The Silence of Trees Read online

My knees collapsed, and I fell to the ground and wept. Even before I felt the rain, I heard large drops falling around me. Then cold taps covered me. I wanted to scream, to wail, but fear of more soldiers nearby held my voice in my throat. Instead, I clenched my fists and pounded them against the ground. Why had my prayers gone unanswered? Was it because I had disobeyed?

  Thoughts kept rushing through my mind: pictures of Mama dead, blood trickling from her lips, clotting in her soft, brown hair. I had to get home. Why hadn’t I checked on my family first? Why wasn’t I thinking clearly?

  My head was pounding, my stomach curling up. I felt like the world around me had become one of Halya’s nightmares. Where was my family? Would I never see them again? Never feel Mama hug me, never hear her quietly sing, never see the wrinkles in her eyes when she laughed? A scream welled up in my throat, but I forced myself to stand up and walk back toward the house, hiding in the trees on the side of the road.

  Maybe if I hadn’t gone. Maybe if I had stayed awake, watching the moon, I could have seen the soldiers. What if everyone was dead? What about little Halya? Oh, God. Halya. I brought my hands up to wipe away the tears and the rain.

  Suddenly I saw Stephan ahead of me, blocking the road to the house. He stood in his uniform, his hands open to me, and I ran to him and collapsed.

  "Oh God, Stephan . . . the fire, the barn." I couldn’t get the pictures out of my head. I couldn’t stop shaking. "Soldiers are here. Mama . . . she’s dead. I know it. Stephan. Mama. Halya. Help them . . . we have to help them."

  He stood there without words, holding me, but his arms felt stiff, his embrace not tight as usual. I pushed myself away and looked into his eyes, struggling not to fall, the mud slippery, my legs trembling.

  "Say something." I threw my arms into the air and brought my hands down in fists. "Say something. My family is dead or dying, and you haven’t said anything. We need to help them, Stephan. What should we do? Where should we go?"

  "Nadya, we need to leave." He avoided my eyes. "The Russians are coming."

  For a moment I stood there, not understanding his words. Coming?

  "No, Stephan. They are already here. The barn, Mama—"

  He shook his head and looked down at his boots.

  "Oh, God." My stomach cramped, and I turned away to throw up into the bushes. I bent over clutching my stomach, the throbbing in my head even louder. If the Russians were not here yet, then it was the Germans who had burned down the farm. The Germans! I started to scream and beat my fists against Stephan. He grabbed me tightly and cupped his hand over my mouth. I bit him, tasting blood, but he continued to hold back my scream. I shook my head back and forth trying to free my voice.

  "If you scream, then they will come for both of us." He waited a moment before releasing me. I stepped away from him.

  "Why didn’t you warn us? Why didn’t you stop them? You wear their uniform. You must have known. How could you, Stephan? I—I could have been inside." I watched his face. Nothing. No expression even in his eyes. Anger clenched my jaw and tightened my chest until I was speaking in gasps. "I could have been inside, Stephan."

  He went to hold me.

  "Don’t you touch me," I said, pulling away. "I don’t know you."

  "Nadya, I didn’t know. They didn’t tell us. As soon as I saw smoke, I ran to find you. When I saw the barn and house on fire—"

  "The house? Oh, my God. I only saw the barn on fire. I have to get them out." I made a motion toward the house, but he grabbed my left arm.

  "Nadya, I looked inside the house. I looked for you. Your family was taken away. There’s nothing for you there."

  "You saw them being taken away? Why didn’t you stop them?" I tried to shake off his grip, but he held my arm firmly.

  "I’m one man against twelve. I could do nothing. When I didn’t see you being led away, I thought they had killed you. I thought you were dead, my Nadya." He pulled me to him, holding me tightly, but I stood there stiff. My head against his chest, I listened to his words, hearing his heart beating through his jacket, hating his uniform, and trying not to hate him.

  "I looked in the house," he continued, "but you weren’t there. I was going into the woods to look for you when I saw you coming down the path. My beloved Nadya, I’m so glad that you’re alive."

  I could say nothing. An emptiness settled into my chest that swallowed all the pain. I could only stand there and be held as the rain pounded on my face.

