The market by the river looked almost like a giant ship; bread and meats at one tip, flowers at the other, and in between an oblong mass of tables with their stacks of fruits and vegetables. Early summer meant a surplus of cherries, though not the sour kind, and strawberries, though the rains had battered them somewhat and those sections of the sellers’ tables evoked butchering stations, even if they smelled considerably better.
My oversized plastic shopping bags grew heavier by the kilogram as I picked up garden tomatoes, bananas freckled like little girls who’d gotten too much sun, paper-covered onions the color of topazes, and gracile if somewhat muddied carrots, all punctuated by a series of eggplants suggesting purple cartoon commas.
The wealth of local farmers filled my bags until the plastic handles dug into my palms and made deep pink paths slick with sweat. I’d saved the less appealing part, for my taste anyway, till last, and hustled down the side of the crowd, frequently interrupted by an errant local stepping five feet back from the merchandise as if the berth afforded a better appraisal of zucchini or chard. Half way down the deck, at last, I found the little cement enclave on top of which had been a sign advertising fresh fish.
In a not-quite-landlocked country, in a town about as far from the coast as you can get, in a place where every store selling every thing all the time hasn’t exactly caught on just yet, fresh fish isn’t easy. I’d asked at shops all around the city, and had been directed to more places than I could pronounce in a sitting, but half the time “fresh” was interpreted as frozen-yet-not-to-the-point-of-qualifying-for-inclusion-in-an-ancient-species-museum-exhibit or else the destination was a “hypermarket,” about as appealing an experience as hanging out at the airport for an hour and a half.
But this little seafood bastion in the market by the river promised to be different; it was small, and close by, and most importantly, almost totally ignored by everyone else. I left my bulking bags outside and edged into the tiny shop, which might have been a bathroom for a larger store next door at some point. Tiles once white and now progressing steadily towards ochre lined the walls, floor, and ceiling, and a couple chests of frozen fish were shoved in no particular order to the right. Beside them, a giant plastic bucket held a few gallons of water and a few more live catfish than could fit, and a somehow pristine glass display case full of variously prepared seafoods installed to the left completed the store’s contents.
Except for a broad metal sink at the back, in front of which was a small chair, upon whose splintered seat was perched the fishseller. In thoughtful repose. A woman somewhere close to forty, decorated with the signs of insecurity that seem to accompany the age: short hair complaining of peroxide, pink lipstick plucked from the pages of an Avon catalog, foundation creating facial crusts where slight wrinkles lurked breathless beneath, and the kind of smile that comes from knowing too much too late, a kind of emotional sportsmanship.
She sat, legs crossed, and grasped a poached egg sporting crumpled toilet paper at the base; a tiny silver spoon dove in and out of the viscous yellow and white within the shell, and there, in the tiny store, surrounded by the unease of faint splashing sounds and the smell of this attempt to bottle the sea, the woman slowly ate her runny egg while my skin begged to crawl away and seek its refuge back in the potatoes and cabbages.
Asking in an uneven voice about the possibility of fresh-cut salmon steaks, I’m given a tour of the many different kinds of products I don’t want, and settle finally for marinated mackerel rolled up with sliced white onions and bay. I pay for my parcel –the least likely item in the shop to consist of fish still or recently living, and make my way, only slightly more weight-impeded, to the line of lazy taxicabs, shipping home for a celebration of the joys of local markets –and a haunting of their unexpected horrors.
The Egg-Woman and the Fish
The market by the river looked almost like a giant ship; bread and meats at one tip, flowers at the other, and in between an oblong mass of tables with their stacks of fruits and vegetables. Early summer meant a surplus of cherries, though not the sour kind, and strawberries, though the rains had battered them somewhat and those sections of the sellers’ tables evoked butchering stations, even if they smelled considerably better.
My oversized plastic shopping bags grew heavier by the kilogram as I picked up garden tomatoes, bananas freckled like little girls who’d gotten too much sun, paper-covered onions the color of topazes, and gracile if somewhat muddied carrots, all punctuated by a series of eggplants suggesting purple cartoon commas.
The wealth of local farmers filled my bags until the plastic handles dug into my palms and made deep pink paths slick with sweat. I’d saved the less appealing part, for my taste anyway, till last, and hustled down the side of the crowd, frequently interrupted by an errant local stepping five feet back from the merchandise as if the berth afforded a better appraisal of zucchini or chard. Half way down the deck, at last, I found the little cement enclave on top of which had been a sign advertising fresh fish.
In a not-quite-landlocked country, in a town about as far from the coast as you can get, in a place where every store selling every thing all the time hasn’t exactly caught on just yet, fresh fish isn’t easy. I’d asked at shops all around the city, and had been directed to more places than I could pronounce in a sitting, but half the time “fresh” was interpreted as frozen-yet-not-to-the-point-of-qualifying-for-inclusion-in-an-ancient-species-museum-exhibit or else the destination was a “hypermarket,” about as appealing an experience as hanging out at the airport for an hour and a half.
But this little seafood bastion in the market by the river promised to be different; it was small, and close by, and most importantly, almost totally ignored by everyone else. I left my bulking bags outside and edged into the tiny shop, which might have been a bathroom for a larger store next door at some point. Tiles once white and now progressing steadily towards ochre lined the walls, floor, and ceiling, and a couple chests of frozen fish were shoved in no particular order to the right. Beside them, a giant plastic bucket held a few gallons of water and a few more live catfish than could fit, and a somehow pristine glass display case full of variously prepared seafoods installed to the left completed the store’s contents.
Except for a broad metal sink at the back, in front of which was a small chair, upon whose splintered seat was perched the fishseller. In thoughtful repose. A woman somewhere close to forty, decorated with the signs of insecurity that seem to accompany the age: short hair complaining of peroxide, pink lipstick plucked from the pages of an Avon catalog, foundation creating facial crusts where slight wrinkles lurked breathless beneath, and the kind of smile that comes from knowing too much too late, a kind of emotional sportsmanship.
She sat, legs crossed, and grasped a poached egg sporting crumpled toilet paper at the base; a tiny silver spoon dove in and out of the viscous yellow and white within the shell, and there, in the tiny store, surrounded by the unease of faint splashing sounds and the smell of this attempt to bottle the sea, the woman slowly ate her runny egg while my skin begged to crawl away and seek its refuge back in the potatoes and cabbages.
Asking in an uneven voice about the possibility of fresh-cut salmon steaks, I’m given a tour of the many different kinds of products I don’t want, and settle finally for marinated mackerel rolled up with sliced white onions and bay. I pay for my parcel –the least likely item in the shop to consist of fish still or recently living, and make my way, only slightly more weight-impeded, to the line of lazy taxicabs, shipping home for a celebration of the joys of local markets –and a haunting of their unexpected horrors.