The Honey Farm

by Harriet Alida Lye

  THE

  HONEY

  FARM

  A Novel

  HARRIET ALIDA LYE

  LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

  A DIVISION OF W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS SINCE 1923

  NEW YORK • LONDON

  The Honey Farm is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To Mary Nighy, for seeing it with me, Rosy Lamb, for putting me in perspective, & Sylvia Whitman, for giving me a room of my own.

  THE

  HONEY

  FARM

  LISTEN. IT STARTS with the bees.

  All day long the low, throttling hum of movement, the moment of liftoff—the bass note that never goes away. Then, swelling from the sidelines as day falls, comes the digital tick of tobacco-brown crickets—percussion—chkchking like an automated sprinkler, chrpchrping like needy birds. In come the fiddling grasshoppers—strings—from the balcony of trees, birch, poplar, and pine, followed by the lazy, peripatetic buzz of a fly. The high whine of mosquitos—the fugue—soars above the rest.

  You will not be able to hear the bees whispering, and you would not understand their secrets even if you could. What you will hear is a hungry, unearthly cringe: the rub of wings as they fly. A science—no, a magic—that you will never know. The sticky slurp of suction, nectar, thirst, sex. It is nothing at all like love.

  Look. The gluey honey is cracking from the cloud-grey hive bubbling from the branch; it’s cracking too from the ceiling where the colony has swarmed.

  Open mouth. Blood on the teeth.

  It starts with the bees, and it’ll end this way too.

  PART I

  Go up to this land that flows with milk and honey.

  But I will not travel among you, for you are a

  stubborn and rebellious people. If I did,

  I would surely destroy you along the way.

  —EXODUS 33:3

  I

  THE HONEY FARM was in a valley in the northeastern part of the province, not far from the old river mouth. Islanded between Timmins on the Ontario side, La Sarre on the Quebec side, and the Abitibi Indian Reserve to the northwest, the farm was in the middle of a logistical no-man’s land. The nearest town was Smooth Rock Falls (population: 1,316 at last count).

  Though the region was not particularly known for its agriculture, the farm had always done well. However, that spring there had been a terrible drought, the worst in recorded history. Everyone suffered. The flowers were desiccated. The bees were restless.

  Cynthia was the proprietor of the honey farm—she’d purchased the land about a dozen years ago. She had worked it, and worked hard, to make the cold, pebble-dashed plot yield more than anyone would have expected. She kept her dark hair cropped sensibly short, making her neck look even longer. Meeting her for the first time, you might be reminded of a tidy, highly polished operating theatre.

  Cynthia had scatter-bombed specially made advertisements in an attempt to recruit extra hands to help during these tough times. The drought had made sand of her soil, wax of her honeycombs. She needed reinforcements; Hartford, her assistant, was not enough.

  The idea was that people would work for free in exchange for room, board, and “life experience.” Cynthia had asked Hartford to find relevant blogs and websites on which to post her ad. For the newspapers, she selected only those in cities and large towns, mostly the provincial capitals and their peripheries, and none in the surrounding area. Nobody from the villages in the region could be fooled into such a scheme. The ads promoted the farm as an artists’ retreat, with a bonus: a chance to learn the apicultural trade.

  Applications started trickling in immediately.

  “We’ve had twelve so far.” Hartford hovered in the doorframe of the honey house—wood-panelled, warmly lit—not wanting to disrupt Cynthia at work.

  “Terrific,” Cynthia said, without turning around. “Let’s take them all.” She put down the jar of honey she’d been labelling and turned to reach for the stack of forms Hartford was holding.

  “They don’t have any experience . . .”

  “What did you expect?” She laughed. “At least artists don’t expect to get paid.” She took a large swig from an unlabelled beer bottle. “This drought is only going to get worse—we’ll need all the help we can get.” She started flicking through the papers, searching for something, she didn’t yet know what.

  After a moment Hartford said, as a last resort, “But where will they sleep?”

  “You’ll clean out the rooms up in the attic and we’ll get futon mattresses from . . . from that place, you know, that place in Timmins filled with junk.”

  “No, I’m not sure I—”

  “Oh come on, Hartford, the secondhand shops filled with evangelists where you can buy old tea towels and household—”

  “I really don’t—”

  “The Salvation fucking Army, yes, that’s it!” Cynthia’s eyes were slightly farther apart than was proportional, and when she became angry, her eyeballs bulged and her likeness to an amphibian grew stronger.

  They stood quietly, Cynthia a little drunk, Hartford a little afraid.

  “Where’s the twelfth?” Cynthia asked, flicking through the pages.

  “Oh.” Hartford reluctantly handed over the final form, including the optional photo the applicant had chosen to send in along with the paperwork. He’d held it aside for reasons he was sure Cynthia would understand. “A writer from Halifax, but she doesn’t seem to have much . . .” He faltered, found his feet again. “I mean, she’s not published or anything, and as it’s so far away I didn’t think she’d want to—”

  “That’s her choice, isn’t it?” Cynthia spoke lightly, and then her eyes landed on the photo. “I see,” she said, her voice changing. “Well, it will be good to have more people around.” She stared at the photo; Hartford stared at her.

