“Freezing!” Silvia dips her hand down and shudders, then shakes her hand dry.
“It’ll warm up by the end of summer—we can come back and swim then.”
Cloud reflections skirt across the surface of the lake, and reeds, thick as straws, punctuate the water-clouds. The life underneath the water is invisible too, though they know it’s there.
They wander on to the next lake. They couldn’t see it from where they were—the land is flat and the grass is high—but find it’s only about twenty paces away. This lake is smaller, so less cold.
“I think we should call this one Hartford,” Ibrahim pronounces.
“Do you think he’d like that?” Silvia stands on her tiptoes to get the lay of the land. “He’d probably call them Big Cynthia and Little Cynthia.”
Ibrahim smiles. Silvia sits down, then he follows suit. Neither laughs at the other’s joke. The grass is papery and cold. Silvia watches an ant climb up a great flat blade that bends with the weight of even such a small body. A second ant crawls onto her hand, its feet the faintest tickle up the inside of her wrist. He’s close enough to touch her, and she finds herself wishing he’d brush the ant off her arm, even though the ant isn’t bothering her.
The air suddenly gets cold and quiet; it’s as if silence had a feeling. She looks up to the sky, which was blue five minutes ago and is now filling in with billowy, charcoal-coloured clouds.
“We should probably get back,” Silvia says. “It looks like . . . like rain?”
And it’s true: there’s a wind in the trees and that vacuum sound of air suddenly descending. Black edges encroach on the crinkled tinfoil sky. Then a filament of light flashes, as if tracing all the wrinkles in the foil, and lights up the whole land.
“A storm,” Ibrahim says.
They sit next to each other, facing it. The hungry rumble follows, fifteen or twenty seconds after the light. The air is staticky. Electric.
“Do you think it will rain?” Silvia asks.
“I don’t know.” A pause. “But let’s go back.”
Neither moves for another few moments. Something else electric.
THE TREES seem smaller on the way back, in the way that the journey home always seems shorter. The pine needles make canopies and carpets: green above, brown below. They hear a giant crack in the sky. It sounds like something broke, something immense and irreparable.
BY THE TIME they return to the farm, the storm has passed and there was no rain. The world breaks and heals itself again, eternally.
XXIII
BACK AT THE FARM—nobody yet calls it “back home”—Silvia feels suddenly parched. Her throat is sandpapery. It’s probably the heat, but she feels a little lightheaded too. “One second,” she says, and then remembers that Ibrahim doesn’t have to wait for her. “Or actually, don’t worry, I’ll just see you later.”
“It’s no problem,” he says. “I’ll wait.”
She puts her mouth under the garden faucet and turns the blue plastic handle, letting the water run right onto her face. It tastes a bit funny and feels a little thick—dusty, almost—but it does quench her extreme thirst. She gulps it, like a landed fish finding water again.
Ibrahim is facing the backyard, shading his eyes from the sun and watching the others puttering around in the garden. It’s nearly dinnertime. Dan and JB are in the herb garden, and Monique is following Ben as he films plants in close-up.
“Ready,” Silvia says, standing up.
Ibrahim turns around, ready to go inside with her, but then he sees her face. “Oh my god!” he cries. “Are you okay?”
Silvia’s face is covered in blood, trickling straight lines to her chin from either side of her mouth as if she were a nutcracker. There are red splatters around her right temple and across her cheek, and red patches are staining her T-shirt too.
“What?” Her hands fly to her face, feeling the dampness around her mouth. She wipes the water with the back of her hand and brings it down to look at it. “Holy.”
“Sit down,” Ibrahim says, rushing over.
The others from the garden look up to see what the commotion is all about. “Silvia,” JB says, rushing over, “what ’appened?”
Ibrahim replies for her. “We just went for a walk and then, I don’t know . . .”
Silvia is looking at all the faces of the people appearing in a circle around her, looking at her as though she’s a medical experiment.
