Garden, silence, homeland

"When I want to see gardens, I close my eyes", Albert Samain. This sentence is an introduction to the tenth chapter Letters from Norway Isidore Sekulic. Many years ago, while in the shade of a birch near the Ibar, I read for the first time Letters, this quote stuck in my memory like the snowy peaks of Trollstigen in the September fog.

photo: private archive

In one geography class in seventh grade, I barely managed to find Norway on the world map, which is why I spent the rest of the class standing in the corner of the classroom as punishment. My professor Ildža was quite a man, and neither he nor I knew at the time that the north was not just a side of the world, nor a lesson in geography. The North is a struggle for survival, wresting every inch of land from mountains and seas, rare sunshine from storm clouds and seeking shelter from the wind for gardens and people.

Right after that sentence, a quote by Leon Bloe from the same chapter stuck in my memory: "Silence is my homeland."

Often, when reading, sentences that we will encounter and understand only in the future are magically lodged in our memory. These two sentences emerged from my memory some thirty years later.

By then, I had already crossed the peaks of Trollstigen several times, left footprints in the snows of the Arctic Circle, spat several times into the northern ice sea from the cliffs of many fjords, planted the first yawn waists, made honey from dandelions and harvested the first, then the second, then many pumpkins in my Norwegian garden.

Norway became my new homeland, silence my homeland, I squinted more and more often and saw gardens, and the world was getting further and further away from me.

Yawning.

I think it all started with them. "Only magic is stronger than nature," grandfather Josif once told me when, after watering the garden, we sat under the shelter of a white mulberry tree. He was actually my great-grandfather, an unborn one at that, although that is not important for this story. We rarely talked before we sat down on the wooden bench, on the carpet, those were the rules. Usually we would just walk through the garden of the old family house in Vučitrn, he would water and I would fill buckets, open and close yawning flowers and chase butterflies. Only when we sat down would he hand me an amber pipe to fill with tobacco and tell me something important like that sentence. When he lit it, there would be silence again, I thought about what he said, fidgeted a little on the coarsely spun carpet because he poked me, and thought how I would get the mulberries afterwards. In our silence, only the crackle of tobacco and the occasional drop of water falling from a leaf would be heard. I was sure that my unborn great-grandfather was blowing smoke rings down the plains of Vojvodina, from where he had to leave once upon a time, due to some war.

Pumpkins.

They arrived later. I've always been very careful with whom I plant pumpkins, they used to scare me with that when I was little, that the pumpkins could break on my head if I wasn't careful with whom I planted them. I dreamed that a giant pumpkin was rolling through the field after me to smash on my head, because that's the main job of pumpkins, and our main job is to run away, and then I grew up and I neither dream nor run away anymore, now I plant giant sunflowers and giant pumpkins in my northern garden, so we'll see who will hit whose head. Now from the seeds of pumpkins again, who knows how many times, I grow hope, among their leaves I look for a smile, which I often lose, and I whisper to their huge, yellow flowers in the evening: "I accompanied you, dear faith, that he will return when things get better", and then I lower my voice and say also: "That once, it doesn't exist for you, but don't tell anyone", and they, the ringing flowers of my pumpkins shake, die of laughter at that joke of mine.

Finally.

When the first tree leaves and the real canopy blooms in some northern courtyard, people here stop greeting each other with "hello, good day, how are you, and how are you and your family". They walk the streets with their heads fixed on the treetops, they often bump into each other, they carry boxes of ice cream under their armpits, they stop at every tree and gawk, gawk magnificently. Then complete strangers tell each other "endelig" - "endelig" (Nor. finally), they smile at each other with wide pink smiles. Finally, there is finality and after it there is no going back, winter is receding, the day is stretched like chewing gum, marching towards midnight. When they say it, it sounds like freedom.

Dandelion.

Forest glades, northern gardens, here and there some hydrophore, cracks on buildings and asphalt here only at the end of April, both kings of meadows - dandelions. They are moving along and across their new homeland, where the wind scattered them last fall. It happens overnight and where yesterday there was no announcement of flowering, today their sunny heads are showing off. They play on the surprise factor, because spring comes capriciously, so often five of them sprout from one bud. It is impossible to stop them, or prevent them.

They look like students in Serbia to me.

Anyone who knows at least a little about dandelions and students will understand.