Jim Crace - Arcadia

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.