“
Now reading
Pear
No one ever died for a bite of one, or came back from the dead for a single taste: the cool flesh cellular or stony, white as the belly of the winter hare or a doe's scut, flicking, before she mates. Even an unripe one is delicious, its crisp bite cleaner almost than water and its many names just as inviting: Bartlett and Comice, Anjou, Nashi, Concorde and Seckel, the pomegranate-skinned Starkrimson, even the medieval Bosc, which looks like it dropped from an oil painting. It is not a sin to eat one, though you may think of a woman's body as you do it, the bell-shaped swell of it rich in your hand, and for this reason it was sacred to Venus, Juno, all women celebrated or dismissed in its shape, that mealy sweetness tunneling from its center, a gold that sinks back into itself with age. To ripen a pear, wrap it in paper, lay it in cloth by an open window or slip a rotten one beside it on a metal dish: dying cells call always to the fresh ones, the body's siren song that, having heard it once, we can't stop singing. This is not the fruit that will send you to hell nor keep you there; it will not give you knowledge, childbirth, power, or love; you won't know more pain for having eaten one, or choke on a bite to fall asleep under glass. It has no use for archer or hero, though anything you desire from an apple you can do with the pear, like a dark sister with whom you might live out your secret desires. Cook it in wine, mull it with spices, roast it with honey and cloves. Time sweetens and we taste it, so gather the fruit weeks before ripeness, let summer and winter both simmer inside, for it is a fall fruit whose name in China means separation, though only the fearful won't eat one with those they love. To grow a tree from seed, you'll need a garden and a grafting quince, bees, a ladder, shears, a jug; you'll need water and patience, sun and mud, a reverence for the elders who told no true stories of this fruit's origin, wanting to give us the freedom of one thing that's pleasure alone. Cool and sweet, cellular and stony, this is the fruit I'll never die for, nor come back from the dead for a single taste. The juice of the pear shines on my cheeks. There's no curse in it. I'll eat what I like and throw the rest to the grasses. The seeds will find whatever soils they were meant for.