Peonies [1]
Peter Bichsel [2]
Translated by xia23
Someone has put a bouquet of flowers in the mailbox of an old women, the flower from a well fertilized garden, fat peonies. An old woman has brought flowers to an old woman, wrapped in the advertisement page of a newspaper, fat as cauliflower and usable.
She has carried them arduously into the city, in a black coat, a hat with a veil, woolen stockings. “Adele will be happy, Adele loves flowers”, she had said, and “we have so many in our garden, we don’t know what to do with them”, and “Adele lives five flights up, I put the flowers in the mail box, Adele will surely find them, Adele will be happy”.
Adele was always alone and had lice when she went to school. Adele is 72. Adele jokes with the milkman and counts the change, the milk will be more expensive. Adele never received roses as gifts. Roses cost more and wilt quickly. She has experiences with geraniums, she crashes eggshells and keeps them long in water, in rain water. The geraniums have become small trees, you have to talk about them when you come to Adele. She tells everyone how to take care of them, and she says that her mother had the most beautiful ones in the village.
Adele will be happy. They look good, the peonies, on the white table cloth with lace trim. They are splendid this year, fleshly like cabbage stalks. Adele will put a newspaper under the vase, the newspaper with the obituary.
Adele is an old woman. The neighbor died last week, she was 73, born in 1889. Old age cancer, Adele knows. She asked the doctor.
Adele has also given a franc [3] for the wreath for the neighbor. “The good soul”, she has said, “she would also have given me one franc.”
The Adele’s nephew will come to Adele’s funeral from Aarau [4]. Her nephew is a bank officer in Aarau.
And Adele is 72, born in 1890.
In 1900 she was in the 4th grader, with teacher Widman, he liked the red one. Adele was good at oral arithmetic. Many of her classmates have been dead, recently Veronika. The others are rarely seen. One comes in the city now and then and brings beans and cauliflower.
[1]. p. 16. Pfingstrosen. 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
[3]. Franc. The unit of money in France, Belgium, Switzerland and several other countries.
[4]. Aarau. A town in northern Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarau
