SAPLING #63 — Bugging out
It hadn’t even been a hot day, let alone a hot night. But after a good deal of tossing and turning, it was all too clear — this was going nowhere. The shutters of the French farmhouse were ajar. The bug screen has been checked twice. I had even read an amusing chapter featuring a Christmas celebration, of all things. (That’s what you get when you fail to properly inform yourself on a book, and few things are as annoying as reading a winter story in the middle of summer.)
A few hours earlier, I had strolled through a fabulously landscaped garden. Now, I was rediscovering it, eyelids closed. Once again, I waded among the gigantic sacred lotus leaves, scrutinized from all sides by the multi-eyed seedpods perforating the foliage.
The image roused rather than relaxed me. I rolled onto my side, pulling my knees up to my chest in an imitation of the juvenile ferns. I navigated the bamboo labyrinth, but once again I found myself entering the next part of the garden too soon. I lost my way among the multitude of lines and colours in the sketches I had made. Perhaps I should add another layer of colour? A first to-do for the next day? Or perhaps add a character? Maybe this drawing could be used in…
She left the center of the city behind her. The houses were built further apart and the nicely tended gardens grew larger, brimming with shrubs and flowers already tired of the summer. It was nice to walk here, only a shame she couldn’t find anything to eat. Her stomach was sticking to her ribs like a deflated balloon.
Suddenly, she saw them: big scarlet apples, thick and firm as clenched fists. Her feet sped up all by themselves. The apple tree was growing in an immense garden with a cast iron gate around it, that went on as far as the eye could see, without any sign of either gateway or entrance. There had to be a house, hidden somewhere between all those trees and bushes, but the vegetation was obscuring it from view.
Whoever had such a big garden could spare a few apples. The gate didn’t pose an obstacle: a child’s hands have enough at a few slender iron curls to hold on to. In the blink of an eye she was up on the gate, balancing like a bird.
‘What do you think you are doing?’
She hadn’t heard the man approaching, but all of a sudden he was standing across the street from her. Fingers suddenly shaking, she held on to the bars.
‘It’s not forbidden to climb your own fence, is it?’ It was the first thing she could come up with.
‘You live there?’
She hoped fervently that the owner of the enormous garden, whoever he was, didn’t happen to be an acquaintance, and nodded defiantly.
‘Why not use the entrance?’
She grinned. ‘Can you see it anywhere?’
He started crossing the street, walking up to her.
She took a decision, swung both legs over the gate and, with a well-calculated jump, landed close to the apple tree.
One of the branches was bowing down low enough. Standing on tip-toe, she reached for the fruit. She picked a single apple and sank her teeth into it, tasting the full, red flavor of relief, and turned to face the man at the other side of the gate.
‘See you, mister.’ She smiled at him full-mouthedly.
He didn’t say anything, just kept looking at her. He had a thin face and dark eyes. With the bars separating them, she suddenly had the odd feeling that he was the one imprisoned behind a fence, and she had just succeeded in reaching free land.
She waved at him one more time, then walked into the garden like she knew exactly where she was going.
It was quiet between the trees. This place was more like a park than a garden, more like a forest than a park. A rivulet made its way through the landscape, reaching a pond half-hidden among the vegetation. She spotted a small bridge, but she couldn’t find a path leading up to it, and before long, she felt the plants closing in on her on all sides.
She took another bite of the apple and looked back at where she had come from. She could still discern the apple tree, but from where she was standing, the gate seemed to have disappeared.
Suddenly she felt exhausted. She chose a nearby tree and sat down with her back against it. The branches overhead were rustling gently, spots of sunlight dancing between the leaves and across the bark. There was a word for it, she knew, for that light, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She wondered about the man be had talked to her? Had he walked on? Or was he still standing at the gate, gloomy-eyed, peering into the vegetation? Perhaps he knew the word she meant. She wished she could go back and ask him. But thinking about him made her sad. She was tired. She sighed and closed her eyes, just for a moment…
Sleep-dazed, I became aware of the noise above my head. In an old French farmhouse you never sleep by yourself. During the day, the regulars snooze in their sweltering shelters, gathering plenty of energy for their wild nights. At first I thought I heard mice, but some of the rather sinister screeches were an indication that it might actually be a family or marten holding court upstairs, and if the racket was anything to judge by, they were tearing the place down. The youngsters were chasing each other around in the ceilings, zigzagging through the rafters.
Across the incessant chirping of crickets I heard an owl call. Would owls eat marten? Could the attic lodge an owl? Once, I had found some chicken skulls up there. In my mind I could see a majestic owl, navigating between the dusty beams without making a sound, an experienced stunt pilot. Coming out of nowhere, firm claws assaulting their prey. A cloud of dust, high, frantic squeaks. Wings closing, silence. End of film.
That owls eat mice is a certainty, but whether their menu will sometimes show marten, was something I had to look up. The region had definitely known a good mouse year, judging by the multitude of birds of prey ruling the skies during the day. Silently, they were directed up by the wind, carried up on the thermals, higher and higher. My thoughts circled along with them into the blue sky… The great nothing was beckoning — until a bigger mammal decided to go for a pee. A door slammed, footsteps down the hall, another door, the sound of a tap running. Even the upstairs animals were startled, suddenly there was more rustling up in the attic. And my sleep resolutely bugged out.
Wide awake, I decided to get up and make my way down the staircase like a nocturnal animal. I could finish that garden drawing. If only I hadn’t left that particular scetch book in the car… Opening the shutters and unlocking my own car at this time of night would probably wake and worry the others unneccarily. So much for bravery — I tiptoed from the bed to the sofa.
I read a bit, browsed the digital newspaper and tried my hand at a number of online battles. As usual, the early birds would be the ones to notice that the sun was starting a new day in office. The lamp could now be extinguished, natural light found its way to what had become my temporary work place: an antique living room table with extravagantly twisted legs, standing in the middle of a Persian rug that was soft underfoot. A beam of light fell on my opened sketchbook, the smaller one, that had been in the house and in which I had just finished drawing a black kite. Eyes burning, I looked into the sunlight. Perhaps I could add this night gone by as an extra layer to this sketch. Or I could write it down instead.
As I was jotting down the final words, the diurnal inhabitants started stumbling down the stairs. The smell of fresh coffee lured me to the breakfast table. All the nocturnal creatures could go back to sleep, now.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
