Gone to the Forest A Novel

8



Tom and the girl sit in the kitchen. Tom leans forward. If the old man dies that will be one thing, he tells her. But what if he recovers and lives? His father looks out the window and does not seem to see the change in the land. He talks to Tom about what they will do next year. He tells him about the improvements that must be made. They will open the fish farm once the water runs clear, they will add another pool, they will open up new trails, maybe a second lodge.

Tom does not think the old man sees the change in the country or the change in his own body. Tom does not try to convince him otherwise. He does the opposite. It is like playing a game of charades. He tells and he does not tell, he does not see why he should do either. The image of the father is gone, but Tom is still afraid of him. Afraid for him. That part of the relationship remaining intact. Tom drinks his tea and asks the girl how much the old man knows, how much he remembers.

She shrugs. He knows plenty, she tells him. He knows more than you know, more than you and me put together. He tells her this cannot be the case. He asks if she has been listening to what he has been saying.

She shakes her head. You have known him forever. How can you know him so little? He is lying in the bed but there is nothing weak about him. He is lying in the bed and he is going but until he is gone the old man is still there. Do you understand?

He understands. He looks at the girl. He becomes more attached to her by the day. Also to the child growing in her belly. Toward whom he feels proprietary. His idea of what life will look like after the old man’s death being tied up in the woman, also in the child that is not his own. She heaves her belly around the house and now she stops to catch her breath, she holds her belly in her hands like she is worried it will fall to the ground. Her skin is growing dull and her hair dry. She looks as if the child inside her is draining her of life, the growing child and the dying man.

Tom asks if she is getting enough to eat. If she is getting enough rest. He tells her she should try not to worry too much. She tells him that she is fine. Everything is fine. Thank you for asking. She knows that he is doing his best. His best is not good enough but she sees that it is something. They are beginning to grow tired. They are starting to be ground down by the old man’s dying.

Both slept poorly the night before. The old man could not stop coughing and called to them continuously—for water, for light, for a goddamned cigar. The girl brought him one and then he ignored both her and the cigar. He is beyond cigars. They know this. She knew this when she brought it to him and still she brought it to him. She allowed herself this. She thinks it must be hard for Tom, Tom who would not have brought the cigar and will therefore never be free.

She thinks: Tom does not know how to love the old man so he loves the land instead. She had seen this from the start. His emotion toward the old man unresolved. His feeling long misdirected. Even now, he would like to stay on the farm. In this house, in this room, at this table if possible. He clings to the land and the farm and really he is holding on to his father. Whom he hates and loves in equal measure. A wave of pity and she reminds herself that the problems of the farm have long been in place. Some of them too long to solve or change.

The girl leans forward.

“How much money is there?”

He looks up.

“Money?”

“Yes. Money. How much money is left?”

He shakes his head and looks blank. His expression is stupid, stupid without thought or pretense. Which cannot be right. The old man said there was more to Tom than met the eye. He said that Tom could be canny, on occasion. Good with money. Good with numbers. He had left the farm—not in good hands but in hands that would do. That was all he said. But the girl listened.

The girl listened and that is why she knows that Tom knows more than he is letting on. She believes this because she needs to. The old man will die. And then what will become of them? She has staked a great deal on Tom’s good hands. On the protection of the land, however reduced it may be. She sits with her knees apart to accommodate her belly, she sits back into her chair. She clears her throat to show she means business and takes a good long look at him.

“The money.”

Tom appears startled by the sharpness in her voice.

“There is not much.”

“How much?”

“Very little.”

“What has happened to it?”

He shrugs.

“There was not that much to begin with. There was not money. There was land.”

“How much land remains?”

“There are still some pastures.”

The old man is wrong. His son is an idiot. He stares at her and does not know what he is saying. She leans forward.

“Tell me what is left.”

“They took almost everything.”

“Tell me what is left.”

“Enough for a small farm. That is what we are. A small farm.”

She can see that it pains him to say this. He is not without vanity. He is not a man without want. But that want is small and it is compromised, it has undergone a lifetime of atrophy. She sees that she will need to do the wanting for both of them. She leans back and looks at him. She wills her voice steady.

“But there is still land.”

“Yes.”

“And in what condition, since the eruption and the ash?”

He does not reply. He blinks and then wets his mouth.

“I haven’t looked.”

“Are the cattle able to pasture?”

“They tell me that it will be fine.”

“Who tells you this?”

“The farmhands.”

“Which ones?”

“The farmhands.”

