Barry signed a cheque for a hundred pounds as quickly as possible - the pen felt unpleasantly clammy - and handed over both, together with his passport. After the merest blink at Barry's signature, the owner ran his gaze up and down him between several glances at the photograph. At last he leaned back, heaving his stomach high with his thighs, to unlock a drawer and count out a handful of large grubby notes. 'You pay me nothing,' he complained.
Presumably he meant there was no commission. Barry shoved the notes into his shirt pocket - they felt clammier than the pen had - and was holding out his hand when the man dropped the passport in the drawer. 'What you want give me?' the owner said, leering at the hand.
I need my passport.'
'I keep now,' the owner said and locked the drawer. 'You want more pay, you come me.'
'I don't think so,' Barry told him, but made for the street. Further argument could wait until Paul and Derek were there to join in - all right, and why not, to support him.
As he opened the door he was overwhelmed by heat that competed with the light for fierceness, by the sullen roar of the fire that was the crowd, by the smell of hot wallets, which were all the table nearest the apartments sold. Its immediate neighbour was devoted to leather goods too. The stalls were packed so close together that once he sidled between them he couldn't see the sign above the door - the Summit Apartments, though they were well short of the top of the hill.
Most of the crowd was making its sluggish way upwards, unlike him. Whenever he glanced about for possible souvenirs or presents, and often when he didn't, stall-holders launched themselves and whatever English they had at him. 'Good price,' they persisted. 'Special for you.' Beyond the corner was a clump of stalls blue with denim, and past that a stretch of trademarks, each of them almost as wide as the T-shirts and other clothes that bore them. Which stalls were likely to appeal to Janet? That was assuming she was even out of bed. He wasn't sure how either of them would have reacted to the other in sight of the next expanse of tables, which were bristling with phallic statues and orgiastic with couples, not to mention more than couples, carved from stone. He dodged the sellers as the hot crowd pressed around him, and struggled to the lower bend.
Had it brought him back to Janet's lodgings? He was trying to see past stalls heaped with electrical goods when a stall-holder, or surely an assistant, younger than himself stepped in front of him. 'What you look?'
'Summer Breeze.'
The boy made circles with his hands above the stall as if to conjure Barry's needs into view. 'Say other.'
Barry's head was so full of heat and light and clamour that he could think of nothing else. 'Summer Breeze,' he heard himself reiterate.
The boy's thin intense face gave up its frown. 'Briefs,' he said with a gesture of lowering his own and presumably his shorts as well.
'Breeze.' Barry jabbed a finger at the building the stall hid, then waved one limp-wristed hand. 'Wind,' he said in case that could possibly help.
'Here.'
As Barry grew aware that the exchange of gestures had made the nearest members of the crowd openly suspicious, he saw the boy pick up a pocket fan and switch it on. 'No, that's not it,' he said.
'You try,' the boy insisted, thrusting it at him.
'No, it's all ow.' Barry meant to wave away the offer, but the whirling blades caught his forefinger. 'Watch out, you clumsy bugger,' he cried.
The boy turned off the fan, which had developed an angry rattling buzz, and peered at it. 'You break. You pay.'
'Don't be daft,' Barry mumbled, sucking his finger, which tasted like a coin. 'Your fault, so forget it.'
He'd hardly presented his back to the stall when the boy raised his voice. 'Pay now. Pay,' he called, and other words that Barry didn't comprehend.
Barry saw a scowl spread like an infection through the crowd, who seemed united in obstructing him. He was willing the commotion to attract Janet and her friends - anyone who would understand him - when the crowd parted downhill. Two policemen were heading for him.
They wore khaki shirts and shorts, and pistols in holsters on their right hips. Their dark moist faces bore identical black moustaches. 'What is trouble?' the larger and if possible even less jovial officer said.
'He cut me,' Barry blurted, displaying his injured finger, and at once felt guilty. 'I'm sure it was an accident, but now he wants me to pay.'
'You listen.'
It was only when the policeman confined himself to glowering that Barry grasped he was required to observe the interview with the youth, which involved much gesturing besides contributions from nearby vendors and members of the crowd. The conference appeared to be reaching agreement, by no means in his favour, when Barry tried to head it off. 'I'll pay something if that'll quiet things down. It oughtn't to be much.'
The policeman who'd addressed him brushed a thumb and forefinger over his moustache, and Barry had a nervous urge to giggle at the notion that the man was checking the hair hadn't come unglued. He stared at Barry as if suspicious of his thoughts before growling 'You go other place. No trouble.'
'Thanks,' Barry said, though his unpopularity was as clear from the policeman's face as from every other he risked observing. To retreat uphill to take refuge with his friends he would have had to struggle through hostility that looked capable of growing yet more solid. He swung around faster than his parched unstable skull appreciated to dodge and sidle and excuse himself down to the next bend, where he saw light through a shop. Once he was out of the back entrance he should be able to find his way to the rear of the Summit Apartments.
He launched himself between two stalls piled with footwear and into the building, only to waver to a halt as darkness pressed itself like coins onto his eyes. Outlines had only started to grow visible as he headed for the daylight, so that he was halfway through the interior before he realized where he was: not in a shop but in somebody's home. Nevertheless the contents of the trestle tables were unquestionably for sale, a jumble of bedclothes, icons, cutlery, a religious tome with dislocated pages, dresses, spanners and other tools, toys including a life-size baby that the dimness rendered indistinguishable from a real one… He couldn't judge how many people were crouched in gloomy corners of the single room; of the one face he managed to discern, he saw only eyes and teeth. Their dull hungry gleam prompted him to fumble the topmost note off his wad and plant it between the baby's restless feet as he made for the open at a stumbling run. He barely glimpsed all the denizens of the room flinging themselves at the cash.
He'd emerged into more of the market. Only the space just outside the door was clear. Stall-holders and their few potential customers swivelled their heads on scrawny necks to watch him. They looked as uninviting as the tables, which were strewn with goods like a rummage sale. Here were clothes he and his friends might have packed to slouch in, here were the contents of several bathrooms - shaving kits, deodorants, even unwrapped bars of soap. The stares he was receiving didn't encourage him to dawdle. He set off as fast up the narrow tortuous dusty street as his hung-over legs would bear.
He hoped any rear entrance to the Summit Apartments would be both accessible and open. Though there were alleys between the streets, all were blocked by stalls or vans or refuse. He kept catching sight of the crowd, not including anyone who'd witnessed his difference with the youth. He might have considered dodging through a house to reach his street, but the old people dressed like shadows who were sitting in every open doorway looked worse than inhospitable. At least there weren't many more stalls ahead.
The next offered an assortment of electrical goods: cameras, camcorders and battery chargers, a couple of personal stereos, whose rhythmic whispers reminded him that before he'd gone to university and after he'd left it as well, his parents had often complained the stereos weren't personal enough. Suddenly he yearned to be home and starting work at the computer warehouse, the best job he'd been able to sell himself to, or even not having come away on holiday with his old friends from school. He glanced past the stall into an alley and saw them.