The Fruit Stall – Part 1: Twenty Fruits

"Close your eyes," said Samuel. "Open your mouth."

"I'm a chef. I know what I like."

"You know what you know. Open."

Valentina laughed, closed her eyes and opened her mouth. Something creamy, sweet and faintly floral slid across her tongue. She gasped.

"What is that?"

"Guanábana. Soursop. Now this." Another taste, tart and sharp. "Lulo. Now this." Sweet, sticky, almost caramel. "Zapote. Now this..."

It was ten in the morning in the old market of Cartagena, and the sun was already hammering down on the red awnings. Pyramids of fruit rose from every stall, mango, papaya, passionfruit, guava, mamoncillo, tamarillo, all in heaped, jewel-coloured piles. The air smelled of ripe pineapple and diesel and frying plantain. Valentina, thirty-one, a chef from Bogotá, had come to the coast to source ingredients for a new restaurant. She had planned to spend an hour.

Samuel, thirty-four, the vendor, sold fruit from a stall his mother had started. He had broad shoulders, a gold tooth and an infectious laugh, and he handed out samples like a man giving presents. "Every fruit has a story," he said. "You just have to let it tell it."

Four hours later she was still there. She had a notebook full of names and flavours and a paper bag full of fruit. He had ignored three other customers and nobody minded.

"I should buy something," she said.

"You already bought twenty. I gave you the price of one."

"That's no way to run a business."

"It is no way to run a business," he agreed, cheerfully. "But it is a very good way to run an afternoon."

Valentina leaned on the counter. "Samuel. Would you like to have dinner with me? I cook."

He grinned broadly. "I would like that very much."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ripe.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ripe.