The Solace of Trees Read online

  None of them knew the boy’s name or how he had come to be alone in the woods. Yet they could guess it: the dirty, raggedly dressed boy was from one of the nearby mountain villages and had been separated from his family by the same men who had attacked their town or, worse yet, had been orphaned by them. It wasn’t for the want of caring that they knew nothing of the child. They had asked, but the boy hadn’t answered. He seemed unable to hear their words or to speak in response, his mouth sometimes opening as if to reply, but no sound emerging.

  On another day, in different times, they wouldn’t have left the child to himself so easily, with nothing more than a sigh of regret, the image of his face erased from their memory with the turn of a shoulder. They would have searched for someone who knew his family or, at the very least, contacted the authorities. But now the question of who the authorities might be was far from clear, and it was even less clear whether they would offer help or deadly persecution. No, there would be little chance of finding the boy’s family. The men who had chased them from their homes had seen to that. The destruction of family bond and the eradication of all that united them through their common ancestral blood was one of the principal strategies of those men’s war. The boy wandering the woods alone was proof enough of that.

  The next day, Amir happened onto another group and traveled with them for a short time before he separated from them as well, hanging back until he was left behind. His life now seemed to have no connecting parts. One thing was linked to the next by only the flow of its motion at best and, much of the time, by nothing at all, as though passing through a doorway that served neither as entrance nor exit, but whose purpose existed only as a notion of itself.

  How his world could have altered so swiftly never entered Amir’s thoughts. The mental faculty to compare the one thing to the other seemed to have disappeared along with his family and all that he had once known. The last thing he remembered of that life was the concussive blast of an explosion that was like a thunderclap going off inside of his head….The explosion had come from a grenade thrown by one of the men who had invaded his family’s home. The exact details of what had led to that remained mercifully inaccessible. He remembered only his father, Asaf, crying out for him to run to the woodbin at the side of the fireplace, where they stored the winter’s firewood. Inside the woodbin alcove was a hatchway that allowed the bin to be filled from the outside.

  Amid the chaos of gunfire and men shouting from all sides, Amir’s legs finally managed to move him toward the woodbin. Just as he had ducked down into it, an explosion had filled his head with a terrible ringing. Somehow its force had pushed him through the hatchway, to the back of the house, and without bothering to conceal himself, he made his way into the forest, to his playing grounds, where his feet carried him instinctively and without thought. He was alone—his father, mother, and sister still inside the house.

  Dazed from the grenade’s detonation, Amir had not run far into the woods before coming to a stop. His mind wasn’t able to function clearly, nor did his legs have the strength to continue. He knew he was escaping from something but was no longer sure what it might be. His head felt as if it had been compressed into a ball of pain, his consciousness slowly slipping away. He only had a few minutes’ lead on the members of the paramilitary band who were at that moment racing through the woods in search of him.

  Working on pure instinct, Amir carried himself to a tree and forced his body to climb it. The tree, a large pine, was one he knew well. High above, where two large, sturdy boughs grew next to one another and then spread wide, he had, with his father’s help, built a tree fort: a place of play, of make believe, of dreams, and now of refuge.

  Amir had earned the nickname Little Squirrel for his love of the woods and the amount of time he spent playing there, climbing trees and building forts. His mother would complain of the difficulty in cleaning his clothes of pine pitch and dirt, but it was really the worry of her son falling from a tree that caused her to try to rein in Amir’s enthusiasm for climbing. He would play in the woods by himself or with his cousins Refik and Tarik, when they visited. Hide-and-seek had been his favorite game to play with the boys because they could never find him. He was just as happy to play on his own, though, and could occupy himself for long periods of time in one of his favorite trees, silently gazing down on the forest life that ventured out unaware of his presence.

  Asaf would tell Emina not to worry about the boy: “He’s surefooted and strong. He knows what he is doing. Amir can climb the tallest of the trees just like he was born to it.”

