Svarttrosten

Another story where I can’t settle on the language, it has happened before, I start, and I stumble, and I start again, the three languages pushing, shuffling, jostling in my head. I go back and forth between them, and I can’t settle, but the title, the title is clear, and it’s in Norwegian. It’s Svarttrosten. The title would be Blackbird in English, but blackbird sounds eerie, ominous, so unlike the bird itself, small birds in dewy morning grass, tiny yellow beaks flashing against black plumes, looking cheerful, looking serene.

In Serbian it would be Kos, Kôs actually, that’s a long o, a long descending tonal accent, but if you don’t mark the accent, the word is ambiguous, in writing it could also mean oblique, slanting, there, you see, I can’t find a simple translation for the word, and I want simple, this story is about simple, about easy, uncomplicated.

So the title will be in Norwegian, and the story will be in English, and my longing, and my unrest, they’ll be in my language, in our language.

The blackbirds are back!, he says, almost proudly, as we step out of the car. He shows me a little nest under the roof, and for a moment we just stand there, looking at it.

A wagtail lands on the roof of my car, strutting around, important, proud, showing off his new radiant spring plumage.

Do you think that showing off on that handsome car is gonna increase his chances with the ladies?, I ask.

Can’t think it would, that’s not a very impressive car.

That’s my first car, I’m surprised how fond of her I’ve become. Her name’s Esme. I make face at him for talking down Esme, and turn and go towards the house.

The gardening tools, small shovels and rakes, gloves, and several bags of mysterious stuff one needs for gardening, I don’t know what, it’s been a long time since I had a garden, they’re already waiting for us by the stairs.

I know what I’m to do, I’ve done this the last spring too. Early spring last year, he was back in his hometown, trying to navigate the complex logistics of his father’s being acutely, seriously and painfully ill. Our until then scarce contact became almost daily updates on the traps and pitfalls of the local health system, and on the stubbornness of fathers, his father so alike mine, tall, strong men, unwilling to show any kind of weakness, or accept that their until recently infallible physique has started to fail.

I lost my father a long time ago, I remember the sorrow and confusion of those days, I listen to him, I tell him not to forget himself, not to forget his mother, especially his mother, mothers can get so lost without the fathers.

His dialect, hard for me from before, gets more pronounced when he’s back there, I often have to guess and deduce and even look up words, he chuckles smugly and won’t help when I get stuck. He has no problem with my dialect, if you can call it a dialect, it is as close to the standard form as possible, that’s one drawback of growing up in the capital. One day he uses a verb I can’t decipher at all, I struggle for minutes, turns out he’s in the countryside, out on a field, preparing the ground to set the potatoes. It was “preparing the ground to set the potatoes” verb I couldn’t crack. So we start talking about potatoes and soil, and gardens and orchards, he tells me about the joy of working the soil, of doing the work put in front of you, hands down, concrete, no hidden traps, no complications, no intrigues, you have to plow this piece of land, now you’re a fifth done, now a quarter, a third, two thirds, almost done, now you’ve finished. You go to bed, you’re tired, you sleep. I tell him about our orchard outside the city, how the teenage me hated going there when there was no fruit to pick — I did love our fruit — how I hated all the tedious work of tending the soil, tending the plants, the same repetitive actions over and over again, you weed the tomato beds, and a week later they’re overgrown again, our garden was in the natural area of steppes, grass fought back, and returned with vengeance.

And how sorely I missed it now! The mindless job of whitewashing the tree trunks, of gathering the twigs after the pruning, of weeding, your hands working, your mind free, wandering, you’re a fifth done, now a quarter, a third, two thirds, almost done, now you’ve finished. You go to bed, you’re tired, you sleep.

Come then and help me to spring start my garden when I come back, he said.

I’d love to!

That was the previous spring. So this time, this spring, I know what to do. I start on the flower beds on the southern side of the house, I’m weeding out everything that has a bulb (you plant one frigging bulb, and you have them forever!), I also pull out everything that looks like the usual weed, grasses with strong roots, spreading through the bed. I follow the networks of roots, try to take them out whole, without breaking them, I know that a new shoot will grow from every place a root is broken, I learned that in our steppe orchard. I admire their sheer life force, even as I’m trying to extinguish it. My hands working, my mind free, wandering.

When I’m unsure, I go to the back, behind the house, and ask him. He comes forward, squats down, he looks at the stems, picks a fresh new leaf, rolls it between the fingers, we smell it, oh, it’s a basil, we keep it. Sometimes I decide myself, there’s a bunch of snowdrops, technically bulbs, but I keep them, because I like snowdrops.

I work slowly and methodically. The sun is warm, the first real warmth after half a year of winter, I take off my jacket, then my hoodie, I’m in a sleeveless top, drunk with the warmth of the sun. He’s working behind the house, on the eastern side, he stays in his long sleeved fleece and a jacket, its late April, still early spring in Norway, there are many degrees dividing sun and the shade.

I stop the weeding, I stretch my back, I look at the area I’ve done, dark soil, spring-trimmed plants, it looks neat, tidy, line to the dark green and brown chaos of the unweeded bed is obvious. I feel relaxed, at ease, in the world of responsibility and decisions, of everyday puzzles and labyrinths, of micro politics I don’t want to navigate, of macro politics I can’t, there’s this little patch of soil, this work I need to do, and when I’m done, I can see it, the difference it has made. The tidy, dark patch of the ground keeps getting larger.

