Black Milk Page 6

  “Well, we don’t know her side of the story,” I say meekly.

  “Everything was her side of the story. She was the writer, Sis!”

  I don’t feel like quarreling. With a ruler in her hand, a calculator in her pocket and plans in her head, Little Miss Practical is used to measuring, calculating and planning everything. I take the list she has prepared for me and leave in a hurry, still feeling uneasy.

  I spin the wheel again. It stops at letter E. This time, I walk east.

  There, in a city as spiritual as Mount Athos, beyond a wooden door, sits Dame Dervish-her head bowed in contemplation, her fingers moving the amber prayer beads. On the tray in front of her there is a bowl of lentil soup and a slice of bread. Her thimble is full of water. She always makes do with little. On her head is a loosely tied turban that comes together in the front with a large stone. Patches of hair show from beneath the turban. She wears a jade dress that reaches the floor, a dark green vest and khaki slippers.

  Seeing she is in the midst of a prayer, I sneak in and listen.

  “God, Pure Love and Beauty, may we be of those who chant Your name and find restoration in You. Don’t let us spend our time on Earth with eyes veiled, ears deafened and hearts sealed to love.”

  I smile at these words and I am still smiling when I hear her next words.

  “Please open Elif’s third eye to Love and broaden her capacity to grasp the Truth. Connections are the essence of Your universe; please don’t deprive her of Your loving connection.”

  “Amen to that,” I say.

  She flinches as she surfaces from her thoughts. When she sees me standing there she breaks into a smile, lifting her hand to her left breast in greeting.

  “I need your help,” I say. “Have you heard the question Ms. Agaoglu asked me? I don’t know how to answer it.”

  “I heard it indeed and I don’t know why you panic so. God says He sometimes puts us through a ‘beautiful test.’ That is what He calls the many quandaries we face in this life. A beautiful test. There is no need to rush for ‘the answer’ because all answers are relative. What is right for one person may be wrong for another. Instead of asking general questions about motherhood and writing, ask God to give you what is good for you.”

  “But how am I supposed to know what is good for me?”

  She ignores my question. “Whether you have children, write books, sell pastries on the street or sign million-dollar business contracts, what matters is to be happy and fulfilled inside. Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Dame Dervish takes a deep breath. “Then let me ask you another question. Are these novels of yours really yours? Are you the creator of them?”

  “Of course they are mine. I create them page by page.”

  “Rumi wrote more than eighty thousand splendid verses and yet he never called himself a creator. Nor did he see himself as a poet. He said he was only an instrument, a channel for God’s creativity.”

  “I am not Rumi,” I say, a bit more harshly than I intended.

  Our eyes meet for a second and I look away, uneasy. I don’t want to confer the authorship of my books to another, even if it be God.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Dame Dervish says. “One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn’t stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light.”

  “You want me to kill myself?” I ask, alarmed.

  “No, my dear. I want you to kill your ego.”

  “Same thing, isn’t it?”

  Dame Dervish sighs and tries again. “I want you to stop thinking. Stop examining, stop analyzing and start living the experience. Only then will you know how being a mother and being a writer can be balanced.”

  “Yes, but what if…”

  “No more what-ifs are needed,” she says. “Did the moth say ‘what if’?”

  “Okay, I am not Rumi, I am not a moth. I am a human being with a mind and four mini women residing inside me. Surely my way of dealing with things is more complicated.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Dame Dervish, chewing her bread.

  It is the kind of “uh-huh” that can mean only, “You aren’t ready yet. Like a fruit that needs more time to ripen, you are still hard on the inside. Go and cook a little, then we’ll talk again.”

  Shuffling my feet, I take my leave and walk toward the south.

  There, in a city as crowded as Tokyo, behind a thrice-bolted door, is the relentless workaholic Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. Four and a half inches in height, ten and a half ounces in weight, she is the skinniest of all the finger-women. She is always eating away at herself, so naturally she doesn’t gain any weight.

  “Time is not money, time is everything,” she is fond of saying.

  In order not to lose time, instead of cooking supper and setting a table she munches on crackers and chips and takes a lot of vitamins as supplements. Even now, there is a pack of biscuits, tiny cubes of cheese and a minuscule box of orange-carrot juice in front of her. There is also a vitamin C tablet and a gingko biloba pill beside her plate. This is her dinner.

  Of all the statements made by men and women since time immemorial, there is one by Chekhov that she has taken up as her life’s motto: “He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.” That is why she is a good Chekhovian. She desires, hopes and fears, all abundantly and all at the same time.

  Today, Miss Ambitious Chekhovian is wearing an indigo skirt that reaches just below her knees, two strands of pearls around her neck and a matching jacket with an ivory silk blouse inside. She has a tiny bit of foundation on her snow-white skin and is wearing dark red lipstick. Her chestnut hair is held back in a bun so tight that not a single strand of hair manages to get loose.

  Every inch of her is groomed, clipped and buffed, as always. Her porcelain teeth gleam in their straight rows like expensive pearls. She is determined, resolute and hardworking-excessively so.