She looks at him and knows that he has no idea. It has been too much for him, he has not spent these past months drawing up business plans. There have been other things to worry about. Well and he has been through hell but so has she. She hoists herself to her feet, panic rising.

“We will go and look. Now.”

“We can’t leave him alone.”

“Of course we can.”

He licks his lips nervously.

“Right now we need to take care of him. We agreed, remember? That is what we need to do.”

She shakes her head.

“I will wait for you at the stables. We will bring Jose.”

She goes out into the hall and looks for Jose. Jose does not like her. She knows that he does not like or trust her. But he listens to her. He does as he is told. Having been the first to realize the old man was dying. The question is only this: who will come out on top? The son or the girl or the two together? She can see the question vibrate inside him. He is armed with the instinct to survive and it is ugly, but then she herself is the same. The two of them understand each other.

She walks out into the entrance hall. From here she can see the other wings, the wings that have been closed, sitting in darkness, windows shuttered. She thinks about the old man’s talk. He is half in delirium but is still more shrewd than the rest. It is not crazy to imagine there is money in the house. They would have to give up the cattle but they could take visitors, visitors who would fish and ride and pay like before, once sanity has been restored to the land. It is not impossible to think this might happen.

She quickens her pace as she leaves the hall. She reminds herself that she is looking for Jose.

She finds him outside. Tending the kitchen garden. Working over the pea shoots and the beets and the asparagus and the lettuces. Things that grow and that she knows nothing about. She stands in the garden in her robe and slippers and realizes how little they leave the house. It is warmer than she expected, well into spring. She watches Jose bend over the plants. She wonders who has told him to tend the garden, who has remembered to do that.

“Jose!”

He looks up when she calls and stands. To see what she wants.

“Yes.”

“Tom and I are going to take a tour of the property. Do you know the new borders?”

He nods.

“Will you show us?”

He nods again.

“We will meet you at the stables in half an hour.”

She returns to the house. She is a woman of imagination but it does not occur to her to wonder how much longer Jose will remain. How much longer Celeste and the farmhands will stay. Why they do not leave and start their own farm, claim their own acre of land. Their loyalty is taken for granted—by Tom, Carine, the old man. Its meaning never examined or perceived.

Back in the kitchen, Tom is still sitting at the table. The girl does not see what it is like for him. He understands this at once. She proposes a life, an idea of a life. But even as he grasps at it, the seed of his confusion grows heavy and unwieldy. He can feel that it is starting to sprout. She makes preparations for the future and the shoots press up around him, he worries about hiding them, he is certain that his father will spot the new growth any moment now. It is beyond his control, it cannot be suppressed. But this is not something he can explain to the girl, who would not understand, it is not even something he can explain to himself.

Tom goes back to the kitchen in search of Celeste. He finds her and tells her that they are going out. She asks him how long they will be gone and he thinks and then says that he does not know. He does not know how long it takes to circle the property because he does not know how big it is. It is the first time he has faced the concrete evidence—the physical borders—of the farm’s contraction. Celeste asks him if the girl is going with him and he tells her that she is. She makes a sharp sound in her mouth to show him that she disapproves. He tells her that it was the girl’s idea in the first place and then says they will go no faster than a walk, a trot, certainly not a canter or a gallop.

He turns and leaves, feeling like a fool. At the stables, the girl is already waiting. She sits on a rock with her arms wrapped around her belly. She looks like she has been sitting there for a long time. She looks up at him.

“Finally.”

“I was speaking with Celeste.”

She heaves herself up and looks at him without replying. He goes into the stables and she sits down again. Hands on her belly. The lead baby grows and it grows. She sits on the rock and she looks like she is about to roll over onto the ground.

Tom brings the horses out. With some effort they get her onto the mare and she grips the reins and the saddle and she looks secure enough. There is determination in her face. She urges the mare forward without waiting. Tom and Jose mount and then follow her out the stable yard.

They ride up the valley and across the fields. Tom has always favored the pasture but the farm is oriented to the river. The house looks to the river, the gate frames the river, the windows and the French doors and the veranda. In the direction of the fields there is no veranda or French doors and very few windows. When the old man drew up the specifications for the house he did not know about the day when they would have nothing but a pittance of river front to their name.

They ride and are silent. Tom sees the girl glare at him. She would like him to question Jose. She would like him to gather information about the fortunes of the farm, the state of their affairs. Tom is not prepared to do this, on some level he has not fully understood or accepted the reduction of the farm. He looks and does not know what is theirs and what is not. He sees lushness around him but has no idea what that lushness is worth, he does not know what they can hope to preserve.

