THE BLUE BOUQUET
SUMMARY
The short story unfurls the catastrophic confrontation of an ordinary man in a strange and mysterious world in the hands of a maniac who set out in pursuit of fulfilling the strange need of gifting his beloved with a blue bouquet.
The narrator who was staying in a hotel room woke up from his slumber fully drenched in sweat . As the heat inside the room was so intense, he decided to go out for a walk. Inside the room was so dark and creatures like scorpion, bugs are common there. After listening to the vast and feminine breathing of the night for a while standing at the window, he got dressed first making sure that no bugs had got into the seams of his clothes. As he reached downstairs, he saw the strange looking glum, reticent, one eyed hotel keeper sitting at the door smoking cigarette, forewarned him that he had better stay in since everything was closed up by then and he also added that there were no street lights. Disregarding the forewarning, the narrator who was highly romantic and poetic, though so dark was the night, waded into the darkness without knowing that he was going to fall prey to the maniacal exercise of the predomination of the flimsy fancies of love over intellect.
The nature received him with sweet and mild moonlight and colorful twinkling of stars orchestrated with the vocals of crickets and with the accompaniment of sounds of leaves and insects. He felt that the whole universe was a grand system of signals where himself was only a part of that macrocosm. The starry and moony night with the fragrance of the tamarind trees took him in to a world of illusion where he could hear the great lips pronouncing so clearly and joyously that he felt safe and free though he was alone in that street. He felt that the night was a garden of eyes.
All on a sudden, the narrator sensed that he was being followed by someone. Though he tried to run, he couldn’t. Before he could defend himself, he heard a voice saying “Don’t move senor or you are dead” and felt a point of knife against his back. So strange was the demand of the stranger, he wanted blue eyes to make a blue bouquet for his beloved. The stranger was a short and slight man wearing a palm sombrero half covering his face. The narrator offered him everything for his life, but everything was in vain. Though the narrator told him that his weren’t blue, he wasn’t moved by his request. He asked the narrator to light a match. In its light he saw a long machete glittering in his hands. After several attempts the stranger realized that the eyes weren’t blue. Throwing the narrator into a quagmire of mystery and terror, he disappeared in to the darkness after a polite ”
Excuse Me”.
After this horrible experience the narrator ran through the deserted street and reached the hotel. The hotel keeper was still sitting there. Without uttering anything he went inside and fled from that mysterious town.
Is love a reality? Love is often something beyond reality so that the demands of love may transcend the boundaries of reason and human cognition . A man overpowered by the overwhelming fancies of love may go to any extant of exploring the world even only for the sake of it alone. This short story unfurls how one’s rationale is enslaved before the strange and mysterious fancies of love.
English Study Material 