The Apple-tree

"The Apple-Tree" by Leo Tolstoy is a poignant short story that explores themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. The narrative centers on an elderly man who reflects on his life and the memories associated with a solitary apple tree in his garden. As he reminisces about his youth, his lost loves, and the changes that come with age, the apple tree serves as a symbol of both beauty and nostalgia. Through this intimate portrayal, Tolstoy delves into the emotional depths of human experience, highlighting the connections between nature, memory, and the inevitable cycles of life.

								
I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug
around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with
straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I
went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the
winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were
sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds.
Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the
flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms
and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when
I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the
ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood.
The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had
happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared
pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in
bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and
they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the
two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the
bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were
left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together,
there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All
the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they
were all wild.

The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries
the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes
along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole
inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old
willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but
when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut
through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow
out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed
through the body.

Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in
order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.

Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all
around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches,
leaves, and flowers.
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