The Mosquito

THE MOSQUITO

My wife left home last week and as soon as she disappeared, the dust and dirt took the control of the house. It was like a sinking boat where the water comes from all directions with enormous viscosity and power. No one can stop a sinking ship! No matter how many hands and how many feet you have! It will sink sooner or later! When she was here, we only let the pieces of love enter the house… There were touches and kisses in every room we entered. Sometimes we had big arguments, sometimes life challenged us. Still we managed to beat the overwhelming size of the waves and kept our life united with love and respect for the last thirty years. But last week she left! She said “she cannot take it anymore”. I could not ask “cannot take what?”. I knew that, I knew what was missing but I did not want to repeat the known. She left and my life changed in one week. Now I go to work late and come home after midnight. Today, ignoring office manager’s omni-present eyes I arrived at the office just before lunch time. Then after the work, I went drinking with friends, complained to them about my wife, the unbearable burden of childless marriage.

I came home just after the midnight and the first thing hit my face was the smell of the dusty floor. I tried to find the match in the kitchen for more than five minutes but couldn’t find it. I found it in living room, under the sofa! One more cigarette before going to sleep would be perfect I thought. But this hopeless search made me utterly exasperated. I sat on the sofa and thought about the whys in my life. Everything in the house started to move around! I was sure that this matchbox has a special place in the kitchen, under the oven. My wife puts it there because the only place in the kitchen can keep the match dry from the vapor of cooking is the little hole under the oven. Sometimes I feel jealous of this little matchbox. Even it has a space in the world, a place where it can be secure from the deadly attacks of vaporized water. Why did this matchbox come here, to the living room? My wife never let me to smoke in the living room so after she left I enjoyed a bit life of mice in the absence of cat. But what is this table doing here in front of the door? Who put these domino pieces on the floor? I cannot even walk! Is it all about her absence?

Why did she go? This was an ordinary fight every couple does! To go means to escape from the problem. Does she think, “I am an unbearable man?” Anyway, she went and I am sure that she will not come back for one month. I am sure that she is waiting for me now… I will go and apologize from her and her mother…I will kiss her mother’s hand; I will beg to her “Please come back! I need you “Noooo! I will not, even if I know I will die tomorrow in the pile of garbage I created. Why should I go? I can hire a maid for cleaning the house and if I can be a little bit more careful about my life, there will be no problem I am sure… I will not feel her absence! What did I do to apologize? If I made her angry to me, she made me mad with her too! She acts like a new bride. We are married for last thirty years… I will not go and I will not beg! Now, I am going to sleep. I slept for one week without her and I can sleep without her until I die.

Why this bed is so untidy? Because I left it so! I don’t try to keep it tidy because I could not find any reason to make it every morning. When I go to sleep, it will be the same! To spend the time with this bed is absolutely wasting time. This is same as ironing pajama before going to sleep! If I let her, she will try to iron my underwear too… I am now in my bed. I am trying to sleep on my right shoulder because I don’t want to dream a nightmare. If I dream her, that means I missed her. No, No, No!!! I don’t want to dream her! I don’t care her any more. She can do whatever she wants! If she went, she must know how to come back too! At least for the last one week I am staying away from her troubling voice, her disapproving murmurs, her groans which are signs of dissatisfaction and complaints.

What is that? Something around my head is turning and buzzing. It may be a mosquito! This vampire was here yesterday too. You! Blood-sucking monster! Fuck off! Get out the room! If you disturb me, I will kill you! I swear that I will not kill any insect after I visited India but if you trouble me, I can easily renounce, easily forget the words of the Hindu baba who told me that no technology can create one cell of a single mosquito no matter how much scientists try. He convinced me but now you are forcing your chances. Get out now! This is last warning for you! I have to sleep now. If I go to work late one more time, I am sure that the silly boss will talk to me about my private life and will try to give me advices on family affairs. He thought I am having troubles because I have an affair with another woman. Not every man is like you Mr. Casanova! It is none of your business! If I am late, fire me! It will hurt less than talking to me like I am your son!