  “It’s just that which worries me,” Emina would respond, not comforted by her husband’s reassurances. “He always wants to climb the biggest tree and go all the way to the top. He isn’t really a squirrel, you know. He’s just a boy.”

  “He’s about as likely to fall from a tree as he is from walking on the ground with his two feet,” Asaf replied with a laugh.

  Unconvinced, Emina shook her head. “What can I expect from the man who taught him to climb in the first place?”

  Asaf had instructed his son in the same way his own father had taught him. If you want to see forest life, you have to become part of it. Walking around making noise, you will never see anything. All of the birds and animals will run and hide. You have to be silent and, above all, patient. You have to sit in a hollow, unmoving, for hours, downwind from the place you watch. Find the paths that the forest life walks. Find their resting places, where they feed, and you will find the animals. Here, climb up that tree. Sit up there, quiet as a rock, and when I return tell me what you have seen.

  At first the eight-year-old boy was excited to be up in the tree. Then he grew tired, his muscles sore from holding the same position for so long. He became bored and, though he felt restless, forced himself not to move, because his father had told him to be still. Amir always listened carefully to his father’s words because of the way Asaf talked to him. He spoke to his son with respect, always assuming the boy’s intelligence, strength, and integrity, without showing even the slightest doubt of the child’s ability to do whatever task might be placed in front of him. Even when Amir came up against a thing he was unable to achieve, his father always treated his son’s effort at it as the true measure of the boy’s success.

  After a time, Amir thought about climbing down from the tree on his own. Perhaps his father had forgotten him, to leave him there so long. It was then the doe and her fawn came by. Soon after, there came a pair of squirrels. An owl, eyes closed, sat camouflaged only a few trees away. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? It must have been there the whole time. By the time Asaf finally returned to the tree to retrieve him, Amir’s boredom had long disappeared, replaced by a calm dreaminess that seemed to transform the boy into something of the forest itself.

  Amir had so many things to tell his father. “Papa, I saw a doe, and she had a little baby,” he cried excitedly. “There was an owl, too. I thought it was just a squirrel’s nest, and then I saw it had eyes!”

  Asaf smiled broadly as his son laughed with joy. Thereafter, it was hard to keep the boy from the trees. With his cousins Refik and Tarik, he had scaled practically every tree in the hillsides surrounding their home, particularly the big ones that had called out their challenge.

  After parting from the second group fleeing the invading soldiers, Amir went in the opposite direction. He had no idea where to go. It seemed to him that life had slipped away, and there was only the dream of it now. In this dream world there were no destinations, no fixed places, just interconnecting circles that led him round and round without meaning or purpose. For a time, it appeared as if his feet were following this same logic and that the ground itself revolved in a kind of circular concurrence, leading him nowhere and to nothing. Yet as much as the world seemed a dream, it was not, and Amir’s solitary wandering was interrupted by his arrival at a place where the forest ended.

  Amir became aware of the town before he saw it. The forest growth became more ragged and i
ntruded upon, debris and other signs of human habitation leaving their mark. Amir felt hungry, though his hunger had become almost a food in itself, the physical ache dulling that of his mind and heart. He skirted his way around the areas of the most obvious human intrusion until he reached a hillside that overlooked a roadway. From his vantage point he could see the town several kilometers to his left, to the northeast.

  Hidden in the scrub, he sat quietly observing the road for some time. Only occasionally did a motorized vehicle pass. More carts and horses traveled past than cars or trucks. To the boy, coming from his mountain village, this seemed only natural, though to the inhabitants of this larger town it was anything but. The greatest movement along the road was by people on foot. That their ethnicity was the same as those who had attacked his home didn’t register in his thoughts. There were no soldiers among them, no armed militiamen. Their appearance, the way they dressed, and the way they walked was exactly the same as if they’d been people from his village.

