The soft ruby-red petals tumbled slowly, end-over-end, through the smog-filled air toward the grimy cobblestones of the back alley. The petals seemed to hang suspended in the air—perhaps by a slight current, or by some trick of the dim light that contrasted bright red against the dull grays and browns of the surrounding city. But this balance was quickly disturbed as the petals were caught in the wake of a slump-shouldered man in a dull grey work-coat who passed by, and the petals were thrown spinning to the ground. The splash of red was quickly swallowed by the wet brown mire that covered the street. Only two lonely petals remained clinging to the slender thorny stem in the hands of the young woman who had been holding the single flower out to the countless somber gray-clad citizens that passed, with downcast faces, by her perch near the entrance of a small alleyway.
They did not reject her. They did not treat her with pity. They did not even treat her with contempt. They merely passed by her as if she were not there. Adam was not able to understand them: in this dirty, drab, and gray world, in the midst of this bustling city where the sky was swallowed by smog and soot and the ground was swallowed in filthy mud mixed with ashes, there was a spot of color, a spot of illumination, that promised something better then the dismal surroundings and they were unable to recognize it. They brushed it aside as if it were nothing. As if it did not exist. But it did. He had caught sight of the color before the roses fell, and had paused, amazed, on the other side of the street.
A large wagon filled with rolls of black sheet-iron rolled between Adam and the girl, spitting forth a trail of fumes and coal dust as it passed. When it had passed Adam caught sight of the girl once more. A large man in an official-looking coat had accosted her, grabbed her by the elbow, and was shaking her harshly. It was hard to make out over the grumbling of the city, but Adam could hear the man’s voice raised in anger. He rushed forward, dodging around a soot-covered trolley and ducking under the heads of an emaciated pair of work-horses that looked well past their days of hard labor. He didn’t know what drove him to be so reckless–though even this unusually spirited display of energy didn’t arouse much of a reaction in the crowd. A few heads turned, but they looked away again when they saw the high-collared jacket of the man threatening the girl.
“. . . permit to sell.” The officer shook the girl even harder. Adam could not help but fear for the roses that hung in a basket from her other arm. The basket was swinging wildly from the forceful shaking, the roses were trembling on the edge of destruction.
“I wasn’t selling them, sir,” the girl said, her gentle voice surprisingly calm. “I was giving them away.”
This simple statement froze Adam where he was, standing on the curb not three feet away from the two. She was giving such beauty away?
“You aren’t allowed to distribute plant-life on the street-corner.” The officer continued, pushing quickly through the words as if he was steamrolling objections that she was not making. Indeed, the girl seemed unperturbed by the shaking and shouting. “I’m going to have to take you in.”
She caught the stem of another rose between two of her slender fingers as he finished talking and she held it out to the officer. “Please take this. It would make me happy to see more color in this city.”
The backhand blow came suddenly, knocking the girl to the ground, but she clung tenaciously to the basket of precious roses. This time she did react. Her eyes were full of tears as she looked up at the officer. “God, please smile upon this miserable man. His heart is torn and he cannot see the beauty before him.”
The officer raised his hand to strike at the girl again. But Adam stepped between them, raising a hand towards the officer.
The officer was almost as surprised with this as Adam was himself. “What are you doing?” the officer asked, his voice threateningly low.
“Don’t hurt her.” Adam begged, earnestly. He didn’t know why it was so important to him.
The officer merely glared at Adam and struck him in the stomach with the club he carried tied around his wrist. “You’re on the wrong side of the law, mate.”
As Adam doubled over, gasping, he saw the basket of roses spin past his field of vision, spreading beautiful flowers over the roadway.
It should have been beautiful despite the sadness of such a loss. But the roses were almost instantly trampled into the mud by passing vehicles. The beauty they had brought was momentary, destroyed in a moment. How could the world be so cruel? He felt a steel-toed boot smash into his ribs, the club strike across his back, a heel grinding against the back of his hand. And then it was over, the officer grew bored, or decided that it was enough. The pain lingered, along with the despair at the casual destruction of such beauty.