Are you still here? If you do something, do it quietly! Vizzzzzzz, vizzzzzzz! This sound kills me. It reminds me my wife. She too talks without any break! When I realize that her voice was cut off, I automatically start to worry about her. There might be something wrong. She talks when she cooks, when she washes the dishes, when she irons, when she watches TV and you won’t believe but even when we make love… Many times it happened so it is hard to forget her complaints or daily gossips while we were doing that business! You know what I mean right?

Please stop! I don’t want to kill you. What do you expect from me? I am not a fat man whom you are looking for! I have no enough blood and no enough fat for you. When I got married, she was very beautiful woman like a jar of water fresh from the river and I looked like a real man, of balance and confidence. Now, look at me! I look like a thin stick… If I can be a little bit taller, they can use my body as a flagpole in front of an official building… And, look at her, she looks like a sack of flour…When you see her, you can tell her that “Don’t walk, it is faster if you roll“.

If you want, you can go to see her. You can tell her, you saw me. If you talk about my miserable life and my desperate nights emerging from loneliness, she will be happier. I know her…You don’t know…She will be happier if I confess my suffering. When you go out from this window, first turn to right and go straight. When you see the sign of Barbaros Street, dive in a taxi which has an open window. After seeing the big Ataturk statue, get out of the taxi and turn right. You will see a small lane. There is a wooden house on this lane, number 3 / 14. This is her mother’s house. Probably she is sleeping now. Go and wake her up! Don’t tell her, I sent you to her. She can torture you. Be careful! You will be a spy from the enemy! She can force you to talk… She can be a cruel witch when she is in pain! You don’t know her, I know…

Do you know how to read? How can you know which street and which lane you will enter? Are you illiterate? It doesn’t matter … She can read and write too but what else! I have never seen her when she reads something in her hands. She tells to everybody that she was the president of Literature Club at the university! She lies, I know but nobody else knows. She doesn’t have time to read because of talking. Dir dir dir dir dir dir… Never stops… If you don’t read, don’t interrupt the man who wants to read. I was taking the books to my room as if I was bringing beer… I was smuggling them under my coat or in my back pocket, wrapped in old newspapers. She was criticizing the books I was reading too… Why I bought a book about the sexual life of ants or about political history of Hittites. What can I do? I like reading… When she spends a lot of money with other women for cooking pies and shopping I never mention it… But my books are luxury. Can you imagine this, my dear mosquito? She is the enemy of the books! The fugitive from the Dark Medieval Ages!

Look at me, my dear mosquito! You look like a nice girl. I cannot see you but at least, your buzzing doesn’t bother me any more. I am not escaping from you! Whatever you do, do try to keep your husband at home! I have never read any book about family life of mosquitoes by the way. I promise you, I will find a book and read very soon… Let me repeat! Keep your husband at home… I started to spend my time outside because of this woman. Of course, she never gives me a rest at home. What can I do? I went out to see my friends and I started to gamble with little amounts. She made me a major attendee for this kind of parties. And then, I started to come back home very late. It was a vicious cycle! The more I come home late, the more I wanted to come late.

You must know what is being drunk, right? Have you ever being drunk my dear? If you suck a drunken man’s blood, you might get drunk too. Unlike most people, I don’t believe that drinking makes people forget the problems. I drink because I lose my rationality, not my memory! It is nice to behave silly for short time because people around you will tolerate you for the things you do. If you are sober, you will not be able to do them; you will not be able to say those words. Better to be drunk and behave like a headless chicken then! And of course, I too miss to be irrational, behave irresponsible without considering the consequences and when I wake up, feel free from the sins I have committed while I was another person. I even kissed a girl in a bar once. I don’t know her. She was dancing at the middle of the bar without her shoes. I took her blue shoes and held them in my hands, waited her to come back and ask me for the shoes. I was not myself and she was not herself too! Then she came and ask the shoes back. I kissed her lips without givin her any chance to resist… In fact she did not resist at the beginning. She seemed like she was enjpying the kiss. But soon she realized that something was wrong. A 20 something girl kisses a 50 plus man. I gave her shoes and left the bar. Next morning I remembered two things: the hidden taste of sweet peppermint lips and number 37. This was the size of her blue shoes. Then I read Chekhov’s beautiful story “The Kiss” in that morning. I cried again when I finished the story. A man is kissed by a girl in the dark and he spends the rest of his life in yearning for the owner of those lips. Can you understand this feeling dear mosquito? Can you understand love? The need for love? The aspiration for someone’s care as a remedy to the contagious disease of loneliness? Or is love only something we humans exaggerate this much? Or is it something we need as part of our evolutionary progress? It is not humanly but natural!

