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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Shortlisted for the Prix Jean Giono, the temples and teahouses of Kyoto are the scene of a Frenchwoman's emotional awakening in this life-affirming novel by international bestseller Muriel Barbery __________ 'Muriel Barbery crafts a moving tale of emotional awakening and blossoming love, set among the vivid colours and mesmerising scenery of Kyoto' Woman's Own 'Delightful, engaging . . . this novel offers the pleasures of a poetic travelogue and an homage to a place and a culture' New York Journal of Books 'Rich with atmosphere and character and drawing on themes of grief and second chances, this is a delicate delight' Living Magazine __________ Rose has just turned forty when she is unexpectedly summoned to Japan for the reading of her father Haru's will, who seemingly abandoned her when she was a baby. Leaving behind her life as a botanist in Paris, Rose travels to Kyoto and is led around its enchanting tea houses, temples and zen gardens by Paul, Haru's former assistant. Initially a reluctant tourist, Rose gradually comes to discover her father's legacy through the itinerary he set for her, finding gifts greater than she had ever imagined and connecting with gentle widower Paul. This stunning novel from international bestseller Muriel Barbery is a mesmerising story of second chances, of beauty born out of grief and roses grown from ashes.
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Seitenzahl: 186
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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PRAISE FOR A SINGLE ROSE
‘Rich with atmosphere and character and drawing on themes of grief and second chances, this is a delicate delight’
Living Magazine
‘Barbery crafts a moving tale of emotional awakening and blossoming love, set among the vivid colours and mesmerising scenery of Kyoto’
Woman’s Own
‘[A] multi-layered novel of self-discovery, grounded in richly evoked landscapes and experiences… An enjoyable, immersive read’
The Lady
‘A fascinating maze of emotional release’
Foreword Reviews
‘A lyrical and opaque story’
Publishers Weekly
‘Delightful, engaging… this novel offers the pleasures of a poetic travelogue and an homage to a place and a culture’
New York Journal of Books
‘An ode to Japan… a magnificent, resonant, finely crafted novel’
Le Monde
‘Barbery sows beauty on every page’
Elle
‘A small miracle’
Lire
‘A moving, accomplished novel… thoughtful, ethereal and inspired’
Le Nouvel Obs
PRAISE FORTHE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG
‘Many authors dream of getting their books onto best-seller lists, but few pull it off with the panache of French writer Muriel Barbery’
Time Magazine
‘A profound but accessible book… which elegantly treads the line between literary and commercial fiction… The Elegance of the Hedgehog is, by the end, quite radical in its stand against French classism and hypocrisy… Clever, informative and moving’
Observer
‘Its appeal is obvious… a feel-good book with philosophical aspirations’
Guardian
‘At once absurd and lyrical, cheery and bleak, contemplative and tender… It is the revelatory joy the characters afford each other – with recognition, with friendship, with love – that quietly rises to the top’
New Statesman
‘A beautiful story with a large cast of fascinating, complicated characters whose behavior is delightfully unpredictable’
Wall Street Journal
‘Gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet’
Washington Post
‘Plumbs the astonishing ways private lives and guarded secrets can come tumbling – for better or worse – into the open’
Vogue
‘Breathtakingly singular… totally French yet completely universal’
Good Housekeeping
MURIEL BARBERY
A SINGLE ROSE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ALISON ANDERSON
PUSHKIN PRESS
A SINGLE ROSE
to Chevalier, always to my dead
on the roof of hell
Contents
1
It is said that in ancient China, in the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a prince who, every year, would have a field of a thousand peonies planted, and in the first days of summer their petals would ripple in the breeze. For six days he would sit on the floor of the wooden pavilion where he was wont to go to admire the moon, drinking a cup of clear tea from time to time, and he would observe the flowers he called his girls. At dawn and at sunset, he would stride through the field.
Early on the seventh day he ordered the massacre.
His servants would lay out the lovely, murdered victims, their stems severed, heads pointing to the east, until only a single flower was left standing on the field, its petals offered to the first monsoon rains. And for the five days that followed, the prince stayed there, drinking dark wine. His entire life was contained in those twelve revolutions of the sun; all year long, he thought of nothing else; once they were behind him, he took a vow to die. But the hours he devoted to selecting the chosen one, then delighting in their silent tête-à-tête, held so many lives in one that the months of mourning were not a sacrifice to him.
