Cherry Bridges
In 1979 I was seven years old when I discovered the cherry bridge. My family lived in the hills of Budapest where houses had stately fronts facing the street, evenly spaced and neatly cordoned off behind individual fences. It was in the back yards where the street’s personality came alive. Behind the houses the city laws were relaxed and uniform visuals were no longer required. Back there the weedy green spaces grew toward each other, refusing to be kept in place by wires or boards.
Our back yard had cherry trees. They were planted by our landlord back in the early days of the 20th century. He originally came from the countryside where his childhood home had many cherry trees. He brought a bag of seeds with him when he moved to the big city and planted the trees so his children might have the same experience he did in his youth. The children enjoyed long afternoons climbing the branches and picking cherries, some to be brought to the kitchen for their mother’s jam and some for eating right there in the trees with a light covering of leaves to separate the wooden limbs from the sky above.
When our family moved into the house, the landlord told us we could modify the back yard any way we chose, but he wanted us to protect the cherry trees. My sister and I quickly learned the joys of snacking our way through the afternoons while hanging from the tree limbs. One day after I began the second grade, I was doing my homework in the house when I heard a call from the back yard. I immediately remembered one of my classmates had told me his house bordered ours from the back. He lived on the parallel street to ours, but the plots touched along the rear fence. I put down my pencil and ran out to the back yard. My classmate was waiting on the other side of the fence.
“Care for a snack?” he said. “Mother made biscuits.” He pointed to the nearest cherry tree in our back yard. “Come on over. Take the bridge.”
I looked up, confused, but then I understood. The yards were all so close that the tree branches created a sort of skyway, a network of branches reaching from tree to tree and spanning the entirety of the street from one yard to the next. We were able to scurry between the many yards, unhampered by fences or locked gates. A sense of immense freedom blossomed within me, and nothing seemed out of reach.
Over the years as I grew, I learned many things about our neighborhood, indeed about the whole country. In many ways my Hungarian neighbors were cautious, inwardly suspicious in a society influenced by the Soviet occupation of the country in the years following the Second World War. But just as they maintained faces of outward rigidity they had, within their hearts, an immense fount of generosity and love. Once they let down their defenses, the overflowing friendship that followed was as tight and true as any human bond on earth. Each Hungarian had in their own back yard a cherry bridge that wasn’t content to stay in its own back yard. The bridges grew from yard to yard, nourishing the entire neighborhood with contentment and generosity.
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete
See more of Zary's work in 12.2