  THERE USED TO BE A RIVER that ran into the valley. The remaining conduit still rippled with now-frozen fluidity, the memory of its function forever dictating its form. This was thousands of years ago. Now there was no water: there were wells. These days the river bypassed the region entirely, and instead of riffling around the north, it diverted directly south, towards the centre of the province.

  In the old hollow where the river once ran, ridges of sand drew topographical maps in the weedy ridges; fish had had to grow legs, becoming salamanders, newts, and toads. The word amphibian means, etymologically, “both sides of life.”

  The town had not yet accommodated this season’s sudden drought. Patterns hadn’t changed. No research had been conducted into ways either to find more water or to use less. This was partly because there was still hope, but primarily because the infrastructure did not exist. Wells, like habits, run deep. Cynthia was intent on changing this.

  II

  SILVIA’S BEDROOM is still decorated the way it was when she was eleven and obsessed with horses. She finished her final exams three days ago and her books, clothes, and empty teacups are all over the room. She’s normally much more organized than this, but since finishing her finals—history, minor in English, at Dalhousie—she’s found herself in a new kind of limbo. Everything is contingent, and everything is an option; there is no longer a predetermined path ahead of her. Before, she was a student. Now that she is out from under that umbrella, she could be anything.

  She has no plans. This is partly what she tells herself she’s doing: looking for a plan. After just three days she’s got computer hands, cramped and stiff, from digging to the depths of the Internet. So far she’s bookmarked teaching Englis
h as a second language in Korea, an unpaid internship at a literary magazine in outer Los Angeles, and an MA in cultural theory at the University of Edinburgh. She knows her parents wouldn’t approve of any of these.

  Her family home is a clapboarded three-bedroom home on Waegwoltic Avenue, just up from the Northwest Arm. The Arm is a wedge of Atlantic Ocean that cuts right into Halifax, though in this neighbourhood the city feels more like a suburb. Ever since she started walking herself to school (age nine) she’d walk down the hill to the end of Coburg Road on her way home, no matter the season, to crunch mussel shells under her feet or stare at the evolving families of geese or, if it was warm enough to have her fingers outside gloves or pockets, read. Though oceans don’t often freeze, this sliver is shallow enough that during particularly polar winters, people can skate from her side of the shore all the way to the dinky Dingle Tower, presiding over the bay like a chesspiece.

  This is where she’s lived for her whole life.

  Now she’s skimming one of her favourite book blogs when she sees a simple advertisement—black text on a square white background—that intrigues her.

  THE HONEY FARM.

  Free retreat for artists, writers, thinkers! Can’t work in the city?

  Come to the Artists’ Colony for a month or two (or longer!)

  and also learn how to keep bees!

  Start early May.

  Contact Cynthia.

  Like most, she doesn’t consider herself the type of person who normally clicks on online ads, but this one feels different: it seems too simple to be manipulative. But mainly, she has a problem and this is a solution.

  She clicks the link.

  SILVIA, SYLPHLIKE, is often limited by the annoying and reductive description of “cute.” She is slender and springy and has short hair, an open face, and eyes that take in the world. They even change colour in different lights. Green, blue, grey. Her eyelashes are pale, indicating that as a child she’d been an angelic blonde, but now her hair has dulled to the colour of the underside of a button mushroom. “Fair Silvia.” A girl led not by her longings but by some dated sense of duty.

  This is false. She is hungry as anything.

  Her parents named their daughter after Shakespeare’s Silvia, the one from the sonnet. They used to read her the poem all the time, whenever she was sad or sick or restless.

  Who is Silvia? What is she

  That all our swains commend her?

  Holy, fair, and wise is she;

  The heaven such grace did lend her,

  That she might admired be.

  Is she kind as she is fair?

  For beauty lives with kindness.

  Love doth to her eyes repair,

  To help him of his blindness;

  And, being helped, inhabits there.

  Then to Silvia let us sing,

  That Silvia is excelling;

  She excels each mortal thing

  Upon the dull earth dwelling:

  To her let us garlands bring.

  Little Silvia had consequently grown up admiring an abstract version of herself, venerating this conjecture of what she might grow into. Though the outline was large and loose—even the poem lets the woman remain a mystery—Silvia, tidy even as a child, knew to draw inside the lines. But the part that went “For beauty lives with kindness” stuck with her. Where do they live?

  Just as she’s about to Google the farm and see where it is and what exactly is involved, her mother opens the door. Silvia closes her laptop.

  “Hi, honey, how are you, are you hungry? Can I get you anything? A snack?” She walks right into Silvia’s room, looking at the messy floor and not at her daughter.

  “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  Her mother has a plastic laundry basket tucked under her arm and starts roaming around the bedroom, crouching to pick up clothing and sniffing it to see whether it’s dirty or clean. No matter what she discerns, she puts it in the basket.

  “I can do that, Ma.” Silvia prounounces it Meehh, an indifferent sheep bleating.

  “It’s no bother! I’m putting a load on anyway.” Her mother is so busy with the task that she still hasn’t looked at her daughter, who is sitting on her hands. Silvia waits as her mother retrieves all the clothes, knowing that there’s more to it than this. Sure enough, as soon as the basket is full, her mom sits down on the bed: “When are you going to start applying for jobs?”

