Ibrahim and Silvia walk next to one another, just behind the other two.
“How are you finding farm life so far?” Ibrahim asks.
“I like it here. I mean, I think? It’s different.”
“Good. Me too. Different is good, right?” he says, as though picking up a baton she’d passed him. “I’m just exhausted,” he says. “Back home I paint at night and sleep in the day. I think it’ll be hard to get used to the rhythm here.”
“Oh.” She’s not sure whether she’s meant to feel sorry for him or admire him for his passion, his persistence.
“I’ll be right back,” Monique says as JB spills feed into the buckets and the enormous pigs come barreling over. “I forgot . . . a thing.” She gestures vaguely towards the house and walks back as quickly as possible.
“You think she’s vegetarian?” Ibrahim asks Silvia once Monique has disappeared.
“Maybe just a city girl,” Silvia responds, swinging one leg over the wooden slatted fence, then the other.
HARTFORD, IN THE SHEEP PEN, sees Monique walk deerishly back up the hill and then resumes demonstrating how to shear the sheep he’s got gripped between his knees. Ben, Dan, MJ, and Alicia stand in a semicircle around him.
“You have to keep the sheep calm,” he says, “so that it doesn’t move around.” Hartford’s movements are gentle and efficient, and the fleece comes away easily. “The idea is to do it as quickly and closely as possible.” He brings the electric clipper’s blade to the sheep’s neck without ever cutting the delicate skin. He stands up and holds out the device to Alicia, simply because she’s nearest. “Give it a go.”
Alicia gets confidently down on her knees and waits as Hartford manoeuvres the next sheep into position. She turns on the clipper, brings it to the sheep’s belly, and wicks away the fleece with ease.
“Excellent,” says Hartford, clearly surprised.
“What are you gonna do with all the fur?” Ben asks, watching it peel off as Alicia mows the sheep’s body in neat stripes.
“The fleece,” Hartford corrects. “We sell it.”
“Right. I bet we don’t get a cut of that profit either,” Dan mutters to his brother.
Alicia finishes quickly and Hartford points to Dan. “You’re next.”
AFTER HALF AN HOUR blistering in the sun, Silvia walks back to the house to fill up her plastic water bottle from the garden tap by the back door. She turns the tap on, then lets her eyes wander. She hears laughter and turns to find Monique standing with Cynthia by the tousled carrot tops. Monique is chatting animatedly, and Silvia can’t hear the words, but she notices Cynthia smile.
“Stop it.”
Silvia turns and sees Hartford right behind her, holding a bundle of fleece.
“The drought.” His voice is stern.
Silvia looks down and sees that her full water bottle is overflowing. Hartford turns off the tap.
“We have limited reserves,” he says.
“Sorry, I—” she starts, but Hartford is walking back to the pens, having left the greyish pile inside the back door. She returns to the pigpen where the others, though finished with the feeding, are lingering, not sure what’s next.
THERE’S STILL LIGHT in the sky after dinner that evening—the orange stripe along the horizon sets the clouds aflame. The farm is farther north than Silvia’s ever been, and she’s amazed at how the light lingers: it’s nearly ten o’clock, and still night has not yet killed the day.
The group gathers round in the library. After dinner there is no rota, no chores to do, and they are not tired—of work, of each other—yet.
The library looks just the way a library should: bookshelves from floor to ceiling; lamps that cast a warm, uniform light. There is nondescript but pleasant wallpaper. Greenish, floralish. A brown corduroy couch big enough for three—four if you squish, and Silvia squishes in with three of them now; two comfy chairs to match; and two red stools that pull out from under the coffee table. Ibrahim and JB sit on the ground.
“Anyone bring a guitar?” Ben—or is it Dan? No, Ben, he’s got slightly lighter hair—asks. He’s clearly afraid of silence, Silvia thinks. Or maybe of conversation.
Nobody did, but Monique spots a guitar case in the corner, propped next to a bookshelf. She goes to it.
“You think we . . . ?” she says, asking nobody in particular, reaching out and touching its neck with her fingertips.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Dan says. “Until they tell us not to.” He smiles around the room.
