Smoke

When she had been young Cenza had always loved the southerly winds, the one which mainly visited in the olive picking season. They would tease the smoke out of the village tile factory's tall chimney and spread it slowly over the lowlands where she lived and her family worked.

She liked how these industrial clouds diffused the harsh bright sunlight and change the shapes of the shadows cast by the olive trees. The soft shadow play during these winds made her feel like the trees were offering a dance and she would be unable to resist the urge to accept and dance with them. Her father would sometimes find her like this and chastise her for not working, but secretly he loved to watch her, imagining the music that she could hear and that drove her vital impulses. It gave him a transparent hope.

It had been many months since the factory had stopped making tiles and the only smoke that washed over the lowlands was sparse and a jaundiced yellow, it imposed an acidic taste of burning plastic, it didn´t come from the chimney, but from the village where the militia were now active, the militia her father had refused to join, and was in constant anxiety.

As time went by, without the smoke from the chimney, the olives were growing thickly and with an abundance. This nature Cenza hadn´t seen before, it was beginning to establish itself on the low planes. She noticed it almost daily, an increase of wildlife, making her aware of what had been missing by its gradual return. Starting with the smallest animals, the insects making their appearance, the butterflies, the bees. Soon she witnessed tiny lizards around the trunks of the olives. They were hunting flies and their grubs.

Wrens, blackbirds, robins, hawks, murmurations of starlings, accumulated, and drifted almost like the southerly factory smoke had, impossible formations, orchestrated by unknown and unseen impulse, expansive, spiritual. Following the birds came the felines, arriving from, or simply escaping the corrupted village.

The same morning Cenza sat quietly watching the impossible beauty of a lynx mothering three newborns at the base of an olive tree, her father left for the village, selected by the sparse rural community to represent them. Water was needed, the supply had been cut.

She lost track of time, the music of the lynx newborns soft mewing, her back against the tree, she felt her eyes moisten. Maybe he was there, in the village already, he had always been strong and definite to her, but now she imagined him, standing thin, curved, soft face and sinuous body, beseeching the militia, hands proffered, begging. And as she sat there she became aware of a change. The sun had weakened and the long shadows drawn by the lengthening of the day were losing their sharp edges. She felt the wind lifting tentatively, brushing her cheeks, gently moving the small dagger-like leaves of the branches of the olive around her. Shadow limbs began their age old dance.

She looked up northwards and saw the drifting smoke. She climbed to her feet and began to move her arms and to sway to the rhythm of the trees movements, the lynx looked, did not stir, there was no music just the sound of the leaves softly whispered warning. Cenza knew a new time was coming, heralded by this source of smoke, the many wheels of the vehicles approaching from the village.

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