  The line of time blurs with age, leaving only certain points pronounced in memory. The road from my parents’ home is a fog of bitterness and regret, but the day Stephan was taken is painfully clear. We had been given shelter in a small Slovak village by an elderly couple who had lost their own son in the war. Jan and his wife Bozka allowed us to sleep in their barn in exchange for a few days’ labor on their farm.

  The evening before his capture, Stephan and I sat sipping burned coffee in the old couple’s home. Until then, neither word nor affection had passed between us since we’d left my family’s farm. He begged me to go outside with him, to talk away from the old couple’s ears. How he pleaded, and he looked so ragged, stripped of the polish of his uniform. His pants were ripped at the knees; his shirt soiled down his back and under his arms.

  When I finally agreed, we went outside and sat beneath a large fir tree. I was so afraid and felt so alone. I wanted the nightmare to go away.

  Stephan had taken my hand. "Nadya, what would you have me do? I love you. I couldn’t have stopped them. Are you going to damn me like everyone else?"

  He looked so broken, so vulnerable that I wanted to kiss him then. Bury my face in his chest, have him hold me as everything else faded away.

  "Nadya, did I choose to wear that uniform? Even though we buried it, I still feel it. I can’t get rid of it."

  He stroked the beard brought on by weeks of travel. I had never kissed him with a beard; he had always been cleanly shaven, his face smooth. This was not a face I knew. Everything was foreign now.

  "Do you hear me? You just stare at me with those big green eyes like I’m a monster. I didn’t kill your family. I have enough guilt without that on my head."

  I clenched my fists. My family. Killed. As he watched. I wanted to spit in his face. Curse him for not saving them. Curse him for taking me away from everything.

  "God, you can’t imagine what I’ve seen. What I’ve been forced to do. Nadya, I am so ashamed. I try to escape in dreams, but even they are filled with blood. So much blood on my hands." He buried his face in his hands, his fingers pulling at his hair. I wanted to scream and weep at the same time. Cry in his arms. Push him away.

  I could smell his breath: mint and coffee. I wanted to take his hand, trace the scars on his wrist with my fingers. Rub my lips against the soft hairs of his arm.

  "If there is a Hell, this war will fill it with people like me." Stephan looked at me. He had such long eyelashes for a man. I knew he wanted me to say something, do something.

  But I did nothing.

  Instead I watched the shadow of leaves on his thigh, his hand resting there, scars on his knuckles, his fingers. Scars he could not cover. The winds brushed through the long stalks of grass; they sounded like hushed murmurs. Like prayers.

  While I sat staring into the hills, Stephan’s fingers brushed against my lips. Part of me lay buried under the ashes of my family’s barn. Yet, no matter how much I had tried to hide inside myself, I wanted so much to be touched, to feel alive. He was all I had now.

  When I felt his fingers on my lips, I kissed them despite myself. Closing my eyes, I bent back my head and inhaled deep and long, taking in the sweetness of raspberries crushed underfoot and the dark, moist smell of sweat and dirt. His fingers lingered on my lower lip before sliding slowly down my chin, down the center of my neck, stopping at the hollow above my collarbone.

  He leaned over and kissed me in a moment I wished would last forever because everything else faded away, but the old couple shouted for us to come back inside the hou
se. Then the soldiers came. We tried to hide Stephan under the table, but they found him.

  Laughter. Loud laughter as Soviet soldiers stood inside the old couple’s house. Their faces were like my brothers. Not the angled, blond faces of the Germans, but brown Slavic faces: thick eyebrows, full lips, black hair. Calloused hands, nails caked with dirt. Smell of sweat and manure worn into their skin. Faces like Tato’s. Like Stephan’s.

  Mixed up words in the Russian tongue: "Punish traitors . . . abandoned Motherland . . . liberate . . . dog hiding under table . . . worthless . . . traitor . . . good dog . . . broken but useful."

  Then a whirl of fists and blood. Stephan thrown around the room, his face battered, his body beaten.

