My mother’s
stories
Chapter 19
The forest of
my dreams
I
was a dreamy sort of girl as a child. I think I developed the habit of
day-dreaming at the time when my mother didn’t manage to place me in the
kindergarten. I was so sensible at the age of five that offered to lock myself
up at home to allow my mother to go to work.
So
I used to seat alone near the window, looking at the world outside, drawing in
my sketch-book or turning over the pages of books with multicoloured pictures.
It was so nice to imagine myself not in our quiet flat, wet and shadowy, but
playing in the yard or walking along the path in one of those wonderful sunny
places depicted in my books.
Approximately
at that time, I think, I went to my grandmother’s village with my father and
aunt. It was the only trip beyond the boundaries of Odessa
It’s
a pity but only a few tiny fragments of that visit remained in my memory. A man
next to a huge apple tree showing me how to pick apples with a long stick
supplied with some clever device on top of it. Or two barefooted girls in long,
grey with dirt frocks. They ran out of the house and stopped in the distance
watching me. They had their dignity, those girls, and playing together in the
yard never showed any interest in me afterwards. My short urban dress and
leather sandals were big enough obstacles to prevent us from making friends.
It’s
amazing how little I can recollect, considering that I had to be overwhelmed by
a huge amount of new impressions. Nevertheless I can remember only some little
flashes of my sole visit to the village. My grandmother was not at home, for
example, when we arrived. So we went to the kindergarten where she worked and I
recollect my fear as I watched her approaching us. Or those two girls, of
course, whose behaviour hurt my feelings. And nothing about the forest. Nothing
at all. I had a nasty suspicion that adults could be going there without me,
early in the morning, while I was sleeping late, tired of new experiences.
Adults never realize how important for a child some things can be.
The
forest was important. Hadn’t I heard about it since I could remember? Didn’t my
mother wake up in the morning sometimes and begin to tell me with a sigh that she’d
dreamed about the forest again? And what wonderful sceneries she saw in her
dreams. It was the place where she used to go with her grandmother Euphemia,
her faithful protector in her endless battles with her mother.
Sometimes
my mother felt especially weak, her heart thumping against her ribs,
frightening her after a new clash with her mother. Her grandmother knew how to
calm her down. “Let’s go to the forest,” she usually said. “You’ll see how
quickly you’ll feel better”. And it was true. As soon as they found themselves
under the roof of the forest my mother felt a rush of new strength washing away
all the miserable sensations of a nervous break-down.
I
didn’t understand, of course, all of this in detail at that age. I only knew that
the forest was a beautiful place where my mother felt happy and strong. No
wonder I dreamed of going there myself. It would have been such a nice place to
escape from the factory region where we lived at that time. It was the place I
hated not even realizing it, I think.
Several
factories polluted the air in our vicinity and nothing, even the closeness to
the sea, could save us from different smells. Our yard was not a feast for the
eyes either. Only a big willow tree near a common tap brightened up its poor
exterior. And perhaps some wilted vines crawling up the walls of our shabby,
slightly lop-sided, dwellings. But mostly the world of my early childhood was
made up of asphalt, shell rock walls and bare ground trampled down by numerous
feet, let alone a revolting public toilet and a huge scrap-heap at the back of the
yard.
But
the main problem was the children who used to rush in packs through the tangled
labyrinth of yards in the neighbourhood. I learnt the vital art to fight back
only at primary school but at that time, when this skill was most important for
me, I was completely helpless and usually ran home in tears after being
attacked by someone.
My
mother’s stories about the forest seemed so attractive against this dark
background. They sounded like a fairy tale which could come true. If only I got
there, I could see with my own eyes huge oaks towering above my head, red
squirrels jumping among the branches, a skittish hare crossing my path. How
nice it would be to look for fragrant berries hiding under green leaves or
drink cool and tasty water bubbling up from under the ground.
And
what a thrilling adventure my mother once had in the forest! Her grandmother Euphimia
or Yukhyma, as everybody called her, knew everything about the forest: what
mushrooms, berries and herbs were edible and when people should start to
collect them. In fact she knew every single path in the woods. So it was
completely inexplicable why they lost their way on that occasion. It couldn’t be
just the sun that suddenly hid behind the clouds. The old woman used it, of
course, to get her bearings, but she knew a lot of other signs to help her on
cloudy days. This time, however, it was like in a nightmare: they were walking
and walking and couldn’t reach the edge of the forest. They continued to toil
till they suddenly realized they were passing by the same small wooden hut for
the second time. “So we were walking in circles!” Yukhyma exclaimed in dismay.
“Good heavens! I should have guessed that Blud had stuck to us”.
For
a long time I believed it was a wood-goblin whom my great-grandmother blamed
for playing the trick on them. But my son assured me it was Blud and who could
know better than him? He used to listen to my mother’s stories so often that
neither his sister nor I could compete with him. But who was that mysterious
creature? At first I thought it was just a funny expression, because “blud” is
the root of the word “go astray” in Ukrainian. My son searched the Internet and
to my surprise found the information about Blud at once. As it turned out there
really was a supernatural being named Blud in Ukrainian folklore. It lived in
the woods and entertained itself by leading strangers astray. I must say that it
was doing its work pretty well at that time when my mother and her grandmother
were roaming among the trees.
It
was getting dark but time after time they stumbled up on the same creepy-looking
hut, grown into the ground to its windows. It seemed to them so scary that they
didn’t dare enter it. Utterly exhausted they sat down near the damned hut
discussing if it was safe for them to spend the night among the bushes when
suddenly Yukhyma remembered her own grandmother telling her about Blud and how
to get rid of it. No wonder she had forgotten – it was so long ago, but it was
laughably simple, actually. They just had to turn their clothes inside out.
The incredible thing was that this simple recipe really worked for them. Soon
after they changed their clothes the old woman recognized the familiar path. It
was not far from the edge of the forest after all. Why couldn’t they see it
before? It was a real mystery.
To
be continued…
(c) Anna Shevchenko
