Flowers [1]
Peter Bichsel [2]
Translated by xia23
Then he introduced her to a flower shop, in a green apron and a carnation smile.
He would step in and ask, if there are flowers here to buy and she would startle and smile and say:
“Almost only flowers”, and he would smile too.
“Yes, I see”, he would say. Then he would ask:
“Do they smell?”
She does not answer. She takes a yellow flower from the nearest vase into her hand and turns it between her index finger and thumb.
“What would you like?” she wants to ask, but doesn’t.
“He has asked, ‘do they smell’”, she talks to herself.
‘I’m embarrassed’, she thinks. In her mind she tries to whisper to him what he would say:
‘You have lots of flowers here.’
‘You like the red flowers.’
‘I like asters.’
‘What are the names of the flowers?’ but she has forgotten.
‘You have lots of flowers here.’ – ‘I love flowers’, she would say. ‘I like asters’, he could say.
‘Especially the red ones’, she would answer.
And she knows, that they smell, but the flowers smell quite different, she knows that too.
“Flowers smell quite different”, she says.
And he would say nothing.
And later she would ask: “What are you doing here” and he would answer: “I sell flowers.”
“Why don’t they smell?”, she says.
“They are paper flowers.”
“Oh, they are beautiful”, she whispers.
“But they don’t smell”, he says.
“Can’t you make them smell?” she pities him.
Or he would say: “I make paper flowers.”
“Oh, that must be difficult”, she says that, “I would like to be able to do that too, but I don’t like paper flowers.”
“Why do I make paper flowers?” he would think as he walks away.
[1]. p. 13. Blumen. Eigentlich möchte Frau Blum den Milchmann kennenlernen. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main, Walter-Verlag AG, Germany. 1996.
[2]. Peter Bichsel. 3/24/1935 - . Swiss writer and journalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bichsel