What he felt as he gazed at the survivor? A sadness shaped like a sparkling gemstone, shot through with flashes of such pure, intense happiness that his heart faltered. 14
A Field of a Thousand Peonies
When Rose woke and, looking around her, did not understand where she was, she saw a red peony with sullen petals. Something went through her with a whiff of regret or flown happiness. Ordinarily, this inner agitation scratches at the heart before vanishing like a dream, but on occasion time, transfigured, gives the mind a new transparency. That is what Rose was feeling that morning in her confrontation with this peony, as it revealed its gilded stamens to her from its exquisite vase. For a moment it seemed to her that she could stay for days on end in that bare room, gazing at that flower, feeling more alivethan she ever had. She observed the tatami mats, the paper panels, the window opening onto branches in the sun, the crumpled peony; finally, she observed herself, as if she were a stranger she had met only the day before.
The evening came back to her in waves—the airport, the long drive through the night, the arrival, the lantern-lit garden, the woman in a kimono kneeling on the raised floor. To the left of the sliding door through which she had come, branches of summer magnolia spilled from a dark vase and caught the light in successive cascades. The shadows on the walls flickered like gleaming water pouring onto the flowers, and all around there was a strange, quivering darkness. Rose could make out walls with sand finishes, flat stones leading to the raised flooring, secret spirits—an entire twilit life suffused with sighs.
*
16The Japanese woman had led her to her room. In the next room, steam for a bath rose from a large basin made of smooth wood. Rose had slid into the scalding water, captivated by the bare simplicity of this damp, silent crypt, its wooded decor, its pure lines. When she stepped out of the bath she wrapped herself in a light cotton kimono, the way one might enter a sanctuary. Similarly, she slipped into the sheets with an inexplicable sentiment of fervour. Then everything faded away.
Now there came a discreet knock, and the door slid open with a soft scraping sound. The woman from the night before came to set a tray by the window, her steps short and precise. She said a few words, took a few gentle, sliding paces backwards, then knelt down, bowed, and closed the door again. As she disappeared from view, Rose saw her lowered eyelids flicker, and she was struck by the beauty of her brown kimono belted with an obi embroidered with pink peonies. The memory of her clear voice, each sentence ending on a clipped note, chiming in the air like a gong.
Rose inspected the unfamiliar food, the teapot, the bowl of rice; every movement she made felt like a desecration. Through the bare frame of the window, where a glass pane and its paper screen cover slid open, she could see the etched, trembling leaves of a maple tree and a more expansive vista beyond. There was a river, its banks teeming with wild grasses, and on either side of its pebbled bed were sandy pathways and more maples mingling with cherry trees. In midstream, amid a languid current, stood a grey heron. Fine-weather clouds drifted overhead. Rose was struck by the force of the flowing water. Where am I? she wondered, and although she knew the city was Kōto, the answer stole away from her like a shadow.
There was another knock on the door. Yes? she called, and the door opened. The sash of peonies reappeared; this time, the bowing woman said: Rose-san get ready?, and pointed to the bathroom. 17Rose nodded. What the hell am I doing here? she thought, and although she knew she had come for the reading of her father’s will, the answer still eluded her. In the vast empty chapel that was the bath, next to the mirror, a white peony with its petals dipped fleetingly in a carmine ink was drying in the air like a new painting. The morning light pouring through an opening latticed with bamboo cast fireflies against the walls and, for a moment, immersed in the kaleidoscopic play of a stained-glass window, she could have been in a cathedral. She got dressed, went out into the corridor, turned to the right, came back again after reaching a closed door, followed the meandering of floor and paper. Beyond a turn, the partitions were dark wood in which she could make out sliding panels, and after another turn, she found herself in a large room with a live maple tree in the centre. Its roots burrowed deep into folds of velvety moss; a fern caressed the trunk, next to a stone lantern; all of it was surrounded by glass panelling, open to the sky. In the shards of a fragmented world, Rose saw the wood floor, the low seats, the lacquered tables, and, to her right, in a large clay vase, an arrangement of branches with unfamiliar leaves, vibrant and light as fairies, but the maple tree punctured the space in which Rose’s perceptions were drowning, and she sensed the tree drawing her towards it, her breath responding to its magnetic force, as if it sought to make her body into a shrub with murmuring boughs. After a moment she tore herself from the spell, went over to the other side of the inner garden, where large windows looked out onto the river, and opened a panel that slid soundlessly along its wooden rails. Along the banks with their cherry trees—fluid pulsebeats of space-time—ran morning joggers, and Rose would have liked to slip into their steps that had no past or future, no ties or history; would have liked to be nothing but a moving point in the flow of seasons and mountains passing over cities on its way to the ocean. She looked beyond the river. Her father’s house was built at a certain height, above a sandy path visible through the tree branches. On the far shore of the river were the same cherry trees, the same sandy pathway, the same maples and, further still, overlooking the river, 18a street, more houses—the city. Finally, at the end of the horizon, a tumble of green hills.
