JUL

16

LIFE AMONG THE DRY BONES

Hanns F Skoutajan

There are various kinds of screams, at least two I can identify. There is the scream of pain and horror; it begins sharply and ends just as abruptly as it began. There is the kind of scream  that starts suddenly  and then trails off. Like steam from an engine, it blasts forth and as the pressure diminishes so does the intensity of the sound. It seems to announce a release. It was the latter kind that pierced the air and echoed through a poplar grove on an abandoned farm in northern Saskatchewan.

A few weeks after arriving in this remote setting that had become home for us , mother ventured from our primitive log cabin to explore the surroundings. She walked behind the barn, an empty and partly collapsed building unsafe for man or beast. Someone a long time ago had hauled logs from a distance, there were no such trees in our area, to build this barn. The builder had been quite a craftsman with the axe. He had squared the timber  and fitted them neatly together, but now the whole structure was rotting away.

It was spring and the leaves were bursting from their winter weathered branches. Winters in this northern country were long and severe as we were soon to discover. But now all of nature was speaking messages of hope . Grasses and  ferns were rising from the ground as if rudely thrust from below. We were amazed at the speed of growth.

Mother was alone for the day. Father and I, along with others, had gone some miles to another farm to fetch some cows which we would now have to learn how to milk. She, nor any of us, had ever touched a cow before let alone extrude milk from the beast.

She had time on her hands. It was good to be alone with her thoughts. She walked slowly along the edge of the woods behind the barn taking in all that was so strange but now was ours, something she found hard to accept.

She felt a sense of ambivalence. She was aware of how far she was from her former home across the sea. With the growing hostility between Britain and Germany the link with her family seemed like an elastic band  almost stretched to the breaking point. War seemed inevitable and with that, of course,  a total separation. 

Her thoughts were often with her mother, her sister and brother and their families. She wished that they too might have emigrated. How wonderful it would have been to have them all nearby sharing the hardships as well as the freedom offered by this new land. Certainly her brother-in-law Max, a man skilled with his hands, would have been far handier on this pioneer farm than her intellectual husband, although he was quickly learning.

She walked on and at length came upon an opening among the trees that looked like it might have contained a narrow farm lane. From directly behind the barn  it entered the woods, no more than two ruts  and even these were overgrown with weeds while the space between them was well on the way to returning to the bush from which it had originally been cut. 

She decided to follow this trail to see where it would lead. Occasionally the ruts turned into mud puddles and she had to resort to stomping  through the brush along the side.  She felt curious about the destination, indeed, she almost felt drawn.

The road mother was following took a number of turns to avoid some willows that grew along the edge of a swamp, or slough, as the locals called it. Then the road opened into what must have been a clearing  some years ago, now, of course, it was filled with tall weeds and low brush. Even some saplings made an effort to grow among them.

She stopped and looked. The road seemed dead-ended. She was puzzled  by white objects she glimpsed among the grass. Advancing a few steps further she saw a good many more and recognized them  to be weather-beaten bones. There was a whole carcass lying there, the rib cage of a large animal, a cow or a horse perhaps. She felt strange as though she had entered into some macabre mortuary. Then she spied a skull. She had never seen one before. Afterall she had been a city person.  Obviously this road she had been following had been used to transport dead animals to be left in the woods to rot.  Now all that remained were their whitened bones. 

“Is that all that there is to life when it is past?” she wondered. “We too share this mortality.”

Mother wasn’t sure of her beliefs. From a scientific point of view she saw no evidence of an after-life, only whitened bones and even these eventually crumble into dust. If religion, the belief in God and life beyond death, could make people decent and responsible , then fine and good, but should we need such primitive incentives? Surely humankind can rise above such superstitions. But on the other hand she remembered the SS brutality, the horror of concentration camps that we had been fortunate to avoid, just barely. The very thought of father caught in their hands could still make her shiver. 

Thus mother reasoned as she stood among the piles of bones. But there was another thought, or perhaps it was only a feeling, that presented itself; had she not experienced something unusual, well, perhaps spiritual, at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague less than a year ago when not only November weather had darkened the sky? The future seemed bleak indeed. Her Catholic upbringing had planted some seeds of spirituality that had lain dormant  deep inside her psyche. There were times when they gave slight signs of life, “intimations of immortality” perhaps.

Suddenly she glimpsed something crimson, like a burning ember. There among the grass and scrub, it glowed. It seemed to have discovered her almost as she discovered it. Or had this fiery eye seen her as she came through the woods, perhaps had seen her a long time before and drawn her to itself?

The red eye held her as she held her breath. They confronted each other, the red eye challenging her to draw near.  A lump formed in her throat. She was aware of her 

aloneness in this valley of dry bones. Slowly she advanced across the clearing and then recognized what it  was that had bound her in this spell.

A scream formed in her throat, pressed out and rang among the trees and bones. A Tiger Lily growing straight and tall between the piles of skulls and ribs dared to announce life among the dead. The scream was long as the pressure  of the anxieties and stresses that had piled up over the months  of uncertainty and waiting  were vented. 

Her arms, at first flung into the air, came slowly down and embraced her chest. Her scream diminished into sobs . Her eyes gushed tears  that blurred the glowing, crimson flower.

She did not kneel to pray or utter invocations, intercessions or words of confession. They were all there, unspoken, yet most real  and clear in this Epiphany.

Many years later mother confided this event to me. It had been a turning point in her life, a spiritual awakening, an experience that confirmed for her that she was not alone.

*                                                          *                                                           *

The above story was taken from my book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom, 1938 - 1958.  I was reminded of it as I walked along the street in the New Edinburgh area of Ottawa. Along the side of the avenue there were large clumps of very tall Tiger Lilies with big crimson blossoms just like the one that mother had encountered. 

Hopefully this story has meaning for you as it has for me. There is a Spirit that is alive among all of nature. Dare to discover it.   

SQ 15/08/2013

See SKOUTAJAN’S PAGE  for previous writings