vibrations, to the particular brand of the numinous which the place diffused. It was not easy with Jason giggling and shirtless, but the light did fall quite beautifully from a clerestory of unglazed slits around the shallow dome. Motes and spicules stirred up from the crackling straw danced in its beams. The whole place had the warm, immemorial smell of hay-lofts. Even though the figure of Rimmon was not perhaps quite as awesomely menacing as intended – having the stature of a modern eleven-year-old – there was something engrossing about his antiquity, his silence, his posture. Indeed, the more she looked at him and saw a man engaged in a timeless human activity, the more he seemed to transcend the role and emit a stealthy power. Altogether Tessa had been quite sorry to leave the House of Rimmon.
The Mango Surprises arrived, macédoines of mango and soursop with a dusting of mauve hundreds-and-thousands. Thus fortified – and in Jason’s case appeased – they made their way to the Wednesday Market next to the bus station. The alleys were thronged with people who carried the Hemonys along as if they had plans for them before dumping them at a street corner piled with the spare parts of car engines. Gamely they rejoined the crowd and were borne off again in a different direction, past heaps of trussed chickens with their beaks agape. There were boys with cloth wrapped around their heads seated behind pyramids of green mangoes. For those stopping to refresh themselves, the boys also dispensed salt to sprinkle on the unripe fruit. A few steps further and they came upon live fish sliced lengthwise to the spine and laid out with ice on draining slabs so that the monger could demonstrate the freshness of his wares. Their hearts twitched, their lifeblood streamed,their flotation sacs pumped and inflated hopelessly. Black silk Chinese caps in conference over the fish; long robes, yellow monkish robes. Priestly robes and cotton pantaloons delicately hitched to pass over improvised duckboards and broken packing-cases which might afford unspattered passage across pools of ordure. And suddenly, with the abruptness of silence unaccountably falling, the family were out on the other side. They found themselves beached at the end of a boulevard lined with balsam oaks whose perfume-drenched candles tottered away down the perspective towards the outer suburbs. Immediately before them stood a tall man dressed in purple, holding a slender leather pouch.
‘Nasal hygiene?’ he enquired in English. When nobody responded he said to Tessa, ‘I am picking your nose please, madam.’ He withdrew from the case what looked like a pair of slender chopsticks but which on closer inspection proved to be freshly peeled twigs with sharpened points.
‘No,’ said Tessa. ‘Thank you all the same.’
‘You mean,’ Jason wanted to know, ‘you’re a professional nose-picker?’
‘I am, young sir,’ said the man with a bow. ‘Very noble profession. In your country I am not knowing the custom. Here in Malomba it very bad to putting finger in nose outside house. Maybe go blind. But wooden piece is okay. So we are doing.’
Looking round, Jason noticed another man in purple standing a few yards off. This one had a customer whose chin he held in one hand, tilting the head back to face the sun while with the other he delicately manipulated the twigs. Then he withdrew them and having flicked them towards the kerb wiped them on a strip of cloth. Tessa had already been upset by the fish, and now another fragment of her former private-school self bobbed up.
‘Most quaint,’ she said. ‘Come along.’
Turning, they entered the crowd once more and weremilled about amid hubbub and confusion before being spat from beneath the Chinatown arch. ‘Oh, I wish it was next Thursday,’ said Zoe. ‘Can’t we go and see this healer before then?’
‘I’m afraid not, Zo. It was difficult enough getting any appointment at all. Hadlam Tapranne is probably
The Mango Surprises arrived, macédoines of mango and soursop with a dusting of mauve hundreds-and-thousands. Thus fortified – and in Jason’s case appeased – they made their way to the Wednesday Market next to the bus station. The alleys were thronged with people who carried the Hemonys along as if they had plans for them before dumping them at a street corner piled with the spare parts of car engines. Gamely they rejoined the crowd and were borne off again in a different direction, past heaps of trussed chickens with their beaks agape. There were boys with cloth wrapped around their heads seated behind pyramids of green mangoes. For those stopping to refresh themselves, the boys also dispensed salt to sprinkle on the unripe fruit. A few steps further and they came upon live fish sliced lengthwise to the spine and laid out with ice on draining slabs so that the monger could demonstrate the freshness of his wares. Their hearts twitched, their lifeblood streamed,their flotation sacs pumped and inflated hopelessly. Black silk Chinese caps in conference over the fish; long robes, yellow monkish robes. Priestly robes and cotton pantaloons delicately hitched to pass over improvised duckboards and broken packing-cases which might afford unspattered passage across pools of ordure. And suddenly, with the abruptness of silence unaccountably falling, the family were out on the other side. They found themselves beached at the end of a boulevard lined with balsam oaks whose perfume-drenched candles tottered away down the perspective towards the outer suburbs. Immediately before them stood a tall man dressed in purple, holding a slender leather pouch.
‘Nasal hygiene?’ he enquired in English. When nobody responded he said to Tessa, ‘I am picking your nose please, madam.’ He withdrew from the case what looked like a pair of slender chopsticks but which on closer inspection proved to be freshly peeled twigs with sharpened points.
‘No,’ said Tessa. ‘Thank you all the same.’
‘You mean,’ Jason wanted to know, ‘you’re a professional nose-picker?’
‘I am, young sir,’ said the man with a bow. ‘Very noble profession. In your country I am not knowing the custom. Here in Malomba it very bad to putting finger in nose outside house. Maybe go blind. But wooden piece is okay. So we are doing.’
Looking round, Jason noticed another man in purple standing a few yards off. This one had a customer whose chin he held in one hand, tilting the head back to face the sun while with the other he delicately manipulated the twigs. Then he withdrew them and having flicked them towards the kerb wiped them on a strip of cloth. Tessa had already been upset by the fish, and now another fragment of her former private-school self bobbed up.
‘Most quaint,’ she said. ‘Come along.’
Turning, they entered the crowd once more and weremilled about amid hubbub and confusion before being spat from beneath the Chinatown arch. ‘Oh, I wish it was next Thursday,’ said Zoe. ‘Can’t we go and see this healer before then?’
‘I’m afraid not, Zo. It was difficult enough getting any appointment at all. Hadlam Tapranne is probably
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