The Story of a Bench

The life of the larch, the heroine of this narrative, was as if split in two. The first part was short, a mere blink of an eye for a tree, considering some of her sisters lived for nine centuries or more. She remembered how she sprouted as a thin shoot towards the light in the heart of the taiga, how she grew stronger year after year, withstanding frosts unbearable for humans. She remembered, right up to the moment when that human, a lumberjack, cut her down, silencing her song, and sent her to the sawmill.

She remembered the resin oozing from the wound like tears and blood, how she screamed in pain, but the people and machines around were deaf. All she could do was stoically endure this torture, this agony, which still couldn't kill her completely.

The irony of fate: man used her even before taking her life. He used the larch's healing resin to treat his ailments – ulcers, gastritis, heart and lung diseases. He drank it to ward off old age, heart attacks, and strokes.

And it was he, the man, who decided her second fate. He decided that in the form of a bench, she would live for another thirty years, if she was lucky.

The second life began with a reunion, strange and bitter. Different parts of her body – pieces of the trunk, fragments of branches – were joined together, bound with nails and staples. But this pain was nothing compared to the one inflicted by the axe and saw.

She was placed in a park, surrounded by living trees – a mocking mockery of fate. And her days began, filled with observing people, their lives, their stories.

On her, people confessed their love, made dates, spies exchanged secret messages in the shadow of the trees. On her, people ate, leaving crumbs and greasy stains, carved confessions and curses with a knife, drew, painted, painted again...

She was a silent witness to first kisses and bitter partings, the birth of new life and death. Someone, sitting on her, wrote poems, in which her story was also present.

She lived the lives of others, collecting them like a puzzle into her own – a kaleidoscope of meetings and partings, inspiration and disappointment, beginnings and ends. She got used to this life, basked in the sun's rays, washed away dust with rain, absorbed the whisper of the wind.

But one day it all ended. The fire that engulfed the park did not spare her either. Dying for the second, last time, the bench remembered everything: the taiga, the sawmill, the park that became her last refuge... She remembered all the stories, all the people whose lives touched hers.

The fire destroyed not only the bench, but also the memory of it, of those who once sat on it, laughed, cried, loved...

The park was reborn, a new, non-combustible, metal bench was placed in place of the burnt one. It will have its own, long story. But that's a completely different story.

October 15, 2024