The Island of Missing Trees(9)

Forty seconds passed.

And still Ada Kazantzakis continued to scream, and her rage, if this was indeed rage, propelled itself forward, a fast-burning fuel, with no signs of abating. Her skin had turned a mottled scarlet, the base of her throat was scraped raw and throbbing with pain, the veins on her neck pulsed with the rush of blood, and her hands remained open in front of her, though by now they grasped nothing. A vision of her mother crossed her mind just then and, for the first time since her death, thinking of her did not bring tears to her eyes.

The bell went.

Outside the classroom, multiplying down the corridors, hurried footsteps, animated exchanges. Excitement. Laughter. A brief commotion. The beginning of the Christmas holidays.

Inside the classroom, Ada’s madness was so captivating a spectacle that no one dared to move.

Fifty-two seconds passed – almost but not quite a minute – and her voice gave out, leaving her throat dry and hollow inside like a parched reed. Her shoulders sank, her knees trembled and her face began to stir as if waking from a disturbed sleep. She fell quiet. Just as suddenly as she had started, she stopped.

‘What the hell was that?’ Jason muttered out loud, but no one offered an answer.

Without looking at anyone, Ada collapsed back on to her chair, breathless and drained of energy, a puppet whose strings had snapped onstage in the middle of a play; all of which Emma-Rose would describe later on in exaggerated detail. But, for now, even Emma-Rose was silent.

‘Are you okay?’ Mrs Walcott, her face etched with shock, asked again, only this time Ada heard her.

As banks of clouds gathered in the distant sky and a shadow fell on the walls as though from the wings of a giant bird in flight, Ada Kazantzakis closed her eyes. A sound reverberated inside her head, a heavy, steady rhythm – crack-crack-crack – and all she could think of in that instant was that somewhere outside this classroom, far beyond her reach, someone’s bones were breaking.





Fig Tree





‘When you are buried, I’ll come and talk to you every day,’ Kostas said as he drove the spade into the ground. He bore down on the handle and lifted up a clod of soil, tossing it on to the growing mound beside him. ‘You won’t feel lonely.’

I wish I could have told him that loneliness is a human invention. Trees are never lonely. Humans think they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts. With their roots tangled and caught up underground, linked to fungi and bacteria, trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.

Even so, I was glad to learn Kostas was planning to visit me frequently. I tilted my branches towards him in appreciation. He was standing so close now I caught the scent of his cologne – sandalwood, bergamot, ambergris. I had memorized every detail of his handsome face – high, smooth forehead, prominent, slender and sharply tipped nose, clear eyes shaded by eyelashes that curled like half-moons … the crisp waviness of his hair, still abundant, still dark, though silvered here and there, and greying at the temples.

This year, love, not unlike the unusual winter, had crept up on me, so gradual and subtle in its intensity that by the time I realized what was happening it was already too late to guard myself. I was stupidly, pointlessly besotted with a man who would never think of me in an intimate way. It embarrassed me, this sudden neediness that had come over me, this deep yearning for what I could not have. I reminded myself that life was not a trade agreement, a calculated give-and-take, and not every affection needed to be returned in kind, but the truth was I just couldn’t stop wondering what would happen if Kostas Kazantzakis were to reciprocate some day – if a human were to fall in love with a tree.

I know what you are thinking. How could I, an ordinary Ficus carica, possibly be in love with a Homo sapiens? I get it, I’m no beauty. Never been more than plain-looking. I’m no sakura, the dazzling Japanese cherry tree with its winsome pink blossoms extending in four directions, all glitz and glamour and swagger. I’m no sugar maple, aglow in stunning shades of ruby red, saffron orange and golden yellow, blessed with perfectly shaped leaves, a total seductress. And I am certainly no wisteria, that exquisitely sculptured purple femme fatale. Nor am I the evergreen gardenia with its intoxicating perfume and glossy, verdant foliage or the bougainvillea with its magenta splendour climbing up and spilling over adobe walls under the baking sun. Or the dove tree, which keeps you waiting for so long and then offers the most enchanting, romantic flower bracts that flap in the breeze like scented handkerchiefs.

I don’t have any of their charms, I admit. If you were to pass me on the street, you probably wouldn’t give me another glance. But I’d like to believe I’m attractive in my own disarming way. What I lack in beauty and popularity, I make up for in mystery and inner strength.

Throughout history I have seduced into my canopy droves of birds, bats, bees, butterflies, ants, mice, monkeys, dinosaurs … and also a certain confused couple, wandering around aimlessly in the Garden of Eden, a glazed look in their eyes. Make no mistake: that was no apple. It is high time someone corrected this gross misunderstanding. Adam and Eve yielded to the allure of a fig, the fruit of temptation, desire and passion, not some crunchy apple. I don’t mean to belittle a fellow plant, but what chance does a bland apple have next to a luscious fig that still today, aeons after the original sin, tastes like lost paradise?