Silvia notes that both Ben and Dan have an unobtrusive familiarity that must make them excellent at their jobs. It’s as if they smile just to open a window onto how other people are feeling.
Ben opens the guitar case and holds the instrument as if he’s hugging it. “Sweet,” he says, and zigzags a few chords as he tunes it. “Any requests?”
Nobody says anything, so Monique says, “Play what you feel like.” She stretches the “feel.”
His chords turn into a medley of Bob Dylan songs. The music creates a background, not a focal point. An excellent tactic for documentary filmmaking.
Ibrahim gets out a pad of paper and some charcoal pencils of varying thicknesses and, without saying anything, starts sketching objects in the room. Silvia, sitting behind him on the sofa, watches as images appear on his page. A cup, a foot, the neck of the guitar. It’s incredible, she thinks, how things can appear where there once was nothing.
“Give it to me,” Monique says to Ben, holding her hands out for the guitar. The Dylan was deviating into a dull but dizzying melody as he listened more to the conversation than to his own rhythm. Monique sits on the arm of the sofa and retunes the instrument. “I write songs,” she says, clearing her throat. “La la LA la la . . . ahem . . . okay, so then—”
Her song is about love and suffering and the moon. It hits all the clichés in the right key, but the tune is nice and she’s got a pretty voice. It soars above her; her face screws up and her eyes squint as the notes get higher. She turns a string of misery chords into a punchy, ecstatic riff, and when she’s finished, everyone claps.
“Thank you, thank you,” she says, making an awkward curtsy. “What are you drawing?” she asks Ibrahim.
“Nothing,” Ibrahim says, putting his sketchbook facedown. “Just stuff in the room. But hey, you guys wanna be my subjects?” He’s holding his pencil in one hand, and with the other he rakes his hair with his fingers. “It could be . . . fun. For you!” He looks around the room. He got ahead of himself, and now he’s realising that he has to follow through on the offer. “And good practice for me.”
“Ooh, yes!” Monique says, rushing forward. “Do me, do me!”
“Okay,” he says. “Sit down, then.”
“Just my face, or—?”
“Yeah, the face,” he replies, oblivious. “I could do, like, five-minute sketches of each of you. You can keep them, or we can leave them here when we go. As, like, a, a memento or something.” He stumbles over his words; he’s unusually nervous.
“Great idea,” Ben says.
“Totally,” echoes Dan.
“Hey, me first!” Monique rushes to sit on a pillow at the foot of the couch. “This can be the model’s cushion,” she says.
“Fine,” says Ibrahim. He picks up the pad. He holds the charcoal above the page. He looks at Monique’s face, making mental measurements.
“That’s such a good idea,” MJ says. “But easier for a painter,” she continues, no jealousy in her tone. “I’m a potter and didn’t bring my materials—it’s too much with clay and spin tables and all that.” She gestures as though she’s doggy-paddling or DJing. “I am here just to collect my thoughts a little bit. Get ideas for my work from textures and colours in landscape.” Her turntables get wider as she gestures beyond an LP’s circumference. Though she speaks clearly, her French accent sneaks in slightly, sticking to the vowels.
“And bees,” JB says, his voice falsely sarcastic. “In landscape and in bees. Is what she wri
tes in ’er application.”
Before Ibrahim can begin—the page is still clean as fresh snow—a knock at the door presents Cynthia. “Hello,” she says, holding two small brown-paper rectangles. “I brought chocolate.”
Silvia feels suddenly uncomfortable, and she can sense the others do too. It’s as though a mom has crashed a high school party. The chocolate works well to create a bridge, though: the eight of them immediately scramble for it as though each piece could have Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket within the wrapper, as though each of them could win—what, the ticket to leave? The ticket to stay?
“Oh god.” Monique moans. “I forgot about chocolate. It’s like fucking ambrosia or something.” Her face is in pained raptures.
“What are you up to in here?” Cynthia asks.
Silvia can’t tell if her tone is accusatory.
