The silly Russian tree
Once, there was a boy. Just a
wee lad, skipping along merrily through his father’s fields of mushrooms. He
was a careless little boy, rather reckless, but his innocence shined like a
diamond through that skin of his. He had gone to return home, when he had seen
behind his father’s old shed, a tree. A large, glistening tree. He had never
seen anything like it before, it’s base slumped against the broadside wall of
the shed. Wrapped around the tree’s base, was a scarf. A red scarf with a
hammer and sickle. The boy immediately recognized what kind of insignia it was,
and stepped back from the tree from his current standing point: the narrow side
of the front of the shed. Back and back he went, staring in awe and fear at
this tree. The tree did not respond, though. Oh no. The tree merely gazed off
into the distance. A lumbering hulk of burnt bark, smoldering leaves, yet still
retained it’s colour. The boy slowly stepped forward, becoming insensitive
towards the fact that the scarf was that of a Russian soldier’s. Closer and
closer he came, eventually forgetting the fact of it’s red taint and standing
right under the burning, yet glistening tree. The boy, knowing no English or
Russian, asked, “Spregen ze Deutsch…?”
The tree seemingly nodded with a falling branch, the fire attached along with
it extinguishing as it hits the ground. The boy motioned his hands towards the
tree, wondering if the tree was hurt. With another falling branch, the tree
shook as if giving a weak nod. The boy
immediately rushed back to his father’s home, snuck inside, and had taken a
fire extinguisher and other medical supplies, only knowing that they were to be
used in emergencies. For the boy, this
was one. He returned to the tree, basket and extinguisher in hand, and gripped
the handle of the extinguisher, squeezing the lever and pressing it down,
shooting out the flame-retardant liquid onto the tree, quickly shutting off
oxygen to the flame and snuffing it. The tree leans over, letting out an
inaudible sigh of relief and relaxing against the side of the shed. The little
boy sets the aid kit down and takes a roll of medical tape, unrolling it and
wrapping it around the tree’s singed branches and bark, taking care to cover
each wounded section of the tree. The boy steps back and nods eagerly at the
tree, clapping his hands together. The tree slowly turns toward the boy and
slowly arches upright, an imaginary smile peeling across the face of the tree.
After what seems to be chatter toward the tree in broken German, with a “Guten
nacht!”, the boy rushes off to his father’s house and sleeps in peace.
The next morning, though…
The
boy awakens to a scent of burning gunpowder, and the sound of SS boots stomping
up the stairs. The boy immediately realizes what is happening and jumps out of
bed, pulling the window open and clambering out of the building, jumping from
the outside of the window to the roof of his father’s automobile. The boy looks
around as he impacts the vehicle, observing the large spotlights glaring in the
direction of his out. With a quiet whimper, the boy crawls off of the roof of
the vehicle, looking over to the shed and seeing what is left of the tree. A
smoldering stump, surrounded by marching SS troopers with a Panzer-4 following close behind, with
the large-bore tank barrel replaced with a spotlight, the machine-gunner at
it’s post with an MG-3 scanning the fields around them. “Mach schnell! Mach schnell!’ says the SS gunner as he stands from
his seat. The boy can only watch in fear as his one vivid memory and most
recent friend is destroyed by the lumbering hulk of steel and brass. With a
scream of blood-curdling proportions, the boy runs off, never to be seen by the
men of the guard again.
Three days later…
The boy returns
to the farm, only to find it a smoldering wreck. With a sigh of disparage, the
boy slowly trots to the ruins of the shed and the fallen, flattened tree. The
left-over treads from the large tank and the heavy footprints from the boots of
the shock troopers are all that is left around the shed. The boy falls to his
knees and begins to sob, uttering out faint English. “Not fair… not fair at
all. Pomogitie moya…” the boy utters,
hugging the remains of the tree. With a weak turn, the tree turns and seemingly
looks up at the boy with the wide, peeling smile from before. “Mudyu shak’ odosha… dausti tebya.”
Utters the tree, handing him the scarf. The boy slowly takes the scarf and
wraps it around his neck, taking the tree’s scorched soldier cap and putting it
on his head. One last word, the tree utters out. “Spasiba...”, said with a groan and the sound of a man expiring on
his death bed. The poor mal’chik only stares, tears welling up in his eyes with
a mimicking smile, peeling across his face. “Danke.” The boy says with a nod, clambering to his feet and
turning, walking away from the corpse of the soldier. The only human he would
ever really know.
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