Natural Habitant, A Novel
Chapter 1: Dawn
On the day of his death, Stephan wakes up with a fly biting his forehead. He swiftly hits it with an open hand but misses the insect that quickly finds shelter in the pleated curtains by the window. Stephan follows it with his eyes and then directs his gaze to the dawn outside.
“No rain today either,” he murmurs.
Shades of gray, blue, and orange smear across the August sky above the treetops. The sky turns purple further west over the Alps and hints at another in a series of hot and dry summer days.
Earlier, Stephan used to check the forecast on the TV that his son gave him. It broke down eventually, first losing the picture and the very next day the sound, too. Then he listened to the evening news on the radio until the electricity to his house was cut short, thus making the adored device a useless piece of plastic overnight. In the end, all that was left to him in predicting the weather were his eyes—which even without the challenge of cloudy vision had trouble seeing far into the future—his arthritic joints, and conversations with his friend Joso once or twice a week.
It’s still semi-dark inside the room. While lying on the back, Stephan reaches toward the chair by the bed and, just as he does every morning, picks up a book with geese on the cover: A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. He randomly opens page fifty-eight and reads aloud while holding a small flashlight above the book to see better.
“It’s hard on such a day to keep one’s mind on grouse—.”
The fly approaches again, attracted by the light, and Stephan flicks the flashlight to shoo it away. He starts over, “It’s hard on such a day to keep one’s mind on grouse for there are many distractions. I cross a buck track in the sand and follow in idle curiosity. The track leads straight from one Jersey tea bush to another, with nipped twigs showing why.”
Stephan places the book back on the chair after faithfully performing the duty of the routine. While slowly getting out of bed, he repeats, “Nipped twigs. Nipped. That’s a word you don’t hear often.”
His feet overheated under the blanket too thick for summer nights, and the feeling of refreshment storms through his body as he touches the cold surface of the floor. While dragging his sore bones to the window to open it, Stephan notices from afar the fly walking headlessly on the window glass. He slows his pace and begins to sneak up on it like a cat to its oblivious prey, without blinking or looking away. He slowly reaches out his hand toward the window, and just when the fly realizes the threat looming over it, Stephan suddenly pushes the window open and forces the little beast to find a new victim.
“Damn bloodsucker,” he says.
The cool air of the early morning rushes in to fill every corner of the room, carrying with it the mixed scents of the surrounding pine forest and the gasoline from the highway. The sounds of the dawn are intertwining, too, creating almost a competition between the exciting chirping of birds from the canopy before they are briefly but repeatedly muted by the rumble of trucks passing the viaduct right above Stephan’s head.
One of the few blessings Stephan had received at birth and for which he was immensely grateful was his isolated house in the woods. One of the many misfortunes he lived through during his life was losing this blissful isolation to society’s progress. He used to be separated by countless trunks of deciduous and coniferous trees and connected by a narrow forest road three and a half miles long to the first village. The road stretching above the roof of his house, Stephan despises far too much to consider it any connection with the outside world. On the contrary. Some ten years ago, when the highway had just been built, these morning clashes between nature and man would have caused enough rage in Stephan that he stoned the pillars of the viaduct almost daily. But he got used to the commotion eventually, as one does to everything in life, be it the pleasant kind or not. His hearing and other senses now carefully collect stimuli from the environment, noticing only the well-chosen ones. Most of the time, anyway.
He leaves the window and goes toward the dusky kitchen. Despite automatically bowing his head while walking through the door, his gray hair, with a few stubborn black ones, still brushes against the door frame.
In the kitchen, Stephan lights a fire with the wood he prepared the day before. Although it’s summer, mornings are thankfully fresh enough to bear a little fire from the hearth to make a diluted coffee.
