And how many people are there now?
There was a time when the prairies rumbled with millions of bison.
There was a time when passenger pigeons blanketed the sky.
There was a time when pollinators lived their own, sweet, innocent lives and weren’t shipped in slave carriers from one place to another regardless of how many could survive the journey.
*
Then the thought comes to me, unsummoned, of what I just saw on the Other Side.
I breathe in so quick that it hurts.
I was in the future.
Some things had already happened, their results knowable, seeable, touchable.
It’s all clear to me now. Inevitable. Preordained.
To keep the gate …
I know my weaknesses.
I know the risks of giving in to them.
I’m not much of a gatekeeper. I’m just a person. Imperfect, a skittish mammal, instinctively protective of myself and my offspring. A weak creature, capable of justifying my selfishness with a thousand rational-seeming arguments the moment I’m threatened with danger or pain or want. People will risk even the destruction of a whole world if it means they can have, just for a moment, everything they want.
All of the motives for leaving or staying that churn in my mind are suddenly so much noise. There’s only one solution, one road. I’ve seen that solution with my own eyes. I just didn’t want to recognize it.
*
I light the sauna fire.
Hot. Good and hot. I cram the stove with the birch sticks I have stacked high in the woodshed.
Then I go into the house and find Eero’s old blog, the one kept under his own name.
I haven’t deleted it. I notice, too, that I haven’t read the last post, the one he made the day before his death. He was preparing for the attack when he wrote it.
Look, Dad. I’m dancing.
Many religions have, somewhat paradoxically, been mostly harmful to the environment. (I say paradoxically because many religions stress mercy, goodness and empathy.) Taken literally, the Bible’s command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth hasn’t even worked to our own advantage let alone to the benefit of the rest of creation. The Bible says that humans are the masters of other life forms, and that, too, has caused great suffering. Humans haven’t been the kinds of masters we expect our own rulers to be – gentle, just and thoughtful of the needs of their subordinates. The atrocities of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot are small compared with the exploitation, cruelty and premeditated mass murder that humanity has practised towards animals.
Perhaps one of the most delusional human tenets regarding nature is the idea of life after death, of the Other Side, a heaven or paradise where a person can go if they live right, an unspoiled world where the con sequences of our own actions are no longer apparent in the environment and where, above all, we no longer need to do anything about them, we can just stroll through peaceful green meadows without a care in the world.
The illusion of the afterlife is a convenient excuse not to do anything about what’s happening now. Certain fundamentalists have even claimed that the warming of the climate is nothing we need to worry about because it’s God’s sign of the end of days, and right-thinking people will be taken up to the Lord when the Earth is destroyed if only they have enough faith.
Belief in the Other Side is one way that people today deny death. It’s inevitable, touching everyone, sad, final. It’s too painful to face. So we invented life after death. In the same way we refuse to understand the suffering of our fellow creatures. We ignore the death of our very world, refuse to look at it, deny that it’s even happening because it’s too distressing, makes us feel too guilty.
LEAVE A COMMENT (total comments: 412)
USER NAME: Tirsu
Everyone who wants to, leave a comment here for Eero. I’ll also put up a link to Eero’s memorial grove as soon as it’s ready and post your comments there.
USER NAME: B-Zone
Rest in peace, Eero. You’ll be remembered.
USER NAME: Rosa Meriläinen
My condolences to you in your sorrow and to all the animals whose rights Eero uncompromisingly defended. He was our conscience and our inspiration.
USER NAME: Lumorap
See you on the other side.
USER NAME: JesseP
Farewell, brother.
USER NAME: (no user name)
Now you know what happens when you mess with a Proggle.
USER NAME: (no user name)
He went the same way as the critters you Singers whine about. A bullet to the forehead.
SHOW ALL 406 COMMENTS
I write a new post on the blog under Eero’s user name but use the anonymous server to do it (I’ve learned that much, at least).
NOT WITH A BANG BUT A BUZZ
If I had to name a product of evolution that could be a result of intelligent design it would be the bee. The importance of bees for the ecosystem of the entire planet is so significant, so essential, that it is as if they were custom-made especially for the task.
We think we have the blood of angels in us. In action how like an angel. The paragon of animals.
But if any species has the blood of angels, the bees do.
The wisdom of bees is the wisdom of the super-organism. Even I don’t mourn the death of my individual cells, sloughing off from the walls of my arteries, ceasing to function, moving on in the great circle of life. What’s more important is that the organism, the entirety of it, is preserved. The hive, the tribe, the society. The ecosystem.
Individuals have to be sacrificed in order for worlds to continue. Bee colonies don’t hesitate to throw out damaged individuals if they don’t know enough to leave on their own.
Bees – individual bees – know when to leave the nest.
And the entire super-organism knows when to leave, too, if it’s forced into a corner. It has great understanding and even greater abilities.
Whatsoever you do to the least of these little ones, you do unto me.
