The Silence of Trees (16 page)

“Oh, how I wish you would leave that Pavlo and come back with me,” Mama Paraska said, stopping her dance and staring into my eyes. “I won’t tell my son that you’ve been living with him. I know that it wasn’t your choice.”

I shook my head. I could not leave Pavlo. When he drank, his temper flared, but he did have a soft and loving side—the part of him that was tender, that cultivated life in the gardens. I was ripped apart by my emotions for Pavlo. I was curious about Andriy though. After all, he was Mama Paraska’s son. After hearing about him for so long, I had painted quite a picture in my mind and I wanted to meet him.

One Friday night, many weeks later, Pavlo came home drunk again after work, and we got into another terrible fight. He accused me of being too friendly with Sonny, an American soldier stationed in the camp. I told him that the soldier was only a friend, but Pavlo insisted that we had been having an affair. I threatened to leave him, and Pavlo hit me. He left me weeping in the corner and went off to drink some more.

Soft knocking on the door. When I didn’t answer, Mama Paraska let herself in.

“My son is here, Nadya,” she said, lifting me to my feet. “I want him to meet you.”

Sobbing hysterically, I would not look at her. I felt so helpless, so lost. She wet a rag and wiped my face. Then she looked me straight in the eye that was not swollen.

“You’re coming with me to meet my son. It’s dark, and he won’t see the bruise. Besides, Pavlo will be gone until morning, no doubt drinking himself to sleep in some hole somewhere. Who knows what other trouble he will find.”

I was ashamed. I didn’t want her son to see me, to know that I allowed myself to be treated in such a way, but I followed her, my spirit broken.

We walked over to the campfire, where I could only see the shadow of a man. As we came closer, firelight began to reveal his face. He stood up and extended his hand.

“Hello, my name is Andr—“suddenly he stopped and took a step back.

I looked down, embarrassed. I must have looked horrible. Tears formed again, and I ran back toward my barracks.

“Nadya, wait! Please!” he cried out, and I could hear his footsteps behind me.

I stopped at my door and turned around to face him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I must look terrible.” I looked down at the dirt.

He shook his head and stared at me, eyes wide.

“No, that’s not it at all. You will probably not believe this, but I’ve seen you before.”

I looked up at him, trying to recognize him.

Interrupting my memories of Andriy, Pavlo tossed a tiny green tomato at my legs.

“Hey, old woman, what are you doing there?” he asked. “Are you sleeping?”

“Just taking a break, Pavlo, and thinking.” I looked at my husband’s white knees poking out from his shorts. His socks stood out black inside his brown sandals.

“The garden looks nice, no?” he asked.

I nodded, staring at his big toe poking through the hole in his right sock. I need to mend that, I thought.

“Yes. It’s beautiful this year, Pavlo,” I said. “Do you remember when we first met?”

I looked up at his face. His grin stretched wider. “Of course I do. It was that beautiful winter night when I was playing my guitar in the dining hall. You couldn’t look away from me.”

“What? You were staring at me!” I protested, still watching his mouth.

“But that wasn’t the first time I saw you,” he said, his left eyebrow peaking to match his crooked grin.

I searched my memory. I could not remember ever seeing him before that night.

“Remember? We had been in camp for a few months. It was the last warm harvest night, and I watched you creep up to my gardens not knowing I was there.” He laughed, walking toward me. “I saw your ankles because you had bare feet. I told myself, ‘This girl has beautiful ankles.’” He reached down and touched my ankle. “You still do, even for an old woman.” He didn’t take his hand away.

I never knew he liked my ankles, and I could not believe he saw me before the dance, in the garden where I would go to escape before I knew it was his handiwork.

I looked for you after that,” he said, “but once the snows came, many people chose to eat in their own barracks. I did see you a few times, though. You were so beautiful; how could I miss you?” He winked at me. “But you were always talking with the girls in your barracks or with that old woman. I never knew how to get your attention.”

