The Honey Farm

by Harriet Alida Lye

  His dad probably won’t be awake yet, but Ibrahim needs to talk it over with him first. This is how they always do it. Hash out ideas over coffee and clove cigarettes, with their dusty taste of the Old World.

  The lights are out in his father’s house. Ibrahim wipes his feet on the tatty Bienvenue mat his father bought thirty-two years ago (it was cheaper than the Welcome version) and brings in the newspaper. Walking through the unlocked front door, he encounters a yeasty smell of warmth and mildew. It’s possible that it smelled like this when he lived here, but he only notices it now that he’s left.

  A half-eaten sandwich sits on the staircase next to a scummy glass and a ball of tinfoil. The ball almost has the shape of something else, as though someone started to make a sculpture and then abandoned the idea. Ibrahim picks all this up and takes it into the kitchen. The absence of his mother is evident in small ways: in the forgetfulness, in the lack of care and of consequence.

  “Morning.”

  Ibrahim jumps, startled, to find his little brother folded up like a cat on the armchair in the kitchen. “Hey, morning, buddy,” Ibrahim says. “You scared me.” He goes over and kisses Aziz on the top of his peach-fuzz head. Aziz keeps his head shaven like their other brother Mo’s. Ibrahim is the only one to let the curls grow. “You sleeping down here now?”

  “Mmm.”

  “How come?”

  “Mo started snoring.”

  The two boys, fourteen and seventeen, share a room. Their choice. Besides the master bedroom suite, where their father sleeps, and the attic room belonging to their sullen and dreamy nineteen-year-old sister, Isadora, there are three rooms. One has been turned into their father’s study, never used, and the other two are ready to serve as guest bedrooms, should any guests ever drop by.

  “Is Abouya still sleeping?”

  “Mmm,” murmurs Aziz. “But he won’t mind if you wake him up.”

  “Okay. Go back to sleep, Zizi. I’ll come see you on my way out.”

  Aziz whacks Ibrahim on the back of the knees for using his little-boy nickname, then curls back into the position in which his brother found him and promptly returns to his dreams.

  Climbing the stairs, Ibrahim notices that the carpet is sagging at the lip of each step. The house is not in total disrepair—it’s old, it was cheap, a certain crumbling is normal—but none of the family either notices or cares about details like carpet or shingles or paint. It doesn’t bother them and there’s nobody else for it to bother. Still, Ibrahim can’t help but feel something—pity, or maybe shame at not being there—swell between his ribs.

  “Abouya?” he calls before reaching the top of the staircase. A warning; no answer expected.

  Ibrahim knocks—a gentle pushing tap—on his father’s door. The latch is up, so the door slides open with this small force. As Ibrahim’s eyes adjust to the velvety light in the bedroom, he sees his father’s silhouette on the bed, wide and opulent as a maharajah’s. While the rest of the house may be in a relative state of poverty and/or decay, the master bedroom remains palatial, swathed in past excesses. This is because most of Ibrahim’s mother’s purchases are still there, and Ibrahim’s father feels that it is not only his duty but his calling to preserve these relics. Nothing in the room has changed since her death, nine years ago last month. Indigo brocade curtains she selected still hang from the four-poster bed, which has little sleeping space between all the pillows (Ibrahim the Elder likes to sleep propped up by at least four of them: one under each shoulder and a couple wedged between his knees). Her antique paintings in gold frames, her hand-painted tiles in turquoise and coral and egg-yolk yellow. Her bookcases and her tasselled armchairs and her tea trays decorated with tin teapots and narrow glass cups (a collection she bought in her youth from the Marrakech souk) assembled at the ready, just in case.

  As Ibrahim enters, the shape of his father twitches, still sleeping, into a sudden tussle with the blankets.

  Ibrahim walks over to the bed. “Abouya, good morning,” he says, confidently but softly, knowing not to touch his father yet.

  The shape jerks about again and snaps into a seated position. “Ibrahim?” His father’s eyes are still closed.

  “Yes, Abouya, it’s me.”

  “Come here.”

  Ibrahim slides into his father’s bed, a wall of pillows between them, as his abouya comes slowly into consciousness.

