idle market

Haply your eye shall light upon some toy You have desire to purchase; and your store, I think, is not for idle markets, sir.

Throughout the last week, even as the subject of the idle markets increasingly crept into news reports trying to gauge the ramifications of the devastation, it seemed crass to think about money.

The idle market was used each year only for a short period in wintertime, from Christmas to "myasoyed" (two weeks before Maslenitsa), when peasants from around Moscow came to sell frozen meat, poultry and venison.