He passes by me fetching things in the house or the yard, you want some music, he asks. Oh no, no music, this silence is excellent.

We take a break, we drink cherry juice, we look across the yard.

His neighbor’s car is now parked by mine, same model, different color. The wagtail is now parading on its roof. That wagtail sure has a penchant for Nissan Leafs, I say. Classy guy, has style. He rolls his eyes at me. Don’t you diss Esme, I say. A blackbird flies to the nest, he’s watching it, smiling. He doesn’t smile often, and hardly ever this broad, with all the teeth showing, the whole face brightening. I was afraid they wouldn’t come back this year, he says.

We go back to work.

We don’t talk much. Short exchanges when he passes me, or when I go to the back to ask about a plant. We talked much more last year, about our old homeland and the new one, about the different ways we adapted, and haven’t adapted, we talked of the angers we carry, and things that make us happy. We barely knew each other back then, I remember uncertainty, I remember tension, how different it is now, I muse, now we can enjoy being silent in each other’s company.

I weed the flower bed, my hands working, my mind free, wandering, I’m a fifth done, now a quarter, a third, two thirds, almost done, now I’m finished.

The sun slowly moves towards the West, I move on to the western bed. I don’t know what time it is, I can’t tell by the sun, the rapidly lengthening Nordic days are playing tricks with my internal clock. I had taken off my watch, put away my phone, I enjoy the rare luxury of not knowing, not caring what time it is. I start pruning the climbing roses on the western wall, I hum to myself.

I cut off the dry twigs of a lavender, to give space for the new shoots. Dry, fragrant seeds rain on my fingers and on the ground. I gather them, I go behind the house, bring them to him in my hand. I know it smells of his part of the old homeland, not mine, I grew up too far away from the sea. He thanks me, and for a moment, the silence is no longer pleasant, no longer easy. I try to break it, I glance at the huge sacks filled with dark, wet leaves, have you been gathering leaves all this time? Yes, there’s so much of it, look how much is left on the upper plateau. We stand close to the wall supporting the upper level, the wall reaches him to the middle of his face, he’s looking straight over it, I look up, I stand on my tiptoes, then jump, I still can’t see over it. You really are very tall, I say, he looks down at me, another broad smile, his teeth flashing, his face beaming.

He is quite tall. When he first came to my apartment, in early January, he had to bow his had to come in. He’s probably used to that, but my apartment and I were not. I had not seen him since that spring afternoon in the garden, after he came back from the old country. We had met sparsely in all the years we’ve known each other, we had talked at times, sometimes more, sometimes less, but we had seen each other very seldom. And now, suddenly he’s in my life, my car, my apartment, we see each other weekly, sometimes more often, he teaches me to drive, I thank him by cooking for us. I have several friends who teach me to drive, the list of people who risk their life and limbs to do me this favor counts no less than eight people, persevering in this for a year now. And cooking for them, sometimes buying them a coffee or a drink, but mostly feeding them, that’s my way of thanking. So that in itself wasn’t strange. Going from seeing each other once or twice a year, to meeting every week was strange. Very strange indeed.

Weeks passed, I got used to his presence. We continued talking, driving, eating together throughout the long winter and the early spring.

These hours, this afternoon, it was just one in a long row we spent together those months. There was nothing special about it, I came to remember it so well because it was such an easy day, simple, uncomplicated, amiable silence, sun-warmed soil, lavender and blackbirds, the year’s first bumblebee, hours slowly ticking away in the early spring sun.

Also because it was the last time I saw him.

The evening is closing in, he was supposed to be elsewhere two hours earlier, he had forgotten about the time. He picks up his phone and discovers a bunch of irritated messages from the people he was supposed to meet. We have tidied up the yard, gathered all the tools and bits and pieces on the stairs, I’m finished, I sit on the stairs and watch him, he’s getting stressed, trying to wrap up hurriedly. Suddenly, irrationally, he decides that he has to do something with the moss before he leaves. He tries to open a small sack, some kind of moss deterrent, first with a little spade, then with garden shears, slashing aimlessly at the thick plastic. I’m sitting on the stairs, watching him, his movements usually precise and measured, now tired, clumsy, erratic. I’m half expecting the blood to start gushing from a cut he’s inevitably going to get any minute now. I shake my head, so, what did you say you were, I say, an engineer, of the hard-hat, steel-toe boots type? Yeah, it surely shows. He looks at me, looks at his hands, as if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing until that moment, he starts laughing, shaking his head, he puts down the sheers and the sack, let’s go he says.

We get into the car, I drive away.

I come home, a bit dazed, a bit sunburned, smelling of soil, and of lavender. I go to bed, I’m tired, I sleep.

After that afternoon he doesn’t want to see me, doesn’t want to talk to me again.

It takes me a while to realize it, he answers short, with monosyllabic words , until I get the message. I give him his space, I pull back, I try to stop contacting him, I miss him.

Weeks pass, blackbirds on the lawn in front of my apartment, small birds in dewy morning grass, tiny yellow beaks flashing against black plumes, looking cheerful, looking serene. I turn my head away, I walk quickly by them.

Months pass, in the early autumn the chicks are almost fully grown, I begin stopping and looking at them, probing my feelings, sorrow, confusion, longing, and anger. I don’t try to understand them, to sort them out, I don’t ask myself when the anger appeared, or why, I don’t ask if this longing will ever end. I acknowledge them, I nod to them, I nod to the birds, I hurry on.

It is winter now, the blackbirds are gone, they will be back in the spring.