The County of Birches (3 page)

The sad and gratifying image sustained Sári through the long afternoon.

*   *   *

Too restless to coop himself up at the shop after an unnaturally quiet midday meal, Apuka drifted out onto the back lawn. He gazed quizzically at the huge elm. It had been here long before he had brought his bride to the house not even a decade into the century, more than twenty years ago. The house had appealed to him because of its proximity to the road that led from Beregszász's Jewish quarter to the vineyards and groves of the surrounding countryside. In the days of his father, the land had been Russian. Sometimes Russian, sometimes Magyar or Austro-Hungarian. In any case they had remained Jews, whoever was master. Like the tree, they were rooted here and fixed in place.

Tentatively Apuka touched the bark. It was just a tree, beautiful, shapely, a green fact he normally took satisfaction from when he left the house at dawn through the kitchen entrance. He'd glance at the tree dominating his yard, and think yes, it was anchored here. Whatever ill wind might blow through, it would hold firm.

Today the hand of fate had brushed, wrongways, up the hair on his nape. A buyer had come out to the field that morning. As a rule, Apuka preferred to conduct business in the more formal setting of his shop, but occasionally a prospective client wished to make an inspection before placing his order. Those who dealt with Apuka year after year—the local Jewish merchants and distillers—trusted the quality of his fruit, but sometimes buyers came from farther afield when the crop had failed in a neighbouring county. It was natural for them to wish to look over the vineyard.

Apuka watched, at ease in the doorway of his rough office, really a shack, as the stranger alighted from his sputtering motor car. The weather had obliged Apuka this season. His yield was nothing to be ashamed of. The fieldhands looked up too at the sound of the motor. Hereabouts farmers and businessmen alike got around mainly on foot or by horse and buggy. The buyer was a stocky fellow who wore the waist-cinched suit with breeches of a country gentleman, not the flowing coat of a town Jew.

“Herr Friedlander,” he extended his thick hand briskly towards Apuka. Odd that the stranger used the German rather than Hungarian
Úr.
Perhaps he had Austrian connections, thought Apuka.

“You, Herr, have something I believe I require,” the customer pronounced ostentatiously.

Although he was put off somewhat by the fellow's manner, Apuka wouldn't let it stand in the way of making a sale. He drew the stranger out towards the upper field that was yet to be harvested. The man's Hungarian wasn't tinged with an accent, Apuka noted after asking him where he had driven from that day. The German usage was obviously a pretension. Well, it wasn't too much to ask of himself to overlook an irritating mannerism in the interest of making a profitable deal. Apuka pointed out the dense clusters of grapes on the sun-thinned vines, inviting the client to taste each variety.

“But Herr Friedlander,” the buyer interrupted with what struck Apuka as an inappropriate laugh, “I have come to make a sale myself. In effect, to sell my own person.”

“Sir?” Apuka pulled back coolly despite his reminder to himself to give the customer the benefit of the doubt.

“I have a modest but prospering homestead near Munkács. In fact, we are mutually connected through your cousin Frau Blanka Gyorgy, whom your charming daughter Antonia visited this spring. There we enjoyed a brief, but I am flattered to believe, profound understanding.” At this he stopped and looked at Apuka so pointedly the hairs rose on the back of Apuka's neck. “In short, I'm convinced we would make a successful match.”

This odious man was claiming a personal relationship to him and his
daughter.
Apuka's head felt wet beneath his hatband. Who did this stranger think he was to come out here in his motor car and field boots, flaunting German affectations and claims to Toni's affections. What kind of a Jew would ask for a hand in marriage without, at least, a formal introduction? Indeed, what species of Jew was he? Apuka imagined himself to be a forward-thinking businessman, but certain proprieties were unassailable. No wonder this man rubbed him the wrong way with his beardless brazen face and clipped head naked beneath the blue eye of God's ether.

“Sir,” Apuka barely contained his agitation. He tipped back his hat as if to accommodate the blood that rushed to his head. “I don't know you, your family, nor even which
rebbe
you follow.”