“Are you okay?” Monique asks, touching her shoulder. “Does it hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Silvia says. “I don’t know what . . .” She looks at her red hands and remembers the rusty earth by the lake. By this you will know I am the Lord. She turns towards the house and spots her reflection in a window. “Is that . . .” She looks down at her shirt and then up at the others again.
Ibrahim, still right by her side, says, “It’s okay, just stay still for a second.” He puts his hands to her head gently and says, “I’m just going to check for an injury,” as he delicately moves her hair around, examining her scalp.
“It doesn’t hurt, though. I don’t feel—I don’t feel anything.”
Ben, who dropped his phone when he ran over, picks it up again and starts filming as JB goes and turns on the tap. He lets the water run, but nobody is watching him, focused as they are on Silvia.
“Hey,” JB calls, “look.” As the others respond he points to the red water running out of the faucet, dark and silty, looking almost exactly like blood. He dips his hands in and out of the stream, and they come away just as red as Silvia’s face. “It is the water.” He holds up his hands, palms facing outwards as if in apology.
Ibrahim pulls his hands out of Silvia’s hair and looks at her, both of them baffled. “I’ll go inside and get you a towel and some clean water, okay?”
Silvia nods. “Thank you.”
When Ibrahim has gone inside, Monique walks between JB and Silvia. Her hair, white-blond and tufty, looks like a baby chick. “This is not right. Blood in the water?”
“It’s probably not blood,” Dan says. “I mean, it’s more likely iron deposits in the pipes or something.”
“Whatever,” Monique says, “it’s fucked up.”
Alicia interjects, “Iron deposits can cause stains in laundry. For high levels of iron, a filter needs to be installed.”
“We’ll have to use bottled water for cooking tonight,” Ben says.
“Is that allowed?” Silvia asks. “I thought bottled water was just for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency,” Alicia says.
“Let’s go find Cynthia.” Monique takes Silvia’s arm and pulls her, not very gently, to the garden. Silvia allows herself to be led, wiping red liquid off her face with her other hand.
The girls walk to the end of the garden and find Cynthia digging troughs in the vegetable patch to help the water get down to the roots: any water that makes it that far needs to have its potential maximized.
Hearing them approach, Cynthia bends up from the waist and wipes her hair off her face with the back of her bare hand. “Is it dinner already?”
“Look at Silvia!” Monique cries out.
“It’s just the water,” Silvia says, holding her arms over her stomach. “Does it often run red?”
Cynthia’s lips move as she slides them over her teeth. She thinks for a second. “Well. No, not that I am aware of.”
Monique looks over to the well. “Could there be some kind of problem with the pipes? Iron deposits or something?”
Silvia adds, “Alicia said something about a filter—”
“If we’ve got iron deposits it’ll need something way more serious, in my opinion, than a filter,” Monique says, looking back at the house.
Cynthia drops the spade she was holding and puts on the beige cardigan she had tied around her waist. “I’ll come in and take a look,” she says, not giving any emotion away.
As they’re walking back together, Silvia sees what looks like slime on the earth by the well. Sh
e stops, bends closer to it. “Hey,” she calls out. The other two, already a few paces beyond her, stop and turn. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” Cynthia asks.
“This, this sludge.” Silvia is crouching. She touches the earth and raises her finger. It’s red. “It looks like blood too.”
Monique takes a step closer to Silvia so she’s standing between the two women. “Ugh, it totally looks like blood.”
“Well, that is blood,” Cynthia says. “I had to kill one of the pigs.”
“What?” Monique jumps back.
“Why?” Silvia asks.
Cynthia looks baffled. “For food, of course. And because she was getting old.” She looks at the two girls. Both of them stare back at her with sad eyes. “Welcome to life on a farm,” Cynthia says, laughing genuinely for the first time.
“So it’s pig’s blood in the water?” Monique is incredulous but willing to believe. “Maybe it sank into the well water?”
“That wouldn’t be possible—not so fast, at least. It’s probably just mud from the bottom of the well seeping into what’s left of the water supply. We’re so low on water that half of what we’re getting is silt.”
