Black Milk - Elif Shafak [59]
The bathroom may not be the most appropriate place to observe a landscape this romantic, but it is the only place in the entire building where I can have a cigarette—without the others, and, most important, the fire alarms detecting my smoke. The healthy-life-happy-minded feminists may forgive me for my cauliflower, but I don’t think they will pardon me for my Marlboro Lights.
But necessity is the mother of invention. Shortly after I arrived here, I set up a mini ironing board in the bathroom as a desk and closed the lid of a storage bin, making it as comfortable as an armchair by tossing a cushion onto it. This is where I write my newspaper column and stories. I lock myself in here, and eat red apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner, smoking to my heart’s content.
So on this snowy night, I am here again, looking out the window as I write, when a loud scream yanks me out of my reverie:
“Help! Help! There’s a thief!”
I put the cigarette out, leave the bathroom and check the clock by the corner of the bed. It reads 3:08. I grab the African mask on the wall and dash forward without thinking about what I am doing. Not that I am made of hero material. If I am brave at this moment it is precisely because I don’t have a clue what is going on. And there is no time to stop and be frightened.
“There is a thief on the roof! Help!”
Now I recognize the voice. It is Miss Highbrowed Cynic who is screaming. I find her perched on top of a vase like a wingless chickadee, hiding among Christmas flowers, her face as pale as a ghost.
“What is it? Why are you yelling?”
“I just got back from the library. I was walking alone in the dark and then I saw it! Her! Someone is walking on the roof!”
“Maybe it is one of the other finger-women.”
“No, it can’t be. All three of them are here, don’t you see?”
I flick a glance over my shoulder. It is true. Having rushed out of bed, they are all lined up behind me—Dame Dervish in her long nightgown, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian in her dark green commando pajamas, Little Miss Practical in her comfortable sweatpants. Straining our ears, we listen to the strange sounds echoing from somewhere else in the house.
“Yo, let’s call the police,” says Little Miss Practical. The day we moved here she wrote down the numbers for police, fire and ambulance on a piece of paper and stuck it on the fridge.
“Wait, don’t rush. Let me go and take a look,” says Dame Dervish.
But Milady Ambitious Chekhovian doesn’t approve. “No way, you are the last person to do this.”
“And why is that?” Dame Dervish asks calmly.
“I know you. Whoever you see on the roof, you’ll say, ‘God must have sent us this thief for a reason,’ and you’ll end up inviting the thug for dinner! You are too soft-hearted for the job. It’s best if I go.”
She has a point, I admit. Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has always been the bravest of the Choir of Discordant Voices. But since she masterminded a coup d’état, her audacity has tripled.
“All right, you go, then,” I say.
Fully focused on her mission, she grabs a plastic fork as a weapon and goes off into the dark.
Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has no sooner disappeared than a commotion erupts on the roof, piercing the night’s stillness. The squirrels inhabiting the trees around the center stick their heads out of their holes, trying to understand what is going on. A few of them jump down and vanish.
We hear Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s voice crack as she shouts at someone. The perceptible alarm in her tone is quickly replaced by anger and aversion. Whoever the other person is, she doesn’t seem to quarrel, doesn’t retort.
Ten minutes later Milady Ambitious Chekhovian comes back downstairs and attempts to stab a tangerine with her fork, fuming and furious. We all watch the fork break into two pieces.
“What is it? What happened?” I ask.
“See for yourself,” she says. Then she turns toward the door, almost hissing. “Are