  “I’m actually looking into that right now.”

  “Krista needs to know about camp soon, and she also said that Bruce said it could turn into a full-time admin job in the fall, so . . .”

  “I’ll think about it, Ma.” She’d attended Daybreak Bible Camp for ten years as a camper—ages seven to seventeen—and had been an instructor there for four, despite starting to doubt the validity of the whole thing—of camp, but also of the world it represented—from the very beginning.

  At vespers one evening that first summer, a ritual the camp extolled as “a nightly spiritual conversation” held in each cabin between the counsellors and their campers, seven-year-old Silvia asked what happened if you believed that God didn’t necessarily make each flower open, or lift up the sun every morning by His own hands, or even heal her friend of his flu, but made it so that the world could operate on its own. Seasons. A spinning globe. Immune systems.

  The counsellor thought about it for a second, snapped her cotton-candy-flavoured gum, and said, “Well, if you believed that, you’d go to hell.”

  The conversation swiftly moved on, and minutes later they were all expected to go to sleep.

  But Silvia lay in bed staring at the cabin ceiling. She couldn’t understand. This wasn’t rational. An eighteen-year-old could tell her that she was going to hell because she believed in deism?

  And so after that, Silvia started seeing holes everywhere. The heavy doomsday feeling of doubt was so terrifying that she never mentioned it to anyone. It cracked the foundation upon which her entire world had been built.

  “Of course,” her mother says now, trying to act as though she is cool with the possibility of Silvia’s thinking about it. “It’s just . . . well, life has to start sometime, you know.”

  Hasn’t it already started? Silvia wants to say. Isn’t this it?

  Her mother looks around the room at the preserved image of her eleven-year-old daughter. Dolls, Black Beauty, a clock that has long since run out of batteries inscribed Blameless Before Him in Love (Ephesians 1:4).

  “Dinner will be ready at six.”

  “Great.” Dinner was always ready at six.

  Standing in the door now, clearly wanting to say something more, Silvia’s mother—tall, self-contained, so nearly very beautiful—looks at her daughter with a love that is forever laced with concern.

  When her mother is finally gone, Silvia is left with a familiar vague yearning and so, spontaneously, without further reflection or investigation, decides to give it a try with the honey farm. Her half-hatched idea is forced fully out of its shell as she fills in the online application:

  1. What is your artistic practice?

  2. What do you want to work on for the duration of your stay?

  Because she has no other artistic inclination, she puts

  1. Writing.

  2. A series of poems.

  She’s written exactly one poem in her life, but maybe this is all she needs. Everybody has to believe in something.

  THE IDEA is still too effervescent to talk about, and she doesn’t want to have to see her parents right now, so she sneaks quietly out of the house, down the eggshell hallway and through the living room where the only decorations are framed professional photographs of her—the same pose throughout her childhood—to go to the Trident, her favourite bookshop, which faces the other side of the ocean.

  The air is crisp as paper. She feels happy, self-sufficient in some small way.

  When she gets to the bookshop—right around the corner from the terminus of the national VIA Rail line, a path of wood and metal that
reaches all the way to Vancouver—she says hi to Dan, the owner she’s known since before she even knew how to read. She gets a mocha, then spends two hours just flicking through things, following the wandering. She wonders if she has the right to participate in this, in the making of this. It all feels perfect, overwhelming—apart from her.

  A hundred and twenty-nine of her parents’ dollars later, she carries a paper bag full of new words and the remains of her coffee so chocolatey it barely tastes of coffee down to the harbour, where she sits and cracks the spine of The Making of a Poem. There’s a salty fog materializing on the horizon, but the Dartmouth side and McNabs Island are still perfectly clear. She likes it here because of how the view is of everything—water the same colour as the squat glass skyscrapers, sailless masts spiking the sky like crucifixes—but also of nothing at the same time. It’s open, a blank canvas. From here it’s a straight shot to Spain, Portugal, even France if the current took her slightly north. All those places are the same to her in that she’s never been, cannot pin one apart from the other. It’s mind-blowing, if she really thinks about it, that it’s the exact same ocean here and there. She could swing her feet into the water here and, connected in the way that everything is, she’d be touching Europe (she thinks of it that way, as one big exotic thing: Europe!).

  She puts the book facedown in her lap and looks out into the growing fog. Spring on a honey farm, she thinks. That could be nice.

  III

  AT ANY GIVEN moment there are literally tons of free cardboard in the city. Twined into bundles on the streets, stuffed into garbage bins, stacked behind restaurants and shops. Tons. And all of it freely available. Ibrahim would never take anything that belonged to anyone else, but this belongs to nobody, and so, by consequence, it also belongs to him.

  Ibrahim and his family live near the train station, a stone’s throw from where his father alighted thirty-two years ago—the plane tickets from Marrakech were cheaper if they flew into Buffalo, so he and his wife took the train from there to Toronto—and where they’ve all stayed ever since. Although Ibrahim moved into his own place a few years back, it’s just around the block from his father, also called Ibrahim, and his brothers and sister.