Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (8 page)

Matti said, But Nimi ran away too. And so did the animals themselves. But you know how it is when the abuse starts. And the mockery. Sometimes I think about running away from them too, from everyone, from home, my parents, the other children, the grownups, my sisters, everyone, and let them think I have whoopitis. To run away and live all by myself in a cave in the forest so no one can tell me do this and don't do that, and aren't you ashamed of yourself.

Maya's answer to this was, But when you dream about running away, Matti, you don't think about taking with you everything that grows. Or the water. Or the light. And you don't dream about how to come back at night and take revenge on everyone.

There was silence. Until Nehi said, But in fact, you both ran away too. And now the whole village is frantic because of you, and your parents are shattered and in despair.

And so the two children sat in the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon all evening. And the evening went on and on as if it were under a spell, and for hours the soft evening light caressed them. After the evening light came the twilight, and after an immeasurable time, the dusk of sunset began, and that dusk went on and on and never ended, but flickered and painted the vast sky in a rainbow of gentle hues, as if up here even time itself had been erased. Wiped away. Forever.

The inside of the house confirmed what the children had seen from the outside, that it was not a fortress, only a low, wide building made of thick logs, entirely surrounded by a garden. Matti and Maya strolled through the garden and went back into the house and ate and drank and talked. That was because, right after Nehi frightened them, he tried to make up for it by being nice to them, by offering them luscious fruit to eat, the likes of which they had never tasted before. Then they went out to the garden again to be with the animals, birds, insects, and reptiles. The light faded slowly, but darkness held back. The evening itself came and went, drifting slowly from one flower bed to the other along the garden paths, a hesitant kind of evening that didn't want to be and didn't want to cease.

It was neither day nor night.

And Matti thought, I don't remember but I haven't completely forgotten that I was here once at a time that was a little like this, a time that wasn't day and wasn't night, not light but not not-light, and in fact, there was no time, but the opposite of time, and all around me was tenderness and caring. A dream? In an illness? When I was little? In the delirium of a high fever? When I was still nursing? Or even earlier, before I was born?

Nehi, when he was still the child called Na'aman,
always took pity on animals and made sure to feed them, even the flies and the ants and the fish in the river, when he was only four or five years old.

And in the village, they made fun of you for that too, Maya said.

She didn't say the words as a question, but as something she knew.

And Matti said, They still haven't forgotten that, but they don't remember it either. Maybe there should be another word, a special word that includes both remembering and forgetting: sometimes, out of the blue, a mother or father in the village imitates animal or bird sounds for their child. But a minute later, they regret it and correct themselves and explain that animals are merely a fairy tale. Then they sigh because our teacher, Emanuella, confuses us so much with all those crazy animal stories out of her poor head.

When Matti said there should be a word that would mean both remembering and forgetting, Maya thought about her mother, Lilia, who scatters bread crumbs at the end of the day for birds that aren't there and tosses slices of bread into the river for fish that vanished a long time ago. And how the day was approaching its end. And how right now, her mother was standing alone on the riverbank. And soon they'll start to be very worried about us. Or maybe there, down below, many days and nights, sunrises and sunsets, have passed, and everyone has already given up on us, and it's only here that time has stopped? And the river itself, Maya thought, that river never rests, day in and day out it churns, twisting among the yards in the village, racing stubbornly onward to the valley, rushing bubbling down the slope, white foam on its banks, as if running away from us, downward to some peaceful valley, and stops in our village for a moment only to curse it.

Maya said, We'll have to go back soon. They'll be worried about us there. They'll think something terrible has happened.

Matti said, Just a little while longer. Till the end of his story.

And the man suggested, We'll ask the darkness to hold off a while longer. We agreed with the evening a long time ago that it would approach slowly.

Maya said, But you did a terrible thing to us by taking all the animals away. And you took animals that no one was ever cruel to. You even took animals that were loved, that were happy to be part of the family, like Almon's dog, for instance, and Emanuella's cat and her three kittens. In my opinion, kidnapping the animals was even crueler than the ridicule you suffered. And you, when you decided to take revenge, did you stop for even a minute to ask who you were really taking revenge on? The ones who made fun of you? The ones who abused their animals? Or were you taking revenge on Almon and Solina and my mother and Emanuella, who you still say you loved?

Na'aman raised his shoulders and seemed to be trying to bury his neck and head between them. As if he had suddenly become ugly right in front of their eyes. And his hands began to dart about, searching for something, as if begging to be released from being hands, to be hidden, to be free to escape from their owner and never come back. And when Maya mentioned Emanuella's name, there suddenly appeared at the corners of Nehi's mouth a sort of grin that looked both forlorn and slightly malicious, a twitch of meanness that at the same time begged for a bit of sympathy.

What, you don't like it here? he said, suddenly hurt. You don't want to stay? Just a little longer? Okay. Go. I don't care. Go. After all, I'm not alone here. Go. I'll hold back the darkness so it doesn't overtake you before you reach home. Go. It doesn't matter. Go. If I really wanted revenge, I could keep you here with me forever. Or at least I could counter your questions with a few difficult ones of my own. Why, for example, do all of you let your parents shut you up every time you try to find out what really happened before you were born? Why do you always let them change the subject and talk about other things? Maybe it's because you didn't really want to find out, to know? Maybe you were even afraid to know? Because it's easier to be lied to and not have the burden of all your parents' secrets placed on your young shoulders? Not just the two of you, but all the children of the village? How convenient it was for you to have your parents keep their shame and guilt to themselves and not taint you as well. Isn't that so? Or maybe you even guessed what the truth was, but your guess frightened you too much. Because if your guess was correct, then suddenly, from this day on, no one will be allowed to hurt or ridicule anyone else. And how would we live and amuse ourselves without occasionally humiliating someone? Without a touch of abuse, without mockery, without occasionally stepping on someone else?