“Ibrahim is drawing me,” Monique says, going back to her position on the pillow, turning her head on her long neck. She swallows.
“I’m gonna draw everyone,” Ibrahim says, democratically.
“Oh,” Cynthia says, “lovely.” She sits down in the armchair opposite Alicia and watches as the group settles back into their places.
The two bars of chocolate disappear before Ibrahim is finished with Monique’s portrait.
“Are you done?” Monique asks, fidgety.
“I think so,” Ibrahim says, each word hitting a different note. He holds the paper at the length of his arm, squinting. “Yeah.”
“Show me, show me!” She jumps up and goes around to see. Her face scrunches like one of his discarded, balled-up drafts. “That’s me?”
“Uh—”
She pulls the paper from his fingers. “Does this look like me?” She holds it in both hands and displays it for everyone.
Everyone is silent. Ibrahim is mortified.
Silvia thinks it’s incredible—though she can see why Monique might not like it as a figurative representation of herself. There are sharp lines dividing the regions of her face—top, middle, bottom, but also left cheek from left eyebrow, and dimple from jaw—and the features are rendered as if etched from stone. Even if it doesn’t look like Monique all that much, it somehow feels like her.
“I think you look hot,” Ben says.
“Is that related to the portrait, though?” Monique asks, her sarcasm verging on smugness. “This doesn’t even look like a woman. Or even a human, really.”
“I wasn’t going for a specific likeness.” Ibrahim is going the colour of a sunburn. “It’s just a little game. Maybe I’ll do more representative stuff for the next ones.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Cynthia says, standing. She walks towards Ibrahim. “Incredible, really. The confidence in your lines, the boldness of your vision. Congratulations, Ibrahim. Monique, what an honour.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I was trying to say before . . .” Monique trails off and looks at the drawing again, tilting her head.
“I think it’s nice too,” Silvia says.
“You do?” Ibrahim asks.
Silvia nods. “It’s amazing that you can make something from nothing.”
Ibrahim looks at his sketch afresh, smiling. “Thanks.”
A mellow quiet settles over the group. It lasts a second before Monique gets up and asks Ben if he wants to go get some water.
“I’m not thirsty.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m thirsty,” she says. “Come with me.”
“Oh, right. Okay.” He gets up so quickly he falls over his feet.
Silvia looks around to see what time it is, but there is no clock on any of the walls. She has no idea whether she’s been sitting in this room for ten minutes or four hours. She has no idea whether she’s been on the farm for a day or a lifetime. Time feels oceanic—too big, impossible to measure—and at the same time it’s metonymic: one second of her life, just as one drop in the ocean is representative of the whole. She looks around at the people, at the books, at the way the light paints the same gold over everything, and feels a smile from inside.
“Shall I do you next?” Ibrahim asks, looking at Silvia.
“Me?” Silvia looks behind her, where Cynthia is leaning against the sofa. Silvia can feel Cynthia bristle at his question, though she doesn’t understand why.
“Yeah, you.”
“Okay.” She sits on the cushion Monique left and softens into place.
“What should I do?” she asks. “Where should I look?”
“Wherever you want.”
Silvia’s face is pale and open. Like a child with a life of opportunity lying ahead. She sits facing forward, eyes on Ibrahim. Still. There’s something pure about the connection of artist and subject that she doesn’t want to break, but also she doesn’t want to look away from Ibrahim because she can’t bear catching anyone else’s glance. The feeling of eyes on her is tangible as cloth. She’s never liked being made aware of the unknowability of others, or the impossibility of others truly knowing her. If they’re looking at her, they’re forming opinions of her that she can’t control. She has the feeling that in being drawn like this, she is understood, somehow, in a way she’s never experienced before. She tries to focus on the strength of Ibrahim’s gaze and forget about the others.
As she sits there on the pillow, her senses become attuned to the sharp sound of charcoal on paper, shaping contours and scratching shadows as it itches through the chatter in the room. She watches Ibrahim’s face scrunch as he concentrates, his long hair falling in his eyes. She is also aware when the sounds of talking dull down and the only sound—and seemingly the only thing—in the whole room is Ibrahim’s charcoal on the thickly woven paper.
