T
I am in the silver birch glade, looking for the last of the birch sap. The sun is higher now and I know that just beyond this glade Grandmother is waiting, and at home in the kitchen Mama is cooking. I don’t need to know anything else. I am safe.
The sap finishes at the end of the snow, before the new leaves come in spring, but sometimes there is a little left in the trees at this time of year.
I check the jars at the base of two slender trunks, but they are empty, and I carefully pull the metal funnels out from the bark. I kneel down beside the last tree and see that the container is half-filled with cloudy liquid. It is the last sap of the year. I pull the piece of metal out and take a sip from the jar. It is sweet; both tangy and musty at the same time.
I set the jar down in between some of the tree roots and then I stand and put my hand against the tree trunk. It seems that I can hear the rounded green leaves above me whispering and chattering to one another. A bird flies up from somewhere in the glade, and then another, and I stretch back my neck, squinting upwards, and I see the gathering of twigs at the meeting of two branches and the sun shining down and I see that it is their nest.
I put my other hand on the trunk and I lay my cheek against it, the silver bark cool and smooth, almost like cloth, and through my skin, I sense the birds high up in these branches and the shape of their nest. I know the leaves moving and willing to move, and the wind guiding them. I feel the strength of the soil flowing up through the trunk and pouring out into every branch, twig, every budding leaf. I feel the pull of water rising up through the roots, and I know the simple being of this tree here, on this springtime day; here, in this sunshine; here, in this rich black earth.
I sense the glade all around me – the laughter of every tree and the light in every dancing leaf – and I say, “Thank you! Thank you for the sap, for your silver juice!” And the glade laughs, and it says, Angela, you are welcome! And I turn my head to the tree and I kiss the bark and do a little dancing skip around the trunk, and then I stroke the bark with my hand. I bend to pick up the jar of sap and I walk out of the glade.
And I know that for the rest of today I will be carrying this laughter inside me; this thanks, these dancing leaves. I am safe.
T
Mother is leaning over a cooking pot and in front of her are piles of chopped herbs in different shades of green – sorrel, parsley, dill, spring onions. She picks up a handful of sorrel and drops it into the pot of steaming borsch.
“Mama, come into the garden!” I call to her. I enter the kitchen and take her hand and pull her and she says, “Wait, Angela. Wait!” while she turns down the flame and slides a lid over the soup. She glances across to the deep saucepan where the skinned rabbit is marinating.
I lead her out of the door and down the garden path to the bottom of the garden. There it is – a flowerbed full of late lily of the valley. A blanket of dazzling white and green spread out over the earth. A thousand tiny bells and the sweetest scent imaginable all around them.
We stand before it, and Mama looks down at the flowers and then she looks at me with a smile I have never seen before on her face, and she reaches out to me and I slip my hand into hers, and it feels so small and so protected beneath her fingers.
“Little swallow. Yak ya tebe kohayu. How I love you so.”
I hear the birds singing in the lilac tree nearby and I close my eyes on this late spring morning and my hand is in Mama’s hand and I feel something light flowing from her hand to mine and I think, what if she could?
I whisper to her to close her eyes and I know when she has closed them because I feel another rush of lightness from her hand to mine and I whisper again – “Mama, fly!” – and suddenly Mama and I are great white storks flying through the clear blue air and the wind is rushing cold and bright against us and against our feathers, and we are pushing the air down with powerful wide strokes and Mama’s wide, strong wings are beating next to mine and my smaller wings are beating down, down beside her and I feel her powerful love protecting me with each beat, beat, beat. We are flying over the rooftops of our village – some thatched, some red-tiled – with the long strips of gardens trailing out from tiny houses and the spring-lit trees below us and I can feel Mama’s joy absorbing the completeness of every movement, every barb of every feather creating each stroke of her wings and carrying her beside me through this bright, rushing air. The lightness, the power, the wind. We fly and fly towards a huge nest at the top of a tree and I feel a pull towards it and Mama comes to land in a cave of twigs and I land behind her and she turns and wraps her wide wings around me, little bird disappearing into softness.
From the most wonderful place in the world, I breathe in, and I think that I could stay in this long, white moment forever and never leave it, never breathe out, never release this happiness back into the flow of time.
Mama, Mamochka, Mamusya, Matenka moiya!
“How I love you so,” she murmurs again.
T
Grandmother steps down the grassy bank to the river. In the reflection, she can see her daughter and granddaughter standing before a blanket of white flowers, hands clasped and smiling. She steps into the water with bare feet, and it is cold in the late spring morning, with a slow current pulling her forwards. Grandmother faces towards the flow of the current so that the river is curving around her body, and she looks downstream. She sees two birds flying in the distance over the thatched village rooftops. A great white stork with wide wings beating and a smaller stork beside it.
“My daughter has returned,” she says to the river, and the water acknowledges her words, flowing around her body and sharing her joy.
Grandmother watches the reflection of the birds until the two white shapes merge into one, and then she closes her eyes.
“It is possible,” she says. “Angela is showing her the way.”
