I have read this story so often, and indeed on all possible kinds of days, that I sometimes think I wrote it myself from memory. But for me, it continues on as I now write. The woman had never seen Death. She let him in without suspecting anything. But Death hurriedly said, like someone who does not have a clear conscience, “Give this to your husband.” And when the woman looked at him questioningly, he hastily added, “It’s seed, very good seed.” Then he departed, without looking back.

The woman opened the little bag that he had put in her hand. There were in truth some kind of seeds inside—hard, ugly kernels. Then the woman thought: a seed is something unfinished, something for the future. There’s no way of knowing what will sprout from it. I won’t give these nasty kernels to my husband; they don’t look at all like a gift. Instead, I’ll plant them in the flowerbed in our garden and wait and see what comes up. Then I’ll take him there, and tell him how this plant came to me. And that’s what the woman did.

Then they continued on with their life in the same way as before. The man, who was continually troubled by the thought of how Death had stood at his door, was somewhat fearful at the beginning, but seeing his wife as welcoming and carefree as ever, he too soon opened the wide wings of his entrance, with the result that lots of light and life came into the house. The next spring, in the middle of the flowerbed, among the slender tiger lilies, there appeared a small shrub. It had narrow, blackish leaves, somewhat pointed, similar to those of the laurel, and there was a weird shine on their dark surface. Every day the man intended to ask where this plant had come from, but every day he let it pass. With a feeling akin to his, from one day to the next, the woman neglected to supply the explanation. But the suppressed question on the one side and the never-dared answer on the other often brought the two people together before this shrub that in its green darkness differed in such a strange way from the rest of the garden.