Black Milk (20 page)

I watch him throughout the evening, cautiously at first, then with growing curiosity. The more I listen to him the more I am convinced that he is the embodiment of everything I have excluded and pushed away from my life. Pure patience, pure balance, pure rationality, pure calmness, pure harmony. He is a natural-born fisherman.

I don’t even think I like him. I simply and swiftly fall head over heels in love with him. But I am determined not to let anyone at the table, especially him, see that. In order to hide my feelings, I swing to the other extreme, constantly challenging him and frowning at his every comment.

Hours later, as always happens in Istanbul when a group of women and men consume more than a carafe of wine and twice as much of
rakı,
people start to talk about matters of the heart. Someone suggests that we take turns quoting the best maxims about love that we know.

One of my girlfriends volunteers to go first: “This one is from Shakespeare,” she says with a touch of pride. “‘Love all, trust a few.’”

The quote is well received. Everyone toasts.

“This one is from Albert Einstein,” says someone else. “‘Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.’”

We toast again.

His eyes sparkling, Eyup joins the game after a few rounds. “This one is from Mark Twain,” he says. “‘When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.’”

Everyone applauds. I frown. But I join the toast all the same.

Ten minutes later everyone at the table is looking at me, waiting for me to utter my quote. By now I have drunk more than my usual, and my head is swirling. I put my glass on the table with a kind of borrowed confidence and a bit more forcefully than I intended. I wag my finger in the air and say:

“‘Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up.’ How stupid!”

For one stunned moment nobody says a word. A few people cough as if they have something stuck in their throats and some others force a polite smile, but no one toasts.

“This one is from Neil Gaiman,” I say, by way of explanation.

Again silence.

“The Sandman . . . Stardust . . . The Graveyard Book . . .”
I add quickly. “You know, Neil Gaiman.”

I lean back against the chair, take a deep breath and finish the quote: “‘You build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.’ . . . How stupid!”

Everyone is looking at me with something akin to scorn on their faces. I have spoiled the fun and changed the mood from one of drunken merriment to somber seriousness. We can always go back to buoyant love quotes but it won’t be the same. Everyone at the table seems slightly confused and annoyed—except one person who regards me with an infinitely warm smile and winks at me like we share a secret.

I
n my dream, I am walking in an opulent, vast garden. There are all sorts of flowers, plants and birds around, but I know I am not here for them. I keep walking, with a cane in my hand, until I reach a humongous tree. Its trunk is made of crystal, and leafy silver branches spring from its sides like Christmas ornaments. There are squirrels nibbling walnuts inside every hole in the tree. One of the holes resembles a cavernous mouth.

“You look so beautiful,” I say, pleasantly surprised. “I thought it was winter. How did you manage to keep all your leaves?”

“Winter is over now,” says the Brain Tree. “You can leave me be.”

“But I took an oath, remember? I said my body should shrivel up so that my brain could blossom. If I don’t keep my promise, God will be angry.”

“No, He won’t,” says the Brain Tree. “You don’t know Him.”

“Do you? Have you seen Him?” I ask. “What does He look like?”

But the tree ignores my questions and says, “Everything expires. So has your oath. Even I am about to perish in a little while.”

As if in response to his last words, the winds pick up speed and pound with invisible fists on the Brain Tree. That is when I realize that its branches are made of the thinnest glass. In front of my eyes, they shatter into hundreds of minuscule pieces.

“It doesn’t hurt, don’t worry!” the Brain Tree yells over the noise.

Trying not to cut myself on the shattered glass covering the ground, I walk and cry, although I know I am not sad. I just can’t help it. In this state I walk away from the Brain Tree.

When I turn back to look at it one more time, I am surprised to see that the mammoth tree has shrunk to the size of a bonsai.

This is the dream I have the first night I spend with Eyup.

 

Once the Brain Tree releases me, my body and I start mending fences. Again, I feel a speedy change commencing within—this time in the opposite direction. My skin becomes softer, my hair shinier. Now that I am in love, I decide to treat my body as best as I can. I begin frequenting The Body Shop, purchasing creams, powders and lotions I have never used before.