She returned to the sanctuary of the tree. The Japanese woman was waiting for her.
‘My name Sayoko,’ she said to her.
Rose nodded.
‘Rose-san go for a stroll?’ asked Sayoko.
Then, in accented French, blushing slightly:
‘Promenade?’
Again those clipped sentence endings, like an echo, those pearly, shell-like eyelids.
Rose hesitated.
‘The driver outside,’ said Sayoko. ‘Wait for you.’
‘Oh,’ said Rose, ‘all right.’
She felt rushed, and behind Sayoko the tree called to her again, strange, seductive.
‘I forgot something,’ she said, and dashed away.
In the bathroom, she found herself facing the white peony, with its blood-lacquered petals and its snowy corolla. Hyoten, she murmured. She stood there for a moment, then, picking up her canvas hat, she left the chapel of silence and water and went to the hall. In the daylight, the magnolia blossoms curved like butterflies—how do they do that, she wondered irritably. Outside the house, the driver from the night before, in a black suit and a white cap, bowed when she appeared. He held the door open for her respectfully, closed it again gently. In the rearview mirror she observed his eyes, thin lines of black ink blinking without revealing the iris, and, oddly, she liked the abyss of that gaze. Before long, he gave her a childlike smile that lit up his waxen face.
They crossed a bridge and, once they were on the other shore, headed towards the hills. She got her first glimpse of the city in a tangle of concrete, electric wires, and neon signs; here and there, the outline of a temple seemed to be adrift on the tide of ugliness. 19The hills drew nearer, the neighbourhood became residential, and finally they drove the length of a canal lined with cherry trees. They got out of the car below a street crowded with shops and wandering tourists. At the top of a hill, they went through a wooden gate—Silver Pavilion, said the driver. His evanescent presence surprised her, as if he had left himself behind to strain towards her, towards her sole satisfaction. She gave him a smile, and he responded with a little nod.
And thus they entered an ancient world of wooden buildings with grey-tiled roofs. Before them stood strange tall pines set in squares of moss; stone walkways meandered past beds of fine grey sand where parallel lines had been drawn with a rake; a few azaleas had been invited. They went through the gate that led to the main gardens. On the right, next to a pond, with the grace of its curved roofs the old pavilion seemed to be taking flight, and Rose had the unsettling impression that it was breathing, that organic life had taken refuge in these ageless partitions and galleries, these openings of white paper casting their long, milky reflections onto the water. Straight ahead stood a tall mound of sand with a levelled summit; to the left began a vast expanse of the same sand, striped with parallel grooves and curving at the far end into waves on a shore. A view of the ensemble revealed first the mineral flow, then the simulacrum of the mountain with its flattened summit and the pavilion with its winged roofs; further away, the ponds with their quicksilver water, pine trees pruned as if they were birds prepared for flight, a few more azaleas; everywhere, age-old stones were surrounded by cropped, luminous moss and rooted in the embankments. Finally, the gardens wound their way to an esplanade where the crowd of visitors had massed. Between Rose and the esplanade, maple trees rustled in a cascade of lacy foliage, descending in tiers down the side of the hill.
She was overwhelmed by the beauty, the stone and wood; it all made her feel lethargic, was all so intense; I can’t go through this 20again, she thought, with a mixture of lassitude and terror. But then immediately afterwards: There is something here. Her heart began to pound, she looked around for somewhere to sit. Likeinalandofchildhood. She leaned against the wooden gallery in the main building; an azalea caught her eye; the terror and cheer infused in the mauve petals melted into a new emotion, and she thought she was at the heart of a sanctuary of pure, icy water.
They followed the visitors’ path and paused for a moment on the little wooden bridge that spanned the grey water on the way to the maple trees and the upper levels of the garden. All around the ponds there was a parade of other strange, tall pine trees. Rose looked up and took in the branching thunder of the needles against the sky; the dark tree trunks projected the force of the earth into these flashes of plant lightning; she felt herself being sucked into a flow of clouds and moss. The driver’s steps were measured; he turned around from time to time to wait for her, showing no impatience, setting off again when she gestured to him. His tranquil pace had a calming effect on Rose, restored to the world a touch of reality which the power of the garden dissolved in the trees. Now the path lined with tall green bamboo led to a stone stairway; she could have reached out to either side to touch the velvety moss where the maples spread their roots. With each step she took, the branches reconstituted a tableau of perfection, and the visual choreography of it touched her heart but also irritated her—and yet her irritation, she realised with surprise, did her good. At last they came out onto the little esplanade; below them were the pavilion, the wooden buildings, the grey-tiled roofs, the sculpted sand; beyond lay Kōto and, further still, other hills. We are east, said the driver and, pointing to the horizon: West mountains.