“Rebbe?” The word plopped from the stranger's mouth, like a pebble ingested by mistake. “Jew? Herr Friedlandler,” the suitor bridled in turn, “you take me for a
Jew!
”

Apuka felt lightheaded. How could he have been so blind not to realize the stranger wasn't Jewish? He was a
goy,
not here to buy fruit from a Jewish grower, but to
take
something far more valuable. A goy, shaved and hatless, and—in all likelihood—with foreskin intact.
Asking for his daughter.
Had the natural order of things suddenly become skewed?

“How dare you,” choked Apuka, and managed again only, “how could you dare presume…?”

“Me?” demanded the goy with insufferable arrogance. “You should be grateful for the chance of marrying her out of this mire!”

Apuka sent the stranger packing so fast he didn't even learn his name. Although epithets were exchanged, he congratulated himself on maintaining the presence of mind to keep his hands off the fellow.

It unnerved him, that he was so much in the dark he didn't know what his children were up to. Had Toni been hiding, all these months, a secret correspondence? How could he be expected to protect them and help them make the right choices for their lives if they kept from him the most important details?

When Apuka had first brought his bride to the white-washed, single-storey structure that would be their home, the elm seemed to welcome them with its outstretched beckoning boughs. Inwardly, he saluted it like the sturdy sentinel it brought to mind. At that time the house consisted of two commodious chambers, the kitchen and the main room that served for everything else. They had entered through the main room's portal at the front of the house and surveyed its generous proportions. These days the door was permanently blocked by the walnut chiffonier that held drawers of table linens. And the two rooms had grown to four. The family had burgeoned, requiring first a nursery addition, then spilling into the main room and raising the need for a chamber for the parents. The rooms opened one into the other. Nights, after the lights were extinguished in the main room, Mamuka and Apuka passed through the nursery that breathed with the syncopated rhythms of their babies, to their own room that was small but luxurious in its privacy. The newel-posted bed was weighted by silk eiderdowns and goose-feathered pillows in monogrammed slipcovers. Now Apuka marvelled at how quickly their children had sprung into the world. The bed had spawned five girls and two boys in hardly a dozen years. Each child had added exponentially to his cares.

Apuka had heard Sári yelling before he turned into the yard. Liliana was always chiding the children not to shout like peasants, but you couldn't monitor them each moment. He looked across the lawn to see what the little girls were doing. That's when he spotted them hanging out on the edge of the limb as thoughtlessly as birds.

Apuka looked up into the tree again. It had failed him, or at least misled him. Its permanence didn't seem at all reassuring. There was treachery in its massive, unwieldy bulk. The thing was trapped by its roots, ingrown as much as it was growing. And it could snatch from him what was most precious with its high ensnaring fingers.

Shadows collected on the lawn, but Apuka still felt the heat of the summer sun in the warm bark. It passed into his palm. They were rooted here, he and the elm. But what about his children? When he pictured them up in the high branches of the tree, he panicked. He saw them, light-boned and delicate, singing their modern songs guilelessly. What if an ill wind were to blow through? A wind dark and fierce with malice, that blew them away to the ends of the earth? He felt unsure of himself and sensitive to his shortcomings, especially following Liliana's disapproval of his outburst. Perhaps she would think he had been reckless too chasing that anti-Semite off their land.

*   *   *

Cimi lounged along a thick bough overhead, looking down at her father. He seemed too subdued. The odd way he touched the tree made her uncomfortable. Apuka wasn't given to moody reflection. He was active and opinionated and as likely to burst into song as one of his children. What was he doing communing with a tree trunk? She wanted to distract him. Poor Apuka, to be so troubled over a big old tree that was as solid and safe as the ground.

She was up again in the offending tree, so she hesitated from calling down right away, even though Apuka looked in need of comfort. She was more accustomed to his flash rages. All she had to do was lead him on a chase; eventually he tired of his anger. Today she had circled back to the yard after shaking Apuka off her scent, then taken refuge for the afternoon in the very place no one would expect her to have the audacity to hide. For the first time Cimi regretted provoking her father. She must have upset him a great deal, she thought, to cause him to hang about like this. Poor Apuka to be so needlessly worked up. She and her siblings were as sure-footed as mountain goats. The tree was like a second home. She had lain on the branch all afternoon, idly breaking off twigs and leaves, and working them in her fingers until she found she could twine them together. As she fashioned the sticks and flakes of bark into something that had shape, she forgot all about the time despite the gnawing in her stomach. When Apuka came outside, she was just beginning to notice that the sun's rays had faded.