Then one afternoon, just as I am placing the products I’ve bought on a shelf in Eyup’s bathroom, I notice something moving there. Aware of my stare, she quickly hides behind ajar of facial cream. In shock, I move the jar aside.

Approximately six inches in height, twenty ounces in weight, it is a finger-woman—though she resembles none of the others. Her honey-blond hair is loose and hangs down to her waist in waves. She has penciled a mole above her mouth and painted her lips such a bright red that it reminds me of a Chinese lantern on fire. Her arms are encased in skin-tight black gloves that reach up to her elbows. She is wearing solitaire rings of various colors over her gloved fingers and has squeezed into a crimson stretchy evening dress. Her breasts are popping out of the décolletage neckline, and her right leg—all the way to her hip—is exposed by a long slit in her dress. On her feet are pointy red stilettos with heels so high I wonder how she manages to walk in them.

Without sparing me so much as a glance, she picks up a cigarette holder. With practiced ennui, she attaches a cigarette to its tip. Then, fluttering her mascara-drenched lashes, she turns to me.

“Do you have a light, darling?” she asks.

My blood freezes. Who is this woman?

“No, I don’t,” I say, determined to keep communication with her to a minimum.

“That’s okay, darling,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”

Opening her handbag, which looks like a tiny mother-of-pearl pillbox, she takes out a lighter and proceeds to light her cigarette. Then, pursing her lips, she starts to make perfect smoke rings and sends them, one after another, my way.

With my mouth agape, I watch this strange creature.

“You don’t recognize me, right?” she says in a half-velvety, half-naughty voice, like Rita Hayworth in
Gilda.
“Of course, that is very normal. When did you ever recognize me?”

She leans forward, exposing the deep cleavage of her breasts. I avert my gaze, feeling uneasy. Has this woman no shame?

“But, darling, I am not a stranger. I am you. I’m a member of the Choir of Discordant Voices. You expressed the wish to make peace with your body and I gladly took that as an invitation. So here I am.”

“But who exactly are you?” It is all I can come up with.

“My name is Blue Belle Bovary.”

“That sounds so—” I say, looking for a word that won’t offend her.

“Poetic?” she offers.

“Well, yeah. It alliterates, sort of,” I say.

“Thank you, darling,” she says with a wink. “My name is a tribute to Emma Bovary, the woman who did everything in her power to escape the banality and monotony of provincial life.”

“Right . . . but as you may know, she is also a rather problematic character. I mean, if you consider cheating on your husband, telling endless lies and dying in agony by swallowing arsenic a problem.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Better to live with passion than to die of boredom.”

She opens her bag again, takes out a compact and deftly powders the tip of her nose. Then she throws a piercing glance in my direction. “I like wearing sensual perfumes, silk clothing, sexy underwear and satin nightgowns.
Enchanté,
darling.”

I can feel my face grow hot. “Could you please stop calling me ‘darling’?” I say, my voice quivering. “I don’t and could never have an inner voice like you. There must be a mistake.”

“Oh dear, you are doing that again! You want to cast me back down into the dark abyss of negligence,” she says after taking a drag from her cigarette. “I scare the hell out of you, don’t I?”

“Why would I be scared of you?” I ask.

“Otherwise why do you always pose like you do in photos? In every interview you give, you appear guarded and serious. Your face scrunched, your gaze dreamy and distant. The contemplative-writer pose. Ugh!”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I say.

Yet even as I try to object, I remember an adept analysis once made by Erica Jong. She said it was not that hard today for women writers to finish or publish their works. The real difficulty for us was to be taken seriously. Jong believed that the biased attitude toward female writers became even more visible in literary reviews. “I have never seen a review of a woman writer in which her sex was not mentioned in some way.” I knew this to be true. In Turkey, a female writer can publish as many books as she wants, and yet it always requires a long struggle and much more work for a woman to be taken seriously by the conventional literary establishment.