Stephan buys coffee on the fifth of every month—that’s five days after the government pays the pension, so five days for the line of old, impatient, and, almost as a rule, chatty village people in front of the post office to disperse. Apart from coffee, it’s the same day when he buys flour, several packages of pasta, and a package of 8 cheese spreads with different flavors. That is his monthly shopping trip. There are few luxuries that Stephan allows himself to enjoy, and he’s always complacently walking back home on the fifths for another success in balancing between wastefulness and the bounties of routine. In the same manner he enjoys blessings of a familiar pattern of mornings, which would be much more significant to Stephan if he knew today was the last time.
As he waits for a shy flame to ignite, out of habit, he looks at the yellowed photos in black frames on the wall. A photo of him and Kathy as children during the last summer she spent at her aunt’s, both leaning on a walnut tree in front of Stephan’s house and smiling underneath the bee veils. Next to it is the picture of his mother in her thirties, reaching out her hand while buying flour at the market. A bit lower, there are remnants of a photo of his father, torn so that he was missing half of his face and the left arm, but both legs were still visible. And then another one of Kathy—to be precise, of her wrist and hand—which Stephan himself took by chance the day before he got married. This one with a note inside the frame: Hang it on the string. K.
While looking at the wall, Stephan remembers that day when the mailman brought the photo of his mother in a shiny silver envelope. It was about two months after she’d passed. Stephan started cursing as he heard a moped approaching down the muddy forest path. It was a strange reaction because no matter how much the postman disturbed Stephan’s silence, he usually came to him with happy letters in his bag. One could say that he cursed more out of habit than out of annoyance with the visitor.
As the mailman came closer, the engine noise and the stench of the exhaust fumes further infuriated Stephan since this was before the construction of the highway when such attacks on privacy and personal choices of isolation were rare. However, Stephan found some pleasure in the sight of a mailman before his eyes, covered in mud from head to toe.
Those November roads might make him think twice in the future about whether the visit was worth the effort, a smug thought sneaked up on Stephan as he was sitting in the chair in front of the house and observing the man approaching, but he said, “I keep wondering when will they put the asphalt through that forest?”
The on-duty guest wasn’t in a mood to share a joke with a well-known willful old man.
“Maybe you should move closer to the village, like all normal folk,” he answered. “How can you not get tired of being so lonely here in the forest? In the village, you could at least say hello to someone every morning!”
“Don’t worry about my loneliness, you’d be surprised how pleasant it can be.”
“If it’s as pleasant as your attitude, then I’ll pass,” the mailman said and hurried to fulfill his task, handing the envelope to Stephan. “This is for you. Please sign here.”
“My oh my!” Stephan took the shiny envelope, and turned it towards the sky to have a better look, for he knew such specially wrapped letters can be sent by one person in the whole wide world.
“This doesn’t look like one of those graveyard bills you usually bore me with.”
“I heard this is how they pack the overdue invoice reminders nowadays,” the mailman said surly and was already on his way to the moped, thus revealing luxurious mud layers on his back. One clean circle on his buttock, that must have been protected by the moped’s seat, made Stephan laugh again, this time aloud and beyond all measures of good taste.
After escorting the postman with a cackle, Stephan carefully began to open the envelope, noticing the difference between his frayed hands with dirty nails and the glossy material he was holding. A piece of white paper fell out.
Dear Stevie,
I expressed over the phone how deeply sorry I am for the loss of your mother, and I can do nothing but repeat my sorrow for her departure. I’ll forever remember her for her kindness and love. There’s one poem that I recently read, written by someone called Willis or Williams, and I found it comforting. I hope you’ll think so, too.
Where do people go to when they die?
Somewhere down below or in the sky?
‘I can’t be sure,’ said Grandad, ‘but it seems
They simply set up home inside our dreams.’
It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? I’ll do my best to come and visit you as soon as I’m back in Zürich. In the meantime, if it will serve as any consolation, I am sending you this photo. I went to look through my old albums wishing to remind myself of those lovely summers of our childhood. That’s how I found this one from the market. Honestly, I don’t remember taking it, but then again, I photographed everything and everyone in my eyesight. Anyway, I think you should have it if it brings you any peace. I hope you’re doing well despite the circumstances and that I’ll see you at least one more time before death comes for us, too.
