A scruffy bright-eyed mongrel trotted towards the market, past the tailor who sat on the floor sewing, past the metal workshop and the watch repairer. Looking neither to left nor right, it threaded its way through bicycle wheels and long skirts, searching for someone to play with.
Joshua heard the sounds of the market before it came into view.
‘Beans! Sweet, juicy beans!’
‘You! Hey! How much are the yams?’
‘Jamalacs! Only twenty millis a pound! Jamalacs!’
The shouting was tossed noisily back and forth. The dog picked its way down crowded aisles, sniffing ripe fruit and vegetables, tail wagging, still searching.
‘Pummel! Oy!’
The dog stopped and pricked up its ears. It doubled back and raced to the low outer wall of the market, where a boy was perched. It jumped up at his knees, barking with excitement.
Robert leaned down and scratched between Pummel’s rough hairy ears. ‘Hey, Pummel. Good dog.’
By now Joshua had arrived at the market. The village market was as old as he was. The government had built it the year he was born, the same year his mother had died. He prowled round the edges, knowing that Robert would be here somewhere, probably watching the market sellers. Halfway round he found his friend, having a tug-of-war with Pummel over a stick.
‘Hello, Robert.’
At the sound of Joshua’s voice, Robert looked up. He let go of the stick and Pummel tumbled backwards, surprised at his sudden victory. He dropped the stick at Robert’s feet and barked hopefully, but Robert ignored him.
‘Thought you’d come,’ Robert said to Joshua, talking fast as usual, getting what he had to say out before anyone could interrupt. ‘Let’s try Mama Calla. She’s in the corner over there. I’ve been watching her.’ All the market sellers were women, wearing wraps of cloth that were as colourful as the fruit they sold.
Robert hopped down from the wall and they set off. Suddenly splashes of water hit their feet. A man was hosing down the aisle. ‘You two again!’ he greeted them. Joshua recognised Simon, a retired fisherman who lived near them. He leaned back from the blast of bad breath from the man’s rotting teeth. ‘Who are you going to pick on this time?’
‘Mama Calla,’ Robert answered and Joshua nodded.
‘Mama Calla, indeed.’ They all looked to where Robert was pointing. Mama Calla was sitting cross-legged, fruit and vegetables laid out on bright blue and orange material in front of her and piled in heaps behind her. She was taking no part in the conversation shouted from one seller to another, but kept rearranging her fruit, moving bananas from left to right, changing the position of a coconut here, an orange there. It looked as if she wanted to be somewhere else.
‘In that case …’
The boys squealed as water from the hose hit their legs, blasting away the dust and sand.
‘There. At least you’ll be clean for her. She’s fussy, is Mama Calla.’ Simon pointed the hose at Pummel and drove him away before him.
‘Wait here,’ Robert told Joshua.
Joshua watched Robert saunter down the aisle, his flapping feet too big even for his long legs. He reached the woman’s pitch. Joshua watched their heads come together and he tried to follow the gestures they were making with their hands. Negotiations seemed to be going well. A couple of minutes passed.
Robert turned and waved Joshua over.
‘One koria fifty an hour, and a paw paw each,’ Mama Calla repeated her offer to Joshua.
He glanced at Robert, who nodded. ‘Fine,’ Joshua said. It was a good deal. Apart from mangoes from their own tree and the odd coconut, they had to buy the rest of their fruit and vegetables from the market.
Mama Calla gathered up her cloth bundle and patted him on the cheek, something he hated. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so,’ she said. ‘Here. A peach for your voice. Sing well.’
Joshua joined Robert on the sacking between the fruit and tucked his legs under him.
‘You first,’ Robert said.
Joshua bit into the peach, sucked, chewed, swallowed, and took a deep breath.
‘Passion peaches, mellow mangoes, paw paw and bananas.’
He paused and went on, singing out even higher.
‘Bent bananas, ranel, koli-kutti,’
He was making it up as he went along.
‘Ranel, koli-kuttu, anamulu, ripe bananas.’
‘We’ve only got ranel,’ Robert objected.
Joshua didn’t care. He liked the sound of the names; some of the fruits were really there, others were from a book he’d found dropped in the road and had taken home and studied.
‘Mellow mangoes!’ he sang out, really getting into his stride now.
‘Caraboa, minnie and gundoo. Tamarinds, sweet tamarinds, tamarinds, come buy!’
And they came. His voice rose higher than the women’s calls and it attracted customers.
‘This is better than hearing you sing at Mass,’ Robert said.
