A Green and Ancient Light (2 page)

I nodded, thoroughly intrigued. It was clear to me that Mrs. D —— thought the woods were every bit as deadly as Grandmother told me the sea-basins were. Grandmother's caution made perfect sense to me, but I believed the best of trees. I wondered at how
anyone could be afraid of any gathering of peaceful giants that grew from nuts over decades or centuries with such patience, such purpose. Granted, I had never been into a deep wood. But this one above the village called to me.

Mrs. D —— dove back into her comfortable nest of topics. “Did you have a garden in the city? Nearly everyone has a garden here! ‘A house without a garden is a rock in the sand.' I'm sure you help M —— with her garden, don't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” I was learning to answer quickly, in the instant that Mrs. D —— took a breath.

“Hers is one of the loveliest in the village, and she uses every inch of it so well, the moss and the shade and the sunny stretches! A greener thumb I've not seen. And always a marvel, always some changes every year. We old folks are set in our ways, but your grandmother has a young heart, a
young
heart, I've always said, like the princess in the old story that sees the world new each morning—do you know that one?”

“No, ma'am,” I said. I'd thought I knew all the fairy tales, but I didn't know that one. Maybe the village folk had different ones.

“‘Looking-glass, candle, moon on the sea'!” said Mrs. D ——, and I supposed she was telling me a part of the fairy tale. But she raced on, as she always did. “We look forward each year, I can tell you, to what she'll plant where, what will sprout out of this corner or that! She must be planting now—are you helping her plant these days?”

I nodded, thinking of the hours Grandmother and I had already spent digging and filling hanging pots, filling window-boxes, transplanting shoots from indoors to outdoors, opening envelopes of last year's seeds that Grandmother had carefully labeled.

“And what are you putting into those long boxes under the front windows, where the sun shines so nice?”

Without a thought, I answered. I'd learned the name from Grandmother, and I'd repeated it to myself over and over because it sounded like a long-ago kingdom: “Setcreasea.”

“Setcreasea!” cried Mrs. D ——, clapping her hands. “Utterly lovely! The long, purple stems and leaves, like the most beautiful twilight has gathered right beneath your windows and stays all day! And then the pink flowers, the crowning glory! Yes, setcreasea love the cramping for their roots. Don't water the boxes too much! But your grandmother knows that; she's been at it longer than most and knows what they all need, every last bloom. I think they tell her, the flowers. Do you think?” She batted my arm again, jovially. “Here we are! Thank you so much, you dear, gallant gentleman!”

I was grateful that we'd arrived at her gate. I was feeling worn out, and not from the shopping burdens.

“And what's it to be at the back?” asked Mrs. D ——, taking the basket and package from me. “There in the shade, where the trees lean in? She always has the best ideas for what to put there!”

I thought for a moment. “I think she said fuchsia,” I said. “For the butterflies.” By habit, I said “I think” so as not to sound too forceful, but I knew that's what Grandmother had planted there.

“Fuchsia! Of course! Like lanterns in the dark—a brilliant choice. Fuchsia will outshine her trumpet vines of last year, and we all thought those were divinely inspired! Such a sharp, clever young man you are, to keep all these names straight—not that I'm surprised, considering the source. ‘The apple doesn't fall far from the tree'—that has a good meaning, too, you know. Well, now, thank you again, dear sir. I suppose you'd best hurry on back to her. Good work to do!”

I thought nothing at all of the conversation then, only that I was glad to be out of it. I hardly thought of it when I told Grandmother I'd helped Mrs. D —— with her groceries, and Grandmother had asked me to repeat the conversation word for word.

“What did she say then?” Grandmother asked. “And what did you say? What did she say next? What did you say?” Unlike Mrs. D ——, Grandmother waited for each of my answers with her full attention. Even then, I didn't understand her interest.

When Grandmother didn't say a word to me for the rest of the day and all through supper, I began to think back through what had happened, what Grandmother had asked me to repeat. As we finished washing the dishes in utter silence, Grandmother's movements brisk and icy, I felt a growing, hollow ache in my chest. My eyes filled with tears.