“But the dirt by the lake is red too,” Silvia says. “I went down there earlier. Could that be linked to the water colour?”
Cynthia smiles at her. “No. The high quartz content colours the earth this high in the Canadian Shield, that’s why it’s red. I think it’s rather pretty, don’t you?”
“I . . . I . . . It is pretty, I guess, yeah.” She wants to trust Cynthia’s explanations for this. She wants to take all her faith and put it into this woman, who seems to have such an innate understanding of and control over the natural world.
“Anyway,” Cynthia says, wanting to move this along, “let’s get you cleaned up.” She walks between the girls with her arms open as though pushing them forward, on to the house.
XXIV
LATER THAT NIGHT, Silvia—her stained clothes soaking in Tide and her hair still wet from its washing—is sitting at the table with the others for dinner. Cynthia brings out a massive portion of roast pig on a platter and puts it on the table to applause. Ben and Dan start filming the scene with their phones.
Silvia has the strange sensation that she’s underneath a bell jar—as though she is on display, and set apart. She stares at the roasted head before her—its rubbery snout, its cheeks gone caramelized, the hairs on its face shaved away. She looks away quickly, feeling squeamish, and notices that Hartford, who is sitting next to her, has turned away as well.
“Anyone thirsty?” Cynthia asks, holding up a pitcher of water.
“Can I have a glass of juice?” Alicia says.
“There isn’t any juice,” Cynthia says.
“I’m not drinking that water,” Alicia says.
Cynthia holds the pitcher to the fading light coming in from the garden-facing window. The water is clear. “The water is fine, Alicia.”
“Iron can sometimes be invisible,” Alicia says, “but the internal corrosion it causes remains the same.” She looks around the table for validation, but everyone is silent, having given up the fight already.
“There’s bottled water if you’d rather,” Cynthia says, her voice heavy, nodding to the pantry.
Alicia doesn’t move.
Nobody else moves either.
The shadows of the candles shift slightly as the sun makes its final descent. When they have stopped eating, whether or not they’ve finished, they leave the table, one by one.
XXV
THE NEXT MORNING Alicia arrives at breakfast with her things. One small cabin-sized suitcase, four wheels, an ergonomic design. She’s wearing mascara and has drawn in her eyebrows; she looks completely different.
“It’s just not for me,” she says, beady eyes to the ceiling. Alicia is the only one of them who seems to have gotten fatter since arriving; the rest have rarefied.
Silvia is confused. More than that: she’s let down. But, she wonders, what makes it more than this? Why does this feel like more than just a business arrangement?
Toby the cat runs after Alicia as she walks down the path, but he stops where the driveway ends and the road begins. He knows his limits.
CYNTHIA HAS ALWAYS been proficient at separating the wheat from the chaff. A hive isn’t about how many bees but about how well they work together. Some say that honey production is less dependent on the acreage of blossom available than on how effectively the bees can drink up all that nectar.
The water returned to normal the next day. Whatever the problem, pig’s blood or iron deposits or some other mystery, it passed, and everyone except Silvia seemed to forget about it immediately.
XXVI
THE FIRST HONEY harvest happens in late spring. At this point the nectar in the flowers is fresh, unripe; the resulting honey is pale and silvery, with a fragile spume—called, rather ironically, the flower of the honey—which has the most exquisite flavour. This early honey is of a different, rarer consistency from the mellifluous golden substance generally sold in shops. Flowers that start blossoming in this period include apple, strawberry, and, a little later, purple loosestrife, the beautiful invader.
For chores that afternoon, Ibrahim and Silvia are paired with JB and MJ, and their task is to harvest this first late-spring spume. The four of them stand idly in the shade of one of the silver birch trees, waiting for Cynthia to come with instructions.
“But why did she leave?” Ibrahim asks again.
“That’s all she said,” Silvia repeats. “That it just wasn’t for her.”
