I’d never encountered one of them before, but one day he was just there, exactly as you might expect him – black-and-white hooped jersey redolent of so many Marcel Marceau routines, black beret placed at a jaunty angle atop his head and a cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth, the smoke spooling away down the street like unravelling cine film. Beside him, a rust-flecked bicycle stood propped against a lamppost, a cardboard price list taped to the frame while string upon string of his wares hung down as though bubble-wrapping and insulating this historical throwback from the world that surrounded him.
Once a common sight in high streets of towns up and down the country, the early Onion Johnnies apparently favoured Wales as a destination due to the similarities between Welsh and their native Breton language, but now this individual seemed very much alone, an island in the stream of shoppers that opened around him before closing again just beyond him and passing on, almost oblivious to his presence.
Nevertheless, he was all icon, as recognisable as any Buddha or drugstore Indian, and seemed to transcend the terms stereotype and cliché, or at least seemed to deftly sidestep their modern use, delving back again to the linguistic roots of the words and adding an authentic air of Frenchness to a bleak Welsh morning.
As I watched on, an elderly lady broke from the passing throng and tottered up to him, asking the question: “C’est combien?”, perhaps recalling the words from long-distant memories or another life, lived many years before. He nodded gently toward the sign before she stepped over and carefully lifted a string of onions from the handlebars, running them through her hands and gazing at them like pearls as they slid across her papery skin.
I don’t know what it was about this gentle action, but I felt compelled to look away for a moment. My imagination immediately took over, picturing a silent parlour somewhere, carpeted by shallots that tumbled from cupboards, rolled across bookshelves and spilled from the quiet corners where they had been squirreled away like the stowed trifles and trinkets that make up the many complex and gentle layers of a life’s silvering strata.
“Oui, bien. Merci.” She deposited the exact amount into his palm and held his gaze for a second before she turned and was gone again, leaving behind her only an inkling of how things, for no apparent reason, can sometimes linger on like an allium tang, blurring the vision with tears and catching somewhere far back in the throat.
