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January | February | March | April
The year begins inauspiciously for Typhoon, proprietor of the Gelik Issim Twenty-Four Hour Fruit And Veg Superstore and Off-Licence on Green Lanes, North London. At nineteen minutes past one o'clock on January the 1st, a mere seventy-nine minutes into the New Year, he is robbed. Two young men carrying lengths of wood which they have taken from the skip in the alleyway that runs beside the store enter and demand the contents of the cash register. Typhoon, who believes that nothing is accidental and all things are one in the eyes of God, attempts to reason with them, explaining both the consequences of their actions for their own souls and the effect such a loss will have on his own business. They decline to take his advice, and, while one of them forces open the till, the other repeatedly smacks his piece of wood - which, fortunately, is merely the side panel of a box of peaches Typhoon himself had recently emptied into a container bin in the next room and is consequently quite light and flexible - across the crown of Typhoon's head.
Slightly dazed but not seriously hurt, Typhoon watches the youths leave, silently totting up in his head the difference between the money that remained in the till when the young men gained access to it, and the far greater sum secreted beneath a layer of sherbet straws on the shelf beneath the counter, next to the spare matches and cartons of cigarettes.
Deciding that the police will in all likelihood be occupied elsewhere on such a night, Typhoon weighs up the possibility that tonight will be one of the rare occasions when the shop closes for a few, small hours to take stock and allow him a little rest, but then, hearing a new group of revellers approaching down the Grand Parade in search of winter fuel, he decides to stay open.
In February, Kelub is sick. Kelub is an enormous black Newfoundland of uncertain parentage who resides on a pile of frayed hemp matting at the back of the store, between the shelves of tinned vegetables and the wall of rice sacks, and in front of the stockroom door. In theory, he is the gatekeeper to the stockroom, and all entrance and egress is at his discretion, but in practice he rarely lifts his immense head from the floor, and a thick leash attached to a bolt in the doorframe keeps him from bothering the customers.
When he is sick, his stomach rumbles constantly and he vomits a thick whitish substance onto the unclean linoleum. Typhoon blames the fatty slabs of poorly cooked meat that schoolchildren bring him from the Afghan-run Kennessey Fried Chicken diner next door, which he chokes down in great wolfing swallows whenever he is given the opportunity.
Typhoon attempts to counteract this poison with large doses of fresh green chillies mixed into Kelub's dry, milk-soaked feed, which has the effect of producing noxious wind in such quantities that people passing the store are seen to cross the road to avoid its effects. Typhoon seems immune to this unearthly stench, and, after several days of this treatment, wherein the shop receives little custom and Kelub appears in danger of spontaneously combusting, his fat pink tongue turning a furious crimson and his breathing becoming increasingly laboured, the sickness abruptly passes, and Kelub returns to his normal pattern of sleeping and farting, but less violently.
Typhoon, who has spent the days crouched in silent worry over his pet, at no little danger to his own health and clothing, explains that the heat of the chillies have scoured Kelub's insides to such an extent that he will from now on be unable to digest the alleged chicken at all, and will at some future point cease to attempt it. His point is proved when, some days later, the schoolchildren, who have crept back into the store while Typhoon is rearranging the tea and coffee shelves, give up in their attempt to feed Kelub his usual treats, and begin to press him with the contents of the olive buckets instead, which brings on a wholly new, and unholy, sickness.
In March, Typhoon hires a new assistant. Grigor, an Armenian giant, is first put to work rearranging the sacks of flour, rice and salt which have silted up in the rear corner of the store. He can be seen for days moving from one end of the shop to another, never resting, hoisting the plastic sacks like bags of wet cement onto his massive shoulders and putting them down again in new, unexplained configurations.
He brews sweet, thick Haikakan coffee in a copper pot on the gas ring in the stockroom and balances the little cup on the corner of the egg cart while he works, taking a brief sip each time he passes on his way to and from the mountain of sacks. He refuses all other refreshment, and Typhoon admits he is unsure how much English the giant speaks, or understands, and gradually comes to realise that Grigor believes that his job is simply this: to move the bags from one end of the store to the other, endlessly. He seems so absorbed in his Sisyphean task, and so single-minded, that Typhoon frets to disturb him from it.
