Fragrance Forever

The smell of wood, refreshingly¹ sweet, greeted me even before I sat down at the round table. As if breathing along with the trees, I felt a simple, primitive²（原始的，简单的） joy when admiring those furniture and home articles shaped and carved out of cedar³（雪松） in the heritage museum village of San Antonio, an old-time riverside town down south in the United States.

The craftsman⁴, Arnold, came from a family of carpenters. As a Vietnam War veteran, he related to me, a visitor from Asia, how he had fought against the Vietcong guerrillas in the jungle.

His dearest memory, he said, was that of a medley⁵（混合） of tropical smells of the rain forest, in which he had to move with the utmost（极度的） caution, trembling with fear that the lurking⁶ enemy would attack from anywhere, any moment. What calmed him down, he recalled, was the fragrance⁷（香味） of wood as he, holding his rifle, was lying prone⁸ against the trunk of a large tree, sticking himself to the coarse bark.

After the war, Arnold started to live by working on wood, like his ancestors. Among his finest carpentry works was a rocking-chair, in which his daughter was now seated, reading. I picked out a tube-shaped pot with a lid. Chiselled⁹ out of a block, the objet d'art well preserved the material's colour in various shades, the clear annual rings, the original cracks and nodes -- what a reminder¹⁰ of the mystique（奥秘） of life!

Lifting the lid, I savoured the fragrance of wood, feeling the natural power that had helped Arnold overcome his fear -- fragrance in war, which sounds like a poet's nonsense.