Grandfather's Mulberry

The old woman, the moment she heard her grandson's voice and then saw him, came out to the threshold of her house as though she had sprouted wings. Her face, across which ninety-two years had drawn their creases, shone. She wept for joy and gave thanks that she had lived, whole and well, to see her first grandson again. Then she threw a quilt over the daybed, spread the cloth, brought out bread and sugar and dried curds. They talked of one thing and another.

The grandson lit a cigarette and walked round the courtyard, and as if he were seeing it for the first time he studied the mud-brick wall, the grapevine, the apple tree, the old tandoor.

"Why have the mulberry branches been cut? For the silkworms, or for firewood?"

The old woman was slicing carrots. She raised her head and smiled.

"Do you remember, when you were a boy, how in mulberry season you would sometimes not come down out of the tree for hours?"

"Of course. It might have been yesterday."

"How many years since you left the village?" his grandmother asked.

"This summer it will be twenty. I still remember how you told me, over and over, that a man must eat his fill of mulberries three times every year when they ripen. I kept your counsel. Actually, I have wanted for a long time to hear you tell me more about my grandfather."

"Your father was thirteen when he passed. He had a little of the old learning. You know, your grandfather planted these mulberry trees seventy years ago. A keepsake, you might call it. The trunks are hollow now, the roots have dried. That is why the branches were cut."

The old woman sank, without meaning to, into her own thoughts. Her grandson did not ask what days were passing before her eyes.

But it came to him that he had turned thirty-seven and had not yet planted a single sapling.

And his grandfather's mulberry had dried, all at once.