Typhoon and Kelub observe Grigor, from the respective vantage points on the stool behind the counter and on the frayed hemp matting before the stockroom, tracing his journey with their eyes back and forth from corner to corner. Customers, too, find the work hypnotic, the derelicts stand frozen at the chiller cabinet, four-packs of Super dangling from reddened fists, wondering at the great man. Finally Typhoon enlists the help of an Armenian plasterer working in the flats opposite, who explains to Grigor that he can stop. Grigor appears bereft, but cheers up when it is explained to him that it is also pay-day, and the plasterer will take him out and show him a little of the town.
Some time after midnight, Grigor and the plasterer return. Typhoon is sat at the counter and watches, speechless, as the two enter, and stride purposefully to the rear of the shop. Looking meaningfully into each others' eyes, and ignoring Typhoon entirely, they each take up an end of the nearest sack, and begin to carry it to the opposite corner of the room.
In April, a batch of bell peppers from Israel bring a new visitor to the shop. A Karakurt, or mediterranean widow spider, a relative of the notorious black widow, is identified as the culprit in a near-fatal poisoning traced to the Gelik Issim by experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The scientists close and cordon off the shop, sealing the doors with yellow and black polyvinyl tape and laying out strips of sticky white fabric along the skirting boards and cornices. Delving into the dark spaces behind the freezer cabinets, clad head to toe in a surfer-like neoprene enclosure suit, one of the entomologists was heard to observe that it would little surprise him to discover entirely new species of arachnid on the premises, let alone such a rare visitor as Latrodectus tredecimguttatus.
Eventually, the bizarre behaviour and appearance of Kelub leads the scientists to suspect that the dog has ingested the widow. He presents symptoms including a board-like rigidity of the abdomen (initially taken to be merely his usual state of flatulent inflation), profuse sweating, increased vomiting and, most tellingly, piloerection, the signature standing on end of the hair associated with the widow's bite. Kelub, now resembling a massively engorged, perspiring sea urchin, is taken into quarantine at the Tropical Medicine School's Bloomsbury headquarters.
The shop remains closed for over a week, with no sign of Typhoon, who has reportedly taken to sleeping on the steps of the School while he awaits news of his pet's condition, occasionally accompanied by Grigor, whose initial suspicion of the corpulent canine has, over the weeks of his employment, softened into something approaching his employer's devotion.
After several days of tests, and a thorough fumigation of the shop which leads to some bizarre mutations among the citrus fruits that forces even the notoriously Best Before Date-averse Typhoon to dispose of large quantities of his stock, Kelub is returned to his owner, and takes up again his repose upon the matting. Beyond some residual spasms in his forelegs, visible only on the rare occasions when Kelub lurches unsteadily to his feet in search of sustenance, the dog appears to suffer few long-lasting side effects.
In July, Typhoon is forced to dismiss Grigor. Having widened his sphere of work considerably since the commencement of his employment, and, with the help of Typhoon and a number of customers, rapidly improved his grasp of the English language, although he would still not be considered verbose, Grigor has progressed to occasionally manning the counter while Typhoon busies himself with the ledgers in the stockroom.
One warm evening, Typhoon hears raised voices from the front of store and emerges from his books to investigate. A short, wide and elderly lady is berating a visibly incensed Grigor, waving a tin of chopped tomatoes in his direction and loudly demanding to see the manager.
Grigor, having clearly exhausted his patience and his stock of English phrases, is demanding of the old lady if she does, indeed, really and truly, wish to see the manager. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, and before Typhoon can intervene, Grigor opens his fly and pulls out a thick, uncut penis. "Here is the manager," he shouts, finally silencing his accuser, who flees into the night, still clutching her unsatisfactory tomatoes. Grigor swiftly follows.
In August, Typhoon at length becomes fed up with Kelub moaning and whining on his tether in the heat at the back of the store and gives him the freedom of the shop, which he utilises to forage in the fruit and vegetables that fall down the back of the storage units and to knock down small children in the aisle between the egg cart and the fridge freezer, trampling them heedlessly beneath his huge black paws.
