White Peach

I go to the market and walk among the several crowded stands loaded with all kind of fruit and vegetable: watermelons as big as cannon balls, little apricots that look like imaginary stones of an enchanted river flowing in Wonderland, Roman cabbages finely worked and decorated like a baroque pulpit in one of the thousand churches around the city, shiny eggplants whose color is like that of expensive black rubies. It is like a precious exhibition in a museum. I walk directly to “my” stand, where the usual lively young man from Morocco serves his clients happily, touching red, green, yellow apples, black cherries as big as scary eyeballs, long exotic bananas as yellow as daffodil flowers. I make my choice. I grab a pesca bianca, a white peach, and give him a few cents, then I walk away from the crowd and the smell of the market. I sit in the sun on a stony bench next to a little fountain and look at my peach. The color of its skin is of a dirty white mingled with red and light orange, like a sunset sky in June. I turn it within my hands and discover some darker spots where it has been laying close to other peaches on the stand. Here, the pulp is softer and juicier, just like the fruity baby food my mom used to give me when I was little. Its skin is like very thin velvet, not soft but a bit rough under my fingertips. Before giving the first bite, I wash the peach under the water of the little fountain splashing close to my bench. The velvet immediately becomes less shaggy, but the water seems to flow over it without any alteration. The sunset sky gets a bit darker, as if turning to the night. When I bring the peach to my mouth, wet and cold, it feels like a piece of soft ice under my teeth. But it is sweet and delightful. A bite of summer. The smell brings me back to the countryside, where green meadows grow on the hill blossoming with colourful primroses and violets. The skin of the peach produces a light and pleasant crunch under my teeth, giving consistence to the soft and juicy pulp. The countryside’s meadows mingled with the sunset sky taste like one of the best summers I have ever lived.