“Apuka,” she risked calling as he turned away. “Apuka, wait!”

The sound of Cimi's voice pulled Apuka's heartstrings. Fool, he was as sentimental as he was hot-tempered. Soon he would get teary-eyed like his daughters over a popular ballad. Cimi scrambled down the trunk and he felt a rush of gratitude as though the tree had relented and returned, unharmed, his youngest, wildest bird. Let this be a lesson then to stop brooding and count his blessings.

“There you are, you naughty child. You better come in and have a word with your sister.”

Cimi was sorry about Sári's spanking, but it was Sári's own fault that she hadn't tried to get away. She was always telling Cimi what to do as though she knew everything, but look what it had gotten her. Cimi knew Sári would blame her, and Sári could be unforgiving. Cimi nestled contentedly in Apuka's arms. Well, it wouldn't hurt to beg Sári's pardon. Cimi, after all, had escaped.

“What have you got there?” asked Apuka, noticing the circlet in her hand.

“See,” she said playfully, “I've made you a crown.”

He laughed proudly, observing the clever way she had worked the rough, hard wood of the elm. His children weren't just beautiful. They were clever and talented, blessed with the gifts of the Lord.

“That will never get around my thick skull.” Apuka patted Cimi dotingly, forgetting for once to deceive the evil eye by pretending to spit on her creation. “You'll just have to wear it yourself.”

*   *   *

Sári stirred from her pool of misery when she heard them come in. The creak of the kitchen door plucked her attention. It was about time Cimi made an appearance and got what she deserved.

“So,” pronounced Rózsa weightily, “the prodigal comes back.”

An uncertain silence hung in the air for a moment.

“On Apuka's shoulders? More like the conquering hero.” Laci's saucy rejoinder broke the tension. Led by Mamuka's barely suppressed chortle, the family burst out laughing.

To Sári, sequestered with her burden of mistreatment, their good humour felt like a slap. How could they
laugh?
A joke was all it took for them to overlook Cimi's offence?

“Yes!” Cimi chirped, quick to capitalize on the good mood, “I even have a laurel wreath like Caesar!”

Sári froze. Now Cimi evidently was showing off something the others greeted with delight. Sári hated what Cimi had made, even before she laid eyes on it. With just some trinket, Cimi had dispelled the afternoon's solemnity in a second. Was that how cheaply justice could be bought? Sári felt violated. Cimi had hurt her
again,
but everyone ignored it. Outrage staunched her tears and withered her self-pity. She felt walled off from her family by her sense of injury. Sári was the good child. That should count for something!

She remembered the bible story she had puzzled over more than once since the first time she heard it, the story about Noah and the flood. Sári sympathized with the Lord's desire to wash away evil. She readily accepted the premise that the world had gone bad and just one man alone remained true to the laws of the Lord. One good man and his family remained among a world of God-deniers and sinners, and they deserved to be rewarded. She even accepted that the Lord would spare only two of each kind; after all, the other species were just animals. She imagined the ark rocking forty days and forty nights under a black sky—the lightless, endless days. They must have become very attached to each other, man and beast alike. The last ones left on the face of the earth.

What Sári couldn't understand was why Noah
twice
released birds to see if the waters had receded. The second bird was a dove. What about the first? A nameless bird released too soon, it flew high and wide but didn't return. That didn't seem fair. The bird was just doing what it was told. A premature courier, it was defeated by the flood and dark clouds and not a dry twig in sight. Of all the Lord's punishments, this one seemed to Sári altogether heartless and wasteful. A blameless bird sent out at the Lord's command, and what for? Was He not all-knowing? He was fully aware that the floods had not subsided.