The Gaze by Elif Shafak Page A

start slapping Takuhi. When the audience saw them hit her, when they saw their belated revenge, their worn out enmity, their hearts melted, and they began to relax. Disagreeable to the tongue but pleasant to the eye, the hellish fire under Siranuş burned furiously; thick and languorous smoke would fill the western part of the tent. Finally, when the sisters took Takuhi by the arms and led her off the stage, the audience felt regret for having taken pleasure in the pain of others.
    Right after the Three Ugly Sisters, Snowball Vergin would emerge onto the stage. Or rather he jumped out onto the stage. With him jumped the open syphilis sores all over his body. His mother, who was a famous Galata whore, caught the sickness from a famous sweet little gentleman who lived from his inheritance. The poor woman tried everything she could to get rid of the burden in her womb, but she gave up when she realised the baby, who was nourished not only by his mother’s blood, but the also by time itself, clung to her womb like a mussel clinging to its shell. The wealthy gentleman swore that he would undertake the treatment, but a few months before the baby was born he found that both his fortune and his desire had been consumed. Vergin was born gasping for breath and with sores all over him. He was a half-wit from birth; he could not understand the clumsiness he saw. But Vergin grew anyway, not little by little, but by leaps and bounds. He grew so quickly that when he stopped to catch his breath he could see the changes in his body. He bent over and looked with curiosity between his thighs. Amazing. There wasn’t even a single sore there. None of the festering wounds that had pierced his body, none of the aches that left his mind shorn, nor the memories that gripped the heart…none of them, none of them had touched him there. He was pleased.
    He called his crotch snowball. No one asked him the meaning of snowball, and he didn’t explain it to anyone. Indeed all of the personalities around him hadn’t been given their share of gratitude from the world, but had been given too many nicknames. Vergin’s nickname was accepted without question in the sidestreets of Galata.
    He didn’t grow much after that day. Because he’d already grown enough. He grew just like a snowball rolling down a hill, and the more he grew the further downhill he rolled. And he lived in his own haggard, tattered world, with his low and untamed dreams, just like a snowball that melted itself with its own warmth. While the shouting of passers-by echoed off sinister houses on the streets of ill-repute and broke up, happy faces, young, tender bodies scattered one by one; lifting wine glasses as they slowly chiselled names on tombstones, only Snowball Vergin, only he remained the same. He was neither bound to life nor was life bound to him.
    Just then, Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi appeared. When they sensed that this man, about whom all of the whores of Galata loved to tell strange stories, wanted Vergin instead of any of the beautiful women present, there was a commotion. But because they had long since become inured to all of the strange things in the world, the commotion soon died down. Snowball Vergin took his sack and left this damp and dingy place that he considered home.
    When he first stepped out onto the stage, his eyes were as wide as saucers as he looked at the crowd before him. Hundreds of eyes were on him; they were spread out in groups in the darkness. He was quite pleased with the situation. From that day to this, every evening, he would wait his turn impatiently in the westward-facing section of the cherry-coloured tent, and when the time came he would rush like an arrow onto the stage.
    After Snowball Vergin it was the snake-charmer’s turn. When the ladies saw the snake-charmer, with a silver amulet on his arm, hoop earrings on his ears, and a cummerbund around his waist, they went pale with fear. Those of them who were pregnant closed their eyes