Work Text:
“I don’t know,” said Combeferre, examining the leaves of Prouvaire’s dying hyacinth stems with his spectacles held in one hand against the plant, like a microscope. “The best science will not give you more than this: Sometimes they die.”
“Unacceptable,” was Prouvaire’s immediate response. “It’s in the prime of life. Take a pulse, draw blood, administer opiates or tinctures if they are not the same thing. Bargain with the devil; I won’t let you leave until I have a straight answer, and a solution.”
Combeferre put his spectacles back on so he could glare over them. “A straight answer? Here is a guess: You have overwatered it. Or underwatered it, or not let it have enough sunlight. You know plants can sense what light is about them, to judge the length of the day? Perhaps you have had too many midnight candles; you have exhausted it to death.”
“The remedy, if you please. Theory is gray,” said Prouvaire, as Mephistopheles. “And green and golden the tree of life.”
“A tree which no longer shades your flower,” said Combeferre. “Throw it out.”
“I haven’t tried blood yet,” said Prouvaire.
“Nor shall you. Get another one.”
Prouvaire jostled Combeferre into the desk with his elbow. “I’m only joking.”
“Well I’m not a gardener,” said Combeferre, in a cool apologetic tone. “Or a botanist or even a collector.”
“But very smart, for the rest,” said Prouvaire. “Patient, and witty, stalwart, and a first-class lover.”
“Who was lured nevertheless by a house call for a dying potted plant.”
Prouvaire shrugged, and checked Combeferre against the desk when he started to move away. “It demonstrates a generosity of spirit, or distraction when you read my message.”
He leaned forward so Combeferre had to lean back, which knocked the plant out the open windowsill, where it landed with a noise like a gunshot on the quiet street.
“Well,” said Combeferre. “I have a definitive answer for you about your plant.”
“It’s returned to the earth.”
“The paving stones, you mean.”
“I shall have another in its place by tomorrow. Now shut the window, if you please, I would rather be less in public.”
Combeferre latched the windows and dusted off the sill.
This proved a prudent decision; in an hour it was raining. Three stories below Prouvaire’s window, the shattered Delftware pot was washed clean of soil. The dying flower, its thready roots tangled in porcelain, rolled with an ugly and viscous slowness into the gutter, where it was washed below the city to the enormous echoing sewers.
Prouvaire mumbled something about the Luxembourg gardens being refreshed with the rain.
“Perhaps I can steal something from them tomorrow and try again,” he said.
“You’ll soon run out of pottery.”
“You underestimate me,” said Prouvaire. “I am from an old family; while we don't have sufficient sons or land or influence or soil for grapes, we are over-furnished with urns. As long a I have ancestors, I shall never run out of pottery."