Black Milk - Elif Shafak [24]
“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