For Elwen_Rhiannon.
Written by me.
Translated by Elwen_Rhiannon.
The Daisy
Daisies are unable to live lonely lives: wide, empty spacer and gaps between stones are not for them. They grow wherever they are able to find the company of other plants, shyly hiding themselves among blades of grass and other taller and braver flowers. And yet they reach their little leaves towards the sky with hope, letting the sun reflect on their petal covered heads.
But this daisy did not grow up where it should had. Perhaps it was seized by the wind, or perhaps has always been in this place, but things like these were not important: surivival was. Survival on a courtyard of Parisian tenement house, on a piece of ground, means fighting for your life every single day. The fight is even harder when you are but a flower unable to defend yourself, run away from a wheel of a cart or hide yourself from a shoe of some accidental passer-by. From time to time the little daisy had to say farewell to its young leaf or a new bud, hit by a hoof of some careless horse. It hurt every time.
Yet some day somebody's small and strong hands raised it from the courtyard to another world, full of books and candles, grey stones replaced by green curtains. The little daisy was the only flower in the flat: its saviour obviously did not enjoy watching these poor creatures without roots, helplessly trying to reach the bottom of the vase with their stems. A naive kindness seen only among children and poets. Traces of grief and melancholy on his young face were visible proofs that he was not a child anymore, and this is why the little daisy decided to name him the Poet.
The first thing that turned the attention of the little daisy was his voice: it was kind and speaking in surprisingly soft tones. Soon she started to learn his habits. Every morning he knelt down, supporting his elbows on a window sill and turned his face towards the window, not caring that he cannot see neither grass nor flowers, but only grey walls of the tenement houses. He tended to look into the distance, as if he was attempting to find a way through the greyness, and then he inclined his head, allowing the daisy to touch his lips with its leaves and praying so fervently that his words were for the little daisy everything it has always suspected to exist somewhere afar, but never had a chance to see on a sad, Parisian courtyard. It did not understand what he was talking about – flowers cannot understand the language of the human beings, it is too loud and too tiring for them. But in the words coming from the Poet it sensed green meadows and warmth of springtime, and it reached its tiny leaves towards him, allowing them to be enwrapped by his breath.
In the evenings it could see his shadow on a wall, a slightly bent, sharp-nosed silhouette with messy hair. It could hear paper rustling, when he was turning the pages of his books with his fingertips. The daisy was waiting for the candle to burn out. Darkness always surprised him: he was leaving his books to draw back the curtains and find another candle by the light of a street lamp. Many times he accidentally touched the leaf of a flower, while reaching for the curtain, and the flower was happy as never before. These furtive, accidental gestures were a secret between them both, understandable only for the two of them.
Ah, but there was that third one, the one the Poet called "Julien". The poet did not need the language of the humans to know that this word means his name. The Poet was always saying it with special care, with tenderness and a bit of awareness. It was enough for the daisy to be sure.
Julien tended to come in the evening, when it dusked. The Poet was spending less time over his books and much more on kneeling by the window and looking into the distance, whispering some words the little flower was unable to understand. From time to time he was pacing round his flat, inefficiently trying to organize piles of books on his desk. When Julien finally entered the room, the Poet tended to sit on the floor, next to Julien's armchair, listening to him with all of his being, as if he didn't want to lose but a word. They tended to sit like this till late, just talking, and the daisy could see sprightliness in the eyes of her poet. If a candle burnt out, none of them was willing to get up and find a new one, and so they were sitting together, speaking in lower and lower tones, until silence. Only their breathing could be heard, and Julien was getting up then and quickly leaving. But he was also coming back, more and more often, until there was no evening without him entering the Poet's space, even if only for a moment.
One could think they had nothing in common. Julien never noticed the daisy: flowers, as well as sunrises or the delicacy of an old page, all of these things mattering so much for the Poet were far from Julien, in some world he did not know how to enter. Maybe this was the reason why the little daisy could not love him, even if it knew that the Poet does. Or maybe it was afraid of what his appearance in the Poet's – their – cosy flat may mean one day: Julien was like all like a sky before a storm, too calm and perhaps therefore dangerous. But the eyes of the Poet were so full of warmth while looking at him at that was all that mattered. The daisy could not be jealous.
Spring slowly turned into summer and the sun was looking through the windows of the tenement house more and more often. Days were longer and warmer and more and more big and small beings were brought to life. The little flower was not surprised when one day a tit looking for food came to visit, sitting on a window sill. And when the bird noticed green leaves of the daisy, it stayed for longer.