“I'm sorry,” I said quietly.

Grandmother looked up at me from drying her hands. “What are you sorry for?”

I hung my head, unable to endure her gaze. My stomach hurt, and my face burned. Somehow, I had transgressed; I had let Grand­mother down, and I hated that I'd done so. I still didn't understand it exactly, but it had to do with telling Mrs. D —— too much.

“Your business is yours,” said Grandmother, and I thought at once of my letters, my trip to the post office. “My business is mine. We don't talk about the garden. It reveals itself in its own time.”

“I'm sorry,” I repeated, really crying now, my nose streaming.

“You didn't know. Now you do.” Grandmother rinsed a cloth, wrung it out, and handed it to me. “Wipe your face.”

*  *  *  *

Spring became summer, and Mrs. D —— learned that it was no use asking me anything else about the garden, though it did nothing to dampen her good cheer. I was greatly relieved when the garden finally revealed itself, for I felt a stab of guilt each time a villager said to Grandmother, “I hear it's to be setcreasea this year, and fuchsia in the shade!”

More than once, when Grandmother seemed to be in the best moods, I asked if we could go up into the forest. She nodded and said we would soon, but in the moment, there was always something to do in the garden or something to buy or mend or clean. Once I'd taken note of the fact that Grandmother didn't seem to share Mrs. D ——'s dread of the woods, I asked her why Mrs. D —— was afraid.

Grandmother shrugged. “She can't see into the woods, so she assumes all the bad she can't see is there. She thinks the sea is friendlier, but if she were out in a little boat, or swimming in it, it would occur to her that she can't see under the water, either.”

*  *  *  *

I liked the postmaster, who at first pretended I was his boss. The joke began because I was always bringing him work to do, my ­letters to weigh and stamp. He would snap to attention when I'd come in and tell me that he'd just swept the floor or organized the closet. Once, he said, “I washed the window, Boss. Does it pass inspection?”

“It looks good,” I said.

“Too clean, though. Now V —— can see me when he goes by, and he comes in and talks both my ears off. Man should be in poli­tics. I can only get rid of him by saying you'll fire me if you catch me standing around.”

“I won't fire you,” I told him.

“You're a good boss. Got more letters for me today? I won't let you down, Boss.”

After a few weeks, when we both got tired of the game, he would ask me about myself, leaning on his elbows, peering at me over the tops of the eyeglasses that clung to the last half-inch of his nose but never fell off. He had thick black hair, a lean, droopy face, and huge eyes that rarely blinked. It impressed me how he could be kind without ever laughing or smiling. Although he was curious about what I found to do in the village, what I was reading, what I wanted to be, or what I thought, he never asked about the garden or Grandmother beyond whether she were well. I'd learned from the Mrs. D —— incident to be careful of what I said. Still, the postmaster was the one grown-up that I usually saw on my own, without Grandmother, so he felt like my friend.

“Your father,” he asked me, “he's an officer in the Army, isn't he?”

“Yes. A captain.”

“That's very fine! You should be proud of him. Are you proud of him?”

I nodded.

“Good man,” he said, and I wasn't sure whether he meant my father or me. “I remember him here. Smart! Always first in the school, always doing things—involved, you know, and famous. Famous as one can be here!” He laughed softly. “He used his head, didn't he, before they got him into the Army? In the city, he was some kind of a . . .”

“Locomotive engineer,” I said. “He designed a diesel engine.”

“Smart,” said the postmaster with admiration. “You got his smarts?”

I shrugged and looked at my shoes.

“Sure you do. You got them.”

One day, the customer in line ahead of me, an old man in a brown hat, told the postmaster about some wild vegetables he'd gathered in the forest. Of course, I paid close attention when the man muttered about how dark it was up there, even in the morning.

The postmaster looked hard over his glasses. “Not up here!” The gesture he made with his head seemed to indicate the mountain slope above our end of the village.

“No, no, of course not!” said the man. “Above the old harbor, past the point.”

The postmaster nodded, and the man added, “Hard telling
what
grows up there!”

