The Solace of Trees Read online

  The next day nothing more was said about the boy. Not even when Zoran called out to him and was about to cuff the boy for ignoring his words before Sonja stopped him and explained that the child was deaf-mute. Her husband shook his head in disgust and walked away with a look that said, He’s your problem, not mine, just keep him out of my way. From then on Zoran treated Amir as if he were no more than one of the farm animals. There was nothing of worth in the boy that he could see. Which couldn’t have been better for Sonja—her husband wouldn’t be stealing him for his own use.

  If Sonja’s husband paid the new boy no mind, it was the opposite for the man’s young helper, Josif Babic, who was excited at the prospect of having someone to talk to. A distant relative of the couple—so distant that the exact relation could not be named—Josif had been working on the farm for nearly a half year and would not wish himself there another half day, no less the remainder of the year, as had been agreed upon. It wasn’t the work. That was difficult though bearable. It wasn’t even Zoran’s constant disparagement of his intelligence—the man’s treating the boy as if he was nothing more than an indentured servant, barely worth the food it took to sustain him. Josif could live with that. It had been that way for him since the age of thirteen, when, effectively orphaned by his parents’ divorce and his mother’s alcohol addiction and mental instability, he, his brother, and two sisters had been parceled out to whichever relative could be talked into taking them. No, what bothered him was the sheer loneliness of the place, his only human contact that of Zoran’s embittered wife and her callous, uncaring husband.

  It didn’t matter to Josif that the new boy could neither speak nor hear. In some ways that was even of benefit. He could say whatever came to his mind or fell out of his mouth without fear of judgment or belittlement, of being called an idiot, or simply told to shut up. These were the predictable outcomes of any conversation that might occur with Zoran. His distant relative preferred talking to listening, and certainly so with a fifteen-year-old who had no more than a fourth-grade education. Josif spent his hours with the older man, a captive audience of one. At night when his work was done, the young teenager retired to his room in the barn to listen to his prized possession, an old, dented cassette player, his arms flailing the air with make-believe drumsticks, dreaming of the day he’d be able to escape his life, run away to Belgrade, and join a rock band…to a time when he would finally have friends and a life of his own. Signaling the new boy to enter what served as his room—two stalls boarded off from the rest of the barn; a doorway, a single, hinged window, a few built-in shelves, and a bunk its only amenities—Josif shared his secret passion with Amir.

  “Come, feel this,” Josif said, leading the new helper to the small, timeworn metallic machine he’d spent his entire savings to purchase. Placing the younger boy’s hand on it, he asked, “Can you feel it, the music? Wait, I’ll put it louder. Can you feel it?”

  Amir looked at the older boy, unsure what was being said. Peering past Josif’s question, he looked beyond the older boy’s smile and into his eyes. Amir nodded his head yes. The older boy grinned broadly, happy at sharing his private escape with someone, someone who might be able to understand.

  “Listen, feel the bass…bom, bom bom, bom. It’s good, isn’t it? Yeah, I love it.”

  Josif’s hands rose into the air, invisible drumsticks beating out the rhythm. He looked over to his new friend, and for the first time he saw the younger boy show a semblance of a smile. The older boy began to drum harder, going fully at it now for the benefit of his new friend, his right foot joining in to pump an invisible bass drum, his head and body bouncing wildly to the music. A great grin broke out on Josif’s face as he looked to see Amir’s reaction. A small but true smile shone on the face of Sonja’s young helper. Josif, laughing, took Amir’s hands and showed him how to drum the air.

  “You don’t have to sleep up in the loft,” Josif said to the boy, signaling him by pointing to his bed. “It’s big. You can stay in this room. Zoran doesn’t really care. He told you to sleep up there to show his wife who the boss is. He doesn’t care about me having to share the bed. That’s not why. Anyway, I don’t care. It’s OK to stay here.”