T
Lyuda opens her eyes and blinks several times, the dazzle of the bright flowers filling her gaze. She looks down at Angela beside her – the little soft hand in her own – and she feels an overwhelming desire not to move. She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes again and feels the sunshine on her hair, and the warmth of Angela’s fingers. She smells the sweetness of the lily of the valley and the nearby river and the fading lilac and sees a flash of white wings and she thinks, I could stay in this moment forever.
She holds the air deep inside her, and feels a pressure; not just in her lungs, but in her head. She feels a familiar pull, a warm insistent pull, and a voice speaking to her. The voice knows her.
There is no light, the voice says. There is no light here for you. This is not where you belong. She knows that what the voice says is true. She knows that when she breathes out, when she releases the breath, then she will be releasing herself to this truth. She knows that this is not her light. She knows where she belongs.
At last, she cannot hold it any longer. She exhales, and as she does so, her face folds down and the darkness surges up within her. It is the most natural feeling in the world. She has failed again. She closes her eyes.
Angela is pulling her hand away, laughing. She spreads her arms out on each side of her and waves them up and down. “Look, Mama,” she laughs. “I am a bird! Mama, can you do it, too? We can play at being birds!”
Lyuda shudders, and shakes her head. She looks at Angela and sees another flash of white wings, and at the same time she hears the voice in her head, repeating the words.
There is no light here for you.
For a moment, she stands frozen, unable to understand what she can do, but her eyes are resting on Angela, and she has the thought, I can try. Perhaps it is not where I belong. But I can try.
She takes a breath and slowly raises her arms on each side of her, and then rises on her toes.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes! Look! I can do it!”
She waves her arms up and down, the voice in her head repeating, repeating, and then she turns around and the skirt of her dress swirls aroun
d her body.
Angela watches her and also turns on her tiptoes and then she runs to her mother and wraps her arms around her waist, and Lyuda wraps her arms around her daughter, and the sunshine falls quietly down onto their spring garden.
28
Lyuda lies half-waking in the bed for a few moments before pushing back the sheet and sitting up. She rubs her eyes and smooths her hair back from her face, and then she smiles and stretches her arms above her head as far as they will go, spreading her fingers out wide. Her body tenses in pleasure, and then relaxes.
She turns to look at Angela, who is just emerging from sleep. What a lovely dream, she thinks. Flying. And I was so strong. My wings were so strong. I could go anywhere. She closes her eyes and extends her fingers again, as wide as she can, and she starts to laugh. Angela half-opens her eyes.
“Mamochka,” she says.
Lyuda slips out of the bed and Angela moves aside to let her sit down, and she strokes her daughter’s soft hair, untangling it with her fingers.
“Mamochka,” Angela says again, and Lyuda feels an overpowering desire to wrap this tiny girl inside her great white wings, and hold her there forever.
“My dearest,” she says, and then something dark moves across her heart. She can feel the voice ready to start pulling her back and she rejects it with a shake of her head. She leans down and puts her arms around the little girl and lays her cheek against her soft cheek, and for a moment they are flying again, and she feels that rushing air so cold against her feathers, the power of her wings, the lift and fall as she moved them. Beat, beat, beat.
“Mama, Mamochka!” Angela wriggles beneath her and Lyuda pulls herself up, laughing.
“Sorry!” she says. “I was daydreaming!”
Angela sits up in bed and giggles, then pushes the hair back over her shoulders. She rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands.
“Mama, play with me in the garden today. Will you? After breakfast? And then I’ll help you make the soup.”
“Yes,” says Lyuda. “Yes, my love, I will.”
She reaches out and strokes Angela’s hair again, and then she gets up from the bed and thinks, I feel so light! She goes through the door into the kitchen in her nightgown and when Angela cannot see, she rises up on her tiptoes and turns a quick pirouette, her white nightdress swirling around her, and she laughs.
T
The Nightspirit watches Lyuda and sees the strings of darkness weaving around her heart. She sees the laughter pushing them away and then watches them creeping silently back. She sees Lyuda turn a pirouette on the kitchen floor and the shower of bright light flung out on all sides of her, and the kitchen lit up in a swirl of white and gold. She sees Angela plaiting her hair in a half-dream; her long, brown arms stretched out behind her back like feathered wings.
Zoryana, the time is running out, she calls to Grandmother, showing her the darkness winding around her daughter.
“She is trying,” says Grandmother. “We must let her find her way.”
Soon, the girl will not be able to hold off the darkness. It will be woven too deep into the rope. It will change her path and her decisions.
Grandmother sighs, and draws the green light of the willows around herself. She watches Lyuda in the kitchen, struggling to stay within the morning sunshine, struggling to hold on to a white-feather dream, the shadows always ready to close around her.
She sees Angela in the bedroom, pulling a white dress over her head and rubbing her eyes with small fists, getting ready to share herself with the new day.
“There is still time,” Grandmother says.
T
I sit with Grandmother on the willowbank. The afternoon is quiet and close, the water and trees murmuring in a deep, heavy tone. Mother’s old tears flow by in the river, a pale grey under the pressing heat.
“I am trying,” I say to Grandmother. “I am trying to show her, but I feel something is wrong. What if it isn’t enough? What if I can’t do it? What if she doesn’t know how to do it?”