I’m sending love and kisses,
Kathleen.
Stephan took a better look inside the envelope, then pulled out a black and white photo of a young woman—his mother Mary. In it, she looked nothing like he remembered her. Her braided hair was dark, and her arms were strong. She was looking straight into the camera, with her eyes alive and mouth revealing an unreserved happiness. The more he looked at it, the more that woman seemed like a stranger—closer memories blurred all others and, in his mind, Mary became petrified in the much older form: weak, hunched over, and drained from a lifetime of hard work. Yet, the woman’s vivid gaze in the photograph caught his attention. There was something homesick about it, and Stephan wouldn’t be wrong if he named that gaze a road back to childhood. Her eyes were narrowed and lengthened with sincere laughter, creating wrinkles from their corners, not at all looking like crow’s feet but resembling the beauty of Chinese fans. Her lips were parted, and her entire posture radiated love for whoever was standing behind the camera, and whoever was watching that photo.
Over time and by everlasting observation, the youthful person framed on the wall replaced Stephan’s newer recollections, making the appearance of his mother forever young in his mind and erasing that weary body of her final days for good. The photograph faithfully performed its duty, for every time he glanced at it, Stephan flew to a happier period—doesn’t the past always seem at least a shade more blissful than the present?
“It was a happy letter, this one. Arriving some… Fifteen years before Kathy forgot about me. Yes, about fifteen sounds right,” Stephan mutters absently.
The loud crackling of wood from the stove calls him back to the present. He pours the water into the pot and puts it on the stove, immediately stirring in a teaspoon of black coffee too, but it’s an action he’s doing by rote. His thoughts are now somewhere in his boyhood when Kathy was coming from Zürich to her aunt’s in the village, for the summer holidays. With Stephan’s father away for seasonal work, summers were a mellow part of the year.
“How the time flies,” he says in disbelief that he is now three months away from his eightieth birthday. He lived longer than his mother. Truth be told he lived longer than most people he knew.
Stephan remembers those past days when he still dared to wonder what his life would be like. To call it dreaming would be an exaggeration, though he had a few of those as a youngster before losing them to bad decisions and unforeseen disappointments. He was hardly planning either since he always shied away from such an activity, deeming it to be too bold for a mortal man who could not possibly have all the factors of the future in his hands to be able to envision it.
Others, however, had a hard time understanding a way of life in which tomorrow doesn’t seem to play a role. But aging takes things from a person, good and bad. Luckily, it also took away those rare but tempting opportunities for others to question Stephan about his life plans.
“Marriage. It is normal to get married. That’s how things go in life. You have to find yourself a wife before it’s too late,” some would advise when he was approaching his late twenties.
“If you don’t have children, what do you have? You leave nothing behind, no trace of existence. Who’ll bring you a glass of water when you’re old?” Others asked in a pragmatic tone.
“You need to look for a secure job, which will lead you to retirement without worries. Try in the city. There are good opportunities there,“ everyone agreed while gloating over his lack of ambition.
“You have to think about how they will bury you. If you die without preparing the money for the funeral, you have only made a burden,” the cautious ones warned.
The planning seemed to have been, in the mind of every interrogator, if not all of them, somehow equated with being alive—thus making Stephan a total opposite. Things finally settled a few years ago, either because curious mouths were fed up with not getting an answer or because they found out for themselves that planning didn’t keep them amongst the living, after all. Whoever stayed around must’ve concluded that Stephan is now merely waiting for the disappearance, which would terrify many but not him—the slow pace has been Stephan’s primordial condition, anyway.
The sound of coffee spilling out of the pot brings Stephan’s attention back to the stove. As he pours the coffee into the cup, the steam rises directly into his face, drenching him with the exotic scent of faraway places he’s never seen. The kitchen, dim and secretive, looks like the perfect retreat for any recluse but Stephan finds the magic of summer dawn outside to be luring him much stronger. Few would resist, certainly no one sane, the invitation to participate in the awakening of the day.
