"Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."
Epictetus Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 15
It was noon in Venice, and the market steamed with human breath and fish scales, stale lagoon, gasping gondolas, sandals and old women. A child played under the fig stall, grasping leaves as big as his face. The grandmother – bent, ancient, resilient – sat nearby with a basket on her lap and a story on her tongue. Her black skirt, her black linen shirt, the war between her fingers, the sandpaper of time on her skin, bitter and salty saliva.
The old woman spoke to the child, telling him an ancient story, letting the words float on the cobblestones like old enchantments.
"In the heart of the Roman Forum, three trees grew together:
the fig, the olive, and the vine.
But it was the fig – sacred above all.
Under a fig tree, the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus.
And as long as that tree grew, the freedom of Rome lived.
When it died... Rome fell.
Yet – even if it dies,
the fig always returns.
Because, remember, it is the tree of life."
With effort, the old woman, sawed by the years, picked the black drop at her feet, carefully sniffed it. Her old fingers, as sure as a pruning hook marked by time immemorial, opened the fruit in half... revealing a heart of life, honey, perfumes, and ancient ideals. Mysteries and celebrations, a heartbroken memory of when, young, she chased life that let itself be hunted, laughing.
Life now mocked her derisively.
Nearby, drowsy, stunned, dazed, knocked out under a shelter of cardboard and refuse, in his sleep, a man moved to the subdued rhythm of a jolt, paralyzed in the heavy air of dawn.
He felt a call, the name no longer his, yet the man followed it like breath. In sleep, a voice reached him. In sleep he saw a fig tree, he saw the fig tree and buried, hidden under the roots of the tree, the remains of a son. In delirium he saw his son, he saw his wife, he felt their breath blowing, and he felt it breaking against the clamor of narrated peoples.
His fingers clenched into a fist, closed to shatter a leaf that wasn't there.
A fig leaf.
"When it blossoms again," the old woman whispered distantly,
"the recognized soul can finally return."