Arcadia Read Free Page B

their porter sleds were left where they were used. The wooden produce trays, the emptied
sacks, the pallets, bins, and panniers which had held vegetables and fruit were piled and stacked unevenly, discarded like the crusts and rinds and eggshells of an outdoor meal. It was safe haven
for a sprinting criminal pursued by police in cars.
    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