He seems personally offended. His forehead crumples, puglike; he pulls his fingers through his hair. He grunts but doesn’t say anything. He hadn’t painted that morning, couldn’t get into work, was too sleepy and distracted. It felt like he had an antenna elsewhere, wasn’t fully present in his own body. It’s not that he misses home—he doesn’t think that is it—and though he wouldn’t want things any other way at the moment, change has always been hard for him.
They expected Cynthia nearly half an hour ago. Drones are at once children and pupils, dormant without the commands of their queen.
When she finally arrives, she neither apologizes for nor excuses her lateness. “Everyone all right?”
“Alicia left,” Ibrahim blurts, sounding wounded.
“I see.”
“What, did you know?” he asks.
“Know what, Ibrahim?”
“That she was leaving.”
“No,” Cynthia says, walking over to the shade of the tree. “I did not.” She sounds upset, more upset than Ibrahim would have expected. “Everyone is free to leave whenever they wish, as I’ve said, but I do prefer to be notified, at the very least,” she says, not looking at anyone in particular. “This is my home, remember. As well as my livelihood.”
Everyone shifts positions slightly, chastened. Ibrahim sneezes, breaking the silence.
“Anyway.” Cynthia looks like she’s doing math in her head. “Let’s get started.” She pulls a small sample of honeycomb from her pocket. “To test whether or not the honey is ready to harvest, you slide a knife along the wax caps of the cells, then gently crush the comb with the back of a large spoon and tip it into a bowl. Like this.” She goes through the motions: slide, crush, tip. Her eyes are like wet stones.
“That’s the honeycomb?” Ibrahim asks, going closer.
“This? Yes.”
“And the bees made that?”
“Bees make honeycomb, yes.”
“But it’s perfect. All those tiny little perfect shapes!” He doesn’t touch the honeycomb, he just marvels at it.
She fights a smile as it flits across her face. “As I was saying. When you press the wax, the cells of the comb will split, and if the honey is ready, it will be released and flow smoothly into the bowl beneath.”
They have none of the modern equipment: uncapping forks, heated knives, extractor machines. They have no need for such technology,
Cynthia says, when the old tools work just as well.
“And if it’s not ready?” Silvia asks.
“It will be,” Cynthia says, leaving no room for doubt.
BEFORE IBRAHIM, SILVIA, MJ, AND JB can get near the hives and the honeycomb, they have to suit up in their astronaut gear. There are only four uniforms, which is why only four can harvest at a time. The suits are all one size, so it doesn’t matter who wears which. There are around fifty hives in each of the three designated apiary areas, and the goal is to complete this first harvest in three rounds.
In matching baggy white coveralls, with their clasped ankles, elbow-length gloves, and veiled hats, it is impossible to tell the four apart. The only distinction is JB. He’s exceptionally tall and has to hike up his socks to cover the bare space left where the trousers end, two inches above his ankles.
First thing they have to do is drive the bees into the lower part of the hive so as to extract the top frames. To do this, they use the smoker Cynthia left.
“It looks like an old-fashioned fire extinguisher,” Silvia says.
“Or the Tin Man’s oilcan,” says MJ, swinging the smoker between two fingers. It’s a small silver can with a funnel top and ribbed sides. There are bellows at the back. MJ is right: it’s exactly like the Tin Man’s.
“If I only had a . . . what is it?” Ibrahim tries to sing the tune. “Brain? Or heart?” He’s never even seen the movie, but he knows the songs nearly by heart from his brother Mo singing them all day every day for an entire summer.
“The smoke is meant to calm them.” Silvia pushes the bellows but nothing happens; it hasn’t been filled yet. “Or maybe it confuses them? I can’t remember.”
Ibrahim takes the brown bag of pine needles that came taped to the can. He and the others are meant to stuff the bottom of the smoker, the burner part, with the needles and then set them on fire. The needles will burn slowly, and a blast from the bellows will set them aflame again to sustain the smoke.
The Honey Farm Page 9