Still life

"I don't understand why in this house that pineapple is always on top of all, darned conceited fool. She's always there, showing her malformed crest and boasting about her abdominal squares crowned with their little forelocks, more shriveled than myself." That who was talking under the concealment caused by the other fruits was the pear, forgotten at the bottom of the prodigious fruit bowl that the painter used for his still-life paintings.

The other fruits, the pouched mango, the sugar cane, the Chinese cantaloupe, the smelly guava, the exposed peaches with tiny nectar drops, the bananas and the purple grapes, kept silent since the weight that the vain pineapple exerted upon them was too much. Besides, the touch of its shell produced some stinging due to its so many protuberances and dry roots. It seemed better that it remain on top, thought all, because if it were underneath, we'd surely be stung by her hard green gray and marred pompon.

"I love the smell that always comes out of this room" a voice was heard. It was the beautiful woman that in ocassions was with the artist. She was crossing the lintel of the door and she looked ecstatic, as if finding out something that now made her understand. She was light-dressed, with a long white gown in almost transparent layers that seemed to reveal but didn't but for the opening that it had below the crutch. "You hadn't shown me this place" said she without turning back but obviously aware that the painter was listening to her at her back with both his hands strongly fit grasping the upper part of the door frame. It was noticeable that the painter held the aluminum tightly so as to restrain his anxious steps towards the woman and get to her in a violent plead for a lust outburst. To him, in this moment, this room was the least voluptuous place in the universe, simply because it was taking time away from her afternoon and night with her.

"You'll have to explain to me how it is that you get inspired to paint", said she, with her soft hands sliding over the empty canvass of days and days without being able to give expression to what any ideas soever. He kept ironically silent, rocking underneath the horseshoe that was nailed below the irregular wooden ceiling. She, nevertheless and despite the expansion she created in his anxiety, did not await an answer and kept on walking graciously till reaching the thick cedar table in which lay the candles and the fruits cloistered within the measureless glassy-coloured bowl. She lay her hand underneath her chin in a thoughtful attitude with a murmuring moan at the time she observed the whole composition. "This pineapple doesn't seem right in here" said she. "It looks like it's crushing everything else". And, right before the painter's eyes that opened wide like broken piggy banks and before his muscles that tightened as hanging bridge's wires, without anymore talk, she grabbed the huge fruit by its hardened hair with both her hands and dropped it off the table like someone who tosses a ball for it to reach the kitchen bouncing and hopping.

As she did so, an even more intense scent than the whole room's came out from the bottom of the bowl. It was a pear that had been buried under red apples even with its very smell inside its grave. And the smell had been concentrating down till creating this aphrodisiac compound of taste-without-inspiration days. So, still ever flabbergasted as moments passed by, the painter watched how the beautiful woman dismounted the heap of fruits that still didn't seem to satisfy him in order for him to start painting, until she could reach where the pear was free at last and exposed to the light that showed its reality: it was stale.

"You'll have to use fresh fruits for your paintings, beauty", said she gesturing some graceful sarcasm with the spoiled fruit's stem between her fingers. She kept on walking now more slender in her posture up to reaching the corner where the waste basket was. She threw the pear with an accurate basketball-player pass and went on towards the kitchen making her way under his right armpit and arm. "I'm hungry", she said. "Have you got anything to eat?"


Original Spanish version here