Arcadia by Jim Crace

Victor’s mother did more than beg. She traded smiles and peace of mind. She did it well. She had a baby to support. The coloured, broken umbrella was the perfect touch. It was what
country women used to shield themselves from the rain and sun when they came in to town to sell their flowers or their garlic cloves. Passers-by would look down to see what this woman had for sale.
Em’s face was hidden by the parasol. Her breasts were on display – with Victor hard at work. The child in need. One hand – the one with a single wedding ring – was resting
on her knee palm up. The other pressed the baby to her chest. She marketed herself. She felt no shame. Shame is a family, village thing. It doesn’t count for much amongst strangers. Her only
fear – and hope – was that her sister would chance by and look beneath the parasol. She did her best to beg with pride. It was not sin, like drink or bed, that had brought her there.
She pinned a browning photograph of her husband to the canvas of the parasol with a black silk funeral rosette. It signified, Here is a widow and her child. Look at their man. His death has made
them homeless, poor.
    What of Victor at this time? Are kids of less than five weeks old so self-engrossed and innocent that nothing in the outside world makes any impact on their lives so long as they are fed and
warm and free from wind? The truth is, yes. The only bonding that there is takes place between the nipples and the lips. Victor was the kind of child who bonded to his mother’s breast with
the tenacity and deliberation of a limpet on a stone. If he was sucking, he was well. Detach his gums, prise him loose with the gentlest finger, and he would imitate a seagull bickering for
shrimps, his tiny call – not yet a voice – as querulous and fretful as a dirge.
    Em thought this threnody would earn her cash, that Victor singing thinly for the breast would move the hardest passer-by to find a few spare coins. If her child could cry like that so readily
she only had to pop her nipples free when people passed and she would earn a fortune in small change. No one was mean enough, she thought, to close their ears to babies in distress. But she was
wrong. We in this city are the sentimental sort. We don’t like tragedy. That’s why the drunkard at the railway station gates, singing bits of opera in fake Italian and French, and
bothering the women with his arias, earned more from begging than the trolley man who’d lost a wife, his mind, and both his legs in some forgotten war. To toss some coins in the drunk’s
old opera hat was to show one’s liberality, one’s worldliness, one’s sense that all was well. To give cash to the trolley man – taken without a word or smile – was to
price a life, a leg, a personality. At what? At less than one could spare. The coins clattered on the trolley floor. Enough small change to buy a rind of pork, a two-stop tramway ride, a piece of
ribbon for your hair. The coins paid for guilt-free entry to the forecourt and the trains. Except, of course, the gateway where the trolley man lay in wait was the one least used. His naked stumps,
his naked hopelessness, made people change their routes. The operatic drunkard got the crowd.
    So it was with Em. When she took Victor off the breast, his protests cleared a space around their parasol. The shoppers did not look to see what was for sale. They knew. They heard the
baby’s screams and kept their eyes away from this private tableau of distress. It would not do to stare. Or smile. Or break the moment with some coins in Em’s palm. Besides, what could
a coin do for one so young? A coin would not change its life. What should they do then? Search their pockets for a little solid love? Hold out their hands and offer to this pair that spare room,
rent-free? That job? That meal? That ticket home? No, Victor’s tears – and, here, who will not pause to note the leaden candour of the words? – were of no worth. But