Tree

Tree. Tree. Tree. Behind the trees, a field, and then trees again. Just a normal forest. Pines, maples, a few birches, their light bark adding variety to the monotonous wall of the Pomeranian bush. No, the forest is never monotonous, uniform. Even when there's no wind, each tree, each twig, and each leaf lives its own, isolated life. They don't rush, observing the world slowly, carefully. They don't flee.

The field is beautiful. Still green, springlike. It didn't yet smell of summer. It was still basking in the June sun after winter. It waited patiently for summer. Light green and delicate. Young grain is delicate; no one will harm it. A young person is delicate too...

On the other side of the road, it's the same. Always the same. The landscape is unchanging, painfully boring and predictable. You can close your eyes and still see the same trees, at the same distance, with the same leaves. The same fields, meadows, forests, and sky, the same everywhere. Only the land was different, unsown on this side, and dirty, barren sand. A small hill, bushes, and beyond, sand and sand. It smelled of earth and dust. And heat. Crows on the sand. There are no ravens here, and the ravens are beautiful, a little scary. The crows are ugly and funny. And they keep screaming.

I wonder if they're looking for grain? After all, no one has sown anything... I wonder what crows eat? I know they eat everything, but what do they like?

They're not entirely ugly; they fit this land abandoned by man and nature. To a forest without mushrooms and berries, to fields unsown with rye, and meadows without grazing cows. There were no cows in any of the meadows. As usual. Every summer the same, the same long and boring route, a landscape titled "This is what Poland C looks like." There's nothing worth noticing, nothing catches the eye. These empty fields and barren forests practically scream: don't go there. There's nothing there!

The road. A ribbon between the hills. Narrow and long. And purple. Why does the gray of the asphalt become so magical and unreal on beautiful days? So wonderful that you could instantly like this world, or at least smile as you watch it wind like a plum selvedge.

(Not this world, not this road, let's stop deceiving ourselves; this wonder of nature sprawled across a too-large country in the middle of Europe is impossible to like; it's like a faded newspaper photo from fifty years ago, like a boring, coarse-grained propaganda film played in a village cinema that no one watches, even though everyone is seated.)

A car drove by, something small and rusty. It must have been red once. New cars don't drive on these roads. Cars rarely drive here, people rarely walk. Maybe no one cultivates this field anymore, but only, out of longing for humanity, once every few years covers itself with a blanket of grain?

It was warm. Hot, for June in this area. It usually rains all summer here, you can stay in bed and hide from the world, you can watch the drops and dream of the vast, warm sea. You can cry, scream, complain, hide, and be offended.

When the sun shines, you have to have fun.

(I guess that's why holidays were invented in the first place—to have fun, to get tired, to have fun, and then go back to school in September; to experience a multitude of fantastic adventures, like those from young adult books, so many of which are now in bookstores, except that no one reads young adult books these days, so maybe there's no need for adventures anymore, maybe boring holidays aren't so bad?)

The road was steaming, and the trees on the horizon blended into the sky. The sky was beautiful too. A deep blue, like the ones on postcards from the Adriatic. Like spilled ink on Mom's favorite tablecloth.

Nora looked away from the sky. Ink and tablecloth have bad associations. She looked down at the road, at the place where the asphalt meets the grass and flowers. She stared for a long time, the colors of the grass, flowers, pebbles, and sand forming fanciful, escaping patterns.

(And yet, it's we who are escaping...)

And again, the escaping streaks of red, green, and gray asphalt. Nora smiled to herself, but turned her head away from the window. She looked forward, and a smile, the first in a long time, uncontrolled, froze on her face.

Her father was behind the wheel. She could see his profile, perhaps a little too confident, a little ironic, and definitely nervous.

(Unless he had to go to this backwater with me).

Beside her, her mother, impeccably coiffed, never, even when she was driving to the countryside, forgetting that whole morning game of elegant woman: shampoo, conditioner, curling iron, comb, spray. Always the same. A whole battery of cosmetics tightly covering her young, pretty face, carefully concealing her nervousness and unrelenting tension.

Nora could only see the top of her mother's head over the back of the car. He wasn't smiling, nothing in the car was smiling, nothing was enjoying the vacation. From Nora's vacation, from those brief moments when you can forget—or rather, from those rare moments when you can remember everything, think about everything calmly, and curse everything silently, sitting in the apple tree furthest from the house. A

deathly silence reigned, not even the soft whine of the engine breaking it. Reconciled by their shared cause and their shared silence, the parents observed the world with practiced calm, or rather, watched, not seen. They perfectly played their assigned roles: proud parents taking their older child on another independent vacation away from home, entrusting their child to an elderly, bigoted aunt for safekeeping, reconciled and even joyfully awaiting a summer away from their daughter.

(Are you happy to be going, Norcia? Aunt Hela will be there, and Alinka will probably come with Karolek? And there will be apples, and plums, and those, well... Oh! Currants. Mom, have you ever been to that remote place in June? There's nothing there. Nothing!!)

Nora wasn't reconciled; she didn't want to go, she didn't want to keep quiet. The tops of her parents' heads demanded silence, but like a condemned man, she had nothing left to lose. In one word, she could start a storm; one word, and they would never reach her aunt. Nora was already, already opening her mouth, but she knew she wouldn't say anything, because it wasn't her parents, but this dull landscape, destined for her, that encouraged silence.