  “Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, will you please help me,” I say. “You heard what Ms. Agaoglu asked. What is your answer?”

  “How can you even ask?” She frowns at me with her thinly plucked eyebrows. “Obviously, I am against you having a baby. With all that we have to do ahead of us, it is hardly time for children!”

  I look at her with puppy eyes.

  “But I was next to Dame Dervish a minute ago and she said that there is no point in running amok in life.”

  “Forget that crazy finger-woman. What does she know? What does she understand of worldly desires?” she says offhandedly. “She has lost her mind somewhere inside those prayer beads of hers.”

  She pops a biscuit into her mouth, then a vitamin pill, and takes a sip of juice to wash it all down. “Listen, dear, let me summarize again my philosophy of life: Did we ask to be brought into this world? Nope. No one asked our opinion on the matter. We just fell into our mothers’ wombs, went through arduous births and voilà, here we are. Since we came along in such an accidental manner, is there anything more sublime than our desire to leave something worthy and lasting behind when we depart the world?”

  I find myself nodding heartily, though the more she speaks, the more lost I am becoming.

  “Unfortunately too many lives are crushed in a monotonous routine. Such a pity! One must actually aim to be special. We have to become immortal while we are still alive. You have to write better novels and develop your skill. ‘You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will… Each hour is precious.’”

  “Was that Chekhov again?”
I ask suspiciously.

  “It was Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,” she says with a frown, and to hammer home the point, she repeats his name in Russian. “АHTOH Павлович Чехов.”

  “Right.” I sigh.

  “Look, I made a calculation: If you write a new novel every year for the next ten years, give a lecture every month, attend all the major literary festivals in Europe and tour the world, then in eight years and two months you’ll have reached new heights in your career.”

  “Oh, give me a break, will you?” I say, exasperated. “Do you think literature is a horse race? Do you think I am a machine?”

  “What is wrong with that?” she says nonchalantly. “Better to be a machine than a vegetable! Instead of living like a sprig of parsley, passionless and lifeless, better to live with the dash and zest of a working machine.”

  “And what about motherhood?”

  “Motherhood… motherhood…” she says, glowering, as if the word has left a bad taste in her mouth. “Better leave motherhood to women who are born to be mothers. We both know you are not like that. Motherhood would upset all of my future plans. Promise me. Say you won’t do it!”

  I look into the horizon, longing to be somewhere else. In the ensuing silence Miss Ambitious Chekhovian slowly gets up, walks to her bag and fishes out a piece of paper.

  “What is this?” I ask when she holds it out to me.

  “It is an address,” says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. “The address of an excellent gynecologist. Guess what! I already got you an appointment. The doctor is expecting you at six-thirty on Tuesday.”

  “But, why?”

  Miss Ambitious Chekhovian’s eyes light up as her voice gets an eerie softness: “Because we want to solve this problem once and for all. This operation will do away with all of the existential questions that have been messing with your mind. I’ve decided to have you sterilized.”

  “What am I, a stray cat!?” I say, flushing scarlet with rage.

  Dissatisfied, she shrugs and turns around. “It is up to you.”

  I know I should mind my temper but I can’t. Still grumbling, I leave her to her veterinary campaign and head up north.

  There, behind an ornamented iron door, in a city as bustling with ideas as New York, lives Miss Highbrowed Cynic. Her windows are covered with burgundy velvet curtains and flimsy cobwebs, her walls with posters of Che Guevara and Marlon Brando.

  She wears slovenly hippie dresses that reach the floor and mirror-threaded Indian vests. She wraps bright foulards around her neck and wears bangle bracelets of every color up to her elbows. When she feels like it, she goes to get a tattoo or another piercing. Depending on the day, she either leaves her shoulder-length hair loose or puts it up in a haphazard bun. She does raja yoga and advanced Reiki. All the acupuncture she’s received has yet to help her quit smoking. If she isn’t smoking a cigarette or a cigarillo, she chews tobacco.

  Her handbags are cluttered sacks, where she fits in several books, notebooks and all sorts of knickknacks. She usually doesn’t wear makeup, not because she is against it but because when she puts a mascara or lipstick in her handbag, she can never find it again.

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic is following an alternative diet nowadays. She has a plate of organic spinach, organic zucchini and some kind of mixed vegetables with saffron in front of her. She is a staunch vegetarian on the verge of turning vegan. It has been years since she last ate meat. Or chicken. Or fish. She claims that when we consume an animal, we also consume their fear of death. Apparently that is the reason we get sick. Instead, we are meant to eat peaceful leafy greens, such as spinach, lettuce, kale, arugula…

  “Hello, Miss Highbrowed Cynic,” I say.

  “Peace, Sister,” she says, waving her hand nonchalantly.

  “I need to pick your brain on an important matter,” I say.

  “Well, you came to the right place. I am brains.”

  “Okay, what is your opinion about motherhood?”

  “What is the use of asking rhetorical questions when it is a well-known fact that everyone hears only what they want to hear,” she says. “Wittgenstein wrote about the limits of language for a reason. You ought to read the Tractatus.”

