Chapter 3
The Kuranda Triangle
The shop was kind of dark, the walls full of paintings, everywhere there were paintings, in different sizes, long and narrow, portrait and landscape formats, thick and thin. There was no special order, like the general impression I felt towards Kuranda, towards the entire market, as if it were hanging on the walls, a sense of freedom and lack of orientation, electrical strips on which the small acorns hung that lit up the selected painting, while the one next to it only received half of the light and remained a mystery to the eye.
I moved from room to room, sometimes leaving through one entrance and returning from another. The place itself was huge, compared to the small stalls. It was definitely something else. As unexpected as the place was, the feeling that I would meet my husband’s parents there was clear. For some reason, even though I looked for the back door, I knew they had not left through it. They were still there. I arrived at the counter where an extremely thin man was sitting with a remnant of long, sparse hair that told of his age. He was wearing cotton pants that had once had cheerful colours which had faded from the sun from drying on the washing line. This was accompanied by a shirt with a woven texture with a colour that was supposed to be white, but had turned grayish as a result of being washed together with clothes that had an unstable colour. I stood in front of him and he raised his head, making it clear that he was busy reading something, and asked if he could help me.
“Yes,” I said. I felt a kind of nervousness. For some reason I knew he wasn’t going to help and my question to him was just a kind of standard “I’m looking for a couple of elderly people who entered the store before...” Suddenly it occurred to me to count the time we had sat and waited for them, and it became clear that it had really been too long since we saw them enter the store. “Four hours more or less,” I completed the sentence. “A lot of people have entered in those four hours, and you can see that the store is now empty,” he said. The store was empty as in the whole market the signs started to disappear, and the stalls started to close, and although he gave an indication that there was no possibility that he had even noticed them, all the people who had entered the store during the four hours, I could tell from his eyes that the only ones who entered the store in the past four hours were the couple I was looking for, neither had I seen anyone enter the store while I sat outside on the bench across from the entrance for the entire four hours.
I didn’t know what exactly to say to him so I ended up saying, “Anyway, if they come in again… tell them we’re at the restaurant on the corner of the block.” I didn’t even bother describing them to him as it was clear that he would also close the store after I’d gone out the door, just like the rest of the market. It was even a question whether the restaurant would stay open until we got there. He probably felt he hadn’t really helped me. Then he said, “You can go to the police station on the other side of the street. They can help because people get lost quite often here.” He wanted to comfort me someway, or encourage me, as if he’d heard some question that was asked. I went further inside to the back of the store. He kept looking directly at me. “They didn’t leave through the back door if that’s what you’re thinking. That door is locked. We’ve had break-ins,” he said.
I didn’t see any reason anyone would want to break into the place, not even for money that might be left in the register. “Thank you,” I said and for some reason continued, “I will definitely go to the police station.”