Changing Tides- Heike Rentel

The hands of Comrade Commissaire’s wife, stripped of the diamonds of state, slice the fish into four equal portions. Once manicured and pampered, the skin encasing her long, delicate fingers is rough and stained. Her hair holds the unmistakable smell of fish like a shadow that cannot be washed out.

As she wraps a small, square bundle, she smiles at her customer and is glad that there are no hard feelings. The old woman, now gently taking the bundle of fish from her, has long memories of bunkers and prisons. For a second, their eyes meet and both are taken back into the other’s past.

Comrade Commissaire’s wife sighs and massages her calves, hardened muscles from standing for hours in the cold winter air. She glances at the olive seller next to her. Large, green fruit with shining skin, hiding the bitter taste and the stones that can break teeth. They shrug shoulders. Trade is slow. Money short.

Sometimes she misses the Comrade, upright and righteous, a man of few words and even fewer smiles. But the missing is fleeting and pointless; it drowns in the scales of dissected fish.

She likes the market, stalls under a glass roof, bustling with people in sensible shoes, carrying shopping bags. Sniffing fruit and judging colour. Most people know her. They knew her then and they know her now. The widow of Comrade Commissaire. She is glad that he died before the change. The big bunker is now a museum; the large houses have new occupants. Sculptures replaced, banished to the new shadows.

Bribes are paid to the same officials, wearing a different uniform and the same smile.

And she, the girl from the country, who had married well — once so proud of the limousine and the chandeliers — has found a stall and some fish to sell. And because people need her fish more than old convictions, her face has become part of this new world; her name garners respect with the wives of the new rulers.

And, if she needs new papers, a parking permit, a sympathetic doctor or tax relief, she wraps a freshly caught fish and takes it to the newly refurbished seats of power, where it can be exchanged against anything that a redesigned seal on official paper can provide.

And Comrade Commissaire’s wife turns and smiles at the next customer.