Zoran Siriski, Valjevo
The Nasturtium

There is a nasturtium growing in a flowerpot in my parent’s kitchen window. I stole a piece of its vine from the neighbour living just a floor above. The nasturtium had been hanging from her balcony and stretching its lithe tendrils into my field of vision every time I would step out onto the balcony – as if inviting me to pinch a part of it. I think it was simply telling me, every time I dwelled on the reddish-orange hue of its petals and cute round leaves, ‘Go on, take me ! I will move to your place and grow there to the delight of your family and your own…” What was I then supposed to do but take it. Actually I did not snap the entire plant. Although the cold early October threatened to parch its leaves or even kill it altogether, its owner, a hard-breathing elderly fat woman with swollen ankles, did not bother or simply forgot in her worry-pestered loneliness to bring it inside.

Now the odd thing about nasturtiums was that I had tried in vain to find one in whatsoever form – a young prickling, an established plant or its seeds. Then all of a sudden it came out of blue the day I stepped on a chair, took a blooming pendant end in one hand and whizzed it holding the scissors in another. I hoped it did not hurt it. I hurriedly drowned the pinchling into water. And it lived and continued to grow its miraculous gently perfumed blooms. Next thing I did after some time was moving my nasturtium to the only container I found at hand, a plastic yoghurt pot. The nasturtium and I did not like plastic but that was the only choice. At that time I could not leave the flat and even if I did it was for the shortest time possible. My mother was slowly passing away from dementia and old age and I had to be around and tend after her. My wife and our little daughter would come daily, usually about noon, bringing lunch and necessities as well as nourishment for my soul. Upon their leaving I would resume my activities such as reading and writing and occasionally going to the window to check how the nasturtium is doing.

It may have been the fifth or sixth day of its stay in the new home when I noticed that the largest of the nasturtium’s leaves started to turn yellow or  get pale and withered. Well, that is due to the seasons changing and normal metabolic processes, I speculated. In a partition of my soul there hovered a doubt that it may have been due to my over-engagement in looking after mother. Father was in hospital and due for a minor operation. When I went to see him, which happened every other day, my wife would stay with mother. There was so much illness, so much submerged pain in our lives while that nasturtium had demonstrated such an obstinate desire to live and bloom, and now…Something was up in the air that struck it amid its odd thirst for living. And this something soon showed in all its mournful intensity.

That morning I got up early as usual and went to mother’s bedroom to see how she is doing. We seldom spoke any word those days; she could not understand or hear any sound, not even a mime. The three visible living inhabitants – mother, nasturtium and I – cohabited and co-suffered in solemn silence. I knew that somewhere in the depths of existence we perfectly understood each other’s thoughts, hunches or soul quivers. She was awake which was visible by now dimmed reflections in her eyes. Her body seldom moved anyway and I had quite a bit of trouble in hauling her out of bed. She had not had a morsel of food for days and her figure and countenance had a wasted and ethereal look. I laid her on the sofa in the living room, her daily abode, and went to say good morning to the nasturtium. Alas, it was in a ghastly shape too, with yellow colours, harbingers of death, gushing from all parts of its recently dark green body.

At that instant my mother gasped for her last breath of earthly air and fell into eternal slumber. I knew without a slightest spin of doubt that her parting had come. No matter how familiar with the necessity of death one is, it always has something new to teach like an eternal puzzle. I stood in grievous confusion for an instant that seemed not to belong to earthly measurements of time. Then I hurried to light up a candle, as Orthodox Christian customs entailed. In the still flame of the candle my thoughts wondered off beyond the constraints of this wondrous, although often painful, existence. I felt an enthrallingly piercing sensation of trespassing into a realm where pain and joy merge to produce eternal sounds of music or inexpressible wealth of colours. A realm where my mother smiled to the nasturtium while it displayed its orange fragrant flowerheads and seemed to utter the story of life that went beyond words or faltering quirks of human heart…