I still could not believe that he had seen me before, that he had been looking for me. “That was you?”

He stroked my ankle. “That was me. I could be quiet when I wanted to. I would often go there to calm down. I overheard many interesting things in my garden.”

He laughed, and I tried to picture my first night in the garden, before I knew it was Pavlo’s. “What I remember is a man covered in mud jumping up and scaring me. I almost lost my skin. I thought you were a poliovyk.”

“You thought I was a field spirit?” He laughed that deep, roaring laugh of his. “Well, Nadya, this field spirit is too hot outside. I’m going to have some lemonade. Don’t stay outside too long. Remember, Taras is coming soon.” He turned around, still laughing, and went back inside the house. Khvostyk was sitting in the window, batting at something he thought he saw.

A week earlier, for Pavlo’s birthday, our children put their money together and bought him a new television and video machine. It had just arrived at the store, so Taras told us that he would bring it over. I looked again at the tomatoes, then back toward the porch window where I saw Pavlo teasing Khvostyk, tugging at his tail. Khvostyk hissed and batted him with his paw. He never really liked Pavlo. He was always my cat. But then again, cats usually didn’t like Pavlo. I closed my eyes to remember that night in camp more vividly.

No matter how long I stared at Andriy, I could not recognize him. His face was smooth, his features delicate, as if sculpted by a skillful hand. He reminded me of an icon of the angel Michael in St. Sophia’s back home, before the Communists had stripped the church of all her treasures and boarded it shut. But other than that, I could not recognize him.

“I’m sorry, but I do not know you,” I said. “I feel like I should, from all that Mama Para—um, from all your mother has said about you, but I don’t recognize you.”

“We’ve never met,” he said, “not really.” He took a step back. “Is there any place we can talk? I don’t wish to wake anyone.”

I looked around. The lights were on all over the camp. Music was playing, people were singing. Not many people would have been sleeping, but this was Mama Paraska’s son, and I did not want to offend him.

“All right,” I said. “Follow me.”

We walked in silence to the section of camp where they kept the gardens—those for the soldiers and those for the rest of us. Andriy and I sat down on a patch of grass.

“Nadya . . . may I call you Nadya?” he whispered, his voice smooth and slow, each word carefully rolling off his tongue, onto his lips, into the night. I only nodded, feeling slightly light in the head.

He looked at me so intently, almost without blinking. It was then that I first noticed his uniform, so familiar. Could we have met? Then something struck in my memory. His uniform. I realized why his uniform seemed familiar. The soldiers who had taken Stephan wore the same uniform, although theirs had been dirty and torn. His was clean and fresh. What if he—could he have been? Gray flashed before my eyes, breath pulled from my lungs. I suddenly felt faint.

“Were you ever in Slovakia?” I asked, desperate. “Were you?’ I searched his face for clues, but his face was not familiar. Could I have forgotten? No. Never!

“Only on the train ride here,” he answered, looking at me strangely. “Are you all right?” He reached out to touch my forehead. “You are very cold.”

“I’m fine,” I said, suddenly wanting my bed, my blanket, the safety of sleep. “What were you saying?”

His eyebrows lowered in concern. He went on. “I have had vivid dreams ever since I was a boy. My mother said that they were messages from God, but I never believed very much in any god. Especially not after the things I have seen.”

He plucked a leaf off a tomato plant and continued, “This will sound strange, but it is true. I swear it on my father’s grave. I have dreamt of you, Nadya. I’ve seen your face so clearly in my dreams. Sometimes you were crying, holding my mother’s hand. Sometimes you were smiling. I would watch your lips, wishing I could hear what you had to say.

“On the nights after battle, after burying comrades, friends, I would pray that you would enter into my dreams. I would wish that I could hear the stories you were telling, instead of just watching your lips move. Many nights, you did return, but I never heard your voice. But on those nights when I saw your face, I cannot tell you how much peace you brought me. I thought that you must be my guardian angel.”