The tit was not a company the daisy would dream of: there were too many differences between them. And yet the bird, joyous and not bearing grudges, returned from time to time to the window sill, attracted by the sight of green, so rare in this part of the town. The tit started to observe the world behind the window more carefully. It observed the Poet, too, and the little daisy was unable to understand the dislike in the bird's eyes.
"He'll get bored with you, you'll see. They always get bored," said the tit one day, while nibbling nonchalantly pieces of bread left on a window sill. "Better get bored with him first. Don't bloom, don't show him what you're really like, he won't appreciate it anyway. Remember, you can rely only on yourself."
"But you take food from him," pointed the daisy.
The tit got silent. In spite of it, the daisy put forth a green and delicate beginning of a bud after this very talk.
The bud was developing fast and it did not take it long to show blushing rose-coloured petals under pieces of green. The daisy waited impatiently for the day when it would bloom entirely, but the Poet was absorbed by something else. He was spending more time with Julien than ever before: they often appeared in the flat together, shoulder-to-shoulder, lost in thoughts and absentminded. They were covering the window, blowing the candles out, sitting more and more closer to each other and talking in hushed voices. Their foreheads were almost touching and something was changing: something new in the eyes of the Poet after every visit. The daisy could sense it in his shaking hands reaching for the books and in the sound of his voice when he was praying: he was afraid. The little daisy was afraid as well, even if it did not know why.
One day the Poet came home later than usually; the streets were already dark and it was far past the usual time of Julien's visits. The flower expected to see them together, but the Poet was alone, apart from a slender shape carefully covered with his cloak. He put it on a bed and covered the window, as usually, when he was expecting Julien's visit, and the daisy thought that it has never seen him that scared. Yet when he lightened the candles and with shaking hands unpacked a piece of metal from the cloak, the daisy saw in his eyes the very same liveness it could see when Julien visited them.
The flower decided to share its doubts with the tit.
"It's a musket! He's going to hunt!" was what the daisy heard. "He's going to kill birds!"
The daisy did not believe, even if it knew that the fear of the tit is the real one: birds of its kind are not scared easily. When the tit started to drop in with a visit less and less often, coming just to sit on a window sill for a while, watching the window and flying away whenever the Poet made a hasty move, the tiny flower regretted that it cannot give the bird some of its own faith in the boy who had saved the daisy from beneath horse hooves.
But its loyalty was put to a test, and a hard one, when the Poet started to pull out the musket more and more often. He was putting it to his shoulder, taking aim at something distant, as if he wanted to tear the curtain with a bullet. A grimace that could be seen on his face was changing him completely and the daisy could not recognize him: he was a stranger, a hostile, and the little flower was unable to find any of his usual warmth. It made it bend its little head in sadness and turn a half-developed bud towards the window, as it could not watch it anymore. The flower could not understand how could it be so wrong.
It was until a few days later the daisy saw him kneeling on the cobblestones and taking something from the gutter. When he came home, the daisy saw him holding a half-faded, dirty flower next to his face and later putting it into a cup with water. In his movements the daisy could recognize the same tenderness that made the Poet dig out its own roots and add soil to the pot. Later, when he was holding the musket again, the flower did not turn its gaze: it has learned that whatever was his motivation, it was not cruelty. The flower understood that it was the Poet all the time, even if it was hard to understand that one's nature can unify so many contradictions.
One day Julien came earlier than usually, so suddenly that had no time to hid the musket under his bed. He covered it with his coat only, but when Julien entered the room, he pulled away the coat immediately as if he know what he was going to find. He did not shout: he went white, but did not rise his voice. He was talking quickly and quietly, with his arm on the Poet's shoulder. The Poet was looking at him as if he was seeing him for the first time in his life and it was clear for the daisy that none of them thinks about the musket, forgotten on a bed, half-hidden under the Poet's cloak.
Suddenly the Poet shook off Julien's hand from his shoulder and the daisy knew something was over between them. Julien left, slamming the door, and the Poet looked as if he wanted to run after him, but perhaps he was not strong enough. He was standing in the middle of the room, round-shouldered; the daisy could not see his face. Perhaps it was better: the flower was afraid of what it could see.
"People are stupid," said the tit, sitting carefully on a window sill, next to the pot in which the daisy lived. "They make everything complicated."
And it bent to kiss a half-developed bud with its beak, and for a moment everything seemed to be all right.
Apart from Julien not visiting them anymore and the Poet being more and more sad and spending less and less time at home. He was returning late at night, smelling of gunpowder and of alcohol, not kneeling next to the window in the morning anymore, but taking the musket instead and pressing his cheek to cold metal, as if he wanted to find some warmth in it.