And by the way, I’m alive.
*
I put up the post. Maybe a messianic cult will be born, built on this cryptic post made after Eero’s martyr’s death, written on an anonymous server but with Eero’s user name. But so be it.
That’s how it should be.
Just so they do something.
*
As I shut down the page, ready to get up from my task, the console sends me automatically to the news channel. The prickly voice of the anchorman stops me in my tracks.
‘The American organization Pro Good Life announced today that they have obtained evidence that animal-rights activists are behind the bee-killing phenomenon known as colony collapse. A PGL representative says that they have found plans for attacks on apiaries on the websites of extremist groups such as the Animalist Liberation Army.
‘Sources claim that extremist groups have developed a device for sending electromagnetic radiation that is disturbing to bees. The device causes the bees to leave their hives and confuses their sense of direction so that they are unable to return to their colonies.
‘Representatives of the animal rights activists categorically deny any part in the phenomenon, but Garrison Slager of Pro Good Life says otherwise. He says the activists’ plan was to cause a collapse in US cattle-feed production and cause severe damage to the meat industry.’
Slager, a serious-looking man in a billed cap, comes on the screen, his face red. ‘Apparently their plan got out of hand, and now it’s caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage,’ he says. ‘These people are completely irresponsible, and they must be caught and brought to justice. Their activities must be stopped by any means necessary. The FBI is investigating the matter, and more evidence is coming to light every day.’
The video clip ends and the anchor looks calmly into the camera. ‘According to the FBI the saboteurs have tentacles that stretch as far as Finland. Although there has not yet been any colony
collapse in Finland, evidence that activists here were aware of methods to manipulate bee colonies has been found on Finnish animal-rights websites. The FBI has requested cooperation from the Finnish police.’
He pauses briefly. ‘And now for economic news. The American-Chinese crisis has opened up unprecedented markets for the Finnish food industry. Demand for beef and pork is particularly high …’
The remote breaks as I pound it against the edge of the table. The monitor pings, flickers and goes out.
*
As I walk along the path to the sauna, a path I’ve walked a thousand times, I feel inside my head how small and soft and sweaty my chubby little hand is in Pupa’s rough paw.
I trust him.
I can hear his voice as he recites:
Fly up to the moon’s bright border
Past the glowing hem of heaven
To the far side of the sun
Up among the azure starlight
Sure of where your wings can take you
Never straying from the pathway!
When you reach your destination
Find the ending of your journey
Fly up to the Master’s mansions
To the home of the Almighty
There are flowers filled with nectar
All the balm a soul could wish for …
Cursed be the stupid sentimentality that mammals fix on their off spring.
I hesitate just a little then open the sauna stove door. I take out the slightly cracked wooden steam ladle, lift some glowing embers out of the stove and toss them on the floor and over the basket of kindling next to the stove. The floorboards oblige immediately and start to smoke. The kindling basket lights even faster, birch bark and papers, old balance sheets from Port of Departure no longer of interest to the tax inspectors.
It all has to look like a stupid mistake, like I just left the stove door open by accident, carelessly left the basket too close to the fire. Some embers spilled out of the stove or a fateful spark escaped, and, of course, the steam-room door was open just enough of a crack (how terribly careless of me) that the draft fed the grow ing fire until it eventually reached the vulnerable old timbers, dry as dry from hundreds, thousands of trips to the sauna.
The fire is soon so well on its way that I’m coughing from the fumes, uncomfortably hot.
I back out of the door, leave it slightly ajar and walk with calm steps to the house. I take a couple of quick ones from my whisky bottle.
It will be obvious that I was quite drunk when I lit the sauna stove.
The fire department, police and insurance company will have every reason to believe that the fault lies entirely with me; no need for any deeper investigation of the old sauna or the fire in it. (‘His son died a while ago,’ I can hear them murmur in their investigative sanctum. ‘He must have been hitting the bottle pretty hard since it happened. Wasn’t his own family mixed up in it somehow, too?’ And somebody else says. ‘Saunas. We always take a sauna, and we always take a drink. I can’t remember a burned-down sauna that didn’t belong to a man in some kind of crisis.’)
Ari will finally testify and say, ‘He was as mixed up as a cuckoo clock, poor man.’
As I’m swigging down a third, larger glass of whisky I can see the red fringe of the fire through the window out of the corner of my eye.
Colourful flashing lights outside the window, just like before, only two weeks ago. Christmas. Christmas is here again.
The whisky isn’t just play-acting; it numbs the worst turns of the dagger inside me.
I watch from the quiet safety of the house a few hundred metres away as a little tongue of flame darts in and out of the sauna window like the mouth of a satisfied cat. I wait until I can see for certain that the flames have reached through the ceiling. I know that once the fire reaches the attic it will start a cross draft and the flames will sweep through the loft and consume the whole building. The junk room is full of flammable things – the cans of paint, the old bee suit stiff with honey.
