Jim Crace - Arcadia

The four meringues were joined inside Arcadia by a central hub much as the four seed-carpels of nasturtiums cling fatly to their stems. The hub supported terraces and balconies, with views through foliage of the heads and hats of shoppers, and the ‘authentic’ coloured awnings on the fixed-site stalls. On the lower terraces there were bars, a restaurant, an open concert arena. The upper balconies were almost out of sight. Below them stretched netting. It hung across the higher chambers of the domes like the billows of a Tuareg tent. Above and beyond the white and green patterns of the netting, there would be the largest aviary yet built in which the Busi Partnership envisaged cockatoos and cockatiels and minah birds, who finally, would learn to call like traders. ‘All fresh today. All fresh today. No loot, no fruit.’

The centrepiece!’ Signor Busi produced a final sketch. ‘You see, we are not charlatans. We have respect for history. We have not torn the medieval washplace down. We have given it new life.’ The sketches showed what careful restoration could achieve, how medieval gargoyles could be rescued by the heroic dentistry of modern masons, how old and pitted stones could have the plaque removed, the cavities disguised, the broken tops replaced. There’d be new fountains, waterfalls, where previously the flow had been fitful and controlled by taps.

Signor Busi showed photographs of the bludgeoned washing basins where soap and stone and cloth had for so long made slapping music with the water. Then his new designs: the renewed basins were transformed by lights and plants. They were kept full and busy with piped, pumped, filtered, and circulating water, which tumbled from hidden faucets into sculpted pools and then ran into channels to troughs of plants. At night, the air-conditioning, the concourse lights, the water would be turned off and floodlights would shine onto the four meringues. They’d make the innards of Arcadia warm and fathomless with the haywire shadows of pot-bound trees.

‘I am a Milanese,’ said Signor Busi, ‘but even so I must admit that here we have a building which will be as beautiful and functional, more functional perhaps, than the Galerie Victor Emmanuel II in Milan. You share a name. You are Victor III, perhaps. You share a place in history as well, if you allow the Busi Partnership to make these drawings come alive.’

Signor Busi spread his arms and laughed. ‘No more to say.’ He left the plans and drawings where they were and put out both hands to Victor. ‘I am at your disposal until Sunday, naturally. Tante grazie, Signor Victor. ’

Victor summoned Anna. She took Signor Busi to the boss’s private lift and travelled with him to the atrium and to the exit on the mall. He was ebullient and playful like an actor who has triumphed on the stage. He liked the woman at his side. Her perfume and her plumpness and the crowded intimacy of Victor’s lift loosened him. His wife was far away. He laid two fingers on her wrist. He said, ‘I think that your employer will give to me the contract for the Soap Market. Perhaps I ought to celebrate tonight, and you should be my guest at my hotel.’

Anna shook her head. ‘It’s very kind,’ she said, ‘but far too early for a celebration yet, don’t you think? Victor has another three to see.’

‘My dear,’ said Signor Busi, letting go her arm, ‘I feel it in my blood that we shall win. Our plans will be preferred.’

‘Perhaps Victor will decide to preserve the market as it is.’

Busi laughed. ‘There’s nothing to preserve. There’s nothing there. There is nothing to demolish. Of course there are the cobblestones to lift and lay again more cunningly. And there are those unkempt small bars and restaurants which cluster round the Soap Garden. Those we have to level off. And then we start from scratch! So we will speak again, I think. And many times.’

His car drew up and Signor Busi left Big Vic a happy man. Above him, on the 27th floor, his plans were strewn across the desk and carpet. Victor stood amongst them, a reference dictionary in his hand. Arcadia — a rustic paradise, he read. Arcadian — of pastoral simplicity. Arcade — a covered row of shops.

Signor Busi waited at the Excelsior for three more days, and on the fourth he received a call. Anna spoke for Victor. She was pleased, she said, to let him know that the Busi Partnership had secured the Soap Market contract. A formal letter would be sent, and Victor would be grateful if Signor Busi would extend his stay for three more days so that a press conference could be arranged and the timescale for construction plotted. He would, too, be sending Signor Busi sketches of a small statue which was a birthday gift to Victor from — how appropriate! — the leading market traders. It was a mother and a child and should be incorporated into Arcadia.

‘A small statue? This we will give pride of place!’ Busi told Anna. And then, ‘So, please let me give you pride of place at my table at the Excelsior tonight. Now I think it is not too soon to celebrate.’

ANNA ATE VEGETABLES like anybody else, but she was not an habitué of the Soap Market. She lived a little way from town — ten minutes on the bus, a forty-minute walk. She did not count herself so poor or so energetic that she need queue at market stalls and then transport her purchases by bag and bus. Within a hundred metres of her home there was a delicatessen with a fresh-products counter and an unhurried clientele, and this she used. Of course there were those times when she preferred to shop in city streets for clothes or shoes or presents for her nieces. Once in a while, after work, she set off down the mall towards the boutiques and the studios, determined to spend money on herself.

On the evening that Signor Busi first met Victor and then ventured to hold Anna by the wrist, she had felt so glad to be herself, so glad to be admired and flirted with (if only by a creaky clothes horse from Milan) that she went looking for a treat in town. She’d seen a brooch that she wanted, handmade, a galaxy of silver stars, a single moon of pearl. She’d need a darker jacket, too, to suit the brooch. Some Belgian chocolates, perhaps, could keep her company that night. She’d take a taxi home.

The jeweller had her workshop-studio beneath the timber galleries in Saints Row. Anna walked there by the quickest route. She was a little anxious that the galleries might close before the larger stores. But there the owner was, at work on a bracelet, a flight of copper geese. Anna could not see the brooch she wanted on display. She went inside. She asked. The jeweller did not lift her head, or take the magnifier from her eye. She said, ‘I sold it. Weeks ago.’

‘Do you have something similar? Another galaxy?’

‘I don’t do stars and moons, not any more. What I do now is birds and butterflies.’ Anna waited for some helpful word, for some expression of regret, for some polite farewell. Instead the jeweller, clearly not prepared to talk, instructed, ‘You could try elsewhere.’

Anna was too vexed to look elsewhere. What kind of businesswoman had such contempt for customers that she could not be bothered to raise her head or lift her eyes. Anna regretted that she had not gone home by bus as soon as work was done. She did not need a darker jacket now. She would not treat herself — and just as well, perhaps — to Belgian chocolates. Or take the taxi home. Instead she’d catch the bus back to her sewing and her television set, and spend the night, as many single women do, as silent and as self-possessed as quails. But first, she thought, she’d take a look at the Soap Market. It was so near, and on the way to her bus stop. Her contacts with the architects and with their plans had made her curious to see exactly what Signor Busi had meant that afternoon: ‘There’s nothing worth preserving there.’ She’d buy some salad for her sinless evening meal.