When he'd left, the postmaster and I were alone.

The postmaster greeted me by name, not with “Boss” anymore. “Been writing again, huh? How much paper you got up there, anyway? Do they bring it to you in trucks?”

As I handed over my letters—one each to my parents, and one each to my friends—I asked, “Are the woods above my grandmother's house really haunted?”

He froze, staring at me with his wide, dark eyes. Then he looked at my letters for a long time, as if the addresses were new to him. Finally, he glanced back at me and opened the stamps drawer. “Yes. They're haunted.”

“By ghosts?”

“I don't know what ghosts are,” he said. “But there are places that belong in the past and need to be forgotten.” He paused then, and for the first time I'd ever seen, he pushed his glasses higher
on his nose and resettled them. “You don't want to go up there, G ——. You shouldn't ask about the woods, either.”

I was too respectful to ask him why not, but the question was burning in me like a coal.

He could see it. “They teach curiosity in school, don't they? It's not always a good thing.” He leaned on his elbows and gave me a long, sober look. “The world's getting worse. Until it gets a lot better, it's best not to ask too many questions.”

I supposed he was thinking of the war. But he was afraid of the woods, afraid like Mrs. D ——. I didn't see how the war could relate to the forest, or how the forest could relate to a past that needed to be forgotten.

*  *  *  *

And so the spring passed, gardens all through the village sprouted into blazes of fragrant loveliness, and we came to the day of the shot-down airplane, when it crashed into the waves and sank into the unseeable depths, down to the gardens of the mer-people. I imagined them all in a wide circle among the coral, holding their tridents, their hair floating, their silvery tails slowly fanning to keep them upright, as the wrecked plane floated down to rest in their midst.

That very night—quite late in the night—Grandmother and I were awakened by a rapping at the door. I was jolted to full consciousness at once and sat up in my squeaky bed, my heart pounding. Of course I imagined soldiers, come to tell us to evacuate. In the faint light of the lowering moon, I located my suitcase, always packed with the things I considered most important, always ready to be snatched up in a dash out the door. But in another moment,
I realized that the urgent tapping came from the back door, where a single mossy step led down into the garden—hardly the entrance soldiers would approach. Nor was the sound very loud; nor was it accompanied by any shouting.

I swung my feet to the floor, the boards cool and smooth. In the next room, Grandmother rustled about—pulling a housecoat on over her nightgown, I supposed. After turning the cast-iron doorknob, I peered out into the darkness of the main room as Grandmother emerged from her bedroom.

Her expression was serious but not afraid, which I found reassuring. The knocking had stopped, and a silence descended that was more nerve-wracking than the knocking itself. With hardly a glance at me, Grandmother crossed to the back door, picked up the walking-stick from the umbrella stand, and demanded, “Who's there?”

I heard the murmur of a reply but could make out none of the words. Grandmother, from her position, heard enough to satisfy her; she put down the stick, lifted the latch, and drew open the door.

Though the garden farther out was bright with slanting moonlight, the back step beneath the trees lay in deep shadow. The silhouette there belonged to a thin person in a rumpled felt hat and a long coat. When the door opened, this person began to bow and speak in a soft torrent of words—a man's baritone—sonorous, like that of a singer or radio announcer.

“My dear M ——, forgive the intrusion.” (He called my grandmother by her first name.) “I am so sorry to disturb you at this hour, but a matter has come up . . . or down, rather . . . and it would seem swift action is called for. It is—well, you know better about these things.”

Grandmother had been listening with a fist on her hip, her other arm gripping the hat rack to steady her. Now she smoothed her tangled hair and pulled her housecoat closer about herself. “Come into the garden,” she said to the man. “You always think more clearly in the moonlight.” With a stern look at me, she added, “You stay there.”

I nodded readily.

The man in the felt hat seemed to notice me for the first time, and his frame stiffened.

“It's my grandson,” said Grandmother, pushing the man ahead of her. “I told you he was here. Have you forgotten, or were you not listening again?” Her glance repeated her orders to me, and then the door closed.