There are two chairs by the front door. Stephan sits on one and crosses his legs. He observes the high grass on a small meadow in front of the house, cut in half by the gravel road, and how motionless it stands without a breath of breeze. He then directs his gaze to the apiary that glimpses behind the house on the left. He doesn’t hear the buzzing up here, especially not with cars persistently passing over his head, but he knows how lively it is inside the colorful boxes.
A memory almost seventy years old flashes through his head, bringing along the echo of him and Kathy running behind the barn to catch a swarm.
“They won’t sting you now, don’t worry. Their bellies are too full,” he almost yelled in excitement and encouraged Kathy to stand still as she held the box with trembling hands, grimacing in fear while he shoved the bees into it.
“Just to catch the queen, and we’re done. The rest will follow her,” he said.
“I think I see her!” Kathy exclaimed every now and then at each bee that seemed to her just a little bigger than the rest, which were mostly drones.
Stephan takes a sip of hot coffee. The darkness is slowly yet patiently dissipating, and dawn will soon give up its time to the morning.
Three hens and a rooster loudly protest in a prison that inevitably comes to them every evening to protect them from fox theft. Stephan gets up to open the door of the small chicken coop, and the poultry rushes out as if chased by the devil. The rooster barbarically flaps its wings while greeting the new day with a rasping voice.
Stephan observes them for a few seconds as they scatter around in the joy of freedom and then turns around, nodding contentedly after finding two eggs inside the coop—enough for dinner today.
Somehow, another ancient memory flashes before his eyes, easily the oldest one he knows. Probably the happiest, too. His older brother John was taking him to collect the eggs in the morning—Stephan was holding the basket, and John was slowly putting in one egg after another. It was a time of carefree early years, harmonious family, and childish laughter. In a week or two, however, everything changed when the second-born Stephan became the only child in the family.
“Phew, when was that? As if it was in another life,” says Stephan.
Swallows fly and roister over his head. They rush out of the nest built in the stable and then dash back inside to keep an eye on their fledglings, the last ones of the season, before they go south. These fast birds unexpectedly crash towards the ground, rush towards Stephan with their pointy wings, and turn at the last moment, thus revealing their white bellies. Stephan is glad that the empty stable serves as at least someone’s home, and swallows are known to bring good luck. He returns to his chair and watches them descending very low, almost to the ground, in search of insects. That’s usually the first hint of the rain, but he doesn’t dare to get his hopes high.
After drinking coffee, Stephan steps inside the house again. He takes a floral box from the shelf and one small piece of paper from the pile right next to it. He sits down at the kitchen table and writes.
Dear Kathy,
Today started the same as yesterday. I hope to be done with the cabbage by the evening because I feel like I desperately need rest. My bones ache, and there’s this overall fatigue in me. Still no sign of the rain. This could possibly be the driest year I have ever lived through. But even that will somehow pass. As does everything,
Stephan.
He folds the paper and puts it inside the box, already full to the brim. After placing it back on the shelf, Stephan takes a used, crumpled plastic bag from the table and puts two bottles of wine and one bottle of water in it, half a loaf of bread, a well-sealed bowl of beans he cooked the day before yesterday, two green apples, a spoon—which he doesn’t wash but only wipes from the previous use—and one cup.
With a bag in his hand, Stephan closes the front door and takes a hoe immersed in a bucket of water by the well. For the past week, he’s been working in the field, hoeing the cabbage crop at the only piece of land he’s got left, besides the house and the backyard. That’s where he’s headed today, too.
Before he leaves, he takes a bucket of water out of the well, and the poultry, that were happily pecking the grass nearby, rush toward him to drink. Stephan pauses to watch them, hesitant in deciding whether he should close them up again inside the coop. Today he risks the fox’s appetite, and leaves them be, and continues walking down the forest road.
To read the entire novel, purchase Natural Habitant on Amazon.
Copyright © 2022 Ana Iris
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