23 April 2022
Clipped gardenias, grilled steaks, kicked-up dirt, sweaty shirts tearing with the elapse of the day, strange and sudden moments of incense or lavender, the smells swelled to a climax, and the colours: maroon-woven dresses with little accentuations of blue running up a stitch on the side, great orange tents like the circus, cartons of mysterious purple fruits with little yellow spikes poking out alongside a delicious foreign scent, and the red, the endless blots of red hidden in every corner of the eye; the red in the gown of a woman rushing by, tugging her children along and kicking up more of the dirt, the red coming from lights strung up along the orange tents, glowing at an unknowable frequency before burning out all together in a burst, the red in the palms of children, holding desperately onto a little gift they afforded with the allowance from guardians, the red stains on crinkled little pieces of paper, thrown lovelessly away, catching on the wind and the dirt, floating along the streets of the agora like any other patron, and the red in the bloodshot eyes of many peddlers who haven’t slept in weeks, and who would not sleep again until they could sell a single ware; and there was the sound, the amalgamated anarchy of screams, bells, chimes, and whispers, barely heard by the recipient but carried endlessly by the wind until one could hear the same whispered phrase an hour after it was spoken. A child jingled a bell as she whirled passed on her bicycle, her figure defined by golden braids pulled by the wind. An elderly man, low to the ground, with a basket attached to his waist, was handing out flowers freshly cut from his garden; he had parceled them out in neat piles in his open briefcase. In one hand, he held the clipped gardenias whose smell was so strong amidst the chaos, and in the other hand he jostled a wood block with hanging wind chimes, and he yelled: “Come one, come all. Flowers from the void. Smells and beauty found nowhere else!” And his neighbour, a rather fat man with a ripped shirt and stains from food found in various spots, had set up a little turquoise tent, an oddity among the orange, to sell his wife’s homemade jewelry—unfortunately, his voice wasn’t loud enough to attract any business. There were bicycles everywhere, and they moved towards and away with the speed of the voices, and the bells. The bells echoed. There were bells high up in the steeple, an old church with tan stucco walls beaten down by ceaseless wind and rampant vandalism, and there were bells in the carts and carriages and on bikes and in the hands of vendors with faint voices. It was a choir of bells. I too had a bell. It was old, a present from my grandmother, an aged silver cast in four plant-like mouths that seemed to bleed out and reflect when I cupped it in my hand, and the little red band tied at the top which would slide between my fingers, swinging with my feet. I had come to the bazaar to sell my sleigh bell. But, looking around, there was little need for more bells—or the sound of more bells. I kept the bell in my jacket pocket, protected by my hand on the outside to prevent theft or accident. An older gentleman with curtain skin stopped me. He jumped out from an alley, nearly pulling over an orange tent, and grabbed onto my arm. His face was red, like Santa Claus, with his long white beard and coal eyes that had already begun to fade into the next world. His breath smelt like bourbon, and there was almost a visible cloud every time he spoke: “Could you spare some change?” I jingled around the things in my pocket; all I had was the little bell, its sound, so faint through the threads, and I wasn’t prepared to give that up yet. I had to shrug the old man off and continue down the market road. He disgruntledly stumbled back into the dark, this time tearing the orange tent and pulling out a silver support rod; as it hit the ground, there was a sounding echo, like the sound of a bell, then it settled in the dirt, rolling off the stone supports. I noticed a tall foreign woman sewing in a nearby tent. Her hands were grey, the skin no longer fit them, and as she attended to her craft there was a sense that she was not in control of those hands. There was music coming from her tent. Another man, much less aged, was seated in the back with a harp in his lap, the wood inlay, an image of creeping vines, his fingers carefully working too, the wobbling of a string barely overwhelming the ringing of bells. I considered stopping, but the general push of the crowd drew me forward, a single white-cap current in the human river. We passed many orange tents, each with colourful characters within. There were stands with fruit, peddlers with jewelry and pendants hanging from their necks, little grills releasing uncontrolled smells upon the world, a small forest constructed of fir trees ripped from the land where they were birthed and now for sale, and many thin lines weighed down by various wares, of every colour and every size, of every country, of every type of craftsmanship—juvenilian and master. A certain tent snagged my coat and freed me from the current. When I entered, pushing up the low hanging orange fold, the scents caught me off guard. Piled up to the roof was a collexion of exotic fruits, each with a uniquely sweet smell and original pigmentation. As I grabbed them in my hands, the cool fruit squished and resisted, existing somewhere between firm and ripe, forming around my hand movements, cooling my palms. A woman in the back of the tent, hidden behind the fruit pile, dressed in opaque purple pieces of fabric, danced over to me; she placed her hand on mine and encouraged me to try the fruit. Her hands were warm. I felt a sharp pain shoot through my palms, the mixture of cold and warm, and I broke away, instinctually raising the fruit to my mouth, and the taste: no taste could ever compare, I thought. It was a combination of sweet and sour. There was a thin glaze of sugar and salt over the fruit, little powdered dust that rose into the air as I bit in, and the milky yellow inside of the fruit, now exposed, oozed its cool nectar into my palms, sticky, comforting. The sweetness of the fruit shifted into an exquisite sour taste as I moved it around my mouth: like an apple, like a mango, like a plum, like a banana, like a kiwi, then like a new piece of bubblegum, the texture between soft and firm, with the juice running down my face, and as I swallowed, the cool parcels of fruit cleaned my throat, coating it in the nectar and making the air sweet and sour in shifting breathy increments. It was delicious; but not what I had really wanted. Reluctantly, I reached into my pocket, the jingle, and I gave the woman my bell, a silver cast of my dreams, my only payment. She took my dreams and she smiled.
But there was nothing like that anymore.
There were no bazaars anymore, they had been lost to time.
I let the image from my youth fade back into my memory, and I continued down the cobblestone streets, careful to look at the reflexion of the moon in the shimmering water. My pockets jingled with coins as I walked. There was a little girl resting against the shore, her fingers playing in the sand. She was covered in dirt. I reached into my pocket and threw her a sixpence and she smiled.
Featured in StartleBloom Literary Review Volume 7