Unfortunately, Kelub is easily distracted, and after several occasions when, thinking he sees a bitch, or a cat, or some newspaper fluttering in the slow-moving air on the far side of the road, he dashes madly from the shop and across the wide expanse of Green Lanes, sending the Number 29 bus screeching to a halt diagonally across the street and cyclists cannonading into the recycling bins under the railway bridge, Typhoon is forced to purchase a restraining collar.
The collar is wide and made of thick-weave, chew-proof Gore-Tex. It joins with a chunky plastic clasp like those on outward-bound types' rucksacks and it holds in place a large plastic box that sits on the back of the neck and pushes two shiny metal stubs through Kelub's thick fur and up against his skin. Another wire, connected to a large box that looks suspiciously like a car battery, goes all the way around both double doors at the front to the store. Cans near the entrance crackle with undischarged static.
Kelub is a slow learner, and Typhoon is afforded many opportunities to view the effect which the restraining collar induces. Whenever Kelub attempts to pass through the portal, either on one of his doomed mating missions or when lured by local schoolchildren, waving pieces of limp meat from next door, the restraining collar passes a strong current through his nervous system. Kelub shudders, goes cross-eyed, wets himself, and passes out in the spreading puddle that laps up against the chocolate and nut selection ranged beneath the counter.
"Is not perfect," says Typhoon.
In October, Grigor once again appears in the shop. Obviously the worse for wear, and coated with plaster dust - the result, Typhoon later learns, of an ill-conceived foray into the suspended ceiling trade in the company of the Armenian plasterer - he nevertheless presents a pitiful figure, visibly reduced by his experiences outside the protective embrace of Typhoon and the Gelik Issim. Typhoon, never a hard taskmaster, takes him back, with a stern warning that those body parts which are traditionally covered by everyday wear should, under all possible circumstances, remain so.
Typhoon's resolve to be Grigor's protector in this cruel and frequently incomprehensible world is only slightly shaken when, some days later, on returning from an extended visit to the social club in St Anne's Road, he finds that Grigor, having drunk his way through a selection of the shop's fruit and otherwise flavoured liqueurs, has finally rendered himself insensible by drinking the pickling spirit from the barrel of root vegetables in the stockroom.
In November, Typhoon, increasingly concerned about security and knowing that, Grigor aside, there will be times in the winter months that he will have to no choice but to leave the premises unattended, enlists the help of his sister's son Guraj who is studying for a diploma in Computer Sciences at Hendon College of Higher Education and works at Currys on Saturdays. Guraj spends several evenings pacing the shop, measuring distances between various objects with a laser measuring tool and making marks with a pencil at the junctures of the electrical system.
At the end of this examination, Guraj advises his uncle that the premises are fundamentally insecure, and that he should seriously consider installing a top-of-the-line security system to replace the ageing and frankly useless alarm he currently has in place. To offset the cost, Guraj offers to install the system himself, at a much lower rate that that which would be charged by a "so-called" security professional. After weighing up the various alarms and countermeasures on offer, Typhoon opts for a sophisticated and relatively expensive, fully integrated system, the cost of which he offsets by paying Guraj nothing, but agreeing to falsify work experience records on his nephew's University application.
The following Sunday, Guraj installs a full security system, consisting of electromagnetic locks on the doors and windows, a separately lockable, automated shutter over the facade, CCTV cameras by the door and over the chiller cabinet connected to a monitor above the counter, motion sensors and a direct connection to the incident room at Stroud Green Police Station, who send an officer to check and certify the installation.
That night, while Typhoon is attending a celebratory dinner at his sister's house in Wood Green, a person or persons unknown break into the store and steal the cash float from the register, a quantity of cigarettes and premium alcohol, and the CCTV monitor. The alarm fails to go off. Typhoon, coming upon the scene in the early hours of the morning, finds Kelub in a state of partial paralysis in the stockroom, a nasty scar forming lividly around his jaws, and a harsh aroma of burnt hair filling the room. He has chewed through the system's power supply cables.
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