Crickets and peanuts
By: Patricia Fritze
“How likely is it, that the growth rate will change within the coming quarter?”, is what a man in a suit and a piece of chalk in his hand is about to write on the blackboard in the front. Students around me continue typing even though they haven’t stopped for a second. The man in the front, probably one hand covered with white powder by now which I can’t see because I’m sitting too far back, pursues his thoughts with a dramatic gesture. I can’t tell if the speaker’s getting any faster or if it’s the typing around me. My gaze wanders unsettled along the walls, where typically in a normal room you would find what is called time. And I do, but the hand of the clock seems to be asleep. Perhaps the clock is ticking, but maybe it’s not. It wouldn’t make much difference anyway because if there was one thing there was no doubt about, it’s that the hand doesn’t lose time temporarily even if it feels like time would go backwards now.
I look around believing I’ve overheard something but the crickets are way too loud and fill the walls with chirp. The last foldable chairs are occupied by the trill even though apparently nobody has taken a seat on them. The crickets are typing and typing. Tipp, tipp, tipp. What do they type that I cannot hear, what do they hear that I cannot type? I listen closely yet the only thing I can hear is tipp, tipp, tipp. So I type down what I hear. I listen closely again to catch the sound and put it into words but still I have no clue how to spell it. Tipp, tipp, tipp. I type any keys on the keyboard in front of me and a confused combination of letters appears on the white background of the untitled document. Honestly, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean but in the end it is one with the sound of locusts. The equations and calculations on the board become blurred. I ask myself what this is all for. I mean life just happens and fortune doesn’t take digits and numbers into account. Probably I’m wasting my time but still I could calculate how much time it was. Perhaps I should better deal with architecture. Then I could create buildings for people who want to lose their time in a nice frame. I stare back to the right but the hand still doesn’t seem awake. Tipp, tipp, tipp. Every keystroke flips one of my synapses like a light bulb. One hundred billion synapses, the only thing I can think of. I start to imagine how long it takes until it gets dark in my head and I can see no more.
I stare back at the clock yet the hand still doesn’t seem to be awake. As soon as it wakes up, the chirping of the crickets would be replaced by a violent roll of stones. It would break loose in the top rows until it reached the bottom. The crickets would keep on clapping until the last shimmer of coincidence is buried under the weight of the stones. All the coincidences would start screaming out of pain and pain would spread in my ears. Once the stones had reached their final position, they would remain there until the timetable indicated that it was time to go back to the quarry. But until then, the crickets would start to jump around like crickets do. I decide that I’ve heard enough for today. Or rather my body does and I just watch it shut the laptop in front of me. One cricket after the other stands up, lets me pass and sits down again, like a domino game which is rebuilt by itself again and again. I’m leaving the lecture hall; a stone will now be missing but no one will notice.
The subway’s already on the track. As soon as I step in, the leaves react to the disruption I have caused. Immediately the mimosa folds up leaf by leaf at frequent distances and at the next station will stretch out the branches and leaves again to load and unload passengers once more. I walk a few steps against the airstream and sit down. At the next stop, a man sits with me. In one hand he’s holding a book that looks a little worn out. The other hand is filled with peanuts which you can’t see but taste. Actually I don’t like peanuts but after a few more stations I hardly feel the taste in my mouth. I wonder how it would be possible for him to reach the next page without emptying the contents of his left hand. But it doesn’t seem necessary because he mumbles the text on the page over and over again. If he gets into stuttering or misses a line, he starts afresh. From my fabric bag I dig out a pencil, from my coat pocket a shopping list. Onions, dish-soap and oil. In brackets and with an exclamation mark it says that it should be the bottle with the green screw cap and under no circumstances with the yellow one. With the pencil I add headphones under the bracket and the exclamation mark. My handwriting differs from that above. I append two exclamation marks to the new point on the list, before I let the pencil in my fabric bag and the shopping list in my coat pocket disappear. There are still two stops to the market when a young girl enters; in her company a fragrant cloud. I take a deep breath. With another breath I could undress the person in front of me: once the smell is gone, only their actual shell remains. At the next stop I get off.
Determined and unimpressed I walk over a red traffic light in order not to be recognized as a stranger by strangers. On the side of the road there is a tree, which you rarely see here, which doesn’t bother me anymore. After all, you don’t have to watch the leaves come loose from the crown in autumn and fall to the ground before they will wilt and passers-by stomp melancholy further into the depths with every step unnoticed. A little further on, I have reached the weekly market, which on all other days of the week is only a covered parking lot with transparent corrugated roof panels. Nevertheless, the sun doesn’t often pass by here. Tables are lines up at tables. Myriad smells come over me. It seems like these scents are hands; some reach out to me or gently stroke my back, some grab me by the neck. I stop in front of a table with fish and ice blocks. The man behind the table to which the fish seems to belong, blinks with a smile. I turn around, but there’s no one behind me.
„You must be a serious one“, he says.
„A serious what?“
„A serious one“, he repeats himself and points to a grey fish with wide-opened eyes. „Just like this fish here.“
“That’s not a fish“
„If it’s not a fish, what is it then?“
„I don’t know. Fish are meant to swim around. Just like fish do“
„Like what?“
„Like this“, I say and take a fish off the table. With both hands I hold the icecold meshwork of scales and try to imitate the movement of its genus.
„Like fish“, he says thoughtfully but not necessarily convinced. „You know, I am surrounded by fish day by day. Sometimes I ask myself, what stories they would tell if they could.“
„They’re fish. They cannot tell stories“, I reply motionless with the fish still holding in my hands.
„But if they could - would they?“
„I’ll take this one“, I say.
He takes the fish from me and carefully wraps it in special paper before wrapping it in another sheet.
„That makes three fifty“, he says, just like he would have said it to any other customer.
I gently put the wrapped fish into my bag which will be an aquarium for the time until I get home. Then I hand over the coins before I go further inside the market. After a while I stop and fetch the shopping list again from my bag and the pencil from my coat pocket. The pencil feels cold now. I unfold the shopping list once more and cross the headphones from the list.