The following is the Coda of The Rowan Tree: A Novel by Robert W. Fuller. The complete novel is now in paperback, and available for *free* in various ebook formats including Kindle. The audiobook can be found at Amazon, iTunes, and audible.com. If you enjoy The Rowan Tree, please write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or your own blog! The author also welcomes your comments.
CODA: ROWANBERRIES
Adam and Marisol had spent their first winter in the cabin in the Berkshires that Rowan called Nobodyland. But tourists at their gate, and the stares of strangers in town, made them want to withdraw even further from the world. A word to Vice President Hazel Chilton was all it took. True to his word, Anatoly Kostikov put a cottage on Lake Baikal at Adam’s disposal for as long as he wanted it. There, Adam and his sister spent their first free summer under the brightest stars on Earth.
Walking along the shore, sailing on the lake, gathering mushrooms and berries, and shopping in the village nearby, they felt a happiness they hadn’t known since their blissful Parisian holiday. Marisol’s Russian gained the respect of the locals, enough so that they shielded their famous guests from the few journalists who came in search of a story.
It was in their Siberian hideaway that Adam finished his journal. Apart from Marisol and Karen, he showed it to no one. Karen put her response in the form of a quote from the Roman poet Horace. Two thousand years ago, Horace advised writers to put their “parchments in the cupboard, and let them be quiet till the ninth year. What you have not published you will be able to destroy. The word once uncaged never comes home again.”
This advice had the paradoxical effect of staying Adam’s impulse to toss the journal on the fire. Let it sit in the cupboard for nine years where it could do no harm and, who knows, maybe, decades hence, he would find a use for some of it.
That fall, just as the snows began and Adam and Marisol were wondering if they could endure the hardships of a Siberian winter, Easter called to say that the flu Rowan had been fighting had taken a turn for the worse. Being almost ninety-three, the doctor had warned her, his situation was precarious.
They left immediately and reached Washington on the twenty-sixth of October. Rowan died two days later, but not before he smiled upon his children.
In what was to be their last conversation, he shared a concern and a vision with the two of them.
“There will be setbacks. Democracy took centuries to develop, and so will dignitarian governance. But in time it will become obvious that peace and justice cannot endure apart from dignity for all.”
During his stint in Beijing, Rowan had gotten to know Galia.
“She has all the virtues of her father, and none of his vices,” he said of her. “She’s getting an insider’s knowledge of politics that will complement the vision she carries in her heart. Don’t be surprised if it falls to Galia to realize what you and her father have begun.”
“What you began,” Adam said, but Rowan would have none of it. “Philosophy is easy,” he countered. “Politics is hard. In you, Adam, the two were mixed in just the right proportions.”
Rowan was a man of second acts, and Adam asked if he saw one for him and Marisol. Rowan reminded them that he’d had his best ideas late in life, and suggested that it might be like that for them. “If you take your dreams seriously, they will bring you a second life as full as your first. But you must be willing to be a nobody.”
“That’s what I am now,” Adam said.
“Me too,” added Marisol.
“Then, there’s a pair of you, don’t tell. In Nobodyland, rules are made to be broken. It’s the only place I ever came up with anything new. I’ll be heading that way myself, any day now.”
When Adam reported Rowan’s remark to Easter she said that Rowan had never been able to resist a mordant quip. That day was his last.
In the forest near their Siberian hideaway were trees with hard crimson berries that the natives identified as rowan trees. Marisol had brought a handful of rowanberries home with her, and a few days after Rowan died, Easter, Adam, and Marisol planted them in the fertile soil of Nobodyland.
Read the complete novel on Kindle and other ebook formats. The print edition is available at Amazon, and the audiobook can be ordered at Amazon, iTunes, and audible.com.