~
“Where did they come from?” Adam asked as he knelt in the mud at the side of the road and cupped a crushed, mud-drenched rose in his hands. He didn’t pay any heed to the spray of mud thrown by the passing traffic even as it splattered over his clothing. “How could he throw them away like that?”
The girl crouched next to him, straightening her almost too-clean apron as she touched his arm. “I doesn’t matter.” The pressure on his elbow seemed to indicate that he should stand.
He stood slowly, accidentally smearing mud across the petals of the rose. The beautiful red color would never be the same, the stem was smashed, the perfect bud rumpled. He turned to face the girl. Her eyes seemed to glow with warmth and happiness. How could someone be happy after that? He almost wanted to shout at her, to berate her for not being upset about the loss of such beauty. But perhaps she was better off in her made-up world. He coughed, wincing at the pain in his chest.
She looked so certain of herself. Maybe she had other reasons.
Her face turned towards the opening of the alley, her head raised in reverence. The narrow passageway passed between two soot-covered half-abandoned apartment buildings, neither of which had a single window that was not soot-covered, boarded over, or smashed-out. It was a familiar sight to anyone who lived in the city. But the usual stacks of garbage and debris were conspicuously missing. At the end of the alleyway a small triangular-roofed chapel with bright stained-glass windows was jammed between the two buildings, a couple tall, straight trees rose behind it, casting a dark green shadow over the building. But the most striking part of this alien image was the thriving rosebush that grew beneath the stained-glass windows.
Adam stepped towards the chapel. As soon as he passed between the buildings it was almost as if the outside world had been cut off. The sounds of the street and the far-away machinery died to a muffled grumble. The air seemed cleaner here. A shaft of light that had somehow made its way through the soot and smog of the city caught the glass of the windows and struck the thriving rosebush with its glorious light. Adam bent over the bush, almost unable to summon the courage to touch it. But curiosity got the better of him and he brushed his fingers against the flower heads.
“How can this place exist?” He said, half to himself, his voice low with reverance.
~
He had seen a vision. How could he continue to live his life the same as before? How could he go back to his workshop and continue making mundane mechanical parts? He had taken a rose with him and it captured his attention in every spare moment. Adam was seized with an outlandish idea. He was consumed with a feverish energy. He took his tools home with him and worked long days and nights in his small attic room. Heating glass, blowing it out. He was lucky enough to have no immediate neighbors to disrupt his work.
But he did not spend all his time working. He took regular breaks to visit the back-alley chapel. He would spend his time examining the roses and the stained-glass windows and talking with the girl, Mary. She truly was amazing. Intelligent, perceptive, beautiful, even wise. Able to converse with him easily and always leading him to the answers that he needed, even if she never outright told him. He told her all about the frustrations of his life. They talked about humanity and the city until he finally found himself coming to some sort of understanding about what life really meant.
His work became that much more important to him. He would use it to bring the changes they talked about. The city would not be able to ignore him. They would learn to live a real life instead of this half-existence of suffering and pain.
She never told him, though he continued to ask, where the chapel had come from. Or where she had been before she came to the chapel. It struck Adam as odd that no-one other than the two of them ever came to the chapel or showed it any interest. He guessed that the people of the city had stopped looking for beauty and so did not see it.
He never told Mary what he was doing. He wanted to keep it a secret from her. But perhaps some part of him thought she might stop him if she knew. If she knew what he was going to do.
~
He finished his project. After staring at his completed creation for a while he rushed to the chapel to bring Mary and show her what he had made. In his hurry he completely forgot to grab his coat and left the door unlocked behind him.
The streets were cold, but he could barely feel it in the rush of excitement that washed over him. He bumped into a slouched old woman in his hurry, provoking a cold stare, but even this did not reach him, he merely tipped his hat and continued on. He rushed around the corner and down the alley, pushing the chapel doors open hastily. Mary was kneeling at the front of the church. Her head bowed over the alter and her hands clasped before her. Adam stopped in the doorway, panting slightly. He folded his hands and waited, bowing his own head as he did so. He knew that Mary would rise soon, knowing he was here. Mary rose and turned towards him. Her face lit up at the expression on his face.
