Lovely White Flowers

He went inside the café where they used to go together. It was here, three months ago, that his friend had told him: “We’re completely broke—the two of us so poor that we’re down to sitting in the cheapest places. I have to tell you straight out— I can’t go around with you any more. I want you to know, somebody else is after me.” The “somebody else” had promised him two suits, some silk handkerchiefs. To get his friend back, he himself went through hell rounding up twenty pounds. His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds— but along with that, for their old intimacy, their old love, for the deep feeling between them. The “somebody else” was a liar, a real bum: he’d ordered only one suit for his friend, and that under pressure, after much begging. But now he doesn’t want the suits any longer, he doesn’t want the silk handkerchiefs at all, or twenty pounds, or twenty piasters even. Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning. Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago. He laid flowers on his cheap coffin, lovely white flowers, very much in keeping with his beauty, his twenty-two years. When he went to the café that evening— he happened to have some vital business there—the same café where they used to go together: it was a knife in his heart, that dingy café where they used to go together.