Les Fleurs et Les Fraises

“Unspecified illness” would be the cause of Ms. Giraud’s death.

An entire lifetime abruptly halted and summarized with two words of complete uncertainty. Quelle blague! The stout woman, slightly stumbling in her stride, might have, at the very least, provided clarification on her vague statement. And from what moment, Denise Giraud pondered, did it become socially acceptable to approach a person in public settings and reveal to them their ultimate fate? Surely this breached the unspoken grounds of morality?

A morning with undeniable desirability; she had strolled, without clear direction, through the bustling streets of Aix-en-Provence, afloat in the vast sea of strangers, rising, falling; the arm of a taller, muscular man brushed against her own, the shoulder of a hasty woman plummeted into her chest, the soft fur of a Chow grazed her lower leg; how the brisk morning air provided such satisfaction, how it filled her lungs as she inhaled deeply through her nostrils, how it promptly exited her lips when she exchanged jovial words with the vendor - « Voulez-vous des fleurs ? » - the graying man, skin crinkled at the edges of his eyes from years of exuberant expressions, presented his collection with pride - « Bah, oui, bien sûr ! » - she surely felt obligated to purchase a bundle of hydrangeas, hortensias, their petals bursting with vibrant purples, blues, whites, their sweet scent attracting her attention, as instinctual as following the palatable scent of a mother’s baked goods in the oven; she hovered over his stall, as a bee does to a blooming flower, anticipating her purchase, but with some unsettling sensation that she would soon be stung, nipped, bit, how strange was this feeling!

She observed the older gentleman wrap les fleurs in multicolored tissue paper, an exhibition that was arguably much too eccentric for the season. It was October. Eight months had passed since she had last spoken to Manuel Masson. And though she was entirely unaware of his whereabouts, his wellbeing, he had somehow weaved his way through each fissure of her small city; the flowers, how he would carefully consider and curate each petal to best pertain to her liking, a gesture so enticing in its thoughtfulness that she often found recollections of his foolishness slipping from her mind: their arguments, his desperation for superiority - how she missed him dearly - with each rising of the Provence Sun, how she yearned for a moment of his presence once more; and although this grief, that of a person still existing, was nearly unbearable, it proved to be evidence for the adoration once shared between them - « Bonne journée ! », a kind vendor indeed - perhaps it would be preferable, Denise dwelled often, if he simply ceased to exist, to know that he was not roaming this world, carrying the eternal echoes of their united past. Would closure wrap its heavy arms around her if he were dead? She would, feasibly, be permitted to truly grieve, if he were dead. If he were dead.

Stiffened slightly from the fleeting thoughts, her fingers wrapped around the bouquet rather tightly, the pinkish color of her skin slowly shifting into a milky hue. The other hand scurried around desperately in her leather handbag, searching for the tiny squared wallet that frequently buried itself under the mound of useless objects.

« J’ai un message important à vous dire. »

“Excuse me?”

The busty woman had waddled, with intention, towards Ms. Giraud, who was still struggling to locate her wallet. “I have important message, you must know,” she uttered in broken English, eyes filled with panic, an unsettled frenzy illuminating in the crevices of her irises - “At age fifty nine you will reach death, yes.”

This unanticipated, violent eruption of words, undoubtedly directed for Denise, induced a sharp sensation of stinging to shoot through her veins, the sort of suffering one might feel when that specific spot of the elbow is hit, a tingling tension that is impossible to put on pause, the type you must simply observe from a distance until it decides to dissipate. But surely there was some error, some misunderstanding with her intentions, some blunder within the language barrier.

The vendor, who had just finished his succeeding arrangement, stopped and stared at the two women; of course, it was at the precise moment where the stout woman handed Denise a crinkled morceau of tinted brown paper; written on it, in a nearly indecipherable manner, were two words: “Unspecified illness” - Quelle horreur ! The words glared back at her, as though highlighted by some intangible source of light, they glowed, they gleamed, they begged to be seen, and, unfortunately for Ms. Giraud, were written deliberately for her viewing pleasure - « Pour vous », she shook her head, « Pour vous ! », the woman repeated, her voice heightening, her eyelids blinking rapidly before she turned to depart, « C’est tout ».