She assessed the city. Everything about it had to do with the presence of the mountains that, to the east, north, and west, enclosed it at right angles. In reality they were high hills, their shapes conferring 21an impression of altitude. Green and blue in the morning light, they poured their leafy flat tints towards the city. Ahead of her, beyond a small hill, the city seemed ugly, full of concrete. Rose’s gaze returned to the gardens below, and she was struck by their precision—the adamantine, obvious fact of them, their purity sharpened with sorrow, the way they were able to resurrect childhood sensations. Like in a dream she used to have, she was struggling in dark, icy water, but in broad daylight, in a profusion of trees, in the blood-specked petals of a white peony. She leaned her elbows on the bamboo railing, stared at the neighbouring hill, looked for somethingthere. The woman next to her smiled.
‘Are you French?’ she asked, in an English accent.
Rose turned to her, saw her wrinkled face, grey hair, well-cut jacket.
Not waiting for an answer, the woman continued.
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’
Rose nodded.
‘It’s the result of centuries of devotion and abnegation.’
The Englishwoman laughed at her own words.
‘So much pain for a single garden,’ she said, with a light, frivolous tone.
But she was looking intensely at Rose.
‘Well,’ she said, as Rose still hadn’t said anything, ‘perhaps you prefer English gardens.’
She laughed again, negligently stroking the railing.
‘No,’ said Rose, ‘but this place is overwhelming.’
She felt like talking about the icy water, hesitated, decided not to.
‘I just got here last night,’ she said in the end.
‘Is this your first trip to Kōto?’
‘It’s my first trip to Japan.’
‘Japan is a country where people suffer a great deal, but they don’t seem to mind,’ said the Englishwoman. ‘In return for this indifference to misfortune, they harvest these gardens where the gods come for tea.’ 22
Rose found this irritating.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Nothing can make up for suffering.’
‘Oh, really?’ asked the Englishwoman.
‘Life is painful,’ said Rose. ‘You can’t expect any good to come from that.’
The Englishwoman looked away, lost in gazing at the pavilion.
‘If a person is not prepared to suffer,’ she said, ‘they are not prepared to live.’
She stood back from the railing and gave Rose a smile.
‘Enjoy your stay,’ she said.
Rose turned to the driver. He was watching the Englishwoman as she vanished below the maple branches, and his expression was one of fear mingled with enmity. Rose started down the hill. When she reached the last of the black stone steps that led to the pond in front of the pavilion she stopped, overcome by the thought that no one, anywhere, was waiting for her. She had come to hear the reading of the will of a father she had not known; her entire life consisted of this succession of ghosts who told her where to go and gave her nothing in return; she was always headed towards emptiness and icy water. She recalled an afternoon in her grandmother’s garden—the whiteness of the lilacs, the short grass at the edge of the estate. The Englishwoman’s words came back to her and, with them, a surge of rebelliousness. Never again, she said out loud. She gazed at the grey water, the pavilion, the sculpted sand, the maple trees, the garden’s large perimeter of childhood and eternity, and she was engulfed by a tide of sadness mingled with flashes of pure happiness.
2
In ancient Japan, in the province of Ise, on the shores of a cove concealed from the ocean, there lived a healer. She knew the virtues of plants, and applied them for those who came to her begging for relief from their afflictions. In spite of this, she herself—as if the gods had made an irreversible, inalterable decision—suffered constantly from the most terrible pain. One day, a prince she had cured thanks to one of her carnation teas said to her: Why don’t you use your powers to heal yourself? Because my powers would disappear, she replied, and then how would I heal my fellow man? What care you for the suffering of others if you could live without enduring such pain? asked the prince. She laughed, went out to her garden, cut an armful of blood-red carnations, and handed them to the prince, saying: To whom, then, would I, with a light heart, give my flowers?
An Armful of Blood-Red Carnations
At the age of forty, Rose had not really lived. As a child she had grown up surrounded by magnificent countryside, where she became acquainted with fields and clearings, ephemeral lilacs, blackberries, and bulrushes; and then, in the evening, under cascades of golden clouds and washes of pink, she received the intelligence of the world. As night fell, she read novels, and in this way, through pathways and stories, her soul was crafted. Until one day, as if losing a handkerchief, she lost her predisposition for happiness.