  Amir watched Josif talking to him, his eyes reading the expression of the older boy’s face and gestures. Alright, thank you, he nodded in response, the slight upward bend of his smile broadening. The aching inside Amir’s head was almost gone. It seemed as if he’d been deaf for his whole life. Amir never questioned why his speech should have gone as well. It seemed to fit that, along with his hearing, it too had disappeared from his life. Just like his family. In a strange way it comforted him, made living in the world possible. Josif continued talking, though now Amir had no idea about what.

  The woman was pleased with the way things were working out. The boy was bright and did his work well. She had barely to show him the task before he would nod his understanding and go about it. He must have some education, and he knew farm work, that was clear. She did sometimes wonder how he’d come to be along the road like that…yet as soon as the thought entered her head, she quickly ushered it out like an unwanted visitor. These were times when it was better to know less than more. The work was getting done, and that was the important thing. Sonja occasionally rewarded the boy with what little extra food might be about. He always saved it, bringing it back to the room to share with Josif.

  Amir knew to keep a careful distance from Zoran. There was something in the man’s eyes that frightened him. Amir watched him in the same way he had been taught to observe animals in the forest. To look without being seen…going more than quiet…going still….His father, Asaf, had taught him that in the woods the hunter learns that his invisibility needs to be more than simply to the physical eye. The hunter must also be imperceptible to the instinctual eye, the one that is felt in the body, whose sight is sensation. Amir had experienced this more than once: an animal’s head suddenly jerking upright, coming alert, even though the boy was downwind and securely out of sight. In fact, his father had counseled, it was more important for the observer to be hidden to the instinctual eye than to the physical one, whose tendency to inattention was much greater.

  The farm was running smoothly, summer making its way past spring. Amir’s body recuperated quickly, but his mind’s ills were still too tender and, to him, distant, to begin their healing. Amir knew he didn’t belong where he was. Yet where did he belong, now? As soon as the lights went out and Josif and he lay down to sleep, dark images of men dressed in battle fatigues crept their way into Amir’s consciousness like hunters threading their way through the forest, stalking their quarry. Scenes from the last few minutes he had spent with his family, before they had disappeared into oblivion, played through his mind. One of the dark men reached out for his sister, Minka, his hand roughly taking hold of her arm. Their mother, Emina, was crying and pleading, but the men dressed in the colors of the forest were laughing as they dragged the young girl away. Asaf, his father, stood with quavering knees. The scenes came and went with no linear sequence or sense. There was fighting and gunfire—the remembrance of the sounds reverberating deep within his unconscious.

  Chapter 4

  Sundays were supposed to be days of rest on the farm, though Zoran often found reasons for Josif to work at chores that he said the boy had neglected to do or done so poorly they’d have to be done over. Even so, Zoran needed rest from himself—from the energy it took to bring everything around him down to a level that he could stand above, allowing him to lord over those beneath him.

  The day was hot, the sun bright, and Josif felt like a bird freed from its cage. It was Sunday, and Zoran hadn’t bothered to come up with any extra chores for Josif to do, so the young farm worker luxuriously slept in until mid-morning, even though it meant missing breakfast. There would be nothing put aside for him, of course; neither Sonja nor Zoran was willing to indulge the farmhand to that degree.

  When he awoke, Josif was pleased to find a plate of food by h
is bedside—bread, jam—and a glass of tea complemented with a splash of milk and a spoonful of honey. It was a rare treat somehow procured by the younger boy. Josif knew better than to take his good fortune for granted. As soon as he’d finished eating, he signaled Amir that they were going to go off on their own, away from the farm. The older boy knew not to try his luck, not to look relaxed and happy in sight of Zoran. Having fun kicking a soccer ball around the yard would invite his boss’s attention and at the very least bring some scornful, sarcastic comment, if not a sudden forgotten chore in need of tending to.

  Taking Amir by the hand, Josif led him out the back of the barn and indicated they should take a path into a small clearing where the cows grazed—away from the dirt lane that led from the farm out to the main road—to avoid being seen by Zoran. Once in the clearing, the two young farmhands cut through the woods to the road and a large grin spread across Josif’s face.

