This story picks up at the conclusion of Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Nightingale and the Rose.” Oscar Wilde’s story is a beautiful, hauntingly sad tale it can be found on this link: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtml. Wilde’s story tells of a nightingale who voluntarily impales herself on a fatal rose bush thorn and sings all night until death to enable the bush to produce a red rose for a young student to give to his beloved. The concluding pathos comes when the student picks the rose and offers it to his beloved to have it, and his love, rejected and thrown aside.

Presently a wind came up from the west. It had begun far away as a gentle breeze, but when the white moon lingered in her delight at the nightingale’s death love song, it had intensified. Now it rustled all in its path. When it came upon a crushed, abandoned red rose in the gutter, it marveled at such vibrant beauty and the intensity of color, for the wind understood romantic love. First it caressed the remnants of the rose in a swirling eddy, then it lifted it and separated the red petals, swirling them into a brilliant blood-red column. As it carried them, love permeated its essence and it knew that it had to return them to their origin.

When it came to the garden, the wind heard the rose bush moaning, “The little nightingale gave her life-blood to pigment my rose. It was my best flower, a rose so red, so beautiful, that it was plucked at noon by the student to give to the professor’s daughter that she might dance with him at the Prince’s ball.” The rose bush shook all its branches in disbelief and continued, “She rejected his rose, rejected the rose of nightingale’s blood, in favor of the Chamberlain’s nephew’s jewels, and now the student is lost. Lost, for he has abandoned romance in favor of the dry logic of philosophy.”

While the wind played in the rose bush’s branches, it wept on, “Oh, wind, I weep for the heroic little nightingale, for the sweet nocturnal singer lying dead in the long grass. Tell me, you who move everywhere, was this, indeed, all for nothing?” The wind whistled soothingly and rocked the rose bush in an embrace and gently deposited the petals in the long grass over the nightingale’s tiny body. One loose petal draped over the thorn in her breast, the thorn which had penetrated her heart.

A young maid servant lived in a garret over the student’s room. All night she had listened to the nightingale’s romantic love song. She heard and understood the song of the heart of love, the song of a boy and a girl. At times she stood at her open window gazing into the night air, trying to see the bird. The song intensified her own love, and she cried soft tears into her pillow. She prayed to the bird,

“Oh, Nightingale, may your song touch the student’s heart so that he may see me. You sing outside his window, might not your song alert him of my love?”

In the morning, she sadly got up and went to work. After her daily duties were completed she slipped down into the garden. First she visited the holm-oak tree and asked it where she could find the nightingale, for she wished to thank the bird for its song. The holm-oak responded, “The little nightingale, who sang of love, sacrificed her life to create a red rose for the student to give to his love, the professor’s daughter, so that she would dance with him at the Prince’s ball.” It waved its leaves and wept because it was fond of the little nightingale who had nested it its branches. “Perhaps the rose bush can help you.”

The girl went to the rose bush under the student’s window and found the dead nightingale lying in the long grass under a mound of blood-red rose petals. She cradled the dead body in her hand and stroked the soft brown feathers on its tiny head, and brushed its body with the silken red rose petals. Then she touched its throat and beak with her long finger and lifted its body to her face, “Oh, nightingale,” she said, “your song of love and your sacrifice of your life cannot have been in vain. I shall bury you shrouded in the blood-red rose petals of love.”

The girl fetched a small trowel and dug a grave under the rose bush, and, as she knelt and worked she sang a eulogy to the little nightingale, her voice crystal and clear, echoing into the purple cavern in the hills and floating through the reeds of the river to be carried down to the sea.

Her song echoed that of the nightingale, and she also sang of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. She sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid. Fervently, and sadly, she repeated the message that the little nightingale had given, and she sang of the love which is perfected by Death, the Love that dies not in the tomb.

The wind heard her song and lifted one of the loose rose petals and carried it into the window of the student’s room. It landed on his open philosophy book. The student touched the petal and, as he listened, he opened his heart to the joy of life, to the delight in living, to the enchantment of romance and art. “This voice has form and feeling,” he said to himself, as he walked towards his open window, “the world seems to have stopped to listen, just as I do now. Surely, after all there is a practical use for art.” He looked out of his window and saw the servant girl silhouetted by the setting sun as she knelt and sang at her task. The wind lifted her hair and it shone brilliantly.

He was about to call to her when he heard the sound of a carriage rattling down the road. There was the bejeweled professor’s daughter riding next to the Chamberlain’s nephew with his silver buckled shoes. Their angry voices carried in the evening air, for they were quarreling about the need for a shawl. The student understood the logic of needing a shawl on a cool evening, but, he said to himself, “They quarrel on the way to the ball; their night is doomed by practicality.”