Maya said, Look, Nehi, you yourself are mocking the rest of us now. And you're rather enjoying it, aren't you?

Na'aman was so lonely that he learned to speak to animals in their own tongues. Several years later, when the entire village began saying he had whoopitis and kept their distance from him and threw stones and pieces of roof tiles at him from farther off, he found himself a cave in the mountains and lived there alone, surviving on mushrooms and berries. Only sometimes, at night, he would wait till all the villagers were safely shut up in their houses, then he would go down to drift like a shadow through the narrow streets of the dark village.

To this day, he still goes down there. In the dark. Goes down only when everyone is behind their iron shutters and iron bolts. Goes down to roam the village because he's sad up here, despite his love for the creatures, despite all the wonders of the mountain.

In the dark of the moonless night, he wanders through the empty, narrow streets. And sometimes, he and Nimi tiptoe around together, approaching one house or another, peeping between the slats of the shutters to watch families quietly immersed in their last, peaceful preparations for sleep.

Because it's pleasant to listen through the curtains to the bedtime story a father is reading to his daughter, or to a mother sitting on the corner of her little son's bed humming a lullaby that brings a sudden ache to Nehi's old heart. And sometimes he likes listening through a half-closed window to the sleepy bedtime conversations between tired couples as they drink their nightly tea in the warmth of their room. Or when they sit and read in the silence of the night or when the people living in one of the houses occasionally exchange a few words that break Nehi's heart and bring tears to Nimi's eyes, simple words like: You know, you look really lovely in that flowered robe. Or: I'm so glad you finally went down and fixed the cellar steps today, thank you. Or: That bedtime story you told the boy tonight was beautiful and it reminded me of my childhood.

So he wanders among the deserted yards at night for two or three hours, alone, and sometimes with Nimi, until the last light in the village is turned off in Almon's window. Because I'm jealous. Jealous of them because of all the things they have that I never had and never will have.

Maya said, It seems that things can be pretty sad up here too.

But you see, I didn't take the animals, Nehi said. Certainly not all of them. One night, they all simply got up and left the village and followed me to the highest mountain forests. Even animals that loved their homes and couldn't decide whether to stay or go—like Zito, Almon the Fisherman's dog, and Emanuella's tortoise-shell cat and her kittens—even they decided in the end to go up with me, together with all the others. Not because I cast a spell on them and not because I wanted to take revenge, but because even animals have the fear that you know so well, the fear of not being like everyone else, of staying behind when everyone is going, or going when everyone is staying. None of them wants to be without its flock or be thrown out of the herd. You edge a little bit away from the swarm just once or twice, and they won't let you back in. Because you already have whoopitis.

At first, Na'aman built himself a small shack from branches in a forest clearing on the mountaintop, and every day, his friends, the animals, supplied him with everything he needed: the sheep and goats let him milk them, the chickens gave him eggs, the bees made honey, the river brought him snow water, the squirrels gathered fruit and berries for him, and the little moles dug up potatoes. Long, long processions of ants even carried grains of wheat from the fields in the valley so he could bake himself some bread. The wolves and the bears watched over and protected him. And so he lived for years and years, far from all humans and surrounded by the love of live creatures, big and small. The frogs shortened his name from Na'aman to Na'ai, and in the accent of the jackals and night birds, Na'ai became Nehi.

Many years ago, on one of his trips into the wilderness, Nehi came to a hidden valley behind seven mountain ridges and beyond seven deep ravines and found a small bush that had white and purple fruit growing on it that tasted almost exactly like meat. Nehi called them beefberries. He planted the seeds of the beefberry bush all over the forest and cultivated them till they multiplied and spread, because he discovered that all the predators liked the taste of the beefberry and ate so heartily that they had no need to prey on weaker creatures.
So Nehi was able slowly to train the tiger to play with baby goats, and the wolf to watch over the flocks of sheep and even go to sleep among them so the sheep's soft wool could warm their bodies on cold nights. Creatures no longer preyed on each other in those forests, and no animal was ever afraid of predators. But they didn't forget completely.

And after another stroll around the garden, Maya and Matti already knew how to utter a few words in sparrow-song and a sentence or two in cat-talk and in cow- lowing, and they understood a breath here and a flutter there of the language of flies. Nehi and all the creatures in the garden begged Matti and Maya to stay there with them for at least a few weeks.

But Matti took Maya's hand and said, They're worried about us down there. We shouldn't distress them so much.

Then Matti also remembered that right now, at this very moment, just as darkness fell, all the houses in the village were being sealed, all the shutters were being closed, and every door was being locked with two or three iron bolts. Their parents must be so worried about them, and maybe the whole village had gone out to look for them with torches and maybe they'd already given up searching and were in their houses now, each family behind its bars and iron shutters.

So Maya and Matti asked Nehi to send a swift deer with them, or a dog, to show them the way home down the mountain. Of course, they promised never ever to tell anyone about what they'd seen with their own eyes or what they'd heard with their own ears in the mountain demon's hiding place, and never to say a single word about all the magic they'd seen in his garden.

But Nehi once again gave them a pensive smile, a modest, almost shy, even sad smile, but a tiny bit sly, a smile that didn't begin on his lips, but in the wrinkles around his eyes, and spread down through the network of furrows in his cheeks till it stopped and lingered briefly at the corners of his mouth. And after his smile, he said that he needed no such promises: after all, even if they did tell it all down there, even if they piled up detail upon detail upon detail, who would ever believe them? All the villagers would only laugh at them and ridicule them if they told what they had seen: the punishment of doubters is to always cast doubt, even on the doubt they themselves cast. And the punishment of the suspicious is to suspect everyone all the time. To suspect even themselves and their own suspicions.