Grupo AMANUENSE - The Story of a Tree

The story of a tree Ricardo Cie - Wen Hsu Chen

“Highly recommended” FUNDALECTURA IBBY Colombia, 2011

The story of a tree Ricardo Cie - Wen Hsu Chen

Publicado por: Grupo Amanuense ® Dirección: 3ra. Avenida, Tronco 2, Sección A, Lote 5, El Encinal. Zona 7 Mixco.

GUATEMALA, CENTROAMÉRICA Teléfonos (502) 2434-7831 / (502) 2431-8243 editorial@grupo-amanuense.com www.grupo-amanuense.com ISBN 978-99922-980-0-6 Primera edición en rústico 2009 Copyright ©2009 Grupo Amanuense, S.A. © 2009 Ricardo Antonio Cie Rodríguez © 2009 Wen Hsu Chen Todos los derechos reservados. No se permite reproducir, almacenar en sistemas de recuperación de la información, ni transmitir la totalidad o alguna parte de esta publicación, cualquiera sea el medio empleado.

Cualquier solicitud de derechos podrá hacerse a: literaria@grupo-amanuense.com

In front of my house on Portrero street, there was a tree. My house’s tree. It was enormous, old and leafy. Above all old, because by the time I came to live in that house it had already been there for a long time, like a guardian, on one side of the iron gate.

My house’s tree doesn’t really belong to my house. It’s out front, like I said, to one side, but we always took care of it. I climbed on it and watered it on Wednesdays, and that’s why I say it belonged to my house even if that wasn’t true. Nobody else claimed it and therefore, out of affection, we decided that it was ours.

One day, my house’s tree got infected by one of those fevers that one thinks only ever happens to humans: it grew bored, wanted a change. Suddenly it wanted that ability humans have of moving everywhere. It came to grow jealous of those soft and leafless beings who didn’t need to stay anchored to the earth in order to live.

Night after night, as the wind softly rocked it, it thought of how to reach places where no tree had ever been. Night after night, it wiggled its roots, like we do when we bury our feet in the sand on a beach.

It softened the ground, pushing it away from its skin and feeling free.

It practiced balancing for entire days so it wouldn’t fall and one lonely Tuesday, in the late hours of the night when not even the dogs were still awake, it pulled its roots from the moist earth.

The two strongest roots, the center ones, supported it on one side of the hole it left, and the tree used them like legs. It rose up, imposing, and three meters taller for the time. The rest of its roots hung like a grass skirt around its waist.

The next day, no one in the city believed the drunk driver who insisted that he hadn’t lost control of his car but that the tree he crashed against had walked in the middle of the street.

No one believed us either, when we went to the police to report that some unscrupulous thief had decided to rob us, but instead of taking our car or the safe as the object of their perfidy, they’d chosen nothing more and nothing less than the tree of our house.

And the police were very upset and kicked us out of the station when we told them that, in reality, the tree wasn’t really ours-ours.

Avoiding populated areas and remaining still whenever it encountered someone in the fields, our tree went further away from our house, step by step with its new legs, looking for a place to plant itself where no other tree had ever been before.

After seven weeks and two days, it came to the enormous ocean and tried to transplant itself in its depths. It thought that a tree in the ocean would truly be a novelty, but it didn’t take into consideration the softness of the sea sand that didn’t let it root itself firmly, nor the force of the tides (much stronger than that of tornados), nor the fact that ants are much less bothersome that the parrotfish that nibbled unceasingly at its juicy bark.

When it emerged, soggy and sad, it sat on the shore for a while before continuing on its journey. For three days it was shaking itself free from the layer of salt that its ocean adventure left on it.

The tree turned East and continued searching. It reached the peak of the highest mountain on the planet and tried to transplant itself there. But it didn’t count on the inclement snow that wanted to imprison it in ice, nor with the impenetrable rocks which wouldn’t let its roots find purchase, nor with the eagles who were so large and heavy that, honestly, having them roost on its branches was hard for it to bear.

Finally, my house’s tree, which no longer belonged to my house although it hadn’t really belonged to it in the beginning either, came to the desert. It saw no other trees among the ochre dunes and felt that, although the heat was terrible, it could bear it and be the only tree to grow in the desert.

It sunk its root-legs into the burning sand, shook itself every six hours to remove the sand from its leaves and endured, endured, and endured the heat, determined to remain. The nights were very very cold, but without ice, so the tree summoned up patience and endured and endured and endured.

What my tree didn’t calculate was that the desert sand, which let it take root better than the sea sand, had nothing on which it could feed. And when at last it thought that it was better to give up, the tree no longer had the strength to pull up its two large root-legs. Pondering how to resolve this dilemma, it grew dryer, unable to free itself. Little by little, a thick sleep fell upon it, just as the sand fell upon its leaves, as ochre as the dunes.

Just before sleep overtook it, at 4:15 on a Thursday afternoon, it begged its mother (Nature) to not let it fail like this, but it no longer even knew if its prayer was completed or not because darkness left it blind and it ceased to feel heat or cold, whether it was day or night.

The earth spun around the sun. Hundred of turns and then thousands and then millions.

I left my house, graduated from school, got married, grew old and one August dawn I left this earth. And my children had children and their children had children and those children had children and so on.

The last child of a child of a child of a child of a child, now fifteen years old, read in the newspaper one Friday, at around three in the afternoon, that a dried trunk of an enormous tree had been found in the middle of the desert.

This was a great archeological discovery and that they were going to renovate the place, so that everyone could visit the tree that had been where it should never have been.

They built a park around the petrified trunk and an artificial lake nearby so that people could admire the great discovery without suffering the desert’s severity.

On the day of the inauguration, the water of the newly-created lake dampened the earth until a drop of water reached the tip of what was once the rootleg of my house’s tree. Within the petrified bark there was still an infinitesimal particle of life, lulled to sleep by time, that awoke when the drop of water reached it and, like an electric current, ran through the trunk, giving the tree a last breath of life.

The tree woke for two seconds and twenty three tenths of a second. Just enough to realize that thousands of people admired it and to know that it had fulfilled its dream: to be alive and recognized by men and women as the tree that was in a place where no tree could be. It smiled, trembled slightly while it closed its eyes for an instant, and didn’t wake up again.

Thus, my house’s tree became the tree of all houses. Its brave story now flies, like dry leaves, to all corners of the Earth and now it is the people, those soft and leafless beings, who envy it.

Ricardo Cie - author Ricardo is a writer, illustrator and works as a creative in advertising. He is a social communicator at the Catholic University Andres Bello (Venezuela). Ricardo Cie has written and drawn in various publications of Venezuela, Mexico and Guatemala.

With Amanuense he has published: Chocolate and Meringue, Chamoch and Story of a Tree (“Highly recommended” FUNDALECTURA - IBBY Colombia, 2011).

Wen Hsu Chen – illustrator Wen is an architect at the University of Costa Rica and graduated with honors from BFA Rhode Island School of Design.

Her work has embellished Central America publications. Her technique – combining watercolor and cut paper– has earned her numerous awards.

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