Arcadia (3 page)

The odours here were less opaque than those which spilled out, windborne, into the streets beyond. To walk amongst the stalls, eyes closed, would be to test one’s nose for all the
subtleties of countryside and food. The practised nose – like Rook’s – could tell when barrows of potatoes were pushed by or where the garlic nests were hung or whether medlar
fruit had bletted long enough and now were fit to eat, or when (the softest, then the foullest scents of all) guavas were for sale, or durians. But why would anybody want to close their eyes? No
gallery of modern art could match the colours there, the tones, the shapes, the harmonies and conflicts on the stalls.

The yellow stars were babacos; the Turkish turban was a squash; the pile of honeydews were rugby footballs begging for a kick; redcurrants, clinging fatly to their spindly strigs, burst and
bled; zucchini from Sardinia retained their orange, tissue flowers and peeped out of their boxes like madly coiffeured snakes. And dead snakes, sometimes, as green and cold as watermelons, could be
found coiled thinly round mangoes or cantaloupes. And thrips and ticks and lice and grubs and flies, the living things that make a living out of market fruit and market crowds. The roaches, bugs,
and weevils that share our meals and beds.

The first traders, on the outskirts of the market, were the bananamen, the specialists in
Musaceae
. They did not wish to penetrate too far into the maelstrom of the stalls. The snags of
fruit weighed far too much to move around, ten, twenty overlapping hands perhaps, each with a dozen fingers to the hand, and each fibrous stem damp and heavy from refrigeration on the seas, from
journeying, from ripening, from growing sweet. Bananas were mostly sold in bulk from off the back of vans. They sold them by the hand, and not by number or by weight. The bananamen stood by,
foul-mouthed, lascivious, and raucous with their yellow-penis jokes. Their fleshy plantains were rewarded with the biggest laughs, the deepest blushes. These traders were the butchers of the
marketplace. They each were ready with a knife, like senators at Caesar’s death, to cut the hand selected by the customer expertly from the stem. Every knife, and every trader’s tongue,
was as sharp as limes.

Beside them was the jackfruit van – one jackfruit always sliced in half and cubes cut out so that anyone could test the flesh for creaminess and age. And then the melons and the yams, the
gourds, the Herculean beets, the pumpkins, the pyramids of cabbages and swedes. Each had its pitch, exactly and invisibly marked out. God help the reckless cabbage that strayed or rolled into the
sovereign kingdom of the yam. God help the greengrocer who scrumped his neighbour’s space.

So old and honoured were the patterns of the trading pitches that Rook, or so he claimed, could have walked as sure-footed as a village cat between the produce and the stalls to the Soap Garden
at the market’s heart without a glance to either side or to his feet. But Rook was not the man to pass unnoticed or unnoticing through such a place. His eyes were Victor’s. This was his
boss’s empire, the place that made him rich. This market was the keystone to the solid arch of Victor’s wealth. Wealth can disappear unless it’s watched and husbanded. So Rook was
more alert than he had been all day. He watched to see which soapies called out his name and waved, which ones had customers and which had none, what new faces were portering or helping out with
sales, who scowled, who hid, who turned away as if they’d never seen his face before, who bid him wish the boss a pleasant birthday lunch, what fruits there were, what vegetables were new,
who had no right to be there and yet was.

At times, Rook simply stood and stared in wonder at the wit and artistry for sale and on display – the plump, suggestive irony of roots, the painted, powdered vanity of peaches, the waxen
probity of lettuce leaves, the faith implicit in the youth and readiness of onion sets, the senility of medlars (eaten only when decayed), the seductive, bitter alchemy of quinces which young men
bought to soften women’s hearts. Who could pass unfeeling through such splendour? Who could resist an orange from the pile? Not Rook. He pushed up against the paper trimmings of a stall.
Before him were the peaks of citruses, the best, most flawless fruit built into perfect ziggurats with prices marked on flags. There were common blonds and bloods and navels – oranges from
twenty nations of the world; Cuban green griollas, the yellowish valencias from Spain, the red sanguinas grown on the southern slopes of the Atlas. Not just oranges in peaks, but foothills too of
bergamots, lemons, limes, kumquats, and the infinite variety of mandarins. And all this summer landscape edged in boulders made from grapefruit, shaddocks, and half-caste pomelos. The fruiterer had
made a passing masterpiece of oranges. He’d added, too, a fringe and diadem of lights, the colour and the shape of citruses. No matter how they shone they were eclipsed. No light was bright
enough to glow more cheerfully than fruit. No packaging could better them or sing their praises louder than themselves.