Stop, stop! Don’t bite me now! I am talking about love; my heart is weeping with old memoirs but you are having your early breakfast! Yesterday, you did enough! Please, leave me unsown this morning. Are you asking what happened after that? Let me tell you more! Same as all women, she started to blame me for every problem… And then, our voice level increases to the level of honking trucks, troubling the neighbors upstairs… Last Tuesday, she left the home and never called me. But I know … She worries about me all the time! What else she can think of? We have no child such that she can worry about it. How many times I repeated, let us go to see the doctor! It may be a small physiological problem. Only doctors can help us. Let us go … No, No, No, No! “After this age, how you dare to ask me to lift my skirt for another man” she said. . No, my life! Why does the doctor want to see your…? This is last thing to do. And if he does, for him it is just like another part in your body. Doctors at the end are supposed to see body as a whole, as one piece, as combination of blood and flesh. No, no! She went in her own way. First, she went to a witchdoctor in our building. After she understood it is useless to throw the melted lead into cold water and interpret the craters on the surface of the amorphic mass, she started to go to an imam. She recited many religious words, drank holy water, prayed five times a day, visited the mosques where prophet’s friend is supposed to be buried and stopped making love with me but kept intercourse for the sake of the prospective baby. But no! Nothing changed! I said, please my rose! Let us go to see a doctor… You can pray and beg to God again but we have to go first in the way of reason… No, my dear mosquito… I could not convince her… She swears not to go my way!

Let me finish my dear mosquito! I can tell you more! Stories never end! If they end, life will end too. What is the meaning of a life if there are no memoirs in it? Forget the job. I will not go to that damn work. I worked for the same company for the last 35 years and nothing happened. Now my boss is 10 years younger than me. Hopefully I will get retired soon. That is why I don’t care much. A few months more, I am out! Then real problems will start! Days and nights will be the same. In the same house, among these tightly-shaped rooms, I will play hide and seek with her. Is there any other chance dear mosquito? Life was so cruel on me and I cannot take it any more. A few days ago I cried in front of my friends. They did not understand why I cried. I told them a story about my grandfather. I told them that when one becomes old, loneliness sits on his shoulders like a dark cluster of fog. The more you escape, the faster it spreads and blocks the exits. I cried and felt better. They thought I cry because I am lonely but not alone… I thought I cried not because I am lonely, but because I am not alone enough.

Look dear mosquito! Time is 3 am! If I sleep after this time, I can wake up earliest at 11 am. Maybe, I should call her and tell her, “Ring my phone at 7 am” No, no! If I do that, it will mean I am admitting the defeat. She will think I cannot bear being alone. Yes, if it is being stubborn, I will do that. I can live without her, without thinking of her… She will come back without my request! If she knows how to leave she has to know how to return too! I will wait here! If there is no wife, I can find many friends to talk… This evening, I found you. If you don’t bite me, we can be good friends, right? Heyyyy! Are you still here? Where are you, my small friend? Where did you go? Did you leave me? You too, left me without giving me any good reason? Same as my wife?

In the morning , I used a little bit cream for the points on my face, my hands and my feet, bitten by the mosquito and went to my wife’s mother’s house…On the road while driving the car and cleaning my eyes from the half a century old regrets, I said to myself, “We have been married for thirty years and she has never bitten me.”

I did not see that mosquito again…

Ali Riza Arican / Jan 30, 2002

Klaeng / Thailand

Edited on 15 March 2008 ***

*** Editing a story after 6 years is a bit challenging because you learn that how bad were your writing 6 years ago. It is also good because you see there is some improvement. I enjoyed editing it but there were parts I could not touch because of the plot. I did not want to change the plot. I added a few new lines, a few new experiences and ideas… Hope it looks better now… I am sure with a critical friend’s comments, it can be better… It is interesting that this story has been rejected for my first collection of short stories because of its simplicity (I guess comparing others) but I still like the satiric voice in it.

Ali