It was then when the daisy decided to bloom, to open its precious and protected bud especially for him, so that he could know that he is not alone. The little flower was unsure if the man was going to see it at all, but when he looked at it while pulling the curtains, he noticed immediately. He carefully pulled his finger towards the flower and brushed the petals, slowly and tenderly, the way he used to speak Julien's name. For the first time in a few days the daisy saw him smiling a ghost of a smile. For this smile, the daisy decided to bloom as long as possible, to keep the Poet at home, even if it was going to cost it so much of its vital forces.
But the spring had to end some day. It was over for the daisy with the promise of summer, sunshine and weather; it was over for the Poet as well. In the evenings, when the Poet was not at home, the daisy could sometimes see Julien standing under his window. Wrapped in his cloak, he was looking up, searching for the candlelight behind the curtains. Once the daisy could hear his steps behind the door. It recognized his way of knocking, hasty as never before: hasty as people who know they may not have time. But there was no way for the little flower to open the door or ask him to wait.
When the Poet was bending over the daisy and watching the grey sky with watery eyes, the flower was caressing his lips with its leaves, trying to tell him to not abandon hope, and above all, to not leave. But he could not understand, and the daisy knew that the tit was right. People complicate everything. Unnecessarily.
And then came the morning when the daisy was watching its Poet with particular attention. He was preparing to leave, but for the first time did not cover the windows while taking the musket from under the bed and chose an outfit totally different from his usual one. The daisy was not used to see him wearing black: he looked paler and the shadows under his eyes were darker than before. But when he tightened his grip on the musket, he changed again and it could not recognize him anymore. The daisy could see firm decision on his face and feverish haste in his eyes. It has never seen him resembling Julien so much and perhaps that was why the flower felt fear. Not of him, no, but for him.
It was waiting many, many hours for the Poet to return, smelling of smoke and of alcohol, to kneel by the window or throw himself on a bed. It was in vain: there were no familiar steps on a staircase and no soft whisper in the middle of the night. There was no one neither to cover the windows, nor to water the dried soil in the daisy's pot.
Another lonely morning, and then another one. June was hot with sun and the daisy, exhausted after blooming, was dying. It was dreaming of water and the Poet coming back, but he did not. When the flower thought that it will not see a friend any more, it heard a familiar flutter and a cheerful twitter.
„See yourself, he got bored with you," threw the tit, bouncing on a window sill and searching for dried pieces of bread. "They're all the same."
The daisy bowed its little head and dropped a few petals.
"I guess you were right," admitted quietly. "But please, find him for me, or I will die."
The tit gave the daisy a look and tilted its head as if it was considering something. It tapped at a window sill a few times more – and flew away. It was then when the daisy started to lose hope, waiting for the twitter of the tit or the light steps of her Poet on stairs.
Instead the one the flower was waiting for, the others came. And they were far from being kind, like the Poet, or sad, like Julien, and the noise made by their heavy boots was more tiring for the daisy than anything before, including the heat. With these people, disaster entered: dirty traces on light carpet, the drawers broken open, the papers left by the Poet crumpled and his beloved books that still could remember the touch of his fingertips, breaking spines while being thrown one by one on the floor. When they left, the door slammed so hard that the air pushed one of the window shutters and the daisy did not even have time to feel its pot falling down and cracking on the ground.
The heated cobblestones were even more hot than the window sill and the daisy had no chance to hide itself from the blazing sun. Dying of thirst and dreaming about moisture, it was unable to forget beloved window sill and small hands pouring the soil with water. There were still moments when the daisy was collecting remains of its strength to look around, look for the Poet – or anyone who could notice it laying on the ground. The storm was hanging by a hair: the daisy could see dark clouds, reminding of smoke, but the tiny flower did not live to the rain. All it was able to hear were distant thunders, and it was the last thing it remembered. And then there was only dryness and heat.
It was no sooner than later, when everything was over, than the jets of rain. Hot cobblestones were drinking the water greedily, changing it into steam and cooling their stone heads. The daisy was drifting inertly in a puddle: its half-overblown flower broke under heavy drops and the soil from the roots was vanishing in the rain, sinking into gaps between cobblestones. The roots were the only part of the daisy that had an appearance of life, spread on a surface of the puddle as if they were giving their last attempts to reach water, but it were only the drops of rain that were making them move: the roots were dead, like the whole plant.
The tit found the daisy in the evening.
"I could say that," twittered the bird, lowering its flight and making circles above the dead flower. "That's how it is when you depend on someone else and not yourself. Pity."
And it bounced a few times in the puddle, washing dirty feet, and then flew away.