_Le charme inattendu d’un bijou rose et noir._
Baudelaire.
The most beautiful flower that Duclos had ever seen was a black dahlia.
It was in the public garden of a little town in Normandy--a garden of
tulips, of daisies, of wistaria, hornbeams and orange trees--a garden
where the rare plant, sprung up amidst the familiar ones, seemed truly
rare, exceptional and beautiful.
How well a bunch of white violets would go in a torrid greenhouse,
amidst the singularity of the orchids! How welcome is an orchid, and
how strangely it strikes the eye in a spacious provincial garden, where
three children are laughing, or an ecclesiastic, who has just finished
his breviary, exchanges timorous words with two old ladies in black!
This garden was fresh and attractive, as elegant as a young woman who
is perhaps on her way to love, for surely enough one discovers here the
four-leaf clover. Its plots and its beds mingled willingly with the
hothouse flowers that were out to take the air, and with the rustic
blossoms that sleep outside--those that close at night the eyes which
they open to the sun, those that have always a new smile to take the
place of the one that has died, and those who surrender completely, all
at once, in a single great kiss.
There were also numerous trees, and even ash, willows and red osiers,
among the lilacs, the snowballs and the roses of Jericho. There were
lawns, basins, fountains, red fishes and white fishes.
There were black flowers.
During all the summer that he spent in this little town, Duclos came
every morning for a walk along the avenue of dahlias. He looked like
an inspector of flowers. He examined them one by one, welcoming the
newcomers and deploring the fate of those which were about to die.
He would pause for a long time before the clump of black dahlias. A
black flower is black. It is a strip of black velvet cut in the shape
of a flower, and nothing more.
Black dahlias are simple or double, like all dahlias. The double
dahlias are fluted balls, stiff, seemingly fashioned of metal or linen
that has been well starched and ironed. Simple dahlias are shaped like
a sun or a monstrance and seem, from the height of their green stems,
to spread a friendly benediction. They have an eye, and almost always,
in the black dahlias, a yellow eye--an insolvent louis d’or placed in
the center of the black velvet sun. They inspire fear, for they seem to
be alive, and this is contrary to the nature of flowers, which must be
only things, pretty things.
However, the black dahlias that so exalted Duclos every morning in the
large solitary garden had no eyes: crisp, curly petals intertwined
above the mystery of the stamens and pistils.
“This flower is only an idea, it is a desire. It is a flower?”
One day he met with a surprise. A tiny bindweed had slipped its supple
stem in between the petals of a large dahlia and had just opened in the
heart of the flower. It had dared to set amidst this night of black
velvet the caress of a carnal mother-of-pearl.
“... And I,” he said to himself, “... to think that I never understood
that line of Baudelaire’s.... No, it’s impossible.... Farewell,
innocent flower that offends the peace of my heart.... Whom am I to
love now, since you are not a woman and this country is a desert of
love?”
He walked off ill content, his eyes lowered, thrusting at the pebbles
of the path with his foot and with the tip of his cane, meditating
upon the disharmony between thought and deed that renders pleasant
realizations so difficult and so rare.
“Desire comes rarely at the right moment. One yearns only after the
impossible--water that flows, the bird that flies off, the woman who
goes back into the house and rudely slams her door. Wisdom would
consist in never desiring anything save the bit of bread one is raising
to his mouth. And even then, who knows whether one’s throat will not
contract as the food is swallowed? Better, then, to desire only that
which has already been accomplished, to accept chance and live over
again those moments which were happy....”
A cry interrupted his reflections.
He looked up and perceived, seated upon a bench before him, a young
woman who, with the hem of her skirt turned up somewhat, was feeling
her ankle uneasily, above a white shoe. The hem was black.
Duclos was not timid. As he bowed, his hat in hand, explaining the
wickedness of the pebbles that one is apt to trip over, he observed the
severity of a toilette that enchanted him. Everything was black and
white, save, at the neck, the gleam of a pink ribbon, quite similar in
shade to the bindweed that opened, yonder, in the heart of the black
dahlia.
Near the woman, a play in brochure form, yellow and somewhat soiled. He
connected this with a large poster that he had seen that morning, and
still drunk with his flower and his desire, he murmured, looking at her
neck, which was so fresh, then at her subdued, golden face and her very
sombre eyes: “_The unexpected charm of a pink and black jewel._”
“White, black and pink,” he amended, smiling.
A somewhat forced smile replied to him.
The spoke of the drama. And when he took a seat upon the bench no one
made a wry face.
“Such stupidity!” exclaimed the lady, rolling up the pamphlet.
Then he recited some verses for her:
O music, music of the trees,
Lull me, cradle me.
Warm breath of the wind, cooled by the stream,
Caress me, fondle me....
She was soon gazing at him through tender eyes.
Long, shrill whistles. The train rumbled by.
“The station is near,” said Duclos. “You go down a small staircase.”
“We have the afternoon,” murmured the lady.
“I love you!” said the young man.
“Why not?” replied the lady.
“Who knows?”
“Who knows?”
They arose at the same impulse.
As they passed the large black dahlia, black and pink now, Duclos
stopped, and pointing to the flower:
“I love you, because I love this black and pink flower. I love you,
because you are both sisters.”
“And to think,” she said, “that this morning I was weeping over the
wickedness of men....”
“Not all men are wicked.”
They gazed at each other for a long time, then took each other’s hands.
“Are you my destined one?”
“Perhaps,” she answered.
Then she added, as at the first time:
“Who knows?”
“Quickly,” said Duclos, “this is the hour.”
They hastened down the little staircase to the station. They set out on
their journey.
Sometimes Duclos would call his lady friend “My Dahlia.” This would
make her laugh, and dream, too.
As soon as they had known each other each loved the other with deep
passion.
The black dahlia with the pink heart became for Duclos an everlasting
comfort. The large velvet flower soothed his brow, his heart and his
lips. It made a beautiful mystery against the marble whiteness.