Here was everything for sale--hats, feathers, coats, skirts, dolls,
wooden dolls, rag dolls, china dolls, monkeys on sticks, ribbons,
gloves, shoes, umbrellas, pies, puddings, cakes, jams, oranges, apples,
melons, cucumbers, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, broaches, diamonds
(glass), rubies (glass), emeralds (glass), prayer books, bibles,
pictures (King George, Queen Mary), cups, plates, tea-pots, coffee-pots,
rabbits, white mice, dogs, sheep, pigs, one grey horse, tables, chairs,
beds, and one wooden house on wheels. More than these, much more. And
around them, about them, in and out of them, before them and beside them
and behind them men, women, children, singing, crying, shouting,
sneezing, laughing, hiccuping, quarrelling, kissing, arguing, denying,
confirming, whistling, and snoring. Men of the sea bronzed with dark
hair, flashing eyes, rings on their fingers and bells on their toes; men
of the fields, the soil interpenetrated with the very soul of their
being, bearded to the eyes, broad-shouldered, broad-buttocked, their
Sunday coats flapping over their corduroyed thighs, their rough thick
necks moving restlessly in their unaccustomed collars; women of the fair
with eyes like black coals; gipsy women straight from the tents with
crimson kerchiefs and black hair piled high under feathered hats; women
of the town with soft voices, sidling eyes and creeping hands; women of
the farm with gaze wondering and adrift, hands like leather, children at
their skirts; women householders with their purses carefully clutched,
their hands feeling the cabbages, pinching the cauliflowers, estimating
the chairs and tables, stroking the china; young boys and girls,
confidence in their gaze, timidity in their hearts, suddenly catching
hands, suddenly embracing, suddenly triumphant on their merry-go-round,
suddenly everything, conscious of the last penny burning deep down in
the pocket, conscious of love, conscious of appetite, conscious of
possible remorse, conscious of blood pounding in their veins. And the
magicians, the wonder workers, the steal-a-pennies, the old men with
white beards and trays of coloured treasures, the bold bad men with
their thimble and their penny, the little stumpy, fellow with
his cards, the long thin melancholy fellow with his medicines,
the thick jolly drunken fellow with his tales of the sea, the twisty
turn-his-head-both-ways fellow with his gold watches and silver chains,
the red wizard with his fortunes in envelopes, his magic on strings of
coloured paper, his mysterious signs and countersigns whispered into
blushing ears. And then the children that should have been in bed hours
ago--little children, large children, young children, old children, fat
children, thin children, children clinging-to-mother's-skirts, children
running in and out, like mice, between legs and trousers, children
riding on father's shoulder, children sticky with sweets and sucking
their thumbs, children screaming with pleasure, shrieking with terror,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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