2.
You might be expecting to hear something about Dirk himself now. But what is there to say?
He was a boy who was short when he was younger but grew a little bit each year. He had a hand at the end of each arm, and above his nose, two eyes spaced evenly enough apart not to be upsetting. If he was outside, his hair color changed from dusty wheat in the summer noontimes to red-gold in sunset light. When inside, his hair was more brown, like an old master sketch done in Conté crayon. His incidental smile, if it broke through, was pleasing because it was rare. He smelled like dirty clothes when his clothes were dirty. On bathing day he smelled like raw boy.
He didn’t look like the old woman or the old man, not only because he was a foundling, but for that other, obvious reason: When does a boy ever really look like an adult until he gets there?
If he gets there.
The old man taught him his catechism and his letters. The old woman taught him how every soup begins with an onion. The old man showed him how to carve a potato, and said one day he might get a knife of his own that could carve wood, but not today.
In the long, dark winter evenings, while the old man shaped animals and other figures from knots of pine, the old woman told Dirk stories.
This made the old man impatient. “It’s a sin to tell a lie,” he said.
“Another sin to deny the truth,” she replied.
The stories involved princesses and disguises, castles and enchantments, third sons out to make their way in the world, ancient witches, cunning magicians, animal patrons and guides. Almost all of the stories started with the death of a mother in childbirth. “Is that how my mother died?” he asked the old woman one night.
The old man went out of the waldhütte and slammed the door, even though frost was in the air.
“No one knows his own story, and that’s the way of it, unless you make it up yourself,” she said at last. “Now, that girl in the red cape; there’s a wolf coming along. Just like the one we made sausage out of. Listen to what happens next.”
He listened.
And all this was in 1808, or so, in Bavaria.
3.
When Dirk had grown about as tall as a broom handle, he awoke one night to the sound of muttering below. He rolled on his pallet of straw in the loft and put his ear to a crack in the boards. The old man was fighting with the old woman. Dirk picked out a few words—“necessary”—“feeble”—“scarcity.” Whispering can disguise the shape of syllables, but not of mood. Dirk heard fear, and blaming.
It reminded him of something. But of what did he have experience but this hut in the shrouded forest, these two elderly keepers? Only the occasional Bible story that Papi read slowly by firelight. Elijah in disguise, Isaac and Abraham. Or the tales that the old woman told, of the goose that laid the golden eggs, of the twelve brothers turned into swans. The stepmother who stewed her children and served them to her husband for supper.
A thin catalog by which to reference human charity and suffering.
The old woman’s sniveling gave way at last to an aching silence. None of the old man’s heavy snoring, which meant he was lying awake uncomforted, staring into the dark.
In the morning, the old man said, “Dirk, today I will take you into the forest and teach you to fell a tree. It is time . . .”
He did not say what it was time for.
Dirk had always wanted to go with the old man and learn his skill. The old woman had always forbidden it. Today she turned to the iron pot over the hearth and said nothing, neither blessing the day’s plan nor prohibiting it.
Before they left, she wrapped bread and cheese in a muslin and pressed it into Dirk’s hands. “Mind your way forward and find your way back,” she said to them once they were over the threshold and through the gate. Did her voice quaver because her little foundling was growing up? Dirk glanced back. She was not there waving. The door was shut.
4.
They walked in silence for what seemed like half the morning.
For a while the branches of pines were low with wet. It was a day in autumn. One of those bridging days between brightness and gloom, though which direction it was headed—which direction Dirk was headed, gloom or brightness—was unclear.
He followed the old man, keeping his eyes on the axe head swaying behind the old man’s shoulder.
The boy was still wondering of what the argument last night reminded him.
Once, according to rumor, Napoleon’s armies had come nearby. On their way to the Battle of Ulm, perhaps. Or the French emperor was said personally to be driving his men forward to Russia. The old man and the woman were unclear on the specifics, but they fretted how best to stay out of the way. To the boy’s regret, no stray infantry battalion came anywhere near them. No runaway soldier, not even a lost bugle boy. Still the old man and the old woman had argued about danger. Fearing conscription, the old man had huddled close to home. The axe, holidaying in the shed, had grown a cobweb beard.
Or perhaps Dirk was only remembering the old woman’s stories. In her repertoire, starving parents abandoned their children in the woods with shocking frequency.
Dirk didn’t want to be sold to an army or left alone in the woods. He didn’t know if the old man would think of such things. Perhaps last night’s discussion had only been about whether Dirk was old enough to swing an axe. He was still young. But not as young as he had been.
They came to an upland stand of trees, very dark and dense though a canopy of yellow foliage crowned their heads. From stout trunks, muscled limbs split into elbows, forearms, and fingers. No sound of bird chatter here, or the chitter of insects, either. Not even the tidal sweep of wind in leaves.
“If we are here, we are here,” said the old man. “Now I will show you a blow so great you won’t soon forget it. Stand there, and don’t move.”
Dirk did as he was bid.
The old man unshouldered the axe. He held it in front of himself with two hands. “Here is how you hold the axe. Imagine the handle is divided into three equal portions, like three sausages the same size. Place your right hand here, and turn it so. Your left hand otherwise. Do you see? How well you hold the axe determines your swing and the force of your blow. You can do a lot of damage with a good blow.”
Dirk tried to understand.
The old man said, “First we clear the lower limbs. This helps us to see higher, and determine the best direction for the tree to drop. This tree here, it is not so old. A young but sturdy specimen. We will start with this.”
With swift strikes and loud, the old man trimmed the lowest branches. Soon all that was left below was a pole of a trunk, bleeding sap. Above, a heaviness of leaves still clouded the sky, though some had been shaken off under the assault.
The old man wiped sweat off his forehead. His eyes were wide. More to himself than to the boy, he said, “A cruel truth: Life demands death.”
“Now will you show me how?”
“There’s making and there’s killing. I never brought down a tree but that I snapped a small limb of it to carve into a figure. You kill and you make. What will I make of you?”
The boy took a step back. “But it’s my turn now.”
“I can’t,” said the old man, “I must.” He turned all around in a circle, as if the boy might be gone when the old man faced forward again. Dirk waited.