Grandmother reaches out and touches my head with her fingertips. I close my eyes. The afternoon heat is pushing down on me and I do not want to cry, but something is building up; a fear, a frustration, even an anger.
Grandmother draws her hand over my hair.
“Let me show you something,” she says.
Her fingers are resting on my forehead, and my eyes are closed, and with her own eyes closed, Grandmother pictures a summer garden and a child running through long grass around the trunk of a lilac tree. Bright, dark eyes and laughing in shrieks. A woman stands high up above her, looking down.
“Go there,” says Grandmother softly, and I feel the increasing pressure of her fingers on my skin. “Go down, down, down. Until you are there.”
I lay my head against the willow trunk and my energy fills the memory of the child. I am laughing and running through the long grass, pulling it up on either side of me with my fists. My hands are full of this grass and I run towards the woman, standing tall above me with this long, golden hair, and I throw the grass into the air and she laughs and catches me in her arms and lifts me up so high! So high up to her breast, to her face, and she kisses me and laughs and kisses me and twirls me around in her arms so that my legs fly out backwards and I am laughing and shrieking. And then she holds me against her skin and we walk around the garden, and she is whispering in my ear, but I cannot understand the words, they are just these whispers of love pouring into me, weaving through my hair, filling me with this colour of gold, which is all around her, and we are both surrounded by this colour and it seems to be around me and wafting out from me at the same time, and Mother is murmuring into my ear and carrying me through this wild garden and behind us is a trail of light that she is creating.
And now I can make out some of the words she is saying. “Look, look, little one, look my darling, look at this, and look at that.” And everything I turn my attention to, everything I look at, turns golden.
And now, in her arms – in her warm, close arms – everything in the garden is this colour, and everything is shimmering when I look at it, even Mother’s hair, touching my face. I can see the shining strands making up the single soft curl between her cheek and mine, and there is a scent of lilac and the fistful of long grass that I am holding and warm skin and hair all mixed together, and Mother’s eyes are moving here and there, from me to the garden as she says, “Look, Look!” and I look, my eyes moving from her to a glistening flower, to this bright leaf, to this wide-winged butterfly, to this strand of grass, to this tiny bird flickering across the garden, its wings moving so fast that it seems as if they are not moving at all.
The scent is so delicious I want to keep my bright eyes open so that I can smell and look all at the same time, and Mother’s warm, warm body holding me so close, and her light flowing into me and my light flowing back into her and she says to me, “Look!”
And I laugh, because there is no other expression of the joy that I am feeling, there is no other way to say to her with every possible part of me, I love you! I love you! I love you! Because she is already saying it to me with this endless profusion of light; and she and I together, in that this light.
And while I am in this most wonderful moment, I hear Grandmother’s voice speaking to me from far away. She is calling me back with her words. She is saying something to me and Mother is saying something to me and the two voices are confusing and I can hear neither one nor the other clearly, and then Mother’s voice is fading and Grandmother’s voice is growing louder and the golden light is disappearing and I start shouting, “No! No! Let me stay!” And I feel the touch of Grandmother’s fingers on my forehead and I hear a voice saying, “Open your eyes, Angela.”
And I open my eyes and Grandmother is looking down into my face and around her head is a pale golden light, like Mother’s, as if I have carried it back to her.
And she is speaking, and I cannot speak, because the memory is so intense that I do not want to do anything that wou
ld bring me into the present moment; anything that would acknowledge, beyond a doubt, with a single word, that I am here, and not there, but Grandmother is speaking, and at last I look up into her old, blue eyes, and I see that she understands how much I want to stay there.
“You cannot stay,” she says, in the softest voice. “You cannot stay. But you had to see.”
I am not able to speak, and she is silent for a moment and draws her hand over my head, waiting for me to return.
“Your mother has been in the place that you know,” Grandmother says. “Not in the way that you go there, but she knows that light. She knew it when you were a baby. It is like a wave for her, coming and going, but she doesn’t know how to stay within the wave. She loses it, and she cannot find her way back.”
I whisper. “What can I do?” The shimmering light around Grandmother’s head is fading.
“Hold on to the memory I have shown you, and bring it back to her. She will remember, little one. She will remember.”
T
I dance into the kitchen. I have picked every flower that I could find and in my hands is a wild handful of lily of the valley and riotous daisies and sky-blue periwinkle and long grasses and twigs of green silver birch from the glade.
“Mama, look!” I call out, and she turns from the stove and her face lights up when she sees the flowers, and my face behind the flowers.
“They’re lovely!” she says.
I can smell the cooking rabbit, and I say, “Mama, can you give me a jar for the flowers? Can I take some of this water here? Is that alright?”
“Of course you can,” she says, and she takes a clean jar from the shelf next to the windowsill and she bends down and dips it into the metal water bucket against the far wall and hands it to me, and I lower the flower stalks carefully into the water so that it won’t spill onto the floor that Mama has washed, and then I hold out the jar to Mother.
“I picked them for you.” I say.
She takes the jar and brings it up to her face, and the scent of the lily of the valley and the wild grasses and the periwinkle seems to spread through the room as she breathes them in.
The Woman Behind The Waterfall Page 16