#fridaymarket, February 23
This week I did my best to get to #fridaymarket on time, and even succeed — I’m working hard to get my sleep pattern back to normal these days — when Oona called and said it had been her turn to be late. So our breakfast turned into lunch. Mash with a meatball for me as usual, and some chop with fries for Oona were intended to strengthen us before our mission in Old Riga (that is the tourist center of the city). We needed to photograph Riga Holmes places (where the famous Soviet Holmes was filmed) for our friend’s students, and the arms on St. Peter’s Church’s wall for our another friend’s research.
It wasn’t until we finished that we got to the market. I mean our brave crossing the street to find us right in front of the counter with all kinds of sausages and smoked things, where Oona gained some Dvinskaya sausage and some saucissette. As for me, I gained unforgettable impressions.
‘With horseradish,’ she said dreamfully. ’With a nice old horseradish.*’
[*Old horseradish in Russian means an old fuck, normally in the sort of obscene-complimentary way for old men who still feel hot. Close to the Old Spice.]
‘Certainly,’ the saleswoman supported. ‘There is nothing better than a good old horseradish, so sturdy.’
‘So strong,’ Oona expanded her idea.
I wanted to say something, too, about such an interesting thing, but the idea was done already, and I couldn’t say more.
It’s worth telling something about what wasn’t said last week. It went wrong itself, but that Friday Oona dragged me to the colonial goods department — which is at the vegetables pavilion now, not at the meat one — and grabbed teas and coffee for herself while some elderling had been trying to squeeze me out of the queue (by cunningly maneuvering his suitcase.)
I took a look at her tea, strangely exactly the same Greenfield that we can see in any supermarket. Ok, I thought, she’s probably out of everything and tough with time, ok, can happen. So I chose some for myself, a camomile one. I mean camomile, natural flowers, not dust or suspicious dried weeds which we normally buy. Ok, I thought, a camomile is obviously a cheap thing, but! How come 2,75 for Greenfield which we normally can see for nearly 4?
‘This is the manufacturer’s store,’ Oona convincingly pointing out to the counter.
There was something going on over there in the meantime. A saleswoman had been actively refusing something, while an old lady had been trying to insist.
‘Smell it!’ she tried to shove a jar in my hands. ‘This one first, then another!’
No, why, I thought. I could perfectly smell it from where I was. The smell of coffee seemed to make you faint.
That was exactly what the saleswoman tried to refuse so decidedly, saying, there wasn’t any need to.
‘What does it mean, no any need?’ Oona was back with her loot. ‘Give it to me! Right, all is clear now. This one smells like amaretto, and this one smells like this too, but…’
‘But?’ we all asked in unison because we all smelled these smells.
‘With a little touch of rum!’
‘Unbelievable!’ the old lady admired. ‘I lost my sense of smell, you know, out of the blue.’
For several seconds Oona had looked at her very attentively, then gave us a version worthy of Holmes: you probably have a new denture, she said.
‘I do,’ the old lady said, surprised. ‘But how do you know?’
‘Oh well, you never know what you can learn one day!’
And we left. To get some cottage cheese. 2, 5 and 9 percent, not a halva that we gazed at so long before. Not even for cakes. Not even a…
This is what happened last week. Cakes were inappropriate, and I had had a migraine then.
Now, on Friday, the twentieth with something of February, Oona gained two pickled apples and one pickled garlic, and a saleswoman told us the story about an american guy who came last week, greeting her nicely, and she said, who are you, do I know you, and he said — you don’t, but you are known in all the America, I got your whereabouts from my friends, so hello, I want all of your somethings, please.
This is how Riga Central market glory works, not to mention pickled apples, and garlic, and cabbage, and wild garlic, and mushrooms, and so much more.
It was clear to me that I needed some half a kilo of mixed minced meat. Just don’t skimp on the garlic and hot meatballs are what’s needed add some sense even to the dankest day of the end of February. Wholeness, I’d even say.
Oona went even further and gained a kilo and a half. My common sense was murmuring we’d probably forgotten something, but I couldn’t recall what exactly it could possibly be.
So I went to take a look at a goose. Oona looked at me, then at the goose, and gained some quail eggs.
And this was apogee, nothing to want more.
It wasn’t until I was standing at the bus stop, seen Oona off, that I recalled to give a call to mum, and then went back for some beef for her. This was what I felt forgotten — a call from her.
My common sense was whispering that on such a dank day of the end of February we couldn’t do without something like a nice good piece of beef.
