Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [11]
“Why’d you turn that stupid wheel?”
“Like I knew we were going to end up here?”
“Can’t ever leave anything alone.”
Hesitantly, the two girls stepped into the rows of tents, buyers, and sellers. There was nowhere else to go.
They were immediately surrounded by the animated jabbering of a market morning. Deeba and Zanna kept looking up at that extraordinary hollow sun, but the scene around them was almost as bizarre.
There were people in all kinds of uniforms: mechanics’ overalls smeared in oil; firefighters’ protective clothes; doctors’ white coats; the blue of police; and others, including people in the neat suits of waiters, with cloths over one arm. All these uniforms looked like dressing-up costumes. They were too neat, and somehow a bit too simple.
There were other shoppers in hotchpotch outfits of rags, and patchworks of skins, and what looked in some cases like taped-together bits of plastic or foil. Zanna and Deeba walked farther into the crowd.
“Zann,” Deeba whispered. “Look.”
Here and there were the strangest figures. People whose skins were no colors skin should ever be, or who seemed to have a limb or two too many, or peculiar extrusions or concavities in their faces.
“Yeah,” said Zanna, with a sort of hollow, calm voice. “I see them.”
“Is that it? You see them? What are they, for God’s sake?”
“How should I know? But are you surprised? After everything?”
A woman went by above them, pedaling furiously as if she were on a bicycle, striding on two enormous spindly mechanical legs. Strange little figures flitted by at the edges of the market, too fast to clearly see. Deeba murmured an apology as she bumped into someone. The woman who bowed politely to her wore glasses with several layers of lenses, lowered and raised on levers, seemingly at random.
“Lovely arrangements!” the girls heard. “Get them here! Brighten up the home.”
Beside them was a stall bursting in flamboyant bouquets, carefully arranged in colored paper.
“They’re not flowers,” Deeba said. They were tools.
Each was a bunch of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, and levels, bright plastic and metal, carefully arranged and tied together with a bow.
“What on earth are you wearing?” someone said. Zanna turned as someone picked at her hoodie. The man was tall and thin, with a jagged halo of thick, spiky hair. His suit was white and covered with tiny black marks.
It was print. His clothes were made from pages from books, immaculately sewn together.
“No, this won’t do,” he said. He spoke quickly, tugging at Zanna’s clothes too fast for her to stop him. “This is very drab, can’t possibly keep you entertained. What you need—” He flourished his sleeve. “—is this. The hautest of couture. Be entertained while you wear. Never again need you face the misery of unreadable clothes. Now you can pick your favorite works of fiction or nonfiction for your sleeves. Perhaps a classic for the trousers. Poetry for your skirt. Historiography for socks. Scripture for knickers. Learn while you dress!”
He whipped a tape from his pocket and began to measure Zanna. He yanked at his head, and Zanna and Deeba winced and gasped. What had looked like hair was countless pins and needles jammed anyhow into his scalp, a handful of which he pulled out.
The man did not bleed or seem to suffer any discomfort from treating himself as a pincushion. He wedged some of the pins back into his head, and there was a faint pfft with each puncture, as if his skull were velvet. Busily, he began to pin bits of paper to Zanna, scribbling measurements on a notebook.
“But what if it rains, you say? Well then rejoice as your outfit cuddles you in its gentle slushing, and you’re given the opportunity for an entirely new book. How wonderful! I have a vast selection.” He indicated his stall, crammed with volumes from which assistants tore pages and stitched. “What genres and literatures are to your taste?”
“Please…” stammered Zanna.
“Leave it,” said Deeba. “Leave us alone.”
“No thank you…” Zanna