The Silence of Trees (23 page)

I needed to put my energy back into my family. Lesya was coming over. Was she still seeing that boy? She said she loved him, that German. She was caught up in the illusion that so often ensnares the young into notions of invincibility and a love that conquers all.

I loved Stephan with that same burning, foolish, young love. I wondered about the promises we had made when we were young. Did we somehow tie our souls together with our early declarations of love? Or was the Universe more forgiving? I had many chances for love, but did I choose wisely?

I loved Stephan, but death made the choice for me. The German colonel loved me with a cold adoration. He would have turned me into a rich lady, but nationality and loyalty made that choice for me. And sweet Andriy would have loved me, cherished me with kindness and devotion, but I could not make the choice to follow him. I could only bury my regret and watch him and Mama Paraska leave the village, leave my life.

Once in a while, I allowed myself to fantasize about what my life could have been. A different life, a different love. What else does an old woman have but memories and fantasies?

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

"Hi, Baba. Sorry I’m late," Lesya shouted from the porch. I heard her shaking off her umbrella and kicking off her boots.

"It’s okay, Lesya. I’m making coffee. Would you like some?"

I got her favorite mug from the cupboard and set it on the table. She walked into the kitchen looking guilty. She wasn’t that late. Then I knew. She was late because of him.

I tried to stay calm. I bit the inside of my cheek and poured the coffee. "So, how is your tato? Your mama?"

"Good. Tato has a conference coming up in California," Lesya said while spooning sugar into her cup. "But you know Mama, she doesn’t want to go because she hates to fly."

"Who can blame her?" I set a plate of toast on the table. "We were born on the earth, not in the air. What else is new?"

"Oh, nothing much. Natalie and Jerry have their hands full with little Pavlyk, but I think they’re going to try for baby number two soon." Lesya buttered her toast, avoiding my eyes. "Tanya is lovesick about her long-distance boyfriend in Kyiv. She wants to go visit him again. Maybe you can go this time?"

"I’m too old to travel," I said spooning too much blackberry jam on my toast, my favorite. "Maybe if Ana were still here we could have gone together, but I can’t go by myself."

"What about Dido? Neither of you have been back for so long."

Like Ana’s husband Nicholas, Pavlo had sworn that he would never return. It would be too much for him. Besides, he knew nothing of where I came from. I could not revisit my past with him.

"No, Lesya. Your Dido does not wish to return. It was a bitter exit from our homeland, and he would rather leave the dead sleeping."

I gave her a look that meant this subject is over. "So what can I help you with today?"

She reached into her backpack and took out a pad of paper and pen. "Baba, I’m writing a paper about the history of Jewish and Ukrainian relations before and after World War II. Could you tell me a little about your experiences?"

Faces flashed across my memory: Miriam, My teacher, Sonny . . . and many others without names. Panic caught in my throat. I took a deep breath. "Where will this article be published, Lesya?"

She looked over her notes, "It’s just for school, Baba. Don’t worry about it. Nothing public."

"Because you know that we are private people," I told her sternly. "I cannot have my life shared with the whole world."

I suddenly had nightmare visions of the Soviets tracking down my family and friends and sending them to Siberia.

"Baba, it’s not like that anymore. Things have changed."

I sighed. She was so young, trusting and foolish. The seeds planted by Stalin were still growing, even if quietly and hidden under rocks.

"You’re asking me a difficult question, Lesya. Things back home were not like they are here. They were . . . complicated. There are old prejudices that remain deep within our people. During our long history, we have been trespassed upon by so many hordes that we are wary of all strangers and slow to trust anyone not Ukrainian on our soil. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled Western Ukraine, the Jews were the stewards of the Poles. Even a socially lowly Jew was above a poor Ukrainian peasant. The Ukrainians were at the mercy of Jewish merchants and Polish landlords. Did this fuel tension? Probably. Certainly some Ukrainians were unkind to the Jews during the war. But other Ukrainians risked their lives to help them. It’s complicated.

"My first experience with someone Jewish was positive, but it was secret. You see, when I was a girl, I had a burning curiosity. My mama and tato were so relieved when I started going to school because it gave them a break from all my questions. I wanted to learn everything I could.

"My teacher was called Danylo Zhytomyrsky, a kind and brilliant man who nurtured my love of books and stories. For five years I studied with him, and he taught me many lessons: Russian and Latin, history and art, grammar and literature, philosophy and poetry.

"When I was nine years old, Danylo came as a stranger to our village from the university in Lviv. We had only an old woman who taught the young children, and no one to teach the older ones, so Danylo was welcomed.

"Everyone just assumed that he was Christian. We had been forbidden to go to any religious service for so long after Stalin’s purges, and then during the German occupation, that most families celebrated religious holidays in private, in their homes. This is the way of our people anyway. The church is a meeting place for the community to celebrate, but the home is the heart of the family and traditions. For hundreds of years it is where people were born, married, celebrated, grieved, and died.

"Once when I was looking around in the teacher’s library, I found some books buried behind others. They were written in a language I couldn’t understand. I asked him about it, and he swore me to secrecy first, then told me his story.

"Danylo had left Lviv after a pogrom. Immediately following the German occupation of Lviv, the Einsatzgruppen—German task forces—organized a pogrom. Danylo was the only one of his family left alive. His parents had long been dead, and his older brother, Jacob, died in the pogrom. As his brother lay dying in Danylo’s arms because of a terrible beating, he whispered the name of a young woman he had loved and the village she had come from. It sounded like our village, so Danylo came to find her.

