Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest

32

Just imagine, Maya said to Matti, and to Nehi, who was walking down the winding forest trail with them as they made their way home in the last light of dusk, just imagine what would happen if one day you finally did come home to the village, Nehi, and all the animals that left us so many years ago to go up the mountain with you came back to us too. Just imagine the panic and the shock, but think of the joy!

Matti said, And the sparrows and finches would nest in the trees again, pigeons would fly around all the dovecotes, crows would shriek at dawn, all the old cow barns and chicken coops and stables and paddocks and sheep pens would be fixed, and dogs would bark again in our yards and on the dirt roads, and swarms of bees would buzz around their hives.

Maya said, And old Almon could sit on the riverbank with his beloved dog and talk to the fish that would come back to the river, and even his old scarecrow would finally start arguing with real birds instead of with Almon.

Matti said, And Solina the Seamstress could give Ginome, her husband, a kitten of his own as a gift. Or maybe it should be a lamb. Or a squirrel.

Maya said, My mother could stroll around the village streets surrounded by a cloud of birds and scatter bread crumbs for all of them, and Emanuella would wave hello to her from her balcony and maybe, if you came back too, Nehi, maybe, who knows—

Nehi listened in silence to everything they said. A bluish vein or artery pulsed on one side of his forehead as if the heart of a chick were beating rapidly there. But at the end of his silence, he said in his low voice, a voice as pleasant as a warm kitchen on a winter night: And what if they ridicule me again? Or abuse me? What'll happen when I suddenly have the urge to take revenge by hurting someone or I do something bad?

A moment later he added, And what if the big brutish farmers, the ones whose parents were in my class when Rafaela, Emanuella's mother, was our teacher, what if they start beating and cursing dogs again and lash the alley cats with leather whips and poison them, and drown mice in barrels of sewage, and start going out to the forest with their rifles again to kill deer, foxes, and wild goats, and sell their fur, and set traps for rabbits and wild geese? And spread nets again to catch fish in the river?

When they'd gone past another five or six bends down the mountain trail, which was growing dark under the thick forest treetops, Na'aman said, Of course, they'll all be happy and excited to get the cows and horses back, and the chickens that lay eggs for them and the goats and ducks and sheep and pigeons, yes, and some of them will probably get very attached to their dogs and cats and songbirds again. That — yes. But what about the rats? The worms? What'll happen to the roaches and mosquitoes and house spiders? And what'll happen to Nimi there? And to me?