darkwall
Well-known member
It was one of those expensive places near Oxford Street that cater for a particular type of person: the sort of person who would pay large amounts of money to spend part of their day eating a salad, while spewing afternoon nothings from their mouths in carefully bred Islington lilts.
I reached the centre of the room without anyone really noticing me, and found myself alone with a great glass display case. Inside, tempting concoctions of rare fruits and vegetables lay whittled down to bite-sized shapes on large white plates. The resident artiste had decorated them liberally with sauces, a la Pollock, and like all great artists had made his work impenetrable, with exotic-sounding names displayed beside each bit of matter.
A struggling painter myself, I was only aware of how much a restaurant in Leicester Square would pay for one of the salads. Prising the glass open at the bottom, I slipped my hand in and began to work my way across to a potato-based dish, but couldn’t reach it on account of the vast expanse of china on which it lay.
Something grabbed my hand: I turned up my eyes to meet the glare of the girl behind the display. She pulled me around the counter. I wasn’t resisting, only trying to think of an excuse. Finally she guided me through a little curtain, and we were alone in the darkness of the kitchens behind the shop.
There we faced each other, and I looked her fully in the face for the first time. In the shaft of light from beyond the curtain I could see the streaks of crusted makeup that formed when she smiled, her homely brown skin and her arms that were hairy like a spider’s legs.
She brought her red doll-lips towards mine, her Hispanic features long and ethereal in the flat square of light we stood in. I was just thinking “fresia this, it was only a salad”, when she whispered in my ear ‘let me show you something’. She brought her face back in front of mine and I saw that she was trembling slightly.
She walked past me and opened a small cabinet nailed against the wall, above which was scrawled “la columna rota”. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to make out what it was that was moving around. In the box there writhed the head, arms and torso of a girl, who appeared to consist entirely of fruit and vegetables.
Her hair was made up of lettuce leaves, her fingers were flailing strips of cucumber and celery and other green vegetables, and her lips were formed by passion-fruit. The girl reached in to the box and cut a carrot areola from the dark skin, and the vegetable girl began to cry. But the tears blossomed as flowers from her red tomato eyes and we were captivated by the loveliness; the flowers of things that do not blossom are always vividly beautiful, like a dream of stone.
We stood there and watched while she twisted in narrow anguish; silently, because they had taken her tongue for a gherkin, and by the stump one could tell that it was just beginning to grow back. We stood there and watched: because even empathy can be overwhelmed by something when it is entirely exquisite.
I reached the centre of the room without anyone really noticing me, and found myself alone with a great glass display case. Inside, tempting concoctions of rare fruits and vegetables lay whittled down to bite-sized shapes on large white plates. The resident artiste had decorated them liberally with sauces, a la Pollock, and like all great artists had made his work impenetrable, with exotic-sounding names displayed beside each bit of matter.
A struggling painter myself, I was only aware of how much a restaurant in Leicester Square would pay for one of the salads. Prising the glass open at the bottom, I slipped my hand in and began to work my way across to a potato-based dish, but couldn’t reach it on account of the vast expanse of china on which it lay.
Something grabbed my hand: I turned up my eyes to meet the glare of the girl behind the display. She pulled me around the counter. I wasn’t resisting, only trying to think of an excuse. Finally she guided me through a little curtain, and we were alone in the darkness of the kitchens behind the shop.
There we faced each other, and I looked her fully in the face for the first time. In the shaft of light from beyond the curtain I could see the streaks of crusted makeup that formed when she smiled, her homely brown skin and her arms that were hairy like a spider’s legs.
She brought her red doll-lips towards mine, her Hispanic features long and ethereal in the flat square of light we stood in. I was just thinking “fresia this, it was only a salad”, when she whispered in my ear ‘let me show you something’. She brought her face back in front of mine and I saw that she was trembling slightly.
She walked past me and opened a small cabinet nailed against the wall, above which was scrawled “la columna rota”. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to make out what it was that was moving around. In the box there writhed the head, arms and torso of a girl, who appeared to consist entirely of fruit and vegetables.
Her hair was made up of lettuce leaves, her fingers were flailing strips of cucumber and celery and other green vegetables, and her lips were formed by passion-fruit. The girl reached in to the box and cut a carrot areola from the dark skin, and the vegetable girl began to cry. But the tears blossomed as flowers from her red tomato eyes and we were captivated by the loveliness; the flowers of things that do not blossom are always vividly beautiful, like a dream of stone.
We stood there and watched while she twisted in narrow anguish; silently, because they had taken her tongue for a gherkin, and by the stump one could tell that it was just beginning to grow back. We stood there and watched: because even empathy can be overwhelmed by something when it is entirely exquisite.