"He never did. He told me her name, but it was not one that I recognized. He had nowhere else to go, so he stayed and became a part of our community. Although he kept mostly to himself, he was well liked by his students and their parents.

"I was the only one he ever trusted with his secret. He was afraid that if anyone found out, he would be forced to leave, or worse. Even at that age, I knew the importance of such a secret.

"Danylo taught me that stories are the lifeblood of a culture. He even shared with me some of the special stories of his people, such as the legend of the golem who protects the Jews, and the mysteries of the Tree of Life. Perhaps most importantly, he taught me about tolerance, showing me that people who are different can be trusted and can enrich your life with their differences."

"I think you’ve forgotten that lesson," Lesya said quietly.

I chose to ignore her and continued, "When I was fifteen, Danylo was taken by the German police. They were rounding up the intellectuals, priests, teachers, and politicians. We never saw him again. My Uncle Vasyl said that he was certainly killed. I always wondered if somehow someone had found out his secret. From Danylo I learned that stories can kill if they are not properly guarded. Not all stories can be shared, Lesya."

I stopped to pour myself and Lesya some more coffee, watching as she carefully took notes in her notebook. When she looked up, she asked, "What about during the war? In the camps? What was that like?"

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Tell her, darling.

A whisper beside my ear? Inside my mind?

For a moment I could see Ana in my memory, hands on her round hips. She was the only one I had ever told about my life, in bits and pieces at that.

It is time to tell the story . . .

I wanted to.

I was afraid to.

I began.

"Our people are not without blame, Lesya," I said, then hesitated. But I was gently urged on, as if there were hands on my shoulder, comforting and pushing me. I looked down at my hands. When did they get so wrinkled?

"I’m going to tell you a little about the DP camp. The same one where I met your dido, in Neustadt, but this happened earlier, before he had joined our camp.

I was living in an all-women’s barracks. There was a lovely old woman who was in charge of us twelve. Her name was—"

I was still afraid to say their names.

"—We called her Mama P., because so many of us had lost our own mothers during the war. We followed her rules, which were very strict, and she made sure that we were safe. Well, just outside of Mama’s dorm, there was a small cluster of ancient trees. Further away was a grove of oak trees that had already died from disease or heartache, but this particular cluster was fighting to stay alive. I had ‘adopted’ one of them and used to sit outside and write—"

"You used to write, Baba?" Lesya asked. "Really? What did you write? Where is it now?"

"Shush," I said. "Long gone, everything is long gone. Now let me continue my story."

If she only knew how hard it was, how easy it would have been to turn back and bury those words in more silence.

Tell her.

A trace of familiar French perfume in the air.

I turned back to Lesya.

"Back home, it is said that each tree has a spirit who lives inside. Very often those who die pick a tree near their family’s home and stay there as a guardian. I truly believe this, Lesya. My own Baba picked a tree near my house, and I felt her whenever I was there. On full-moon nights I could see a shape shimmering inside the tree, like something dancing. And I would hear her voice on the wind when it rushed through the leaves. Praising. Guiding. Warning."

"Have you?" Lesya interrupted.

"Have I what?" I asked her.

"Have you picked a tree?"

"What?! I haven’t decided to die yet." I couldn’t believe she was asking me this, but then I saw a grin stretch across her face. She was teasing me. Fine, then I would tease her back.

"You see, Lesya, I am waiting until you buy a house, then I can choose the tree closest to your bedroom window. That way I can scratch against the glass to get your attention and send you dreams whenever you need my advice." I smiled at the image, "Not that you would listen. Young people never listen. But I was the same once.

"My first night in the DP camp, I walked out into the center of those trees and sat down. Of course, it was not safe for a woman to be out alone, but I knew that Brother Taras had followed me to make sure that nothing would happen. I saw him hiding behind a nearby building, watching over me."

I smiled with the memory. "He was like my personal bodyguard and a dear friend. I named your father after him.

"I sat down to escape all the madness of the camp. It was crazy that first night; people were going wild from the unfamiliar freedom. But in that grove of trees, with Taras nearby, I felt safe. I returned to that place almost every day, usually in the mornings, and I got to know those trees well: the shape of their trunks, the stretch of their branches, the patterns of their leaves.

"They were the saddest trees I had ever known. They had stood through the war, and it seemed to me that whenever the wind blew through their aching branches, the air was full of weeping. You see, they were forever forced to gaze upon their dead brothers and sisters who had not survived the war. A tree cannot run and hide in the face of pain or terror. A tree must stand and face each storm as it comes. And those trees had seen so much death.

"That first night, I leaned against an ancient linden tree, maybe 300 or 400 years old. Most of the other trees were oak, also ancient. The Germans called them "Knorr-Eiche," or knotty oak, because their trunks were gnarled with age. Each oak had many round protrusions on its trunks; they looked like heads. Some had dozens of these heads. Most of the other people in camp found them a little unnerving, so they avoided the grove. I was often the only one there.

"When I leaned against the linden tree in the company of the oaks, they whispered in the wind. Like the rest of us, the trees were too drunk on death. The spirits in them had twisted and churned as if trapped, trying to escape their own skins. I would sit and look at the heads on the knotty oaks, and sometimes the faces would weep.

"But the spirits of those trees did not let the trees die. They stood and waited for better, brighter days to come, days when the cranes would return to fly through their branches, and the white-tailed eagle and the osprey would take refuge in their cool leaves."

I realized that I was rambling, and I was suddenly embarrassed for having revealed so much to my granddaughter. After all, she had come for facts, and I was giving her fancy. I avoided her gaze and reached for a napkin to twist in my hands. I continued,