  Ibrahim the Elder tenderly strokes his son’s hair. After a few minutes of silent, slow movement, he says, “This is getting too long.”

  “I like it like this, Abouya.”

  “You like looking like a girl?”

  “I don’t look like a girl.”

  “You look like your sister.”

  “She should be so lucky.” Ibrahim looks up with a cheeky grin.

  “Or a terrorist. Terrorists grow their hair long.”

  “Dad.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t say that!” Ibrahim sits up and looks at his father. Ibrahim the Elder has a chubby face under his sandpaper beard, an affectionate imitation of the Italian Mafia neighbours. His eyes glow in the unlit room. Ibrahim’s do too, but he can’t see them for himself. All the Abdullahs have the same tigers’ eyes, orange-brown and radiated like quartz. A tinge of chatoyancy, especially in the dark. “How did you sleep, Abouya?”

  “Terrible. Ever since your mother died I can’t sleep, you know. No sense of rhythm anymore.”

  “I know, Abouya.” To dislodge this familiar conversation, Ibrahim gets up and opens the curtains.

  “Ibrahim! Slow! It’s bright!”

  “It’s day.” Ibrahim turns to look at his father, hooded like a turtle under the sheets. “Can I make you some coffee?” His father keeps a kettle and a French press next to his bed so he can make coffee and tea and boiled eggs and Cup-a-Soup without leaving the room.

  “Yes.”

  When the kettle boils, Ibrahim pours water over the coffee grounds until the pale swell calms and the coffee sinks.

  “So what brings you here today, Ibrahim Abdullah Junior? Anything good from your collection walk last night?”

  “Some bottles. Hardly broken. And all the cardboard stays dry in this weather—it’s perfect.”

  “Well, Ibrahim, there are always two sides—”

  “But I also saw an announcement for something I want to talk to—”

  “Is the coffee ready? Pour me a cup.”

  It is ready; Ibrahim pours it.

  “You’re not having any?”

  “I already had some, Dad, but thanks.”

  “I don’t like it when you call me Dad—sounds so trashy in your mouth.”

  “Sorry, Abouya.”

  “So. What is this announcement?”

  “Oh, yeah, so at the train station, on my way back home, I saw an announcement for an arts residency on a honey farm, starting basically now. Next week. The beginning of May.”

  A pause as his father swallows his first sip. “Too weak,” he says. And then: “What is this arts res-i-den-cy?” He says it slowly, as though the familiar words in unfamiliar conjunction have completely fuddled him.

  “A place where artists can work on their, you know, work. But at this one, ’cause it’s a honey farm, you can also learn how to, like, farm bees.”

  “Bees!”

  “And you can stay as long as you like, and I could spend some time painting, really painting.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Where? Oh. I’m not sure, actually. It didn’t say.”

  “Well.”

  “But I wrote down the email address from the paper and I can write. I mean, I will write. To find out all that stuff.” He’s so excited he’s practically pleading, though he knows his father will enourage him as he always has.

  “What if you don’t like the other people? Will there be other people?”

  “I’m sure I’ll get along fine, Abouya.”

  “Of course you will. But what if, is all I’m saying. Like I was saying about
your cardboard staying dry because of this drought. There are always two sides to a situation and you have to consider both justly.” He looks at his son; his eyes narrow. “How much?”

  “Nothing. It’s free. Work in exchange for room and board.”

  “Well, not exactly free then.”

  “Yeah.” Ibrahim searches. “But it’s no money.”

  “Bring me a clovie.”

  Ibrahim gets the clove cigarettes from the basket where they are kept and Ibrahim the Elder puts one in his mouth. His tongue navigates the base, just for a taste; he doesn’t light it. “You don’t want one?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “So do you want to go?”

  “Yes, Abouya.”

  His father pauses. “What’s the weather like today?”

  “Hot and dry. As usual.”

  Shifting the position of the pillows beneath him, Ibrahim the Elder grunts.

  This would be the first time Ibrahim has been away for any period longer than a weekend. He stayed close to home longer than he might have otherwise after the death of their mother, but it’s not like he can stay around forever.