Now I can make the phone call.
When the fire department arrives there’s nothing to be done. The flames reach halfway to the sky. I don’t try to hide the whisky, now and then taking a stumbling drink and keep repeating flimsy explanations, inventing contradictory causes for the fire.
The fire fighters restrict themselves to protecting the nearby buildings, keeping an eye on the roof of the house.
When they’ve left and the sauna and barn are just a pile of charred timbers, broken glass and twisted metal, with the blackened chimney, stove and a fragment of the wall in the centre like some kind of monument, I look out at a spot about three metres above the ruins.
I have two queen bees. The one around my neck and the one Ari gave me in my pocket.
There, on the Other Side – like here – it’s nearly sunset. But there’s no knowing what the weather is like over there. If it’s grey or cloudy, you wouldn’t necessarily see anything, but …
If I look just right, if I really want to see it, I can.
Up in the air, an opening, glimmering. It’s hovering there, only visible from the slightly different colour of the air, the light of the setting sun on the Other Side. It’s like a microscopically thin reflective film or like the sunlight striking the surface of water. Something no one would ever notice if they didn’t know to search, know what they were searching for, how to look from just the right angle.
And it can’t be seen without a queen from an abandoned beehive.
I take both queens out and drop them on a leaf of plantain weed. I can’t tell if the gesture is a tender one. It is definitely respectful.
When I look up, the air is just air again. Without any openings. A logical, ordinary Finnish August sky, bitter with the smell of smoke.
The whisky hums, my head sings.
I left Eero the shovel, the new axe, a good knife, whetstone and flint.
Not everybody gets such good supplies for life.
*
Maybe another door will open to Eero’s Other Side some day, somewhere.
Maybe Eero will go to investigate his world and will one day smell a campfire, and there sitting on a fallen log will be a girl his own age eating blueberries from her hand.
Maybe everything will start from the beginning again.
I close my eyes. I don’t know if the thought is comforting or unbearable.
I hear the faint bellows from Hopevale Meats as some bull calf with a healthy attitude puts up a resistance.
With that inspiration I lift my sturdy-soled shoe, put it down over the tiny forms of the queen bees and rub, twisting and crushing the fragile creatures with the bottom of my foot until I’m sure they’re nothing but dust.
*
I still have one more thing to do.
I invite the cold in, welcome the ice-bright, sterile calculation. I have half my father’s blood in me after all. I invoke it to guide my feet, hands and brain.
I must carry out my efficient, emotionless killing plan.
I know what I need.
I find everything at the village store. Black bin bags. Several metal spray cans of the most effective, wide-spectrum product available.
Soon I’m walking between the hives like an efficient mass murderer, like a calm, deliberate commandant at Auschwitz. The black casings lower over the unsuspecting creatures. There’s no escape. Just a cloud of permethrin and it’s all over.
I let the dark stench from the ruins of the sauna surround me for a moment. It’s true what they say. Smoke can sometimes make even a hard man cry.
END NOTE
All of the reports in this text concerning the colony collapse phenomenon were, at the time of writing (summer 2011), authentic and accurate. The biological and mythological information about bees is also based on factual sources. Some of the discussions concerning animal rights are based on actual internet discussions.
Warm thanks to the Finnish Cultural Foundation for their support for this work.
The fol
lowing works have served as sources:
Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, A World Without Bees, London: Guardian Books, 2008
William Longgood, The Queen Must Die And Other Affairs of Bees and Men, New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1985
Hilda M. Ransome: The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004
Suomen kansan muinaisia loitsurunoja (Magic Songs of the Ancient Finns), Helsinki: Salakirjat, 1880/2008
Michael Schacker: A Spring Without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply, Guildford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2008
Jürgen Tautz: The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2009
The text includes excerpts from:
Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala, translated by W.F. Kirby, London: Everyman’s Library, 1915
Euripides, Hippolytus, translated by S.G. Gabha
Euripides, The Trojan Women, translated by Edward P. Coleridge, London: George Bell and Sons, 1906
Immi Hellén, ‘Enkeli ohjaa’ (‘The Guardian Angel’), from the collection Lasten runokirja: Suomen pojille ja tytöille omistettu, translated by Lola Rogers, Jyväskylä: Valistus, 1930
Also by Johanna Sinisalo and published by Peter Owen
NOT BEFORE SUNDOWN
BIRDBRAIN
PETER OWEN PUBLISHERS
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Peter Owen books are distributed in the USA and Canada by
Independent Publishers Group/Trafalgar Square
814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA
English-language edition first published in Great Britain 2014
by Peter Owen Publishers
Translated from the Finnish Enkelten verta
Original edition published by Teos Publishers 2011
English-language edition published by agreement with Johanna Sinisalo and the Elina Ahlbäck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland
© Johanna Sinisalo 2011
English translation © Lola Rogers 2014
The Blood of Angels Page 20