My mother's stories
chapter
21
The forest at last
(the ending)
I started doing physical exercises every morning to prepare myself for
future trials, but here, unexpectedly, my mother showed her
changeable character in full measure and put up a real fight. I don't
know why she was so totally against my second walking tour.
Supposedly, it had something to do with the idea of a tent, which, in
her eyes, was a very convenient place for a young girl to lose her
virtue. She tried to scare me off with a story of a man from her
village, who died from pneumonia after he fell asleep on bare ground
in May. I objected to her that it wouldn't be bare ground if we put
inflatable mattresses under our sleeping bags, but she paid no
attention to my words.
Just before our one-day training tour, when we were
going to learn how to put up tents and build the fire, my mother
suddenly felt ill and asked me not to stay the night there. I had a
nasty feeling that she was pretending being ill as she was not very
good at it. Yet I couldn't risk it, growing up with the knowledge
that my mother's heart was weak. So I promised her to come home
before dark. It was difficult to leave the camp when the fire was
already crackling merrily under the cauldron and soft fingering of
the guitar was flowing through the still evening air, but I came to
our leader and told him I couldn't stay. I left together with another
girl, who lived in the next street and who'd told some lies just to
join me. It took us half an hour to reach the nearest bus stop and
after another forty minutes I was home. It was already getting dark,
but I was not really surprised to find my mother in a very good mood,
wrapped up completely in her domestic affairs. It was, perhaps, one
of the points of no return, which we had a lot in our relationship.
Mutual disappointment I would rather call it.
Anyway, our battle continued till that very day when my
father came home from work and said that it looked as if his factory
trade union was not going to pay for my walking tour. My mother
seized this opportunity at once saying we couldn't afford to waste so
much money on my entertainment. So suddenly everything was over and I
had to go to the club to tell our instructor I couldn't go. I
remember the agony I felt while walking there. Leaving the club I
tried to suppress my tears, but they were rolling down my cheeks. I
heard some boy sneering behind my back at such improper behaviour at
my age, but it didn't matter to me at that moment. I felt too
miserable.
My father didn't usually interfere with my mother's
decisions. So it was a real stroke of luck when he, seeing my
despair, suddenly took pity on me and said he would give me the money
for the tour. I don't think I have ever had such a dramatic change
from total misery to radiant happiness again. My mother didn't give
up yet, however, and tried to use her tears as a last resort. She had
never used tears as a weapon before and I remember how difficult it
was for me to say “no” to her. But somehow I did and the day of
my departure came at last. My globe-shaped rucksack was extremely
heavy, swollen with my sleeping bag, clothes, food supplies and an
inflatable mattress. We were going to carry tents and mattresses in
turn, as I learnt later. It added several extra kilos to our
rucksacks, which tried to bent us to the ground even without them.
It's still a mystery to me how I managed to reach the club with that
monster on my shoulders. My longing to see the forest had to be
really strong to give me strength for that.
And then there was an intercity bus with a spacious
luggage compartment where we had to cram our rucksacks. On the bus I
found that there was something wrong with my chair – it stuck in
one position and I couldn't move it. Our instructor, as usual, didn't
pay much attention to my problem. Sitting near the dark window with
my back upright I felt uncomfortable and unlike the others couldn't
sleep. Yet it didn't bother me too much at that moment. Listening to
the soft drone of the engine, while our bus was making its way along
the dark road, I felt happiness bubbling quietly inside of me. After
all these years of dreaming about travelling I was going to see the
forest and the mountains at last.
At that moment I didn't know, of course, what was going
to happen to me there. Although it was not difficult to predict that
our instructor would be as ruthless and sarcastic as ever and that it
would be really hard to walk in the mountains with all these uphills
and downhills and huge rucksacks on our shoulders. But who could have
guessed how unbearable it would be? Or that our instructor would
hurry those who began to fall behind, banging with his alpenstock on
their rucksacks? I had to gather all my strength not to give this man
the pleasure of hurrying me with his stick. It was more than enough
for me to be his favourite scapegoat on this tour. He loved
bombarding me with his jokes, egging the others to laugh at me. They
didn't laugh only once when during a conversation about everyone's
favourite dishes, he suddenly glanced at me and shouted gleefully:
“Look! Look at her expression!” He got no laughter in response,
only averted eyes. This reaction was not, actually, odd. It was our
last week in the mountains – the week of near starvation. Lack of
food was especially annoying because at first we often buried the
remainder of our porridge with tinned meat in the soil, not being
able to finish it. It was our instructor's fault, of course, but he,
it seemed, didn't feel too guilty and entertained himself every
evening by starting conversations about food.
Incredible as it is, in spite of all the trials and moral
pressure every time I had enough strength to raise my head I felt the
same quiet happiness bubbling inside of me: while looking at the
slopes covered with woods or inhaling fresh scent of pine-trees or
looking at the bonfire and singing to the light strumming of the
guitar. Or just peering at the distant tops of the Carpathians
wrapped in light lilac haze early in the morning. The mountains,
unlike people, didn't deceive my expectations, being even more
beautiful than anyone could have imagined.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
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