Fire and Trees

Overnight it had gotten cold. No, it hadn’t snowed although some years it had. It was time to get up – one couldn’t stay in bed all day. She pulled out the first sweat suit she could lay her hands on. Not that she used it for jogging but just to keep warm while the house warmed up. She had several in a box in her closet and wore them over her pjs, at least until it was time to go to town. Then she would pull on her woolen pantyhose and city trousers for she knew her sons didn’t want her walking around the city improperly dressed. Her fingers had already turned white – but she was used to that. Raynaud’s disease – poor circulation. As she pulled on the pants, she noted three small holes in the front. Holes like cigarette burns – and then she remembered. 

It all came back. Years before, when she had still been living in the country and when, to put it simply, she was a bit younger, the time came to prune her olive trees. She had called in Francesco, whom she called her Paul Bunyan. He was a stocky bear of a man, his stocking cap pulled down low, with calloused paw-like hands. He pruned her trees and piled up the branches one side of the road. They were to be burned, but only in small increments. After he left, she went out every morning with her clippers, a few newspaper pages and matches, and a bottle of used frying oil that was poetically called olio esausto “exhausted oil”. She would start a small fire, gradually adding the clippings and leaves. The leaves burned gaily, sending out sparks as she prodded them with a pitchfork. Summer was being consumed. Suddenly a branch full of leaves burst into flames, for the leaves, and not just the olives, contain oil, and sparks flew out. Three burning sparks or embers landed on her pants, remaining there for less than a second. But that had been enough for them to leave their mark, a ghost of their existence. Three small holes in her winter pants. 

She loved the trees that surrounded her house. Mostly chestnuts with their ropes of catkins in spring that would then carpet the gravel road. In autumn once they had dropped their prickly burs, the hillside would be covered by a crown of rust colored foliage. She would often gather a few shiny chestnuts, carefully popping them out of their prickly casings, to be roasted over the fire. Sometimes she was sure she heard footsteps, someone walking through the woods, but it was just the chestnuts as they dropped, one after another, to the ground. One day she had been sitting at her desk when she looked out the window and noted several strange people wandering around outside, gathering chestnuts. She went out and had a hard time convincing them (they seemed to be Chinese) that this was private property, and they had no right to be here. Either they didn’t understand her or pretended not to. It occurred to her afterwards that if she had uttered the word carabiniere or polizia, which they would certainly have understood, they would have vanished like a mirage. 

Then there were the holm oaks, which kept their leaves all year. And the special russet beech down by the gate that she refused to have cut down even though it gradually grew to be taller than the house itself. A magnificent tree. Along the road there were the acacias, false acacias or robinias, with their thorns and grape-like clusters of white flowers hanging down towards the ground, and the dark cypresses reaching skywards. 

She left most of the trees to follow their own fate. Which meant that every so often one would give up the ghost, giving way to woodborers and old age. A particularly large one at the top of the slope behind the house blocked the entrance into the woods where in spring the daffodils she had planted told her spring was coming. She thought it curious that in Italian they were known as narciso for narcissus to her was a related but different flower, and not the yellow daffodil. Its other name, trombone, seemed more fitting. She didn’t remember now whether it was Francesco or Andrei who had cleared away the branches but the remains of the trunk itself were too large and had to be burned on site. “Don’t worry”, they had told her, “it will just gradually go out by itself.” That had been hours ago. As she remembered it, the night was really dark. A velvety black. There was no moon but on top of the slope behind the house the fire continued to glow red. She had hesitated as to what to do and envisioned the fire spreading. The long hose right outside the door, which her son had used to water the garden down below by the gate, was still attached to the faucet. She put her phone in her pocket – wasn’t an iPhone yet but it was synchronized with the one in her house – picked up a robust walking stick and a flashlight and started dragging the hose uphill. She could see well enough by the light of her flashlight and managed to skirt the rocks and low bushes. Finally at the top, she sprayed a stream of water on the burning log, and over the surrounding area. That should do it, she thought, as she slowly worked her way back down. It had been easier coming up, but once by the side door she shut the water off and hoped for the best. Thinking about it now, she realized how foolhardy she had been. 

Fire, sparks, recollections. They can glow, suddenly come alive, haunt you when least desired. Things that happened years ago, seemingly forgotten, can lie smoldering to be stirred to life by a passing breeze. It may take more than a pail or two of water to douse the flame. Or it may turn out to be simply the glow of the first rays of the early morning sun sneaking into the jungle of memories, and for which we can be grateful.