  “Yeah, we’re free now, man!” Josif laughed. “No more fucking Zoran saying ‘do this, do that. No, wait. Do that and then do this!’ Ha, what shit that guy, huh?”

  Amir looked back, the expression of his smile and eyes saying, “Yes, I am glad to be getting away.” Even if the younger boy couldn’t hear the older boy’s words or read his lips, he seemed to understand. “What are we going to do?” Amir asked with a tilt of his head and a furrow of his brows, not so much because he cared one way or the other, but rather wanting to give support to the happiness he could see in Josif’s face.

  “We’re going to go swimming,” Josif said, his smile broadening at the quizzical look on the younger boy’s face. “I know a good swimming hole just up the river from town. There’s a place you can dive off the rocks into the water.”

  “OK,” Amir smiled back timidly, understanding by the motion of the older boy’s arms snaking through the air, one following the other, that they were going swimming.

  “You know how to swim, don’t you?” Josif asked with a questioning look, as he repeated his mime of a swimming stroke.

  “A little,” Amir answered with his fingers.

  “OK, no problem. I’ll teach you to swim like a fish,” the older smiled bringing his two palms together in front of him, weaving them back and forth as though a fish swimming through the water. “Look,” he said, “it’s like a dance. I’ve just invented it!” And with a great laugh Josif began to move his feet along with the movement of his hands, stepping to the beat of a silent song.

  Amir could see by Josif’s laugh and his body’s gyrations that his friend was making some kind of a joke. Although he had no idea of what had been said, Amir shared the moment’s humor with a small, silent laugh of his own.

  “Come on friend, let’s go before Zoran comes along and finds us.” Placing his arm around the younger boy’s shoulder, Josif led him down the road in the direction toward town. Amir’s body nestled into that of Josif’s, the warmth of the older boy’s arm drawing him in.

  Josif liked his new friend. It was what he had come to name him, “friend.” It was a simple term for want of a real name. Sonja and Zoran called the new helper “boy,” though there was a clear difference in the tone of voice with which they addressed him. Zoran, when he bothered to at all, used the term with a derisive inflection. Sonja’s tone was neutral, almost too purposefully so, as if she might be hiding some hint of affection, not just from her husband’s ears but from her own as well. Neither of the farm’s owners had attempted to ask Amir what his name was. Nor had Josif, though not for the want of caring, as with Zoran, or the fear of knowing, as with Sonja, but simply because it hadn’t seemed relevant to him given the fact his younger friend could neither speak nor hear it.

  “The swimming hole is just up a little farther,” Josif said upon arrival at the river, speaking loudly so his voice carried over the sound of the running water. “It’s a shame you can’t hear the river. It’s so beautiful. It’s like music. Look,” the older boy paused, turning to Amir and pointing at the coursing water. “It’s really nice, yeah? It’s still running strong. It’s going to be fun diving into it.”

  Amir followed the motion of Josif’s hand as it moved in a gentle arc, taking in the nature surrounding them. The younger boy’s head nodded in appreciation of what he saw. He had in fact been in a heightened state of awareness from the moment they set foot on the narrow trail that wound its way through the trees and over the rocks that bordered the bank of the river. Josif had been only partially right in thinking Amir couldn’t hear the running water. His ears, it was true, no longer picked up the sound…yet the sight of it, the spray of the mist rising in the air and wetting his skin, the smell of the water and the taste of it upon his tongue, all unleashed a memory that sang out like a choir of healing hymns to his soul.

  “I like it very much. I am happy to be here too,” Amir said by way of his smile.

  “There are a few good places to swim in this river,” Josif indicated with a sweep of his arm. “We’ll keep going until we get to the last one. It’s got the best place to dive from.”