‘Don’t remind me!’ Joshua retorted, thinking of the solos the nuns sometimes got him to sing in chapel at school. ‘I –’
‘Don’t talk,’ Robert snapped in the bossy voice that he put on for his many younger brothers and sisters. ‘I can talk, but not you. You keep singing.’
‘They’re good tomatoes, Madam,’ he said, in his normal voice, to the woman in front of him. She had a tomato in her hand and was sniffing it. ‘You won’t find any better. Was it a pound you wanted?’
‘How much?’ the woman asked suspiciously.
‘Twenty-five millis a pound.’
‘Do you think I’m made of money?’ the woman asked indignantly.
‘Then take two pounds. Only forty millis for two pounds.’
‘Tasty tight tomatoes, Mama Calla’s best!’ chanted Joshua at his side.
‘Who needs two pounds?’ The woman considered the offer, shifting her basket to the other arm. ‘I’ll give you eighteen millis for one pound.’
Robert shook his head. He’d noticed that she had brand new sandals on her feet, and her cloth looked pretty new too. ‘Twenty-three millis,’ he said.
‘Twenty,’ she bargained, picking up the tomato she had put down, scenting compromise.
‘Twenty-two,’ Robert said firmly. ‘It’s my final offer. Won’t get better tomatoes anywhere.’
She nodded and held out her basket.
‘Passion peaches! Minnie mangoes!’ Joshua sang.
Robert held up the scales for all to see, put a pound weight in one copper dish and filled the other with tomatoes till the scale balanced. Then he put them down and tipped the tomatoes gently into her basket, careful not to bruise them.
Several women were clustered around the stall now, picking up mangoes and smelling them, prodding watermelons, examining the beans.
‘You sing now,’ Joshua said, shifting position.
Robert shook his head.
‘Ten millis change,’ he said to the man he was serving, taking it from Mama Calla’s cloth pouch. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You go on. I prefer doing the talking.’
And Robert was better at the bargaining, Joshua conceded silently; he had all the market mamas’ patter at his fingertips. ‘All right, big feet.’ Joshua took another bite of peach and sang on while Robert did the talking and bargaining. They took it in turns to weigh the big green ranel bananas, to slice through melons and pile sweet yellow mangoes into baskets and bags.
They had done good business by the time Mama Calla returned. She weighed the pouch Robert gave her and took two korias and two fifty milli coins out of it, 1.50 korias for each of them. ‘Not bad,’ she said, ‘not bad at all.’
Joshua ducked before her advancing hand could reach his cheek a second time. He jumped across the fruit into the aisle, grinned and took the money, along with the promised paw paw. He put the money in one pocket and the paw paw in the other. ‘Come on, Robert.’
‘Come back and help me tomorrow!’ Mama Calla screeched after them as they squeezed down the busy aisle. ‘Mangoes and bananas,’ she cried hoarsely, settling herself, ‘Tamarinds, juicy tamarinds.’ Her cries joined the hubbub of other calls and were swallowed up behind them.
It was just as they were leaving the market that Joshua saw him.
He gripped Robert’s arm. ‘Look,’ he said.
Robert followed the direction of Joshua’s gaze. A man was standing a little distance away at the edge of the market, not quite in the shade. He was on his own. People were taking a wide berth around him. No one stopped.
Berries were piled up in a mound on a makeshift table in front of the man: red, golden and black berries, jumbled up together and gleaming. Trickles of juice ran off the wooden board and into the earth, staining it. Joshua stared. It was very like the stain made by the pig’s blood earlier that morning.
Despite the sun’s heat, the man wore a blanket around his shoulders. It was striped red and green with a black crocodile woven down the back. He stood perfectly still behind his berries, impassive, indifferent, eyes on the ground.
Joshua and Robert came a little nearer.
The man did not raise his head.
They drew closer still. Joshua crossed himself quickly against bad luck. Robert copied him. As he did so, he stubbed his foot on a stone and sent it flying. The man looked up and almost instinctively reached his arms out over the berries, as if trying to protect them. Sweat was pouring down his face.
‘Mountain man,’ Robert whispered to Joshua out of the side of his mouth.
Joshua nodded, not taking his eyes off the man. Men from the mountains were rarely seen in their village. They lived high up where it was cool, at least one day’s walk away, where the earth was as hard and cracked as this man’s skin. Mountain people had their own customs and spoke a dialect that the village people found hard to understand. They kept to themselves and ignored the government, which was down at the coast. Their mountains loomed over the village, as if they were trying to push it off the narrow coastal strip and into the ocean. Perhaps that was why the fishermen distrusted them. They made no secret of their dislike for the mountain people. Joshua hadn’t needed Robert to tell him what the man was.