Rook made his choice and took an orange from the cheapest pile. Its peel, it’s true, was blemished, dirty almost. There was a brownish lunar landscape on its outer crust. The price was
low. But for Rook, who knew his oranges, such blemishes were marks of juice and sweetness. An orange so discoloured is an orange which has ripened in the heat, in countries or in seasons where the
nights are warm and bruising. An orange so discoloured would have slaked its daytime thirst upon the perspiration of the moon. Rook held his purchase up, and searched for a few coins. The fruiterer
just clicked his tongue and shook his head to signify there was no need for Rook to pay, that he should take this orange as a gift.

Rook scalped the orange at its pig with his teeth. He spiralled off the peel and ate, stepping back and stooping to save his shirt-front from the juice. The flesh left fluorescent lacquer on his
lips and chin; the pith made anchovies of flannelette beneath his nails. He let the peel fall to the ground as he walked. The detritus of fruit, the husks and pods and skins, the blowsy outer
leaves of salad, the blown parsley sprigs, were not considered litter there, but God-given carpeting for cobblestones.

Rook loved it all, this market world, this teeming concourse of cobbles. What good, he wondered, would it be to own this land, as Victor did, and yet not have the legs or lungs to browse amongst
the smells and tints and sounds? Yet don’t be fooled. Our Rook was not at ease. The market boy was now a predator. What made Victor a millionaire – the rents on market stalls, the
‘seeds-to-stomach’ stranglehold on wholesale and supplies, the canning and bottling plants – had made Rook wealthy, too. His wealth was surreptitious, though. No penthouses for
Rook. No limousines. No coddled fish for lunch. No Rolexes or La Martines. His money was the kind you couldn’t spend too openly and couldn’t bank. It was the kind that came in cash four
times a year, slipped to him in a paper bag with a mango or some grapes or handed over at a bar, a cylinder of notes – all used – and held by rubber bands.

Compared to the trading rents which Victor charged, Rook’s ‘service fees’ were small, a modest tithe for peace of mind from every market trader there. A guarantee against
eviction. A small amount to pay for Victor’s ear. ‘Pitch money’, it was called. A sweetener for Rook: vinegar for those who paid. You could see it on the faces of the men who came
to Rook just then – his chin still damp with orange juice, his eyes alight, alert – to make their summer payments for their pitches.

One man peeled off his payment like a sinner giving alms. Another passed his ransom concealed inside his palm. A handshake did the trick. A third – the soapie known as Con – shook
openly and tauntingly a sealed envelope in Rook’s face, with Rook’s name written large and red on it for all to see. Others saw the payment as a trade. They paid, then mentioned
problems that could be fixed, if only Rook would talk with Victor. The price of olives was too high. The pears were bruised by the new mechanical pickers that Victor used. The contractors who hosed
the market down at night were playing games with the water jet and damaging the decoration on the stalls. ‘Please let old Victor know our troubles. He can’t fix what he doesn’t
know. And – please – wish Victor Happy Birthday from us all.’ What was unspoken but accompanied all the cash that Rook received was this: Long may you rot in Hell.

What should we make of Rook, then, as he, shamefaced, proprietorial, pushed through the shoppers and the porters in the medieval alleyways of wood and canvas, of trestles, awnings, stalls, and
booths, of global colours, smells, and tastes, and reached the bars and lawns of the Soap Garden? That he was bad? Or shrewd? Or simply, like the rest of us, a weakling when it comes to cash?

W
HEN
R
OOK
arrived at the sunlit respite of the Soap Garden, there were no seats. The bars were full. The lawns were packed with
porters and with the low-paid women who weighed, wrapped, and sold the city’s purchases. Their bosses occupied the shaded chairs. Keeping a fruit or vegetable stall is not an unremitting
task. There is free time.

