Telegrams of the Soul

Flower Allée

Six A.M. It is dry, cool, the sky is a wan white blue, bleu-lacté the French writers would say—.

A florist dealing in artificial flowers flings back gray wooden shutters, open for business.

In the dusty window display, spring blooms in sloe blossoms; summer in cornflowers; fall in pink and lilac asters and the feathery pompoms of dandelions.

A pale shop girl carries white roses out into the street, with which she decorates a carriage parked outside. The flowers smell like old muslin.

Flower Allée — or this afternoon at four! Box seats, five crowns! Let’em spread the money among the people, thousands profit indirectly, you have no idea! It trickles down to — Why it’s just impossible to think it all the way through.

Out in the street, a young woman with a sleeping child in her arms stares at the “flying bed of roses,” a slice of “enchantment,” roses and a horse-drawn carriage, the mystery of the “beautiful superfluous!”

The child sleeps soundly in the clear morning air.

From a first floor window, a young prostitute in her nightgown peeks out from behind a white shade: “Should I hire the carriage, should I not, should I, should I not, should I—?”

The shop girl looks up: “Slut—!”

The shop girl yawns, sticks a rose into the coachman’s buttonhole.

The young mother with the child walks on. The child sleeps soundly in the clear morning air.

The prostitute pulls down the shade.

The rose-carriage rolls off; the roses sway, bow, rustle, tremble in the breeze, and one tumbles to the asphalt—

That afternoon, a woman and a young girl hire the carriage.

“Les fleurs sont fausses—,” the girl observes.

“ ‘S ’at so—,” says the woman, “is it really that obvious?!”

Flower Allée. Access via the Praterstrasse. Flying flower bed. Thousands profit indirectly!

The young prostitute lies in her bed, asleep. The afternoon sun warms the white shade. She is dreaming: “Rose carriage—.”

The shop girl reclines on a little whicker chair in the dark, dank artificial flower storeroom, asleep—. She is dreaming: “Rose carriage—.”

The young woman carries her child through the streets. The child sleeps soundly in the misty afternoon air—.

The rose that tumbled that morning from the passing carriage stands tall in a glass on a street sweeper’s window sill.

His little daughter says: “Yuck, it stinks—.”

To which the street sweeper might have replied: “These are the flowers that blossom on the asphalt of a big city—!” But that’s not what he said. A simple man — it just wasn’t his way—. He muses: “Must be from the Flower Allée—!”