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Maria spotted the red tent just hours before it started snowing. It was a late snowfall, arriving at the tail end of a dry and cold winter, so harsh that the countryside around her house had fallen ill with a jaundiced yellow. That day, like thousands before it, she had spent studying, nourishing her young mind with books.
Barely thirteen, with a body that was slow to bloom and boredom as her life companion, Maria had few reasons to venture out. Partly because she had to wait for the bus that passed only twice a day, partly because reaching the bus stop meant walking half a kilometer down a dirt road, where stones refused to compromise with shoe soles, and where she feared the neighbors' dog might come charging at her, foaming at the mouth, dragging its broken chain behind.
The village, distant and inhabited by people without imagination, was small enough to not merit a tourist's stop or careful visit. It was also so predictable and shabby that the school at its center, painted in pastel colors borrowed from sadness, was the only building in town that dared to exceed the canonical two floors, venturing into a third attic level dedicated to a dreary library deserted by almost everyone. Maria, on the contrary, borrowed many books, made herself comfortable in the armchair before the fireplace, and read until exhaustion.
During the fair season, the outdoor porch was perfect for the purpose, with its green-enameled swing that creaked like an old music box, the table with its flower-patterned oilcloth secured with windbreakers, and the wooden railing that shed flakes of dry paint at the slightest movement. Custer, her old mongrel with a tail broken in the middle and a white patch on the side of his muzzle, loved to curl up in the corner of the balcony. In that spot, the railing posts seemed sandpapered, and moreover, a dark halo on the wooden floor testified to how attached the animal was to that piece of world.
On one of those winter afternoons with the scent of snow in the air, the red tent appeared in the meadow atop the hill.
It was perfectly positioned in the center of a crown of trees, with its shorter side facing the wind and guy lines well-tensioned. The zipper at the entrance appeared half-open, with the lower flaps barely fluttering. One of the first snowflakes of the snowfall, which would last for two days from then on, settled on the slanted side. Like the millions that followed in its wake, it rolled to the ground with a barely perceptible rustle. Maria returned home somewhat worried, with Custer by her side. The dog nimbly jumped over the missing plank on the wooden bridge laid across the stream banks. She preferred to pass along the side, relying on a firm grip on the frozen handrail.
In the evening, with her mother in the kitchen, her father just arrived and his mood slightly worse than the time before, Maria alienated herself from reality and began to read, letting herself be lulled by the rocking chair in front of the fire. The news droned on with its usual rosary of bad news. Meanwhile, Moby Dick was making a fool of Captain Ahab.
A mound of snow. That's exactly how the tent appeared. After more than two days of uninterrupted snowfall and icy wind that had stiffened its contours, none of its sharp geometries could be seen anymore, and the surrounding plants had their branches bent. Maria, wearing snow boots, and Custer, with a touch of arthritis and snow tickling his belly, got close enough to imagine that the red tent could very well be someone's tomb. Maria turned back, running and watching out for the unstable bridge. She arrived home with burning feet and cheeks colored with fever-red. Lord of the Flies, brand new, was just waiting to climb onto the rocking chair with her to be initiated.
On the third day, under a sky that alternated white clouds with timid streaks of blue, the tent had sunk under the snow's weight like a cake taken out of the oven at the wrong moment. On that occasion, Custer had stayed in his bed, and the book told of a pig's head, impaled on a wooden stake and surrounded by a perpetual swarm of flies.
On the fourth day, it rained.
Maria didn't dare find another excuse to leave home, face the frozen slush up to the hill, and see what had become of the red tent. She imagined it pressed to the ground, with crumpled guy lines and the collapsed structure protruding from the canvas like a compound fracture.
The night that followed, she managed to sleep only a few minutes.
Nightmares, oppressive blankets, and too much darkness pressing against her eyelids. The clearing among the trees, with the tent at its center, appeared to her in dreams along with a rapid alternation of seasons, with a flock of crows taking turns at the feast and a procession of worms heading toward that memory of red.
Winter passed, then spring. Frodo Baggins managed to free himself of his burden, Beverly Marsh, along with the losers, completed her initiation rite, and Maria turned fourteen.
One summer morning, having passed her exams with flying colors and with mom and dad down in the village looking for a new car, she returned to the clearing. She brought Custer along, slightly limping from worsening arthritis and attached to an unprecedented leash interpreted as an irredeemable offense. The grass, tall and thick, hadn't managed to completely mask the tent's canvas that the sun had begun to fade. The curved frame tubes had proved irresistible to invasive weeds. In the middle, a newborn tree was reaching toward the sun and had dragged a flap of the tent along with it. The smell of decay in the air was quite distinct.
Lord Jim climbed his river, Guy Montag tried to set as many fires as he could, and Big Brother stared at her for a long time from the large poster on the walls.
In August, under the scorching sun and with the attic heated up, the library closed for its usual summer break, and Maria finished rocking herself under the shelter of the porch, when nothing new was happening on the western front anymore.
She ran toward the hill and arrived there panting. The tree, nourished by abundant spring rains, had grown at least a meter and a half and was dressed in red like a Christmas fir. The tubes, stakes, and now-rusted guy lines twisted in the air like a rather macabre piece of modern art. She ran back even faster and noticed that the bridge had surrendered its second rotten plank to the river. A wooden stump remained as a witness to better times gone by.
The following autumn, only a few unread books remained in the library, and middle school released her into a new world.
She forgot about the hill, the clearing, and the eager-to-grow tree that dragged along the remains of the red tent and who knows what else. She forgot to the point of no longer dreaming about anything related to that place. In her thoughts, there was some space for that curly-haired boy from class 1B and a new excitement for her breasts, which had finally decided to insistently point against her undershirt. In the morning, after breakfast, choosing matching clothes began to require a few extra minutes.
The institute's library, housed in a quiet basement, had so many books that Maria had to give herself a rule. She chose criteria that considered historical chronology and a not-too-rigorous alphabetical order. Before the holidays, she stocked up on the complete works of Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Goethe.
She rocked on the porch with Madame Bovary and learned the rudiments of Sentimental Education. It happened at the end of the afternoon, with an imperious thunderstorm that had made the eastern sky disappear. She learned about the life of Jeanne Le Perthuis and the cynical ambition of George Duroy, an irresistible playboy from a Paris that only appeared in vintage prints anymore.
At the beginning of September, without Custer, who was confined by arthritis to his favorite corner of the world, she found herself again before the tree. It had grown to match its siblings surrounding the clearing. The tent's canvas had turned to piglet pink and fit perfectly among the already lush branches. The frame tubes held it taut, as if a skilled and patient hand had starched and ironed a shirt collar. Among the highest leaves and just beyond the shelter of the canvas, one could glimpse a black head of hair, rather disheveled but still thick. It rested on the main trunk as if someone had arranged their afternoon nap in the shelter from the sun.
Maria hadn't come empty-handed.
She circled the trees, stamped her feet on the ground to drive away vipers, and finally sat with her back against the trunk. Enterprising ants began to take measurements of her bare ankles, and she drove them back, burying them under a light layer of soil. The tent fabric barely fluttered, like that first time at the beginning of the snowfall. Sparrows were singing, and cicadas were certainly not holding back. She felt the hard grass pierce through her flimsy summer pants and a hint of itching in her legs.
She persisted.
She pushed with her back, and the young, still tender trunk began to rock. The black hair, producing a sound of broken bones barely confused with the rustling of leaves, settled on the branch beside her.
With an emotional voice, she began reading The Catcher in the Rye.
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