The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak Read Free Book Online

everything he would normally do, to instead just stand still as if rooted to the spot, as if there was no job to be sought, no life to build and no purpose to wear oneself out for. At the end of that week, Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova carefully inspected her husband as if trying to determine his true colour. Only then was she forced to accept that he was too rigidly fixed in hisways to ever change. He was so because of his age (too old; having always advanced a couple of steps ahead of his age, he had now stopped and was waiting for his age to catch up with him); because of his title (too elevated; having always focused on rising even further up, he had suddenly become aware there was not much space left to rise to and froze in his tracks); and lastly, because of his frame (too imposing; he had a frame that was so unbendable and inflexible that he chose not to go through the doors that required his bending down). Pavel Pavlovich Antipov was a man who in essence was weak and fully aware of it, who clung to his power with all his might less to avoid being like others than to avoid being himself. A man who knew too well what he craved and worked all his life to achieve it, struggling bit by bit, climbing step by step, to reach success in the end. The last type of person to accommodate drastic changes!
    Being so young and inexperienced, having never had to work or even accomplish anything, and in utter harmony with her advancing pregnancy, Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova was one immense, round zero. As such she could remain forever anchored in whatever inertia she was entangled. Yet just as easily, she could be sent rolling ahead with a strong gust. She possessed that sheer boldness peculiar to the ignorant and that virginal expectation that things would turn out well, an expectation nurtured by the very fact that she had never acquired anything in life by herself alone. Everything she did attain had been bestowed upon her and all she had lost would one day just as easily be somehow returned to her. She still spent most of her life preparing long lists about what she would do once she returned to Russia. However, just as easily she could spend this time working until that day arrived. Hence she gave up expecting help from her husband and decided to do something she had never done before: to look for a job herself.
    Fortune was on her side because fortune loves to test those emerging with such a challenge, so she found a job as awaitress in one of the most stylish pastry shops in Beyoglu. In that mirrored pastry shop decorated with elegantly stained glass, all day long she went back and forth between customers dressed to the nines and the kitchen that smelt of cinnamon and whipped cream. From all the cacophonous languages spoken there, each sounding to her just as unmelodious as the other, she acquired fragments of words sufficient to understand the orders that were more or less the same and never tried to learn more than that. Actually, she never opened her mouth unless she had to. In spite of the high workload and low pay, no one had ever seen her frown or complain. Though the boss had ordered every employee to smile continuously when serving the customers, others grimaced the moment they left the field of vision of either the boss or the customer, but Agripina’s smile stayed on her face throughout the day as if it had been nailed on. While all the other women tried to avoid work whenever they could or kept searching for a rich middle-aged man to rescue them from this torment, she alone did nothing but work continually. It was more a dedication to suffering than an effort to leave behind these insufferable days that kept her going. It was almost as if she was secretly proud of her suffering, as if embitterment purified her and giving herself up to God’s mortals brought her closer to Him. The more insurmountable the difficulties she encountered, the more insufferable the dangers she had to overcome, and the more vulgar the people