BLACK

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:

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.