Black Milk

gets up, walks to her bag and fishes out a piece of paper.

“What is this?” I ask when she holds it out to me.

“It is an address,” says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. “The address of an excellent gynecologist. Guess what! I already got you an appointment. The doctor is expecting you at six-thirty on Tuesday.”

“But, why?”

Miss Ambitious Chekhovian’s eyes light up as her voice gets an eerie softness: “Because we want to solve this problem once and for all. This operation will do away with all of the existential questions that have been messing with your mind. I’ve decided to have you sterilized.”

“What am I, a stray cat!?” I say, flushing scarlet with rage.

Dissatisfied, she shrugs and turns around. “It is up to you.”

I know I should mind my temper but I can’t. Still grumbling, I leave her to her veterinary campaign and head up north.

There, behind an ornamented iron door, in a city as bustling with ideas as New York, lives Miss Highbrowed Cynic. Her windows are covered with burgundy velvet curtains and flimsy cobwebs, her walls with posters of Che Guevara and Marlon Brando.

She wears slovenly hippie dresses that reach the floor and mirror-threaded Indian vests. She wraps bright foulards around her neck and wears bangle bracelets of every color up to her elbows. When she feels like it, she goes to get a tattoo or another piercing. Depending on the day, she either leaves her shoulder-length hair loose or puts it up in a haphazard bun. She does raja yoga and advanced Reiki. All the acupuncture she’s received has yet to help her quit smoking. If she isn’t smoking a cigarette or a cigarillo, she chews tobacco.

Her handbags are cluttered sacks, where she fits in several books, notebooks and all sorts of knickknacks. She usually doesn’t wear makeup, not because she is against it but because when she puts a mascara or lipstick in her handbag, she can never find it again.

Miss Highbrowed Cynic is following an alternative diet nowadays. She has a plate of organic spinach, organic zucchini and some kind of mixed vegetables with saffron in front of her. She is a staunch vegetarian on the verge of turning vegan. It has been years since she last ate meat. Or chicken. Or fish. She claims that when we consume an animal, we also consume their fear of death. Apparently that is the reason we get sick. Instead, we are meant to eat peaceful leafy greens, such as spinach, lettuce, kale, arugula…

“Hello, Miss Highbrowed Cynic,” I say.

“Peace, Sister,” she says, waving her hand nonchalantly.

“I need to pick your brain on an important matter,” I say.

“Well, you came to the right place. I am brains.”

“Okay, what is your opinion about motherhood?”

“What is the use of asking rhetorical questions when it is a well-known fact that everyone hears only what they want to hear,” she says. “Wittgenstein wrote about the limits of language for a reason. You ought to read the Tractatus.”

“I don’t have time to read the Tractatus,” I say. “Ms. Agaoglu is still in the living room waiting for an answer. You’ve got to help me now.”

“Well, then, I urge you to think about the word envy.”

“Come again?”

“Envy is not a simple emotion, mind you, but a deep philosophical dilemma. It is so important, in fact, that it shapes world history. Jean-Paul Sartre said all sorts of racism and xenophobia stem from envy.”

“I am afraid I don’t get a word of what you are saying. Could you please speak more plainly?”

“All right, let me put it in simple terms: The grass is always greener on the other side.”

“Which means?”

“It means if you have a baby, you will always be envious of women who don’t have children and focus fully on their careers. If you choose to focus on your career, however, you will always envy women who have kids. Whichever path you choose, your mind will be obsessed with the option you have discarded.”

“Is there no way out of this dilemma?” I ask.

She shakes her head desolately. “Envy lies at the root of our existential angst. Look at the history of mankind, all the wars and destruction. Do you know what they said when World War I broke out? The war that will end all wars! Of course that is not what happened. The wars didn’t end because there is no equality and no justice. Instead we have an imbalance of power and income, ethnic and religious clashes… All of this is bound to generate new conflicts.”

I take a long, deep breath. “You are making me depressed.”

“You ought to be depressed,” she says, wagging a finger in my face. “To live means to be saddled with melancholy. It is no coincidence that Paul Klee painted the Angel of History so lonely and hopeless. Remember the look on the face of Angelus Novus. I highly recommend that you read Walter Benjamin on…”

“You are making me soooo depressed,” I interject.

She stares at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Oh, I see. In the age of Internet and multimedia, no one has the time or patience for in-depth knowledge anymore. All right, I will cut to the chase.”

“Please.”

“My point is, whichever woman you will grow into, you will wish to be the Other. According to the great French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the essence of ethics is the point where you come face-to-face with the Other. Of course, from a phenomenological stance, we could speak of the ‘other’ inside the ‘I.’”

“Ugh, hm!” I say.

“Read Heidegger to see how a human being, any human being, cannot be taken into account unless seen as an existent among the things surrounding him, the key to all existence being Dasein, which is being-in-the-world.” She widens her dark green eyes at me. “Therefore, my answer to your banal question is as follows: It doesn’t really matter.”

“What do you mean?” I say, trying to keep frustration from my voice.

“Whether you don’t have children or you have half a dozen of them, it is all the same,” she says with customary assurance. “In the end, it all boils down to the envy of the Other, and to deep existential dissatisfaction. Humans do not know how to be satisfied. Like Cioran said, we are all sentenced to fall inside ourselves and be miserable.”

A freezing wind blows in through an open window. The candle in my hand flickers sadly and I shiver. Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s voice, stiff with relish and conviction, scratches my ears. I begin to walk away from her.

“Hey, where are you going? Come back, I haven’t finished yet.”

“You’ll never be finished,” I say. “Bye now.”

It is getting late and talking to Miss Highbrowed Cynic has demoralized me so profoundly I cannot stand to hear another word on this subject. I clamber up the stairs of the Land of Me, two at a time, panting heavily, and fall back into Ms. Agaoglu’s bathroom. I make a move to wash my face but the running water is too hot and adjusting the temperature requires an energy I am not sure I have now. So I turn off the faucet and, doing my best to look calm and composed, return to the living room.

Everything is the way I left it. The paintings on the walls, the books on the shelves, the porcelain teacups on the table, the cookies on the plates, the ticking of the clock, are the same and the house preserves the same solemn silence. Ms. Agaoglu is tranquilly waiting in her seat. The question she asked me a while ago still hangs in the air between us. But I don’t have an answer. Not yet.

“Umm… thank you so much for your hospitality,” I say. “But I should really get going.”

“Well, it was nice talking to you,” she says. “Woman to woman, writer to writer.”

When I step out into the street I catch sight of the two Gypsy women sitting in the same spot. Judging by the flushed looks on their faces, they are excitedly talking about something, but upon noticing me, they go quiet.

“Hey, you,” one of them says. “Why do you look so down in the dumps?”

“Probably because I am down there,” I say.

The woman laughs. “Come, give me your palm and I’ll tell you the way out.”

“Forget about telling my fortune,” I say. “What I need is a cigarette. Let’s have a smoke together instead.”