He hesitates. Then he asks Jose how the cattle are faring. Jose rides ahead and speaks to him over his shoulder.

“They are fine, they are not bad.”

“When will they take the herd to the auction?”

Jose shrugs.

“I do not think you should worry.”

He does not elaborate. Jose never elaborates. They continue across the pasture in the direction of the hills. The girl is silent. Jose points to the edge of the field.

“That is the north border of the land.”

They peer to where he points. It is in spitting distance. Tom fingers the reins.

“There?”

“There.”

Jose turns and now they follow no path in particular, they meander across the fields. They trace the border of a piece of land that makes no sense. Jose points again and tells them this is the west border of the land. This is the east border of the land. He turns. The girl pulls up beside them and now she speaks.

“Where are the other fields?”

Jose shakes his head.

“There are no other fields.”

“Tom showed me the map.”

“The map is out of date.”

The girl laughs and pats the mare on the neck.

“Impossible.”

“But true.”

“How?”

“The Government is becoming desperate. It is making more and more concessions. Each week there are announcements on the radio.”

He looks at the girl. She turns pale. They have not listened to the radio since their return from the city and it has been one month, it has been longer. She grips the reins tighter but shakes her head defiantly.

“They cannot take away the land by announcements on the radio.”

“Except they do.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“The Land Reform Process has been a failure. The people are not satisfied. There is more and more violence in the country, only this time it is organized. This time it is armed.”

He shrugs.

“It is like they predicted. The unrest is now a rebellion. They give away your land, but who knows if that will be enough.”

The girl turns the mare around and gallops across the land that is no longer theirs. She goes as far as the top of the hills and then comes to an abrupt halt. From the top of the hills the land once stretched another five thousand acres. Now she is already trespassing.

Tom and Jose follow and then they also look down the slope. In the distance they can see the land is divided into a hundred tiny farms. Recently it had been empty. Now it is a complex diagram of fences and ownership that is difficult to decode. It is no longer taking place in their language. Still, one meaning of the landscape is clear to them. The girl stares down at the land and her eyes are filled with dread.

“Where did these people come from?”

“They are from here. Where else?”

“But how have they come so quickly?”

“The rebellion. It has organized the land. It is overseeing the process. The Government no longer has any power.”

It turns out, Tom thinks. It turns out these are people who do not believe in property until it is theirs. Then it is defended tooth and nail. They will push back, Tom thinks. The momentum is on their side. It will carry them forward as they push and push. Until they will be pushed into the river for all he knows. The force of it being stronger than anything they have ever known.

The girl says that she is not feeling well. She backs the mare up and then she turns her around and disappears down the hill. She is upset, Tom thinks. Like him, she has seen that it is a bad nest. The mud walls crumbling around her. The farms below also bad nests. They have given them land and that is not nothing. But these tiny squares of earth do not contain appeasement, they contain nothing but dirt. Even Tom can see this.

Tom and Jose stand alone on the slope. After a long silence Tom says to Jose they may as well finish the tour. Now that they are here. It being such a nice spring day. He does not know what else to do. Jose nods and they turn their horses back down the hill to the flat land below. Jose leads him around the pasture, in a long and sloping square. Tom asks him what is theirs and Jose tells him that it is this square and what he has already seen, something like one thousand acres. What good will that do me, asks Tom. I don’t know but it’s yours, says Jose.

Tom points to the land surrounding their square.

“They haven’t allocated our land.”

“Not yet.”

“When will they do it?”

“Soon, I think.”

“And what were we doing with it?”

“Nothing.”

Tom nods. That cannot strictly speaking be true and yet he understands what Jose means. The old man left things fallow more often than not, his own son included. Until the time came to harvest at will. Tom looked down across the valley. At the land, which has been the only frame for his vision. He thought: the old man had liked a picture. He had liked a vista. An empty legacy, a stupid one, now that time had come to an end.

It will not be recovered. Soon these fields would also be covered in fence and barbed wire. Like a million cages set upon their land. They would be surrounded and there would be nothing to be done about it. Tom draws his breath in through his nose.

“Is it all like this?”

Jose nods.

“Everywhere?”

He shrugs. They turn and ride back to the house.

When they arrive, the girl is nowhere to be seen. She has vanished. Her bags have been packed and the drawers of the dresser in her room are empty. Tom stands in the stable and wipes the horses down. The mare had not been untacked. They had found her standing in the stable yard, the reins hastily thrown over a post. Tom unbuckles the harness and the horse exhales in relief. He rubs her down and the muzzle is soft as felt.