He took twenty precious millis from his right pocket and held the coins out as carefully as if he had been holding out food to a wild dog, his eyes not leaving the man for a moment.
Surprise flashed across the man’s face. It passed so quickly that Joshua wondered if he had seen it at all. The man accepted the coins. From the folds of his clothes, he took out a stone scoop and a bag made of newspaper, which he unfolded as if it were a treasure. Slowly and deliberately he dug the scoop into the mound of berries, three, four times, until the fruit filled the bag. He put the scoop back in his pocket, folded over the top of the bag, and handed it to Joshua in both hands, bowing slightly as he did so.
Startled, Joshua bowed back. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Robert was doing the same.
The boys turned and walked away, not speaking. When they had gone about eight metres they stopped and looked back. The mountain man hadn’t moved. There he stood, still as a statue, eyes downcast, passive and alone. If it wasn’t for the bag of berries in Joshua’s hands, their transaction might never have happened.
Joshua unfolded the top of the bag and sniffed. Robert took a berry, put it to his lips and hesitated. Joshua took one out too. He popped it straight in his mouth and squashed it with his tongue. Strange, sharp, sweet juice spurted into his mouth. He decided that he liked the taste.
The boys walked on till they were out of sight of the man, then perched on stones by the roadside to eat the berries, first in twos and threes, then in small fistfuls.
But the fruit was too ripe for the heat of the coast. They were only halfway down the paper bag when, soaked by the juice, it gave out in Joshua’s hands. What was left of the berries plopped to the ground between his feet and lay there, a mushy mess. Joshua and Robert watched in dismay as small red and black ants advanced at once from all sides, as if this was what they had been waiting for all morning. Then larger soldier ants marched purposefully through their smaller cousins to the front of the feast.
Joshua screwed up the bag and licked his fingers clean. ‘Let’s go and help Dad build the shop,’ he said. ‘He asked if you would come.’
Robert brightened. He enjoyed himself at Joshua’s. There would be just him and Joshua and Joshua’s father. It made a change from being at home with his big family and having to help his mother by looking after the smaller children.
‘Well, you two,’ Joshua’s father greeted them. ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’
Joshua grinned. His father might sound gruff but he knew he didn’t really mean it. ‘We were at the market.’ He remembered the paw paw in his pocket and took it round to the house, where he left it in the shade.
‘Now, where do you want us to start, Dad?’
‘I’ll go on spreading the mortar, you two put on the stones. Use the ones in that pile over there.’ He jutted his chin towards a large heap of stones, then turned back to the wall and slapped on some more mortar.
At first Joshua and Robert were slow at finding suitable stones, but they soon speeded up and got into a rhythm where one would be at the pile picking up a stone while the other was putting one down on the growing wall.
‘Butcher.’
They all turned. A woman was standing there, basket on arm. ‘How about some meat?’
‘Of course.’ His father hesitated, then passed the mortar board to Robert. ‘Here. You say you want to be a builder when you grow up. See what you can do. The secret is not too little and not too much.’
The boys felt him watching them for a moment before he turned away to serve the woman.
Another customer arrived and stood there, talking. Then the butcher was back. He rolled a cigarette and sat down by the wall.
They paused, looked at him. ‘No, no, you carry on,’ he said. ‘I like watching you work. You’re doing fine.’ He waved the cigarette at them, then lit it. ‘Half the pig’s gone to the hotel.’ He was speaking more to himself than to them, but they caught the satisfaction in his voice. ‘And half of what’s left is sold already.’
Eventually they stopped and went to squat beside him.
‘Here.’ Joshua took the coins from his pocket and gave them to his father. ‘We helped Mama Calla,’ he explained.
‘Again?’ His father seemed amused. ‘Well done.’ He pocketed the 1.30 korias. ‘Was this all?’
Joshua shook his head. ‘She gave us 1.50 each, and a paw paw. But we saw a mountain man, Dad. He was just outside the market. He was selling berries. A pile of them – this big.’ He got to his feet and demonstrated. Then he squatted again. ‘So I bought some.’
His father looked startled. Then he pulled a face. ‘Sour things, those wild mountain berries. I never …’ He stopped suddenly. ‘You didn’t like them, did you?’