The Girl in the Tree

It seemed strange to be listening to the strains of The Blue Danube while gazing out at the pine-clad slopes of the Himalayas, worlds apart. And yet the music of the waltz seemed singularly appropriate. A light breeze hummed through the pines, and the branches seemed to move in time to the music. The record player was new, but the records were old, picked up in a junk shop behind the Mall.
Below the pines there were oaks, and one oak tree in particular caught my eye. It was the biggest of the lot and stood by itself on a little knoll below the cottage. The breeze was not strong enough to lift it's heavy old branches, but something was moving, swinging gently from the tree, keeping time to the music of the waltz, dancing...
It was someone hanging from a tree.
A rope oscillated in the breeze, the body turned slowly, turned this way and that, and I saw the face of a girl, her hair hanging loose, her eyes sightless, hand and feet limp; just turning, turning, while the waltz played on.
I turned off the player and ran downstairs.
Down the path through the trees, and on to the grassy knoll where the big oak stood.
A long railed magpie took flight and flew out from the branches, swooping low across the ravine. In the tree there was no one, nothing. A great branch extended halfway across the knoll, and it was possible for me to reach up and touch it. A girl could not have reached it without climbing the tree.
As I stood there, gazing up into the branches, someone spoke behind me.
"What are you looking at ?"
I swung around. A girl stood in the clearing, facing me, a girl of seventeen or eighteen; alive, healthy, with bright eyes and a tantalizing smile. She was lovely to look at. I hadn't seen such a pretty girl in years.
"You startled me," I said. "You came up so unexpectedly."
"Did you see anything---in the tree?" she asked.
"I thought I saw someone from my window. That's why I came down. Did you see anything?"
"No." She shook her head, the smile leaving her face for a moment. "I don't see anything. But other people do---sometimes."
"What do they see?"
"My sister."
"Your sister?"
"Yes. She hanged herself from this tree. It was many years ago. But sometimes you can see her hanging there."
She spoke matter-of-factly : whatever had happened seemed very remote to her.
We both moved some distance away from the tree. Above the knoll, on a disused private tennis court was a small stone bench. She sat down on it, and, after a moment's hesitation, I sat down beside her.
"Do you live close by?" I asked.
"Further up the hill. My father has a small bakery."
She told me her name --- Hamida. She had two younger brothers.
"You must have been quite small when your sister died."
"Yes. But I remember her. She was pretty."
"Like you."
She laughed in disbelief. "Oh, I am nothing compared to her. You should have seen my sister."
"Why did she kill herself?"
"Because she did not want to live. That's the only reason, no? She was to have been married but she loved someone else, someone who was not of her own community. It's an old story and the end is always sad, isn't it?"
"Not always. But what happened to the boy---the one she loved? Did he kill himself too?"
"No, he took a job in some other place. Jobs are not easy to get, are they?"
"I don't know. I've never tried for one."
"Then what do you do?"
"I write stories."
"Do people buy stories?"
"Why not? If your father can sell bread, I can sell stories."
"People must have bread. They can live without stories."
"No, Hamida. You're wrong. People can't live without stories."
*
Hamida! I couldn't help loving her. Just loving her. No fierce desire or passion had taken hold of me. It wasn't like that. I was happy just to look at her, watch her while she sat on the grass outside my cottage, her lips stained with the juice of wild bilberries. She chatted away---about her friends, her clothes, her favorite things.
"Won't your parents mind if you come here everyday?" I asked.
"I have told them you are teaching me."
"Teaching you what?"
"They did not ask. You can tell me stories."
So I told her stories.
*
It was midsummer.
The sun glinted on the ring she wore on her third finger : a translucent golden topaz, set in silver.
"That's a pretty ring," I remarked.
"You wear it," she said, impulsively removing it from her hand. "It will give you good thoughts. It will help you to write better stories."
She slipped it on to my little finger.
"I'll wear it for a few days," I said. "Then you must let me give it back to you."
On a day that promised rain, I took the path down to the stream at the bottom of the hill. There I found Hamida gathering ferns from the shady places along the rocky ledges above the water.
"What will you do with them?" I asked.
"This is a special kind of fern. You can cook it as a vegetable."
"Is it tasty?"
"No, but it is good for rheumatism."
"Do you suffer from rheumatism?"
"Of course not. They are for my grandmother, she is very old."
"There are more ferns further upstream," I said. "But we'll have to get into the water."
We removed our shoes and began paddling upstream. The ravine became shadier and narrower, until the sun was almost completely shut out. The ferns grew right down to the water's edge. We bent to pick them but instead found ourselves in each other's arms; and sank slowly, as in a dream, into the soft bed of ferns, while overhead a whistling thrush burst out in dark sweet song.
'It isn't time that's passing by,' it seemed to say. 'It is you and I. It is you and I...'
*
I waited for her the following day, but she did not come.
Several days passed without my seeing her.
Was she sick? Had she been kept at home? Had she been sent away? I did not even know where she lived, so I could not ask. And if I had been able to ask, what would I have said?
Then one day I saw a boy delivering bread and pastries at the little tea shop about a mile down the road. From the upward slant of his eyes, I caught a slight resemblance to Hamida. As he left the shop, I followed him up the hill. When I came abreast of him, I asked : "Do you have your own bakery?"
He nodded cheerfully, "Yes. Do you want anything---bread, biscuits, cakes? I can bring them to your house."
"Of course. But don't you have a sister? A girl called Hamida?"
His expression changed. He was no longer friendly. He looked puzzled and slightly apprehensive.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I haven't seen her for some time."
"We haven't seen her either."
"Do you mean she has gone away?"
"Didn't you know? You must have been away a long time. It has been many years since she died. She killed herself. You did not hear about it?"
"But wasn't that her sister --- your other sister?"
"I had only one sister --- Hamida --- and she died, when I was very young. It's an old story, ask someone else about it."
He turned away and quickened his pace, and I was left standing in the middle of the road, my head full of questions that couldn't be answered.
*
That night there was a thunderstorm. My bedroom window kept banging in the wind. I got up to close it, and as I looked out, there was a flash of lightning and I saw that frail body again, swinging from the oak tree.
I tried to make out the features, but the head hung down and the hair was blowing in the wind.
Was it all a dream?
It was impossible to say. But the topaz on my hand glowed softly in the darkness. And a whisper from the forest seemed to say, 'It isn't time that's passing by, my friend. It is you and I...'