  “I don’t have time to read the Tractatus,” I say. “Ms. Agaoglu is still in the living room waiting for an answer. You’ve got to help me now.”

  “Well, then, I urge you to think about the word envy.”

  “Come again?”

  “Envy is not a simple emotion, mind you, but a deep philosophical dilemma. It is so important, in fact, that it shapes world history. Jean-Paul Sartre said all sorts of racism and xenophobia stem from envy.”

  “I am afraid I don’t get a word of what you are saying. Could you please speak more plainly?”

  “All right, let me put it in simple terms: The grass is always greener on the other side.”

  “Which means?”

  “It means if you have a baby, you will always be envious of women who don’t have children and focus fully on their careers. If you choose to focus on your career, however, you will always envy women who have kids. Whichever path you choose, your mind will be obsessed with the option you have discarded.”

  “Is there no way out of this dilemma?” I ask.

  She shakes her head desolately. “Envy lies at the root of our existential angst. Look at the history of mankind, all the wars and destruction. Do you know what they said when World War I broke out? The war that will end all wars! Of course that is not what happened. The wars didn’t end because there is no equality and no justice. Instead we have an imbalance of power and income, ethnic and religious clashes… All of this is bound to generate new conflicts.”

  I take a long, deep breath. “You are making me depressed.”

  “You ought to be depressed,” she says, wagging a finger in my face. “To live means to be saddled with melancholy. It is no coincidence that Paul Klee painted the Angel of History so lonely and hopeless. Remember the look on the face of Angelus Novus. I highly recommend that you read Walter Benjamin on…”

  “You are making me soooo depressed,” I interject.

  She stares at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Oh, I see. In the age of Internet and multimedia, no one has the time or patience for in-depth knowledge anymore. All right, I will cut to the chase.”

  “Please.”

  “My point is, whichever woman you will grow into, you will wish to be the Other. According to the great French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the essence of ethics is the point where you come face-to-face with the Other. Of course, from a phenomenological stance, we could speak of the ‘other’ inside the ‘I.’”

  “Ugh, hm!” I say.

  “Read Heidegger to see how a human being, any human being, cannot be taken into account unless seen as an existent among the things surrounding him, the key to all existence being Dasein, which is being-in-the-world.” She widens her dark green eyes at me. “Therefore, my answer to your banal question is as follows: It doesn’t really matter.”

  “What do you mean?” I say, trying to keep frustration from my voice.

  “Whether you don’t have children or you have half a dozen of them, it is all the same,” she says with customary assurance. “In the end, it all boils down to the envy of the Other, and to deep existential dissatisfaction. Humans do not know how to be satisfied. Like Cioran said, we are all sentenced to fall inside ourselves and be miserable.”

  A freezing wind blows in through an open window. The candle in my hand flickers sadly and I shiver. Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s voice, stiff with relish and conviction, scratches my ears. I begin to walk away from her.

  “Hey, where are you going? Come back, I haven’t finished yet.”

  “You’ll never be finished,” I say. “Bye now.”

  It is getting late and talking to Miss Highbrowed Cynic has demoralized me so profoundly I cannot stand to hear another word on this subject. I clamber up the stairs of the Land of Me, two at a time, panting heav
ily, and fall back into Ms. Agaoglu’s bathroom. I make a move to wash my face but the running water is too hot and adjusting the temperature requires an energy I am not sure I have now. So I turn off the faucet and, doing my best to look calm and composed, return to the living room.

  Everything is the way I left it. The paintings on the walls, the books on the shelves, the porcelain teacups on the table, the cookies on the plates, the ticking of the clock, are the same and the house preserves the same solemn silence. Ms. Agaoglu is tranquilly waiting in her seat. The question she asked me a while ago still hangs in the air between us. But I don’t have an answer. Not yet.

  “Umm… thank you so much for your hospitality,” I say. “But I should really get going.”

  “Well, it was nice talking to you,” she says. “Woman to woman, writer to writer.”

  When I step out into the street I catch sight of the two Gypsy women sitting in the same spot. Judging by the flushed looks on their faces, they are excitedly talking about something, but upon noticing me, they go quiet.

  “Hey, you,” one of them says. “Why do you look so down in the dumps?”

  “Probably because I am down there,” I say.

  The woman laughs. “Come, give me your palm and I’ll tell you the way out.”

  “Forget about telling my fortune,” I say. “What I need is a cigarette. Let’s have a smoke together instead.”

  It is as if I’ve suggested robbing a bank. They get serious and become suspicious all of a sudden, eyeing me distrustfully. I ignore their gaze, sit down on the sidewalk and take out a pack of cigarettes from my bag.

  That’s when a smile etches along the lips of the Gypsy who offered to read my fortune only moments ago. She slides over to me. A few seconds later the other one joins us.

  As darkness falls, only paces from Ms. Agaoglu’s living room, the Gypsy flower sellers and I are seated cross-legged on a sidewalk, puffing away. Above us a wispy cloud of smoke lingers lazily. For a moment, the world feels sweet and peaceful, as if there were nothing to worry about, no questions gnawing at my mind.