2nd Day - I like Apricots

Reading time: 4 min

Photo by Dovile Ramoskaite on Unsplash

“I’m not a man of exotic taste,” I hear him say. “I just don’t like them ripe.”

He walks assertively along the path, hands joined behind his back, stopping politely in front of every orchard, listening to what the farmer has to say.

There’s nothing new about this man. He’s older than the last one, although I couldn’t say how old, and the colour of his uniform is the only colour I’ve ever seen our customers ever wearing. I would say he’s of a higher rank than average though, for a few reasons. First of all, his age. In this world fertile of wars, men don’t age if not for a good reason. Then, there is the carpet of little, sparkling medals on his jacket. I assume more of those means more power, because men without them tend to buy from the spoiled batch. Also, the farmer skipped the rotten basket and is now rushing through the ripe area: another sign that this man has money to spend.

I know he fought in the war, because we’re an expensive good only military men can afford nowadays, but I can’t say anything else about him.

Some of the older fruits were imported – I know that because they told me – and they tend to know a little bit more about our customers, but I was planted here, I sprouted here, I’ve never seen the outside of the farm, only the orange sky with its charcoal explosions.

The man stops at the twenty-one years old section, feels a couple of them, sniffs their peel, then shakes his head and walks a little more.

There’s eight of us in my orchard, the twelve years old one, but there used to be ten. Two of us have been plucked and purchased by two men with the same, strange name: General. It is a great honour to be plucked that early, when you’re still green, and some of the older fruits weep when it happens. The farmer says they do because they’re jealous, but I heard some of the imported whispering that it’s a lie.

Once, I remember, a group of men in uniforms put together all of their money to buy a flower, only five years into being, from the best seeds in the farm, and a plum from the rotten basket jumped out of her section to stop them. The farmer had to shoot at her, spraying her juice all over the field. He told us to watch. He showed us a grey, jelly-like substance among the juice. He said that if you get too old and no one purchases you, you grow mould inside your head and go rotten. You’re not supposed to have any of that grey stuff inside you; only bright red, the same bright red stuff that sometimes gets darker and drips out from between our legs. When it happens, your price decreases, but you’re much more likely to be bought soon, which, I must admit, it’s a relief.

We don’t get fancy names like General or Captain, but when the farmer’s asleep, the old batches rise and talk to each other, and they call themselves names of fruit and plants I’ve never heard before, like Kate or Juliet.

They call me Apricot.

The farm has other six apricots at different stages of ripening, and all of us have the same reddish hair and freckled peel. They say it’s good to be an Apricot because nobody wants to buy a Watermelon, but I don’t know what this means. We’ve got two Watermelon and they’re the sweetest.

The man is now at the “first blood” batch, and he’s studying them with his fingers and tongue. It seems tickling.

Rotting away is bad, but there’s an even worse destiny for some of the fruits. Sometimes, when the farmer’s son comes to water and clean us, he might get a little distracted and not notice a rigid worm trying to eat his way inside our flesh. I saw it happen to a green Apple once, and although she was screaming, the worm kept eating, and the farmer’s son couldn’t hear her.

The worm spoils the fruit forever. Sometimes you go into the rotten basket, sometimes you must be thrown away.

The man is unhappy with the farmer’s range, he says he wants to try some green stuff, and he steps into our orchard. He looks at me, and I smile, my heart beating so fast I’m afraid I’ll fall from the tree.

He touches my peel and I’m happy, because, although it doesn’t feel good, he says: “I like apricots.”