Free The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak Page B

thereafter. Yet Pavel Pavlovich Antipov did not go anywhere. After losing Agripina, he lived alone in Flat Number 10 of Bonbon Palace for another two years. When he died, he was neither a year more nor less than one hundred years old.
    In 1972 Bonbon Palace was inherited by Pavel Pavlovich Antipov’s daughter, born out of wedlock. Valerie Germain, who lived in a large house in the Paris countryside with her husband and four children, the last of which she had given birth to when forty, did not attend the funeral of her father whose presence had been nothing but an echoless void for her. Not only did she not visit the grave where he was laid next to Agripina, she also remained equally indifferent to this unexpected inheritance. Neither then nor later did she feel the need to come and see the building. Renting out all the flats with the aid of a rather greedy but just as competent Turkish real estate agent and managing the business from afar, she did not interfere with anything as long as money was regularly deposited into her bank account.
    Less than three weeks after she had rented out Flat Number 10, however, she received a letter gracefully penned in proper French. It was from the tenant. She was informing her that the personal belongings of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov and his wife were still there. Since the furniture was rather large in quantity and value, she indicated, it would be worthwhile for the owner to come and see things for herself. However, if this was not possible, she could find a shipping company to transport it all to France and help with the arrangements.
    In her response, Valerie Germain thanked the tenant for concern she had shown and expressed her sorrow for having inadvertently caused such trouble, but then indicated in no uncertain terms that she was not interested in receiving any of the mentioned items. Her tenant could choose among these any she wanted to keep for herself, to use them as she saw fit, or dispense them to others; she could then throw the rest inthe garbage. The decision was hers. Of course, if any expense would be incurred in moving the furniture out of the house, she was ready to deduct it from the rent.
    Another letter arrived soon after. The woman in Flat Number 10 stated that she could not bring herself to throw the belongings into the garbage, and that she believed her landowner would agree with her if and when she saw the furniture herself. Volunteering to safe keep them for her until then, she had attached to the end of her letter a list of one hundred and eighty items describing each and every one in detail. Also included in the letter was a black-and-white photograph. It was a picture of Bonbon Palace, probably taken by Pavel Pavlovich Antipov right after the construction was completed but before anyone had moved in.
    The apartment building appeared colourless and soulless in the picture. There was not a single person in it, neither on its windows or balconies, nor on the sidewalks or the streets. It resembled a child of war with no living relatives and no eyes to watch her lonely growth. It looked equally placeless. One could not get a clue about what the city surrounding it, if there was one, looked like. It could be anywhere in the world and of any time other than the present…
    Valerie Germain liked this picture. For a long time she kept it posted on her refrigerator along with shopping lists, invoices to be paid, calorie counts, food recipes, vacation postcards and the pictures her children had drawn. Then, the children grew up, her age advanced and she lost the picture of Bonbon Palace sometime, somewhere.

And Today…
Flat Number 3: Hairdressers Cemal and Celal
    ‘Oh God, what wrong have we done to deserve this smell? We literally live in garbage. It won’t be long before we start scrabbling around like roosters.’
    It was none other than Cemal uttering these words and whenever Cemal said anything at the beauty parlour, female laughter, some genuine, others out of