Black Milk - Elif Shafak [27]
“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 heavily, 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.
Moon Woman
In 1862, Leo Tolstoy married a woman sixteen years his junior: Sophia Andreevna Bers. Although the marriage was to become known as one of the unhappiest in literary history, there may have been much love and passion between them—at least in the early years. There was a time when they laughed together, he like a wild horse galloping at full speed, she like a mare cantering across the paddock, timid but excited. Thirteen children came of this union (nineteen, according to some). Five of them died during childhood. Sophia raised the remaining eight (or fourteen). She spent a large portion of her life as a young woman