Fruit Market
So that the train would not barrage through the tables laden with fresh peaches and cantaloupes and orchids, the store owners raised their awnings and heaved their produce back into their shops. This was done four times a day.
It was six in the evening when the last train arrived. From her shop, Tanya felt the rumbling of the train in the way her spoon began to clink against her cup. She watched as the tea washed up the white walls of the cup like a small tsunami.
There were more times than she could remember where Tanya wondered what would happen if she didn’t rush to crank up the awning like the others, if she simply sat in the shop and waited. She wondered. First, the pomegranates atop the train tracks would shudder out of their baskets. Before long, the train would come hammering past the tips of store owners’ noses and crash into her tables, and pieces of wood and fruits would explode into her shop, and by chance, a wooden leg could impale her in an instant.
She finds it too easy to wonder about these things. Tanya knew such a thing would never happen. The store owners were practiced in their nonchalance about the train, the way dicing a chicken’s neck becomes routine. But when the last tables were still left on the tracks and the black head of the train grew bigger, Tanya knew they would shout and swear and pull her tables in themselves. And Tanya would watch from her shop, sipping tea as her neighbours angered themselves into a frenzy. She could wait, every single time. She could wait until one day they decided she was too much of a nuisance, and nothing would be done, and the train would come screeching into her tables of fruits and everything would explode and she would be impaled. The train would continue through the tracks with the smear of pomegranates and everyone– the store owners, the Gangnam women and businessmen in the next stop– would see the spectacle.
She was dangerous. She could do nothing at any time. Tanya would watch the train pass, touch it with her fingertips–the metal monster that travelled to towns she would never see, could never imagine.
Tanya knew she had better things to do aside from imagining her death, but the fruit market did not offer much to do. She thought the most interesting thing to happen all year round was the August typhoons, during which thousands of flying ants would cover their fruits like moss and leave their wings in piles like wet leaves.
She poured hot water into her cup. Her tea stilled. She was getting old, that was evident.
The train would continue forward into the city. It carried hundreds of people who lived in the countryside who found work among the skyscrapers of Gangnam. From the left side of her stall, Tanya could barely make out silver heads of buildings rising above an ocean of plastic tarpaulins. Tanya knew that the city lights were even more unmistakable at night, as if saying that I am here, I am desired. She wondered what it would be like as a passenger boarding the train to a shining Gangnam every day. How she wished she were one of the hurried faces passing in the windows, hovering by her fruit tables for the fraction of a second before disappearing into the distance.
But perhaps Tanya could wait, seated quietly on her wooden throne. She was permanent, unlike the train and all that it carried. She could do things that no one would dare imagine. She’d sweep ant wings into shapes on the ground to keep herself entertained, or recoil from awe from the reaches of her imagination.
The store owners were beginning to shift in their stalls now, now cranking up their fabric awnings. Tanya could wait a moment longer, always a step away from chaos.