  After what feels like an eternity, Abouya says, “Fine. You go. Go.”

  “Really?”

  “Ibrahim. You do as you wish, always.”

  “But do you think it’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s a very good idea if you want to do it. You are good with paints, you are good with your hands. A change of scene will be good.”

  “Okay.” Ibrahim slides back into bed and pulls the covers over his head like a child. His eyes won’t close and he wants darkness. The navy covers become like eyelids, and he sees images playing out on the silk. “You won’t need me here,” he states, not asking, getting to the point he is most concerned about.

  “Of course we don’t need you, don’t be ridiculous. Go, inshallah.” He pats his son’s head through the covers. “We’ll pray for rain.”

  THOUGH HE’S LIVED in this country his whole life, Ibrahim has never been north of Aurora. His nose piggied up against the windowpane, he stares out at the view, dizzied by the beauty of it. So stark, so wild. So unlike the city.

  Ibrahim tries to follow the map he printed off the Internet as the train noses forward into the forest, past the millions of lakes. On the map they look like peeling paint, or a rash—haphazard and unhealthy. From the window, though, the lakes are glowing with the afternoon sun, pockets of liquid gold just floating there. There are so many of them. There must not be a drought up here, he thinks. What he doesn’t know is how many there used to be: the water dissipates; the rash heals.

  Things are starting to feel indistinguishably different. He has crossed no borders, but something’s changed. Not the air. Not the sky. But something. And he’s not even there yet.

  Ibrahim’s stop is Onakawana. He gets off there and takes a bus east and back south in the direction of Val Gagné, still this side of the Quebec border despite the Francophonic name. (This far north, all the borders overlap: French, English, First Nations in a nationwide Venn diagram.) He gets off the bus before Val G though, at a bus stop where County Road 634 meets Highway 11.

  Off the air-conditioned bus, the heat is like hot breath.

  WELCOME TO SMOOTH ROCK FALLS!

  THE BIGGEST LITTLE TOWN IN THE NORTH.

  From Smooth Rock he has to walk about two hours. The farm is in a place that has no name, but it falls under the same municipality: Smooth Rock houses the nearest post office.

  Looking at the map, he traces the line that leads to the farm. It must be the smallest road on the whole map. Like a vein or a root it bifurcates, then stops. It’s not the kind of road that needs to be claimed, maintained. It’s like a part of your body that’s so tiny and familiar it doesn’t even need a designation.

  The landscape is starting to thicken. No path cuts a straight line. Though the forest is sparse, shrubby in parts, it seems untamed. All pines and needles. He looks up. The denim-blue sky is so wide up here.

  When the path forks he stays left. He’s not really thinking about what it will be like when he gets there.

  VI

  POSTERS FOR A CARNIVAL in Smooth Rock Falls are peeling, their tails tattering in the wind. Silvia is waiting on a bench with a large red suitcase, her high school backpack, a tote bag, a purse that slings over her shoulder, and a Panama hat on her left knee. She feels caught in that awkward space between posing for a photograph and posing for real life. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, and the hat looks like a dumb prop there on her knee. Looking closer at the nearest poster, she notices that the carnival is at the end of June, weeks away, but seven years ago.

  With a sudden surge of panic, she scans and counts all her bags and possessions as though somehow, in the moments when her mind and eyes were elsewhere, something could have disappeared. But no. Everything is there.

  She takes her phone out of her leather purse and sends her parents a text: Here, in Smooth Rock Falls. Train journey was long but nice. It’s sunny, waiting for taxi to the farm. Excited.

  The taxi she booked finally arrives, twenty-eight minutes late. The farm is thirteen kilometres from the town, but with all these bags weighing her down, Silvia never thought about the option of walking it.

  “You go to Honey Farm, c’est ça?” The driver’s accent is thick Québécois.

  “Yes.”

  “For Cynthia?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Hilary?”

  “Nope.”

  “You look just like ’er. She used to live ’ere, with Cynthia.”

  Silvia shrugs. “I don’t know Cynthia yet either.”

