Fresh Figs in Season by Jim Daniels

The old woman in the weekly Saturday market in Pont St. Esprit stands hunched at her small table squeezed in from both sides by the larger vendors selling all varieties of fruits and vegetables in glorious piled displays—the ones who travel the circuit of regional market days.

Her long gray-white hair hangs straight down off her head in a way that extenuates the severe curvature of her spine. Her dark dress, its muddied fringe, her dull, faded apron. Her small cashbox, her refusal to smile. The thick paper bags for her figs to be carefully snuggled into. She usually sells butternut squash too, each one pre-weighed, the price marked on the thick pale skin in permanent marker. The figs rest in small baskets, or in larger pallets with a sheet of nesting plastic to protect their tender skins—they do not travel well, bruising easily. She will pick out what you need.

Butternuts and figs. Sometimes, enormous leeks or another chunky root vegetable. Never more than three things. Sometimes only one thing. You could walk right past and not think she is even selling anything, that maybe she is waiting to meet someone, someone who will help her with her own shopping.

Though she has a certain sturdiness, as if her thick legs and rump have compensated for the hump, muscled to give her stooped body a certain balance. Unlike the others, she does not try to lure you in with a taste of a ripe-cut melon, or goat cheese, or a special dry sausage thinly sliced. She does not throw in free parsley at the end as a small bribe to come back the following week. While she does not smile, she does not frown either. Her working the market is simply part of what she does. The growing, the harvesting. And the selling. If she had a husband, he is long gone. If she has children, grandchildren, they’ve moved away. It’s just her, the table, and her meager produce.

She does not sell fig jam like others who sell figs among their seasonal produce and fig jam in the off-season. That jam is like lavender honey. For tourists, in brightly labeled Provencal jars. Nope. Just ripe figs in season.

This past spring, she had no figs. Though I could see she had none, I still said, no figs? After all, we call her the fig lady. She just looked me in the eye and said, no figs. No figs, no explanation. This fall, she has lots of figs. That’s a great thing about figs—they have two seasons, spring and fall. What happened in spring? None of my business.

She is not to be condescended to. She would not like us calling her the fig lady, but we cannot resist. Everyone who goes to the market knows who she is. No one knows her. Maybe she simply gets out of practice in conversation on her small farm, wherever it is. I myself am always out of practice in conversation. This is because I write. This is why I write.

I try to imagine her on a ladder, picking the fruit. I fail. My late friend Pierre devised a special tool to harvest his high figs. It made him crazy not to reach every single one. He cut a plastic bottle in half. Duct-taped the bottom to a long stick, and inserted a razor blade inside the bottle on the edge. He’d reach the stick up under a fig, then turn it so the razor cut the fig off and dropped it into the bottom of the plastic bottle. It was like winning every time with the giant claw machine.

Pierre died four years ago while harvesting the last rows of grapes for the season. From what his family reports, impatient, he wanted to be done for the season, to wake up the next day unburdened. The high harvester turned over on a hillside and killed him. Maybe the part of him that made him want to reach those high figs is the same part that made him want to finish harvesting despite being exhausted, despite the coming darkness.

His son finally went out to look for him and found him dead, lying beside the harvester. Everyone around here knows about him and the accident. His full life reduced to being the man who died harvesting his grapes. Some kind of lesson for everyone, a cautionary tale, depending on who’s telling. Pierre, he called himself a paysan with pride. A man of the earth in every single way.

I would like to have a conversation with the fig lady about how she picks her figs, to tell her about Pierre, if she doesn’t already know, and ask about how she spends her days when not at the market. I admire her simple, spare table of goods and how she lets them speak for themselves.

I haven’t said it—perhaps I don’t need to—but fresh figs are my favorite fruit. The combination of sensuality, texture, delicacy, shape, and etc., etc. A certain preciousness and intimacy. As a writer, sometimes I feel like Pierre reaching up into the trees to get those elusive words up high, gently lowering them onto the page, trying not to bruise them.

In the fall, perhaps to make up for spring, in my fig madness, I bought one of those large crates from her, knowing I’d have to eat them quickly before they began to soften and rot. She held onto the crate for me, stowing it beneath her table so that I could do the rest of my shopping before picking it up. Each of those figs, equally ripe, in a cushioned nest. I paid her upfront. I returned with my wife after we finished off our weekly rounds—she carried our shopping bags, and I took the crate, nervously winding our way through the crowd back to the car. I popped one in my mouth as I popped open the trunk, beginning the hard work of taking in all that hand-picked, hand-held sweetness.

My own four fig trees grow slowly and are yet to produce fruit. This, I suppose, is another writing lesson for me, who lacks patience. The trees are alive and filling out. I have to accept that for now. Pierre and I were both on the verge of retirement when he died. In the village, after funerals in the one small church, everyone follows the casket in a procession down to the cemetery. I believe it’s helpful to grieve on foot instead of in a car with a magnetic flag stuck to it. For Pierre, that procession was enormous and already legendary. All of the area farmers came out of respect for a true paysan who died harvesting his crops. The fig lady, to me, is also a paysanne. Not being from around here, I don’t have the authority to give her this designation, but she seems slightly out of place, even at the village market, as if she has walked out of a previous century to sell her goods. There’s nothing on her table from this century, or the previous one.

One day, I’d like to get a smile out of the fig lady. I see that as an imaginary bridge to cross, to make that small connection. We all know her because she sells so few things at her modest table and because she is the oldest vendor in the market. Every time I return, I look for her. When I find her, I feel all is right with the world. She would not be happy to see me romanticize her life like I just have—there’s not room on her table for that. Someday, she will simply not be there, I know, that small space in the market swallowed up by someone selling black garlic, or some other latest thing.

Meanwhile, if the figs are in season, I’m not buying them anywhere else. Not that the woman would care. I love that she doesn’t.