  There is a story that some men have inside them a beast that comes out in rage or on nights of the full moon to eat human flesh, to terrorize villagers. I remember watching the soldiers’ straight postures transform into those of bears and wolves as they pounded Stephan’s face again and again. They grunted and growled, hitting Stephan in the chest, the belly, the back. And when he fell to the ground in pain, all three soldiers—snarling and spitting—continued to kick him.

  Then the soldier with the crooked mouth slithered toward me. His breath was foul: alcohol and garlic. His lips were caked with food, spit, and dirt.

  "Pretty little bird . . . hold her tight . . . good hips . . . firm breasts . . . fine stock . . . hold her . . . that’s a good girl . . . open your eyes . . . such nice skin . . . I’ll be back for you."

  I watched from the doorway as the soldiers dragged Stephan down the path. The hair over his left ear was matted with blood, which trickled down his neck and soaked through his shirt collar like sloppy embroidery.

  The last to leave was the commander, who turned and smiled at me. "We’ll be back for you, little bird." Then he slammed the old wooden door behind him. I stepped up to open it, but Jan reached across me and bolted it shut.

  In shock, I stood for a moment looking at the wood grain. There were faces and animals. I could see an entire story hidden in the tree that became the door of this old couple’s home. I wondered if either of them had ever seen the characters in the wood.

  "Come, girl." Bozka put her arm around my waist and nudged me gently to the table. "Poor girl. Come sit down, and I will brew you some fresh kava."

  As I walked, I cradled Stephan’s overcoat. It was all I had left of him.

  Jan sat down at the table and turned to his wife.

  "Let her be," he said, shaking his head. "They take her husband out to be killed, and you serve her coffee?"

  Not my husband, I thought. I had used Stephan’s name so they wouldn’t separate us. I decided then to never again use my father’s name. I wanted no harm to befall my family if they somehow survived. The Russians would not connect them with a daughter who had run away with a German policeman. Even if that police officer was later taken away by Soviet patriots in a remote Slovak village. How could they know?

  I allowed myself to be led to the table by the old woman and sat down in the same spot as before. Before the soldiers came. Before they took Stephan away.

  Bozka glared at her husband. I looked at Jan, who had seemed to shrivel as the soldiers exited. His shoulders slumped, his head sunk down and his hands trembled even more as he pulled out his pipe.

  "You do not know that they will kill him," Bozka hissed while preparing the coffee. "They talked of digging ditches."

  Jan began to refill his pipe. "Don’t talk fairy tales, wife. You know what it means. We’ve seen the graves. You’ve seen them." He looked at me. "You should know what happens. So you don’t wonder. Forget about hope."

  I felt a chill. The icy wind still circled even though the door was shut.

  "First, they tell the men to dig deep ditches. Next, they order them to strip—"

  "Jan! This is not the time—"

  Time. I had no more time. Soldiers took that and everything else away from me. And always excuses to cover the graves. First, the Russians killed Dido and Uncle Ivan. Not starvation, they said. Collectivization. A plan. Always a plan. What excuses for the Germans who murdered Mama, Tato, Laryssa, and Halya? And now, again, the Russians. Now they took away Stephan.

  Time. Where was my past? My future? The vorozhka was right. What are we in war? Things. To be used. Broken. Thrown away. I had no more time. I had nothing. I couldn’t even feel anything. Just dead inside.

  "Shut up, Bozka. She should know the truth. She is alone now." Jan stared at me.

  I looked down at Stephan’s coat. Why did I let him leave it with me? He would need it out there. I was warm in this little house. I pulled at my ripped blouse trying to bring the two sides together.

  "I’ll sew that for you, dear," the old woman said, noticing my efforts.

  "Don’t interrupt me, wife," Jan said. "Listen to me, girl. The soldiers will order them to strip. Then tell them to turn around and face the ditches—"

  Feeling the ache in my right eye, I gently touched the bruise on my cheek. There was a little blood on my hand when I pulled it away.

  "Then they are shot. They have dug their own graves. Unless the soldiers use their swords. That is how they killed our son. But he was one of the Hlinka Guards."

  I looked under the table and realized what a tiny spot it had been for Stephan to hide in. He must have been cramped, especially with his bad knees. How could we have thought they wouldn’t find him there? Even with the tablecloth, it would be the most obvious hiding place. Poor Stephan.

