The Folk Forest
One time, a guest entered the yellow house.He was an old man, probably my grandfather's age, wearing a suit decorated with medals. It wasn't a surprise to me. He belonged to my grandparents' generation.
All of my school friends' grandfathers had gone to the Second World War.
The man didn't say anything except:
“Okay. Look.”
He sat on the kitchen stool, put his head down, and closed his eyes.
“A round yellow circle. Like a sun disk without flames.”
He paused.
“A young woman in a green military uniform was dancing in front of it.”
“She was the most beautiful woman in our division.”
Then the woman spoke to me.
“Do you like plums?”
“Why plums?” I asked.
“We have a plum garden.”
“You are the most beautiful here.”
“Everyone tells me this.”
The dancing woman started to laugh.
The picture changed.
Now I could see farmland and a few houses at the edge of it.
Several women were sitting on a bench.
They were talking about the war.
The war had started only a few days earlier, and that day the grandson of one of the women had received a notice to join the army.
“He is going to fight,” she said in a heavy, old-fashioned accent.
That grandson was the man sitting in front of me in the yellow house.
The man continued in the same quiet tone.
“The German army attacked us very fast. We, the soldiers, had to leave the battlefield in small groups, hoping to meet our larger divisions somewhere up north.
“The Germans were everywhere.
“And we had nothing else to do but go through the forests.”
One of the soldiers managed to find civilian clothes and forced us to change.
We refused at first.
Then we changed and hid our uniforms.
“Who is going to fight for you?” he said.
He spoke with my grandmother's old accent, and that made me listen to him.
“We have to check the area,” he continued. “We cannot walk straight. The Germans are here. The only way is through the forest.”
He pointed at me.
“You go first. You look like you're from a village. Check around and come back.”
He gave me a long wooden stick.
And I went straight into the unknown forest.
After a while, I reached a darker part of the forest.
It's probably deeper here, with a swamp or a river,I thought.
The thought came and quickly disappeared because I wanted to turn back and find a different road.
Then someone moved in front of me.
There was a slightly open place in the forest, with a few small green hills.
At first, I was frightened. I thought I had walked into a German base.
For a second, I froze.
I couldn't move.
I could only stare at the place that had frightened me.
A dark figure was standing on one of the hills.
A tall, dark figure, with its back turned toward me.
I was scared first.
I felt as if my heart had dropped down somewhere inside me.
Maybe it's a strange hallucination,my mind answered, as if I had asked it a question.
Quietly, I started to move backward.
After one step, I had a vision.
Brown darkness, like dirt or mud.
Dark hallways with light bulbs somewhere high above us.
Metal grids over our heads.
I could see dirty men in the darkness.
And myself among them.
We were people.
Men.
Trying to lift those heavy grids.
The figure on the hill lifted one hand and pointed in the opposite direction from the one I wanted to take.
I started walking that way.
Soon, I found myself in a different forest.
My grandmother's stories came to my mind.
The forest was green.
The air was green.
Watery, light green.
The leaves of the trees were moving to the rhythm of music.
They were singing, but very, very softly.
Then hands appeared from nowhere, moving together with the music.
Women's hands.
Gentle hands.
I couldn't see much.
I could only hear the quiet music and see the leaves moving and the women's hands moving with them.
I walked toward a green mountain.
The mountain was darker green and smoother, almost watery.
I came closer.
Then I froze.
This time, by myself.
The mountain had one eye open.
And it was watching me.
I stepped backward automatically.
It wasn't a mountain.
It was a dragon.
A dragon waking up on the ground and watching me.
The dragon began to move.
It stood up on its feet and stretched its green wings slightly.
Then, in a second, it turned, almost touching me—
and disappeared into the green air.
I ran back.
I frightened the soldiers who were waiting for me.
They didn't expect to see me, and everyone jumped up from the grass where they had been sitting.
We started walking in the direction where I had met the dragon.
I believed the dragon had been walking straight, because that was how I had found my way back to the group.
And, of course, I didn't see any dragon.
Everyone was laughing at me and making jokes.
After a while, we joined another group.
Soon, partisans found us.
We joined them.
Later, I joined the army again.