C’est tout, Denise scoffed, the words echoing against the walls of her brain. The flower man remained silent, simply offering a small smile of solidarity, and handed her a singular red rose; it was rather bold amongst the presentation of hydrangeas, a thick drop of blood oozing into the ocean of blue.

That would imply, if indeed what the woman stated were true, that Denise only had a mere twenty five years left of existence, a quarter of a century, perhaps appearing lengthy at an initial glance, but truthfully a number of years that would pass by in a heartbeat. It was surely false, the crazed woman perhaps searching to impose her own trepidations upon another person, a desperate attempt to silence her internal turmoil, surely, surely she was not capable of limiting the life of another down to those two wretched words, unspecified illness, no! no, yet a miniscule morsel of doubt infiltrated her mind, the distraught eyes of the woman staring back at her, the stout figure lingering as a shadow in her mind.

The ringing of fear in her ears began quiet, a soft hum, a low buzz that resembled a maddening mosquito, growing gradually, a crescendo building, louder, an orchestra frantically following the lead of its conductor, louder, the belligerent banging of a bell against the walls of its enclosure, louder! the unforgiving crash of thunder in a catastrophic hurricane, ouragan!

Oh, but how the strawberries were displayed so fresh on that fine morning, shades of vibrant vermillion lined neatly in individual boxes, crimson, carmine, glowing as les rayons du soleil bounced off their shiny surfaces; how appetizing they appeared, oh, how she could imagine the saccharine flavors seeping into the surface of her tongue! their scent so pleasant, so charming, an irresistible purchase; Manuel Masson adored les fraises, she could recall, any cloud of calamity capable of instantly vanishing upon the moment of consumption; oh, how sweet his lips tasted with the sticky syrup of strawberries.

She had imagined him to be dead, yes, only mere moments prior to a disclosure of her own date of death, surely this was not solely by chance? Surely this was a divinely orchestrated sequence of circumstances, surely this was a fleeting moment in time where it might indeed be justifiable to embrace her enduring hunger, a hunger that might only be satisfied through the bise of strawberry sap.

Those sensations never truly dissipate, not entirely; the love sits, heavily, as a prism in your heart, it waits patiently for a strike of lumière to refract at an angle so precise, so ideal, so deliberate, to reconstruct the kaleidoscope of colors once forgotten, a former flame reignited, a barren world metamorphosed into flamboyance; oh, how we anxiously wait for this perfect state of luminance to return such radiance to our realities!

She pronounced it as something indisputable, and her decision had been made. The succession of numbers was all too familiar, a reflex action, a musical pattern that flowed from her fingers to the anticipating device before her; eight months had passed, eight months of wrapping the wounds in gauze, eight months of burying les souvenirs under a mound of dirt, would this choice truly resolve -

-Oh! What putrid smell was wafting through the air?

Coercively shoving itself into her nostrils, it reached its calloused hands into the pits of her throat, triggering her gag reflex, eyes swollen, a thin layer of wetness covering her cornea, oh mon dieu, it was atrocious! Desperate to escape the clutches of this fetid beast, she attempted to migrate from the area, swiftly, but with fail, malheureusement; it followed her, persistent, lingering, such as her longing for a future unfulfilled, it snarled, it growled, and in a sudden moment of clarity, revealed itself to her in its entirety: it was of a burnt umber shade, smeared unapologetically across the sole of her stilettos, reminiscent of the soft Chow she had spotted earlier, and determined to remain comfortably in its new residence. Ah, merde!

But what an instant it was, to discover that she indeed possessed the perfect product to remove such a flaw - the inky words seeped into one another, the shade of brown darkening, as she wiped the beast away from her shoe with the petite papier that had sat heavy in her pocket; a simultaneous, successful removal of both the pest and perhaps too of her past, a sign much too evident to disregard as nothing, and indeed a rejection of the stout woman’s words for her future.

And so Ms. Giraud, resuming in her path down the bustling markets, tossed the paper, irrevocably stained with faecal matter, into the nearest poubelle. The single rose shortly followed.