“You look so happy, Adam.” She said, running down the aisle towards him. “What is it?” She touched his shoulder.
“I have finished my work.” His face shone with a fevered light as he clasped her hands in his. And then his exuberance welled up again. “Come, come see it!”
She smiled warmly at him and fetched a warm red cloak to ward against the chill of the streets.
They returned more slowly than Adam had come, Mary asked a few questions about what he had been working on, but all he would answer was that it was pretty and that he had started making it when he first met her. As they climbed the steps to Adam’s apartment his heart raced with anticipation. Mary was almost as impatient as he was to see what he had wrought. Her face glowed with excitement and her movements were all touched with quickness.
Adam paused at the door, reaching for his coat-pocket for the key. Forgetting that he had left the coat behind and forgotten to lock the door. He chuckled a little at his mistake, but then paused again with his hand on the door-knob, glancing back at Mary to see her expression.
He turned the knob and the door swung open with a little push. Mary’s face lit up with amazement, her eyes widening and a smile sweeping her face. Adam basked in the glow from her presence for a moment before he led her into the center of the room.
The once drab room had been transformed into a colorful and sparkling garden of flowers. Emerald green translucent vines climbed over the walls and stretched across the ceiling, flower-stems of sparkling green glass grew from the edges of the room at different heights. There was no furniture and only enough open space enough in the center for Adam’s bedding, his tools, a warm-burning oil lamp and the two of them. Throughout the rest of the room glass roses bloomed from every surface, brilliant red glass sculpted lovingly, they refracted the light and seemed to glow from within. They seemed almost to have a life of their own.
“Beautiful,” Mary whispered as she turned about, looking at the complex weaving of glass vines and roses across the ceiling.
“Indeed it is.” A sarcastic voice cut through the moment.
Adam and Mary turned again toward the door they had just entered. Framed in the doorway stood the same officer who had given Mary so much trouble those long months ago. “What are you doing here?” Adam asked, fear competing with anger in his voice. His hand reached for the nearest weapon, a hammer that lay on a box of tools nearby, but Mary’s hand stopped him, her fingers entwined in his, stopping him from defending himself. He looked her in the eye, pleading with her. But she only shook her head.
“So this is what you have been doing while you neglected your duties.” The officer said, tapping his stick against the palm of his hand. “Well, enough of that.” The stick swung quickly through the air and caught one of the glass roses in the bud, shattering it and sending shards of glass spinning, glittering, through the garden of roses.
Adam winced and tensed, willing to throw his life away to defend his creation. But Mary’s grasp held him back. Her other hand touched his shoulder. “It will be all right.” She whispered. “It isn’t worth it.”
All those months. All that work, gone in an instant. The stick swung again, this time severing six flowers in one swing. How could he? The officer moved into the room, his thick leather boots crunched glass beneath their soles as he trod on the glass flowers. The stick swung again. Adam fell to his knees and buried his head in his free hand, holding tighter to Mary’s hand. He felt her arm around his shoulder as she comforted him.
“Don’t give him reason to kill you.” She pleaded with him, softly. But he barely heard her, all he could focus on was the sound of glass breaking. Of his effort being destroyed, the beauty he had crafted in this desolate world was being smashed out of existence. What had taken him months to build was being destroyed in a moment. Glass shattered, and fell, it seemed to go on forever. The officer smashing the garden as the two of them huddled in the center of the room.
When it was over the officer left them in the middle of a pile of crushed glass. Adam reached down and scooped up a handful of the broken fragments, his leathery hands resisted their sharp edges. A single tear fell from his face and was cut by a sharp edge. “The only beautiful thing I ever made is gone.” He said, lifelessly.
Mary moved around in front of him and raised his head to meet her eye. Her face was streaming with tears, but her eyes glowed with an inner light. “Never say that.” She said plucking a intact rose-bud from the mess of glass around them and holding it out to him. “It lives on, in your mind, in my mind, in his mind: in the past. What is unmade can be remade, but what is made lasts forever.”
He choked on a sob and grabbed her in a tight hug.