“Why not wear fire-red lipstick, flowery dresses, and show a bit of skin? Would your writing career decline? Would you be less a woman of letters? You’re terrified of being a Body-Woman. Tell me, why are you so afraid of me, darling?”

Words desert me.

“Unlike you, I am a great fan of everything bodily and sensual. I adore the sweet pleasures bestowed on us mere mortals. After all, I am a Scorpio. Hedonism is my motto in life. I enjoy my womanhood,” she raves on. “But because of those boorish Thumbelinas, I have been censored, silenced, suppressed!”

A wave of the purest panic rolls over me. I break into a sweat.

“Of course you’re sweating,” she says, as she cocks her head to one side. “You always dress up like Madame Onion, layer upon layer of clothing. If you wore something light and skimpy, you’d feel so much better.”

Could she be right, I wonder. Maybe I did somehow turn myself into Madame Onion. A woman who refuses to draw attention to her Body because she wants to be respected for her Brain, who dresses up in layers when she goes out in public. I always hide myself behind clothes, using them like armor. And whenever I pose for an interview, I make sure I don’t smile too much, in order to not be taken lightly in a male-dominated environment. I try to look damn serious, and, often, older than I am.

“Now, those novels of yours . . .” mutters Blue Belle Bovary as she smoothes on a papaya hand cream—like an odalisque in an Orientalist painting.

“What’s with my novels?”

“Oh, nothing, it’s just that sometimes I get the impression that you female writers can’t write about sexuality as freely as male writers do. Your sex scenes are always short, almost nonexistent. You know how, in the old movies, when a couple was about to make love, the camera would drift off to the side? Well, that is precisely how you women write about sexuality. Your pens drift off the page when you run into a sex scene!”

“That’s so not true,” I protest. “There are plenty of women writers who write lavishly about eroticism and sexuality!”

“Yes, darling, but I’m not talking about romantic or erotic novels,” she says. “Just because I said I like satin and desire doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. Obviously I’m aware that most of the writers in these genres are women. But that is hardly the topic. I’m not talking about those kinds of books.”

Standing up, she flicks her hair with a quick toss of her head. “I’m talking about highbrow literature here. No offense, darling, but the number of women novelists who can write bluntly about sexuality is slim to none.”

“There must be a way,” I say, still not fully convinced.

“Oh, there is,” she says with an impish smile. “Female novelists can write freely about sex only under three conditions.”

“Which are?”

“The first condition is lesbianism. If the woman writer is lesbian and open about it, what does she have to fear? Lesbian writers tend to be better at writing about the body than your lot.”

While Blue Belle Bovary continues with her monologue, I find myself growing increasingly captive to her silky voice and exaggerated gestures. It is too late to wonder where this conversation is going. Instead I ask, “And why do you think that is?”

“Probably because since they are already stigmatized, they can speak about sensitive subjects without fear of stigma. This makes them more interesting and sincere.”

Of this I know a good example. The American writer Rita Mae Brown’s groundbreaking novel
Rubyfruit Jungle
came out in the 1970s and challenged the mainstream society’s approach to not only sex and sexuality but also lesbianism. Another example is
Tipping the Velvet
by the British novelist Sarah Waters, who calls her books “lesbo historical romps.”

“The second condition, darling, is age. When you are an ‘old woman writer’ in the eyes of society, you are free to write about sex as much as you want. Old women are thought to be above nature. They can talk about sexuality to their heart’s content and it will be called wisdom.”

Alexandra Kollontai comes to mind—Russian revolutionary, social theorist, writer. Though she wrote passionately all her life, criticizing bourgeois moral values, celebrating love and sexuality as positive forces in life, in her older age she expressed herself even more unreservedly about such topics. Kollontai defended the economic, social and sexual emancipation of women—views that did not make her popular among the ruling elite. She developed her theory on non-possessive love and sexuality in her novel
Red Love
and a controversial essay titled “Make Way for the Winged Eros,” which was bitterly criticized by the leading figures of the Communist regime.