For a while the student was silent as he opened his mind to new possibilities and then he spoke to himself again, “I, on the other hand,” and he gazed down at the singing girl, “I, on the other hand, have true beauty, love, and art at my feet.”

© Copyright, Jane Stansfeld, November 18, 2013

When Mr. Jones died and Mrs. Jones retired she retreated more and more into her home. She took to making the majority of her purchases online. Each time that a new package arrived she carried it into her kitchen and opened it reverently, like a precious Christmas gift. She always marveled at the clean brown boxes with their neat ninety degree corners and pristine cardboard. When Mr. Jones had been alive he would rip open the crisp parcels with relentless speed in his urgency to unveil his new acquisitions; now, Mrs. Jones took her time opening the bundles, taking extreme care to preserve the packaging.

One day, when her neighbors, the McKinley’s, were out-of-town the brown UPS truck stopped outside their homes and when they were unable to make a delivery next-door, the uniformed delivery person rang the Jones door bell. Mrs. Jones hesitatingly opened up.

“Good afternoon, ma’am; would you take a delivery for the McKinleys?”

Now Mrs. Jones didn’t like taking deliveries for her neighbors for it meant that later on in the day she would have to make herself presentable so that she could complete the delivery, but she nodded and accepted the proffered package. The delivery person lingered after he had handed over the package, he backed up a few steps stood on her porch and looked intently at her.

“You’d better watch that one carefully. It made our whole truck stink. Can’t imagine what’s inside?”

His pose and comment seem to imply that he expected Mrs. Jones to know what it contained or, at least, what to do with it. Mrs. Jones was hardly listening to him and merely stood clasping the package, hoping that he would go away. When the man was unable to engage her in conversation he turned and sprinted up her drive to his vehicle. She quietly closed and locked the door.

She put the box on her hall table in readiness for her to take it next-door in the evening. She went back to reading a book in her living room. Soon an obnoxious smell began to waft through the house. Mrs. Jones put down her book and went to the hall table. The box sat innocently on the table and she gave it a more thorough inspection. It was cube shaped, about a foot in each direction. Unlike most packages, it looked grubby and worn on the outside. She picked it up and estimated it to weigh several pounds. She shook it, holding it close to her ear, but nothing rattled inside. She examined the label, but most of the shipper information was obscured by dirt. As far as she could tell the package came from the United Kingdom. One word stood out “LIVE,” but Mrs. Jones could not decipher either the words before or after it.

Mrs. Jones called her daughter to ask her whether she could think of anything which could travel through the mail “live” and not rattle. After discussion, they both surmised that the smell could only mean that what was “live” was now dead. They discussed whether Mrs. Jones should refrigerate the package or place it in the garage or even outside, anywhere where the smell would not permeate the house.

Mrs. Jones decided on the garage option and after she had placed the unwanted package next to her car she opened the windows to fumigate her home. When the air seemed clearer she closed the doors and windows and, feeling more secure, returned to her book.

But the stench still managed to enter the house. Mrs. Jones went into the garage and stood arms akimbo to stare at it. She wanted to open it but something held her back. It was probably not respect for her neighbor’s privacy, but more a belief that the box was some kind of test perhaps akin the Pandora’s box. And last she took it outside and put it on top of her dustbin. She spoke to it,

“Well, you two can stink together!”

She returned to her book and, as she read, dozed off. She dreamed of boxes of dead worms, after all the McKinleys were avid anglers, shaking her head for surely even dead worms would rattle. She dreamed of a kidnapping in which Mr. McKinley’s right thumb, well-packed in bubble wrap, was mailed to his home, shaking her head for even Mr. McKinley’s thumb wouldn’t weigh several pounds. She dreamed of a box of maggots and awoke in a sweat.

That evening she put on make-up and clean jeans and when she heard the McKinley’s car pull into their drive she darted out to retrieve the box. She carried it over to their house and rang their door bell. Mrs. McKinley answered the ring. She smiled when she saw the package and inhaled the smell.

“Oh thank you!” she exclaimed with glee. “It has arrived at last. What a delicious smell. I can’t wait to eat some on crackers.”

“Excuse me?” questioned her neighbor.

“Stilton.” She breathed in deeply as if to get and extra waft of the box. “It’s my live blue stilton. We get one every year direct from the UK. Quite delicious! This one smells divine. You must come over and join us when we enjoy eating it.”

Mrs. Jones shook her head and hurried home.

Copyright © October, 2013 Jane Stansfeld.