“Is it any trouble?”
“It is to me. It’s stink gives me headache.”
“You said it did not have a smell.”
“Don’t argue with me! You know very well that I can’t be stressed, it’s bad for the baby.”
The artist spent a whole day in the market sitting on a camp-chair, with Van Gogh beside him.
To pass the time, he drew momentary portraits of the passers-by in his notebook. Now that he did not have to do it for a living, his hatred of human faces had subsided. After all, people were not all that bad, most were just miserable and deserved sympathy.
“What’s this flower called?”
Before him stood an intellectual-looking man wearing a goatee and a shabby coat.
“It doesn’t have a name. If you take it, you can name it yourself.”
“I would call it Hamlet. There is something of the Shakespearean hero about it – certain meditativeness, questions without answers.”
“Could be,” concurred the artist. “What are you, anyway?”
“I am a writer,” announced proudly the man in a shabby coat. Then, seeing skepticism in the artist’s eyes, he added hastily: “I’m just finishing my big novel.”
“Well, that happens,” the painter replied sympathetically. “So, do you take it?”
“What does it cost?”
“Nothing. Mind you though, it’s not easy to keep.”
The immigrant from a planet of intelligent plants was an ardent florist. Stranded on Earth, he accepted his new home wholeheartedly. The planet abounded with flowers of the species Homo Sapiens of which many were beautiful but needed urgent care.
The immigrant had already forgotten his birth name – he liked the names that earthlings invented for him. “Van Gogh” – what a beautiful name that was! “Hamlet” seemed to be no worse, although the human flower that gave him that name was in a serious state of neglect.
The Florist had a lot of work in store.
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Contact the author: Alexander.Sharakshane@yandex.ru