lethargy

Since childhood, I only loved winter. Where I lived, winters were always cold, always snowy. Frost has always dulled human feelings and reflexes. Locals used to spend the winter in their wooden houses in village, and as animals fell asleep. They slept all winter. I loved winter for desolation. No people. Only snow and frost.

Since childhood, I used to go to bed earlier than everyone else to get up first and look at the fluffy snow. The snow was the only thing that brought joy to my life. Snow always covered the horror that surrounded me - grey houses, grey streets, grey, lifeless faces. Instead, it made me believe in beauty. Now I don't believe in anything. 

***

My heavy boots are breaking spines of snow on the ground with every step. The sound of cracking the only thing that worries me right now. Does snow feel anything? Whether the snow, like me, has not felt anything for a long time. I have been walking in this forest for too long that my head began to ache from annoying thoughts. I know these forests better than who I am. I completely lost the concept of time; I've been walking for too long. Half an hour? Two hours? All-day? All my life? Where are these paths leading down to the village? Did I miss the turn? No, I couldn't. Did I allow myself to be lost? Or maybe I was lost all the time, but only now I understood that? However, it doesn't worry me that much; the only thing I was worried about was cracking snow spines. 

***

I was ready to go even longer with the hope of finding the end of my tiredness, but I only found a wooden house. It was one of those wooden huts where the locals lived in the summer. As soon as the long autumn rains season comes, they leave the woods and go down to the village to spend the winter in better-heated houses.

The whole life of these people revolved around the forest. The forest gave them food. The forest gave them work. The locals prayed to the forest spirits and did not allow strangers to hunt in the forest. Strangers desecrated the sacred ground, cut down trees, trampled berries, mushrooms and killed animals. To atone for sins in front of the forest, the locals sacrificed these strangers, sprinkled their blood on the earth to make it more fertile.

***

When I was little, my older brothers always told horror stories about evil spirits that live in those huts in winter and suck the souls of the lost in the woods. I entered the house without second thoughts. I am too old to believe in those childish stories about ghosts, demons, and other magic stuff. I just wanted to find something to help me warm up. Something that would finally help me to understand my muddy soul (or a evil spirit that will suck my soul out of me).

***

Everything in the house was made of wood. Sacred wood. A wooden table was carved out of juniper, as was a chair with a broken leg. Locals believed that juniper brings good luck and protects the house with its resins. The bed was carved from a beech. Locals believed that beech promotes fertility, so often all the beds in the village were made of beech wood. My attention was drawn to three large cabinets with dried mint, thyme, foxglove, heather, blackberries, blueberries, and wild garlic. Honeysuckle, chanterelles, and porcini mushrooms like New Year's toys hung on a string between cabinets. Everything lay separately on its shelves and created inflorescences of aromas in the house. It was the smell of home. My home. In a corner on one of the shelves, I found dried tobacco wrapped in a piece of paper. Next to the tobacco packet lay a box of matches, some of which were damp and unusable. This pack of matches was the only source of heat. There was nothing in the house that could help keep warm or help find a way home.

***

Locals who live in such houses do not need gas or a gas stove to make their food - they can light a fire and cook corn porridge with goat cheese in a large cauldron. They don't need a phone to contact someone - they have reed pipes with which they communicate with other people in the forest and those in the village. Prolonged sound - someone in the woods died. Many short sounds - wolves are near the village. There is no internet not only in the forest but also in the village. People don't need it. Their navigator is the stars and the wind. And their Google is older people who know everything - how to cure a cough or chickenpox or what to eat to have immunity. Those older people carry with them through the centuries all the legends, myths, traditions, superstitions. Some of them no longer know how old they are; they have been on this earth for so long. Locals do not need electricity - instead, they have the sun during the day, the moon, and the stars at night. When the nights turned cloudy, and there were no moons or stars, the locals lit homemade wax candles.

***

My body gradually stopped listening to my brain. I haven't felt my toes in a long time, and in general, I could barely move my legs. The frost burned my face and hands. My cheeks and fingers were red and numb with pain. If at first my body was covered with fever, now my body trembles every second from the cold that has penetrated inside me. To warm me up, I rolled a cigarette from a piece of paper and tobacco, found a single match that wasn't still soaked with moisture, and inhaled deeply. With each inhale and exhale, I felt a sharp pain in my chest, my eyes began to blur - I do not know if it's because of tobacco or cold.

Everything inside me began to burn, my lungs and insides. My legs began to sway, and my mind began to scroll through strange pictures from childhood. Here is my father sitting at the table and drinking, drinking... Mom cries, and dad screams, screams loudly. And then he hits. He beats my mother, then my brothers and me...

"Mom, mom, get up."

My mother lies on the floor with her eyes open wide, her face and body bloodied from the beatings, she is silent.

"Mom, can you hear me? Mom, don't leave me with them, take me with you..."

My father buried my mother in our yard and planted a viburnum on her grave. I kissed that viburnum, its leaves and fruits every day. I talked to the viburnum, talked about my life, cried in front of it and prayed to it.

"Mom, do you hear?"

And my father beat me. In order not to see my drunken father, I ran into the woods and walked, walked for hours, just not to return home.

***

The house was completely covered in darkness. I have to get to bed. I need to go to bed. When I go to bed now, I will wake up earlier tomorrow and look at the snow. There was darkness in my eyes and a reed pipe sounding in my ears.

I need to sleep.