She has no curiosity about what the drawing looks like. That doesn’t feel like the matter at hand. The only thing she’s thinking about is this moment of sitting, and watching, and being watched.
XV
BREAKFAST. IBRAHIM COMES DOWN, wolfish. He hasn’t slept all night. The others are halfway through toast and cereal when he lopes into the kitchen, his eyes red-veined like another planet. His face looks hollow, cavernous.
Back home he didn’t usually go to bed until well after dawn, and now, what with the rigorous schedule imposed on them—rising with the sun and working all through the day—he isn’t performing to capacity in any aspect. Plus, here there is no garbage to rifle through at night, no new material to move him onto some unplanned path. Though he arrived with enough supplies to last him through to autumn, he’s realised that it’s the routine of the hunt that inspires him. It’s the air; the dirty streets; the people who, like him, lurk in the night; all the evidence of life he sees and collects as he roams.
Standing like a zombie in the kitchen now, Ibrahim takes it all in—orange juice, oranges, the radio tuned to something Québécois—before he takes a seat.
“You all right?” Silvia asks.
“Fine. Coffee?”
“Here,” says Monique. “There’s a little left in the jug. Milk? Sugar?”
“Black.”
He’d been working all night, making good on his five-minute sketches from the evening before—five minutes is nothing, five minutes isn’t even coffee and a clovie—softening the edges with his fingers, erasing lines into highlights, crosshatching shadows. He likes the one of Silvia the best; this is the one he cares most about. Of all eight sketches, hers looks most like her, but also most like him, his style. Part of it, for him, comes in the moment, but another important part comes in making it his own, after. The final product is equal parts him and his subject. It’s just like bees, he’s coming to realise: the honey isn’t sitting there inside the flowers, ready to be sucked; the bees have to work to turn it into that sweet syrup. The solitary work, the magic that happens in the cells.
“Aig?” Ben asks.
“What?” Ibrahim’s confusion sounds angry.
“You want some aig?” Ben repeats, pointing to his breakfast. Runny yolk and ketchup make an abstract painting of his plate.
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“Oh, egg. No. Thanks.” The thought of food makes him feel like vomiting.
Now everyone is looking at Ibrahim, concerned. He catches Silvia’s eye but looks away, too tired to think.
“I have to go back to bed for a few minutes,” he grumbles, making his voice gruff to try to mask the panic of the sleepless. He walks out of the kitchen, holding his coffee in both hands.
Back in his room, the eight charcoal-grey faces lie face up on the floor, a protective line in front of his bed. Ibrahim falls asleep, thinking of Silvia’s grey eyes.
XVI
SILVIA’S MORNING JOB is to tend to the garden. It’s a simple job and doesn’t take two, so she’s happy to cover for Ibrahim, her partner for the day. Transitions have always been easy for her; she doesn’t think too much about things. Like water, she takes a little while to fill her surroundings, but inevitably she fills them wholly.
The sky is bare. It’s only nine o’clock, but beyond the shade of the greenhouse, the sun feels naked, as if it were noontime. Despite the water shortage, irrigating the plants twice weekly is essential. More than that is unnecessary—overwatering leads to plant rot, Hartford explained, and overfertilizing leads to root burn—but less than that and the plants will be endangered.
Today is a watering day; tomorrow will be for weeding. She gets the plastic watering can from where it lives by the hosepipe and pours small green beads of fertilizer into the bottom, eyeballing a one-to-six ratio, and then fills it up with water from the hose. There is a well at the bottom of the yard, but its pulley is no longer functional and the bucket’s purely decorative; the water system now works through a series of pipes and cisterns and taps and hoses that connect this well to the others in the area, extending all the way to the nearest village. None of the wells have been private for years, Cynthia has explained. In this case, codependence means strength.
Drop a stone in the well and it will sink, an echoless sigh, for two and a half seconds before the tiny plink when it finally hits water.
The Honey Farm Page 6