The market, Salonica

The market, Salonica
The market, Salonica

Sunday 7 June 2015

Bananas

If you have visitors, and run out of things to say, flowers are useful.  They’re not as difficult as pets or babies, not for most people, anyway.  Pretty little things, they wait outside until you need them, and always nod their heads. 

My neighbour’s parents came to see him.  They don’t come too often.  They’re more like hardy annuals that push up in the spring.  Let’s have a look at the garden.  This year, they were spending a long time on one flower, a lot longer than people normally do.  They hadn’t gone mad.  There was only one flower.  The rest of the garden was bare. 

I remember it quite clearly, a tall stem, with a patch of white petals at the top, like a tiny flag, as if the earth had surrendered.

Think of a stalk and petals, and personal injury won’t be your next thought.  If you want to hit someone, you don’t use a flower.  But they can still be dangerous.  Last year, twenty-seven UK residents were poisoned by daffodils.  That’s right, people ate them, twenty-seven at least.  They’re just the ones that got sick, delicate hunter-gatherers, or poets – in short, those not immune to daffodils. 

This spring, supermarkets were advised not to put daffodils in, or adjacent to, the fresh food aisle.  It might cut down on errors, but it won’t stop a devoted self-harmer.  You can grow your own.  Well, most people can.

Supermarkets wait for you.  They watch you cross the forecourt.  You might not know the difference between a toothpick and a needle.   

As for the daffodils, blame poetry.  Where there is beauty, there is suffering.  We can hold a stalk and petals, and not know it’s a flower.  That sort of thing.  But fruit is dangerous too.  I was physically assaulted for a bunch of bananas.  Poets don’t write about bananas. 

A banana is not a flower.  You can hold it, or eat it, and still feel nothing.  But when you can’t get things, you want them.  In Greece, years ago, you couldn’t get bananas.  I brought some back from India.  I wanted to impress a few people up in the Old Town, then eat them, the bananas, I mean.  I also had a copy of The Times of India.  News print is black.  Bananas just go that way.  Like friends that bruise, they are not the best travelling companions.   

In those days, a bus ran from the airport to the centre of Salonica.  It stopped on the waterfront, near Aristotelous Square.  From there, I used to walk up the hill.  That afternoon, I’d just turned the corner into Egnatia.  I must have been holding other things as well, but I only remember the bananas.  A man gripped my arm, the one with the bananas.  His fingers felt like metal.  He wanted my bananas, but he wasn’t stealing them.  How much were they?  His voice was like his fingers.  I couldn’t move.  I’m not exaggerating.  I was back in Greece.

The skyline looked the same, and the castellation on it, like a toy at that distance, where my bananas had been going. 

Cut from a tree in India, carried on a plane to Greece, and turned into custard on the top of a hill.  Is that the sort of history you want for your bananas? 

The man with metal fingers let me go.  A passer-by said: “Leave him alone.”

I didn’t do the cooking, but I allowed it to happen.  They were my bananas.  The Old Town was full of passers-by.  No one said: Leave them alone.

The man with metal fingers should have got them. 

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