Excerpt: 'The Woman With The

Bouquet'
by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

The Woman With The Bouquet

By Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Hardcover, 224 pages
Europa Edition
List Price: $15

At the train station in Zurich, on platform number three, there is a woman who has
been waiting, every day for fifteen years, with a bouquet in her hand.
In the beginning, I didnt want to believe it. I had already made several journeys to
see Egon Ammann, my German language publisher, before I noticed her; then it took
me a long time to formulate my surprise, because the elderly lady looked so normal,
so dignified, so noble, that you paid her no attention whatsoever. Dressed in a black
woolen suit with a long skirt, she wore flat shoes and dark stockings; an umbrella with
a knob sculpted in the shape of a ducks beak emerged from her handbag of cuirbouilli; a mother of pearl barrette held her hair in a chignon against her head, while a
modest bouquet of wildflowers, with a dominant orange note, made a small splash of
color in her gloved hands. There was nothing there that suggested she might be a
madwoman or an eccentric, so I had attributed my encounters with her to chance.
One spring, however, Ulla, one of Ammanns colleagues, met me on the platform by
my carriage, so I pointed out the strange woman.
Its very odd, I think Ive often seen this woman. What a coincidence! She must be
waiting for my double, someone who always takes the same train that I do and at the
same time.
Not at all, exclaimed Ulla, she stands there every day and she waits.
Who for?

Someone who doesnt comebecause she goes away again every evening alone to
come back the following day.
Really! How long has this been going on?
Well, Ive been seeing her for five years but I spoke with a stationmaster who ways
he noticed her at least fifteen years ago!
Are you making fun of me, Ulla? Youre making up a novel!
Ulla blushedthe slightest emotion turned her crimsonthen she stammered,
laughed in confusion, and shook her head.
I swear, its true. Every day. For fifteen years. In fact, it must surely be more than
fifteen years, because each of us has taken years to notice her presence So the
first one must have as well For example, youve been coming to Zurich for three
years and youve only mentioned it today. Maybe shes been waiting for twenty or
thirty years Shes never replied to anyone who asked what she was waiting for.
Shes right, I concluded. Besides, who could answer such a question?
We could not elucidate the matter any further, because we had to turn our attention to
a series of interviews with the press.
I didnt think about it again until my next trip. The moment Zurich was announced
over the trains loudspeakers, I recalled the woman with the bouquet and wondered,
will she be there, yet again
She was there, vigilant, on platform number three.
I looked at her closely. Light eyes, almost the color of mercury, on the verge of fading
away. Pale but healthy skin, marked by the expressive claw of time. A thin body, still
in good shape, that must once have been lively and vigorous. The station master was
exchanging a few words with her, and she was nodding, smiling amiably, and then
she went on her way, imperturbably, staring at the railroad lines. I was able to find
only one eccentricity: a folding canvas seat, that she carried with her. Or was that the
sign, rather, of a practical nature?
As soon as I arrived at the Ammann Verlag, after changing the tram several times, I
decided to conduct an investigation.
Ulla, if you please, I must find out more about the woman with the bouquet.
Her cheeks went raspberry.
As I was sure you would ask me again, I prepared myself. I went to the station and
chatted with a few members of the staff, and now Ive become very friendly with the
man who runs the left luggage.
Well aware myself of how easy it was to like Ulla, I had no doubt that she had
managed to extract as much information as possible. Although she can be abrupt,
and slightly authoritarian, with a piercing gaze as she looks at her interlocutors, she

offsets her rather strict approach with an explosive sense of humor, and the sort of
good humor one would not expect from someone with such dark features. If she
easily befriends everybody, it is because she is basically well-disposed toward people
and irrepressibly curious as well.
Even though she spends her days outside on the platform, the woman with the
bouquet is anything but a tramp. She lives in a fine bourgeois house, in a leafy street.
She lives alone, with the daily help of a Turkish woman in her fifties. Her name is
Frau Steinmetz.
Frau Steinmetz? Will the Turkish woman tell us who shes waiting for at the station?
The Turkish woman hurries away the minute you go up to her. This I found out from
a friend who lives in a neighboring street: the cleaning woman speaks neither
German, nor French, nor Italian.
Then how does she communicate with her boss?
In Russian.
The Turkish woman speaks Russian?
As does Frau Steinmetz.
This is all very intriguing, Ulla. Were you able to find out this Frau Steinmetzs
marital status?
I tried. I wasnt able to find anything.
A husband? Children? Parents?
Nothing. Let me be precise: I cant swear she doesnt or didnt have a husband, or
children, I am only saying that I dont know.
At teatime, over some macarons, the employees and the publisher Egon Ammann
himself came to join us, and I brought the subject up once again.
In your opinion, who is she waiting for, the woman with the bouquet?
Her son, answered Claudia. A mother is always hoping that her son will come.
Why her son? asked Nelly, annoyed, Why not her daughter!
Her husband, said Doris.
Her lover, amended Rita.
Her sister? suggested Mathias.
In actual fact each of them, in their answer, was telling their own story. Claudia
suffered from not seeing her son, who was a professor in Berlin; Nellys daughter was
married to a New Zealander; Doris was pining for her husband, a sales
representative, who was constantly away on business; Rita changed her lover as
often as her underwear; as for Mathias, this young man was a pacifist and a

conscientious objector, doing his civil service by working rather than serving in the
army, and he was clearly nostalgic for his family cocoon.
Ulla looked at her colleagues as if they were all mentally retarded.
None of that, shes waiting for someone who died and she cant accept the fact.
That doesnt change a thing, exclaimed Claudia. It can still be her son.
From The Woman With The Bouquet by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Copyright 2010
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Excerpted by permission of Europa Edition.