When the next spring came, they cared for this shrub too, along with the other things in the garden; and they were sad when, though surrounded by flourishing blossoms, it came unchanged and mute, just as in the first year, impervious to all the sunshine. At that time they decided, without letting each other know about it, to devote all their energy the third spring to just this plant. And when that spring came, gently and hand in hand, they fulfilled the promise each had made. The surrounding garden grew wild, and the tiger lilies were paler than usual. But one morning, when they came into the still, glistening garden after a heavy, overcast night, they already knew. From among the black, sharp leaves of the strange shrub had grown a flawless pale blue blossom, for which the bud casing on all sides had already become too small. And they stood before it, united and unspeaking, and now they really did not know what to say to each other. For they were thinking: Death is blossoming now. And they bent down to savor the fragrance of the young bloom. But since that morning, everything in the world has changed.

“That’s what it said in the inside cover of the old book,” I concluded.

“And who wrote it?” the man urged.

“A woman, judging by the writing,” I replied. “But what good would it have done to try to find out? The characters were already very faded and somewhat old-fashioned. Probably she was long since dead.”

The man was absorbed in his thoughts. “It’s only a story,” he admitted at last, “but it touches a person so.”

“Well, that’s the way it is, when one rarely hears stories,” I soothed him.

“You think so?” he said. He extended his hand, and I held it tight. “But I’d like to tell it to someone else. May I do that?” I nodded. Suddenly something occurred to him. “But I have nobody. Who would I tell it to?”

“Oh, that’s simple—to the children who sometimes come to watch you. Who else?”

And the children have indeed come to hear the last three stories. Although, if I have been correctly informed, they only got part of the one that the evening clouds retold. The children are after all small, and thus a lot farther from the evening clouds than we are. But with this story, that’s fine. For in spite of the long, eloquent speech by Hans, they would see that the thing had taken place among children and, as experts, would take a critical view of the way I told the story. And it is better for them not to find out how hard it is for us to go through things that come to them so effortlessly and simply—and how awkwardly we do it.

An Association That Arose Out of a Crying Need

An Association That Arose Out of a Crying Need