Cirrus@Austlit

Dimitri is a middle-aged Greek now living in an Australian coastal town. His friend, Jim, comes up distraught, and describes how he found a corpse on the beach: a teenage girl, pregnant and missing a hand.

From this incident, Dimitri recalls a girl he met in Greece when he was fourteen: Dimitroula, who had come to Thessaloniki to have an abortion. Dimitroula's hand has been undeveloped since birth, with only a few stubs like fingers. Dimitri helps her find a doctor and falls in love with her, but she never comes back once she leaves.

In "Market Day" a blind woman discovers accidentally that she is now grey and old, but this woman transcends her tragic past and self-interest to serve the cause of her niece's love. This little brown Aunt who has patiently endured physical and emotional suffering is almost deified because of her capacity to love a world she cannot see. She accommodates the loss of her own youth, and by the end of the story her hair is no longer the focus of her despair but, appropriately, has the appearance of a bronze crown. This narrative is also interesting in that Farmer recreates the particular textures and sounds of Elpida's environment as the reader shares the blind woman's dependence upon aural or mnemonic experience.

(Source: 'Against the Grain: Beverley Farmer's Writing')