  The driver is still staring at her in the rearview mirror. “You could be sister of Hilary, it’s bizarre,” he says, pronouncing “bizarre” the French way.

  Silvia looks out the window, trying to ignore him, watching the low rolling hills become higher mounds and deeper valleys. They are getting into the land of stark contrasts.

  “A lesson for you: bees smell fear. When you afraid, ferry-monies get aroused and come out your skin like parfum, so you must be calm.”

  “Thanks,” Silvia says, still staring out the window.

  The road forks, and when they arrive at the end of the long dirt road on the left, lined with evergreens, the taxi stops before the lane gets choppy. “I don’t go up,” he says, nodding up the road. “Bad ferry-monies.” He drops all her luggage on a patch of grass, takes her money, and reverses. “Bon courage,” he says out the window with a laugh straddling pity and gentle mockery.

  “Merci.”

  Confused and increasingly sweaty, Silvia walks up the “road”—waxy shrubs growing between two dirt-worn paths of tire treads—until it turns to a cleared, dusty track. She’s pressing her hat onto her head so the wind won’t take it. The track bends up a small hill, and right at the crook the farm comes into view.

  It’s more impressive than Silvia had imagined. The farm looks like it’s from a book or a movie, or even from her imagination. Anything but real life—at least the life she’s known up until now. The main, labyrinthine building is the perfect old English or old French country house: thick grey stones all veined with vines; white-framed windows, the panes of glass warped like bad dreams; overgrown lavender bushes on either side of the front door, their heavy purple heads falling all over the front path.

  She notices the buildings—sheds and shanties connected by gravel paths scarring the lawn—scattered around the property in what seems like an arbitrary manner. Everything looks done by hand but done well, and the add-ons and outbuildings make the whole place seem . . . more approachable. Less rigid. Like a fun aunt instead of a stern grandmother.

  She can see, behind the house, fields fading into the distance. Some fruit trees in the back lot, a corner of a vegetable patch. It’s Edenic.

  VII

  HARTFORD HAS BEEN BUSTLING about all morning, assembling and personalising Cynthia’s welcome packages including a map of th
e region; a legend of the property describing what’s what; directions to the local shops but a reminder that no purchases are necessary, everything will be provided; a quick, clever narrative illustrating the anatomy of bees and the production of honey, with Cynthia’s own doodles of combs and drones and clover; and finally a netted hat, for protection. After tending to all sorts of last-minute tasks, he is now sitting on a striped green lawn chair at the top of the driveway, drinking from a tall glass of lemonade, ready to welcome the guests. Everyone is set to arrive that day.

  Hartford’s hair is the colour of dusty straw, and he’s wearing one of those floppy beige sun hats that are not fit for safaris. He looks brighter than he feels: though he’s gotten over much of his initial resentment, he still feels territorial about this place.

  “Silvia?” he repeats, though he remembers exactly who she is. “Silvia . . .” He taps his pencil, looking through the list he wrote. Then he looks up, remembering something. “Welcome to the Honey Farm. I’m Hartford, and Cynthia and I are pleased to have you here.” He looks back down to his clipboard. “Ah yes, here we are. You’re in the loft”—Cynthia had decided to call it the loft rather than the attic. “Follow me.”

  The way his nostrils flare when he smiles reminds Silvia of webbed feet: they tug downward with the furrows that lead to his chin. It wasn’t clear exactly how Hartford had wound up living here, but it was known that he had started out as Cynthia’s singing instructor and ended up living here full-time to help out.

  Following Hartford up the gravel pathway to the house, Silvia sees a shadow flick across the window. She looks up, thinking it was maybe the reflection of a bird, but there is no bird.

  “And Cynthia, where is she?”

  “Cynthia is not available right now, I’m afraid. If you have any questions, I can help you.” His voice is like a friendly automated voice-messaging system.

  She’s confused—it was Cynthia’s name that had been on the application form, no mention of this Hartford man—and she’s flustered too, the intense heat starting to get to her. Her bags seem to have grown heavier and bulkier in the past ten minutes, and sweat is darkening her mouse-coloured hair, sticking her bangs to her forehead.