  There were no other bathers at the swimming hole when they arrived. The boys, in fact, had seen no one else at all, war having drained the local inhabitants’ spirit for such summer pastimes. The look on Josif’s face, however, showed no weakening of enthusiasm for enjoying the bucolic setting of the river running through field and woods in a countryside that had changed little in the centuries since it had been first settled.

  “Yeah, this is it!” Josif shouted in glee when they finally arrived. He gestured to the younger boy to follow as he raced along a narrow path leading up to a small outcropping of rock sitting above the deepest part of the swimming hole. “Come on, come on,” he cried.

  Reaching the highest point of the rugged rock formation, Josif began dancing on one foot, then the other, as he removed his shoes, and then his pants. A small grin broke out on Amir’s face as he watched the older boy hopping about in such a rush of enthusiasm that he appeared to be attempting to jump right out of his clothing.

  “Come on, don’t be scared,” Josif laughed as Amir stood to the side, watching him with a timid smile. “We’ll jump in together. It’s not as far down as it looks.”

  “I don’t know,” Amir answered with a doubting look, stepping toward the edge of the rock and peering down at the nearly thirty-foot drop to the water below. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, barely able to do more to keep himself afloat than paddle about with arms and legs.

  “Ha-ha, you’re scared,” Josif joked good-humoredly. “It’s going to be fun. You’ll see. You can’t think about it. You just have to do it.”

  Stripping off his shirt, Josif stood clothed in only his underwear and gestured impatiently to his younger friend to follow his example. Sensing both the abandonment of the moment from the older boy and a hesitant warning of rational restraint within his own mind, Amir slowly did as Josif had encouraged. “OK, OK,” he said, using his hands to express his hesitation, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  “Yeah, alright. Look down there, man. This is going to be fun!” Josif exclaimed after Amir had shed his clothing and finally stood beside him ready to take the leap. “Here, take my hand. One, two, three…go-o-o-o!”

  Unable to hear Josif’s countdown, Amir could nevertheless feel the anticipation of their leap by means of the tension transmitted from the older boy’s hand clasped on to his own. Amir wanted to speak out, to say “wait,” but even if the deaf-mute boy had been able to verbalize his hesitation, there was no time. Pulled by the weight of Josif’s leap, the ground disappeared from under Amir’s feet and was suddenly replaced by nothing but air, the two boys’ bodies rapidly plunging downward in free-fall. And then, as abruptly as the leap had been taken, the flight was broken by the impact of the splash, the sensation of falling through air now displaced by the feel of total submersion in clear, cold liquid.

  Josif surfaced first, a shout of delight exiting his mouth at the very same moment he took in a large inhalation of air. Amir’s head and shoulders br
oke through a second later, the small panic he felt at being closed in by the water quickly being overridden by the relief of surfacing and the sight of Josif’s face manifesting his joy in smile and shouts of adrenaline-inspired delight that echoed about the pool. There was happiness in the laughter coming from deep within Josif’s lungs, its pulse rippling outward like the water from his dive. At heart, Josif was a person drawn to the wonder of life, even if his lot had been one of difficult and too-often loveless experience.

  As the sound of Josif’s laughter traveled through the air it found entry into the boy whose ears could not detect its melody. Amir felt the sound’s emotion gain access to his own senses through his chest, a sensation of warmth arising from his solar plexus and spreading wide. The younger boy could feel his heart breathe in Josif’s joy like the great gulp of air his lungs drew in upon surfacing from the water. For a glorious moment, Amir felt himself freed of the cast that had formed around his fractured psyche—the invisible plaster that kept his mind whole and held all of its pieces together temporarily replaced by the happiness on his friend’s face and the beauty of the nature that surrounded them.

  Josif and Amir raced back up the rock wall several more times, jumping feet first or with legs pulled into chest for maximum entry splash, until the older boy gestured with arms outstretched in front of his head that they should try a real dive.

  “We can go from there,” Josif indicated, pointing at a ledge about halfway up the outcropping. “It’s not so high.”