I looked down at my hands: nails caked with dirt from helping in the gardens earlier that day. Then I glanced at his hands: clean, trimmed smooth.

“Many months ago, the dreams stopped coming. I waited, prayed each night to a God I lost faith in, that the angel who appeared in my dreams would visit me again. Only once more did I see you, and that was ten weeks ago.”

I looked up at him. As he talked, he never stopped looking at my lips. It was the same way Stephan used to look at me.

“You were crying. I wanted to comfort you but could not. The next morning, the letter from my mother arrived. I took it as a sign.

“You brought me such hope on those nights. If I could have named you, it would have been Nadya. How perfect that your name means hope, because that is what you have been to me. My hope.”

This man had such a gentleness to his voice. Somewhere off in the camp, Pavlo was surely drinking more, and here this man was sharing his soul with me. What had happened to my life? I looked down. Everything was spinning out of control. I fell backward, caught by his strong hands. Darkness . . . and then his face.

“Nadya?” Andriy whispered. “Nadya, are you hurt?”

Rage filled my mouth, bringing up the words I had been burying for months.

“I hate him,” I whispered.

“Who?” Andriy asked.

“I hate him. I hate my life.” I sat up, my voice growing louder as I shouted into the night. “I hate you, Pavlo! For all that you’ve done to me. For ruining my life!”

In the near distance, a stray cat hissed and darted past.

If only Pavlo were before me at that moment, I would finally have bared my soul. I would have told him how much he hurt and disappointed me.

If only I could escape. If only I had another choice. If only I were a man. I wished that I had the strength to match my rage. Why did I always have to stand by with arms twisted behind my back, my mouth held shut, choking on silence?

This war had silenced the women and released a poison inside the men, something that changed their eyes and twisted their vision. I didn’t know where it came from, but it broke us.

I had seen it in Pavlo’s eyes, in his anger. It was the same poison in the Germans who burned my family, the Nazis who murdered Miriam’s mother and destroyed her, the Russians who raped the vorozhka, Stephan with all his lies and betrayal, the Slovak Partisans who beat me, and all the other beasts who ripped and clawed and thrust and spit and burned. Wolves wild with blood lust. This was a man’s war.

If only I were a man.

I would rip off the lips that had curled around lies and accusations. Tear out a heart that pumped only poison. Pluck out those eyes and crush them in my palms until the poison ran out over my fingers and onto the ground, staining it red. Like the wise witches who could read the future in a black pond or candlelit mirror, maybe in that thick pool of poison I could see the horrors in all their eyes. Maybe then I could understand war.

Andriy tried to brush tears away from my face, but I wanted no man near me then. My hands in fists, I began to beat at my belly and rock back and forth. Wailing. No more words. I slipped into a dark, empty place far away, where the only thing I saw was blood red rage all around me. And the only thing I heard was moaning in the distance, a sound I did not recognize as my own voice. Andriy held my shoulders and shook me gently. I could smell the tomato plant on his fingers. A clean, green smell. Somehow that smell brought me back into my body. He held my hand and let my cry.

After I had no more tears, I sat staring in silence at the moon.

“Come on, Nadya,” Andriy said. “Let’s walk away from here. Leave your sorrow with the tomatoes.”

I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. What a ridiculous thing to say, as if I could lose my sorrow. As if the tomatoes could hold it. I stopped, bent over with laughter that came from deep inside my belly. A laugh I had not felt in a very long time.

“What’s so funny?” Andriy looked concerned again, which only made me laugh harder. Who was this man to listen when no man did, to advise me on the healing powers of tomatoes?

After I lost the laughter, I walked with him toward the edge of camp in silence, the smell of the garden still on our clothes. After a moment, Andriy said, “Leave him.”

He stopped and looked me in the eyes. “Leave him and come with me and my mother. You will always be safe, always taken care of.”