The Land Across Read Free Page A

his garden,” I said to the girl.
    “Ours did once or twice,” she acknowledged. “Kleon had chickens before we were married.”
    Kleon spoke bitterly before retreating into his house and slamming the door behind him.
    “He says he was rich once, that one may be rich or wed but not both.”
    I said, “I’m sure that isn’t true.”
    “For him, yes.” The girl smiled, making me feel like I was a lot younger than she was. (Really it was only two or three years.) “He has locked us out.”
    I stared.
    “You do not believe? Try the door.”
    I did. It would not open.
    “You see? I have hear the bar drop into place. We are cast out!” She grinned at me. “Are you afraid?” She had a great grin.
    “A little bit,” I admitted. “Is there an American Consulate? If there is one, I’d like to go there.”
    “Soon he thinks better.” It was like she had not heard me. “Martya is with him, he will think. She will tell him he need only go to the police. He will say ‘I am his prisoner! He lock me out!’ Then the police will come and shoot him. He is right about this, but we will not go to them right away. Do you like these trees? The bushes?”
    “They’re really nice,” I said.
    “This bush here…” She caressed it. “It will bloom for us before the moon is old. For a week it is the most pretty one in Puraustays. Our trees give nuts. I do not know the German name, but the wood burns well. A hot fire and slow. A little stick burns for a long, long time.”
    “I see.”
    “Some have fruit trees. This is nice because of the fruit. Apples, pears, cherries are all good. These burn well, too. I think you have these in your land.”
    I said we did.
    “But you, yourself? You have such trees?”
    I tried to explain that I did not have a house, I lived in an apartment because I was on the road so much.
    “If you had a house, you would have fruit trees. You are a fruit tree man. This I see.” She had begun to walk, and I followed her. “My father had fruit trees but he is dead.”
    “My father is dead, too,” I said. “He was with the State Department, so I grew up all over the world.”
    “Here?”
    “No, not here. Mostly Germany, France, and Japan.”
    “Here there are three kinds of men. A fruit tree man like you, he is strong.” She held up her clenched fist. “Strong, or perhaps he has the good friends.” She drew an imaginary pistol. “You are such a one, I think.”
    I said I had a lot of friends in America.
    “If a man who is not strong plants fruit trees, his neighbors take the fruit.” She raised her chin, a proud daughter. “No one took my father’s fruit!”
    “That must have been nice.”
    “Yes, yes! Once Kleon had fruit trees. They took his fruit and he could not stop them. Now we have nut trees, so we eat the nuts.” She pointed. “Do you see those?”
    We had reached the edge of her husband’s block, and she was pointing at the next one. The trees there were oaks. I said they looked fine.
    “No, no! He is weak. No one takes acorns.”
    “I see.”
    “When a man dies his neighbors cut his trees to burn. My father is dead half a year before anyone is so brave.” The girl sighed. “I take you now to a man who has fruit trees. If there is for you a consul, he will know.”

2
    THE STORY
    They were cherry trees mostly, Martya said. Whatever they were, they were beautiful, tall trees in wedding gowns. The smell made me think about God and heaven, and the bees that swarmed over them about hell because I got stung twice before we got to the door. “Volitain will put wet tobacco on those,” she told me. “It will take your pain.”
    He was pale and starvation thin, with straight black hair, as courtly and polite as Kleon had been abrupt and hostile. “Enter!” He bowed from the hips. “Enter and welcome! Any friend of dear little Martya’s, a brother is to me.” The look that passed between them told me Martya had tried to make him.
    “He is bee-bitten.” Her tone was