  Jan pounded his fist on the table, "Listen to me, girl. Listen to me because I know about war and death. The man you love is gone. Forget him now, or he’ll haunt you forever."

  He shook his finger at my face, "You can sit there silently for now, but you better let that pain out. Cry if you have to. Scream if that’s what’s inside. Don’t let those bastards take away your voice."

  He glared at me, then reached out for his wife’s hand. Bozka walked over and took it.

  "War brings death too soon," he said. "Get used to it. You are alone now."

  I rested my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. I had been alone since I left Mama and Tato to see the vorozhka. Even on the long road here to Slovakia—even with Stephan walking beside me—I was alone.

  Bozka whispered, "Jan, enough."

  I saw the spilt coffee on the ground, coffee the soldiers had spilled when they ripped the cloth off the table. I reached over to lift up a rag from the corner. After carefully hanging the overcoat on the back of the chair, I knelt down beside the table and dabbed at the small puddles.

  The cottage air suddenly seemed too thick, the tobacco too heavy, the voices too familiar. I stood up, reaching again for Stephan’s coat.

  "I need to go outside." I said, aching for the openness of sky.

  "It’s the middle of the night; you shouldn’t go alone," Bozka said in protest.

  "I am alone." I unlocked the door and walked outside.

  I spread Stephan’s coat beneath the silver fir and lay on top of it, curling into the fabric, the smell of him mixing with grass and raspberries. It was all I had now, all that was left of him. We had shared our final kiss in that spot.

  Out of the old couple’s cottage came the smell of boiling raspberries and coffee. I watched a black griffin fly overhead, toward gray branches on the hillside, standing out against the sky like poetry. Baba said that Mother Earth gave us messages in her work, omens in her creation. Most people just didn’t read the signs, she said. But what of those gnarled letters against the night? I looked longer and they spelled my mother’s name. Or was it mine?

  I lay my cheek upon the earth, listening. Around me grasses whispered, winds exhaled through leaves, bushes shook off heavy sighs. The gentle hush . . . a lullaby. Like the songs my Baba used to sing. To make me feel safe. To chase away my night frights. To remind me that death could have a gentle face.

  When Baba Hanusia was dying, she came to stay with us. I was young and didn’t really u
nderstand. I knew Baba was sick, but I thought she would get better. One night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, I jumped out of bed and crept over to Baba, who lay sleeping—still except for the deep cough which scratched through her throat every few minutes. Slipping under the warm blanket made for her by her mother, I tried to wrap my arms around her but I could not reach. Instead, I wrapped my left arm lightly around her neck. I lay my head on her chest and listened to her heartbeat. The sound was so big, like the rumble of a warm summer storm. It was everywhere. She was everywhere, and I was safe.

  As she opened her eyes and felt my hug, Baba smiled.

  "Why aren’t you sleeping?" she asked, brushing her hand against my long hair.

  "Because I wanted to sleep with you," I whispered. Then I began to cry.

  "What’s the matter, little mouse?" she asked, then coughs shook her body.

  Trying to hold the tears back with tiny fists, I said as calmly as I could, "Mama said you’re sick."

  "Shh." She pulled at my chin. "Stop crying. Sit up and look at me. Sit up."

  I pulled away from her and tucked in my knees, my fingers tightly clenched together. The silence of the room brushed up against my bare arms, my neck, my chest, and I missed the drum beat of her heart filling up my ears.

  Baba sat up a little in bed and reached her arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

  She cleared her throat and whispered, "Little mouse, I’ve told you a lot of stories, no? Stories of princes and devils, foxes and bears. Stories of rusalky and werewolves and Baba Yaga."

  "I love your stories, Baba. Please tell me one now. Tell me a story to make the bad dreams go away?" I asked, nuzzling into her neck.

  "Nadya, I don’t have time—"

  "Baba, please," I begged. "Just one. A quick one, please."

  "All right," she sighed, "but it will have to be very quick. Now listen carefully, this is the story of Valentyna and the mountain.

  "Once there was a young girl named Valentyna, whose family lived beside a large mountain. Every day before she did her chores, Valentyna would stand at the bottom of the mountain and wish that someday she could reach the top.