At that hour of the morning, the soapies came for coffee-and-a-shot and to fix and chalk their prices for the day. Some turned away or sank into their seats when they saw Rook. Some watched him
blankly. One or two – the older, more successful ones, the ones invited to Victor’s birthday lunch – stood up and waved at him to indicate that he should join them at their table,
that they’d be honoured if he’d drink a shot with them. But Rook had Victor’s chair to decorate and Anna’s cakes to buy. He’d join them later, when his tasks were
done. He went first to the cake-and-coffee stand and chose a dozen cakes from their display – four fruit, four cream, four chocolate. Rook leaned against the stand and studied all the sales
girls on the lawns and then the foliage of the garden while his cakes were gift-wrapped in a cardboard pyramid and tied with red and silver tape.

Of all the trees and bushes in the garden, the burgher laurels seemed the best for Victor’s birthday chair. Their leaves looked supple, shiny, washable. Besides, their branches were within
easy reach and, unlike the roses and the snag trees which lined the lawns, they posed no problem for the naked hand. Rook chose a laurel which grew against the railings of the medieval washing
place and threw its shadow across the worn stone sinks, the emaciated gargoyles on the fountains, the cluster of grotesques which nuzzled at the basin rim. Rook, made devil-may-care by his passage
through the market, was in no mood to be unnerved by rules or inhibitions. He simply grasped a slender laurel branch, and tugged as if he expected it to snap like celery. His hands slipped, ran
free, and stripped the leaves, together with the fledgling buds which roosted at each node. What was that smell?

He took more care with the second spray. He bent it downwards at its base, and tried to twist and break it off. It snapped but was too green and sinewy to separate cleanly. He tore it free. He
held it by its broken stem, satisfied that it would do for Victor’s chair. Quite soon he had a thick papoose of laurel sprays resting on his arm.

Rook was bemused, not by the cussedness of laurels, but by the odour of the exposed wood, a cooking, kitchen smell both unnerving and familiar. He smelt his fingers and then put his nose to the
fractured branch. ‘What’s that?’ he asked himself, and sneezed. He walked across the grass to the group of traders on the patio of a bar. They were all men that he knew by name,
and all about Rook’s age, not old or rich enough to dine on Victor’s fish. They’d all been market boys together, kicking turnip-balls amongst the lettuce leaves, made shrewd and
tough beyond their years by labouring for Dad. They’d all been comrades in the market strike a dozen years before. The noisy pair were brothers; bananas were their trade. The balding one was
Spuds, a shapeless idle man with wife and kids to match. Another was the man called Con whose envelope of hard-earned cash was in Rook’s jacket pocket and who now held court with his account
of how, at dawn that day, he’d very nearly had his pockets picked. He stopped mid-sentence when he spotted Rook. He’d already seen the fellow once too often for the day, a thousand
times too often for a life. This was the man, this Rook, who’d betrayed the soapies, who’d led the produce strike and then abandoned it for pay and privilege at Victor’s feet, as
if fine sentiments were not as fine as cash. That man’d barter every tooth inside his head, he thought, but said, ‘Watch out. Here comes the apple grub.’ Con was not the
understanding sort. He’d gladly throttle Rook. He’d gladly shake out every golden tooth. He’d pay to have it done.

The others were more forgiving. They might still have been Rook’s intimates if it weren’t that they were always in his debt. ‘Pitch’ payments had cost Rook a thousand
friends. They smiled at his approach, but not with generosity or welcome. It was simply that their childhood friend looked rather foolish to their male, no-nonsense eyes: one suited arm weighed
down by foliage; the fingers of the other hand entwined in the fussy, dainty packaging of cakes.

Rook leant against their table and he sneezed again: a clearance of the nostrils and a shout of matching force and volume.

‘What
is
that smell?’ he asked, wiping his eyes with his sleeve and placing the laurel amongst their cups and glasses. They passed the broken branch around the table and put
their noses to the wood. They scratched their heads. Their noses knew that smell so well, but their tongues could not locate the name.

‘Like coconut,’ said one.

Another thought it smelt like cake. They called their favourite waitress to their aid. She hardly had to smell. ‘It’s marchpane,’ she said, using the country word for marzipan.
She handed back the laurel branch to Rook. Once more he held it to his nose. The girl was right. He smelt the eggs, the sugar, and the almond paste as perfectly as when he was a child and helping
mother mix and shape the birthday treats, the balls, the stars, the leaves of marzipan.