Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

oblivion

the steamy heat of the greenhouse, and thecriminals won; the guards couldn’t do anything about it; the only gardener who knew the job, a former custodian of an arboretum, was soon killed by a live wire, and the garden began to fai l; prisoners started eating the flowers, chopping them up with a knife like greens and boiling them in tin cans.  The camp administrators, who could not retreat—the botanical garden was now celebrated in the mini s tr y, they promised to send specialists, expand the garden, and turn it into a museum of polar agronomy and gardening— the administrators decided to gather the peasant exiles and staff the garden with them. They simply sent a convoy of guards to the exile village and, without arresting them, the leader picked out

ten people to bring back to the camp. The garden had trees—apple, cherry, plum; in winter they were wrapped in burlap, with straw piled around the trunks, but the burlap and straw were stolen to make clothing warmer; they had to keep a watchman by the trees. They were still too small to bear fruit, so when high-ranking visitors came, fruits were hung on the branches in any season; the fruits were counted, so that the staff would not appropr iate any before returning them in compliance with an inventory list. One time a guest decided to eat an apple and discovered the thin thread that tied its stem to the branch, and angri ly threw the smal l Golden Chinese apple, glowing like a paper lantern,

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