  Amir walked down the hill to the road, his hunger having turned into a kind of feeble delirium. His mind, impaired by lack of food, saw the people on the road as a continuation of the refugees he’d met in the woods. His body carried him toward the town. After only a few minutes, he stopped and sat by the roadside. He felt dizzy, his steps unsteady, unsure that he could continue walking, one foot able to follow the other.

  Chapter 3

  Sonja Ćosić didn’t hurry the mare. She was in no more of a rush to return to her farm than the weary horse that pulled the empty cart homeward, fresh from being freed of a ponderous load of firewood. It had taken Sonja the better part of the day to load the wood, drive it into town, and sell or barter it for whatever she could. The chill of early spring was quickly fading and people had higher priorities than firewood to spend their money on. Sonja was tired; she seemed to wake up tired, go to bed tired, and spend the time in between feeling the same way. All of her children were gone from home and there was no one to help out with all of the work. Her husband never allowed her a moment’s rest; he treated her in the same manner that had caused their daughter and two sons to escape as soon as they were old enough to do so.

  The boy, small, thin-limbed, and brown-haired, sitting on the roadside, barely caught her attention. His head hung down as if he was dozing; he didn’t even look up when the horse whinnied and the cart was near to passing.

  As she approached, Sonja considered him. There was more work at the farm than she could ever possibly keep up with. She prepared to pass the boy by, figuring that he would not do for her, but then reconsidered: Her husband, Zoran, had his Josif to help him. But would he share that boy? No, there were always too many of her husband’s chores for the helper to do, so that the man could go off with his friends to drink and boast of his role in a local paramilitary group.

  Stopping the cart a few meters from where Amir sat, Sonja called out to him, “Hey boy, if you’re hungry, there is work at our farm. If you work well, you’ll be fed well.”

  The woman leaned over the cart and waited for a response. The chicken coop needed cleaning. But there were other things that needed her attention more. There always were, and the floor of the coop just kept rising higher and higher with the chickens’ shit. It was a harder job now than ever.

  When the boy made no response, Sonja stepped down from the cart, thinking the child asleep. Coming closer, she saw his head move, and she could see that the corner of the boy’s eye closest to her was open.

  “Hey boy,” Sonja called once more, a moment passing before Amir gave a start and jerked his head up to stare at the woman.

  The older woman realized almost immediately that the boy hadn’t reacted to her call but rather that it had been the movement of her body drawing close that had caused him to look upward.

  “What’s the matter, you didn’t hear me? Don’t be frightened. I have work to offer you,” she said, observing the child closely as she spoke, a suspicion of something in her face, a distant memory whispering an answer.

  Amir watched the woman talking to him, saw the realization dawn on her after her words went unanswered. When Sonja was a little girl, a deaf-mute boy had lived on the farm nearest her family’s. Sonja remembered the look of his eyes. They held a wider, more intent gaze than she was used to seeing in others. They watched and waited with an open candor, innocent of any agenda they might impose on others. Eyes of ordinary people didn’t do that. They looked, then quickly scurried to some inner place to peek around from, to peer out from where they couldn’t be seen.

  Sonja raised her hand to her mouth three or four times, as if holding a spoon or fork, her eyes looking directly into Amir’s. It was not so difficult talking to the deaf. Maybe it was even easier, clearer. There was room for only the simple, the truth. She remembered the neighbor boy. One of his smiles would have been worth a hundred of Zoran’s. If she had only known then.

  She saw that this boy understood immediately. Next, she mimed the act of shoveling, taking three scoops of air and depositing them in a nonexistent wheelbarrow. She repeated the eating again, then once more the simulated shoveling, until she was sure he understood he would get food only for work. Acting out a nod in question to his agreement, Sonja waited for his answer. A feeble movement of the boy’s head came in response, and Amir attempted to rise, only to almost immediately fall back into a sitting position. He was very weak. Sonja worried whether she would get her worth’s out of him and thought to just leave him there and go on her way. Then, looking at the boy’s hands, she saw that they had known work.

  The woman grew angry at herself, at how she’d come to think like Zoran, and helped the boy up into the cart. She’d take the boy home and feed him. After a good meal and a night’s sleep he would be able to work. To hell with what her husband would say. Let him breathe the acrid, rotten egg–like smell of a winter’s worth of chicken shit if he didn’t like it.

  Despite the courageous words of Sonja’s inner dialogue, she hid the boy up in the hayloft of the barn after feeding him, signaling him to sleep and not to move until she returned. She would have the boy begin his chores the next day. Then Zoran would see. When her husband returned from the woodlot, where he was felling next winter’s fuel supply with his helper, Josif, her boy would be well into the cleaning of the chicken coop, and Zoran would see that the new boy could work. He wouldn’t be able to protest much then. And there were plenty of other jobs for the boy as well. If he worked hard she’d keep him for the summer. He could help with the haying. Even her husband would see the wisdom in that. With the war producing so many lost and homeless walking about the countryside, it made sense to take advantage of the available extra hands. There was only the cost of the food, and in summer they provided much of that from their own gardens. After the final haying was done the boy could move on to whomever or wherever he might belong.

  Chicken shit was not nearly so easy to clean as cow shit. Its smell burned the nostrils even after sitting for a long time, the ammonia so strong that Sonja always wore a scarf to cover her mouth and nose when cleaning the coop. Cow shit, on the other hand, soon lost its edge, even taking on a pleasant earthy, musty smell. The cow shit would come up in nice, big clumps even when layered thick like a wedding cake, tramped down between months of neglected bedding. The chicken shit wouldn’t do that; it would break up small, glue the bedding hard, raise a dust in the air that filled your nose and lungs. Zoran knew that. The cow work was his, man’s work. The chickens were always the work of the woman, everyone knew that. At least that was Zoran’s idea. Women do the chickens, men the cows. That was unless the woman did the chickens and the cows and the man went off to something more important, like drinking with his friends. But Zoran liked his cows.

  The next day, after her husband left for the woodlot, Sonja retrieved Amir from the loft and set him to work. The boy had cleaned a chicken coop before. That much was evident, though Sonja had hoped for a better output than the new helper seemed able to muster. It wasn’t for the la
ck of the child trying. He was still weak; he needed another day and more food. This would never do. Zoran would come back and laugh at how little the boy had done. She could say the new farmhand had started late, though even then, her husband would say how tired the boy looked for so little work. There was nothing to do but for her to help and say that her new helper had done it all on his own.

  Sonja worked with the boy until the lunch hour and then served him a large meal. Her husband would rave if he saw how much she fed the child. She left the boy to finish the work by himself and returned to the house to prepare Zoran’s favorite food for the evening meal.

  “What’s that in the coop? You let a stray cat in with the chickens?” Zoran asked, stepping into the kitchen upon his return home. Small wood chips spit from a chainsaw speckled his clothing. His face looked tired and annoyed. “I told you: no more help. Josif is enough and hardly worth the food it costs to keep him. There’s time for you to do all you need to do. Next, you’ll be wanting a maid so you can watch television all day.”

  “The boy costs nothing,” Sonja replied, her defense mapped out in advance, and, though predictable, one she was confident would work. “A few scraps of leftovers, that’s all. And as for all the time I have, if I’d had to clean the coop myself there wouldn’t be stuffed cabbage and yam pie on the table for dinner tonight.”

  Her husband didn’t bother to acknowledge her words, his look saying that nothing she might have to say would be of any justification. Yet, he left it at that. Sonja saw his nose sniff the air, his mouth already salivating, tongue licking his lips. She’d won that round, though of course she couldn’t show it. God, what kind of life was it to feel pleased, like a cur receiving a pat on the head after being kicked, like a servant rewarded by a benevolent smile from the mighty master? She’d keep the boy as long as she wanted. If Zoran didn’t like it he could go to the barn with his cows, not that it would be any great displeasure to him.