by Maja Lunde
“We have many hours, we can get a lot done. I would really like to teach him numbers,” I said.
“Mm.” The still evasive gaze, as if he acquiesced, even though I knew that he was doing the opposite.
“You asked what I wanted to do,” I said. “That’s what I want.”
He got to his feet, then he walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, massaged it lightly. A persuasive massage, trying to hit my weak spot; he knew that even if I could resist him verbally, I seldom managed it physically.
I gently twisted out of his grasp, he was not going to win. “Kuan . . .”
But he just smiled at me, took hold of my hand. Then he pulled me towards the window, stood behind me while letting his hands slide from my shoulders and all the way down towards my hands.
“Look outside,” he said softly and intertwined his fingers with mine. I gently tried to pull free, but he held me tight. “Look outside.”
“Why?”
He held me calmly against him, and I did as he asked. The sun was shining. It was snowing white petals out there. The ground was covered. The petals floated through the air, turning a luminescent white from the sun. The rows of pear trees were endless. The amount of blossoms made me dizzy. I saw them every single day, every individual tree. But I didn’t see them the way I did today. Together.
“I think we should go to town. Dress up, go out and get something good to eat.” His voice was mild, as if he had made up his mind not to get angry.
I tried to smile, meet him halfway, couldn’t start this day with an argument. “Not the town, please.”
“But that’s where everyone is.”
He wanted to join the queue, the way we did every single day. I took a breath.
“Can’t we do something, just the three of us?”
He lifted the corners of his mouth in an attempt at a smile. “Makes no difference to me. As long as we go outside.”
I turned towards the window again, towards the flowers, the white sea. We were never alone out there.
“Maybe we can just walk over there?”
“Over where? To the fields?”
“That’s outside.” I tried to smile, but he did not return it.
“I don’t know . . .”
“It will be nice. Just the three of us. And then we won’t have to walk that long distance with Wei-Wen. It will be good for him to be spared that, just this once?”
I lay my hand on his upper arm, an affectionate gesture, refrained from saying anything more about the lesson. But he saw through me.
“And the books?”
“We can bring some with us? And I needn’t keep at it all day.”
His eyes finally met mine. Resigned, but with a little smile.
WILLIAM
I stood beside the desk. It was placed by the window, where the light was the best, the most suitable place in the room and absolutely the most pleasant. But I hadn’t sat here in months.
One lone book lay on the table. Was it Edmund who had placed it there while I was sleeping?
The pages were yellowed, a thin layer of dust covered the top and the brown leather cover was dry and brittle against my fingers. Now I recognized the work, I’d purchased it in the capital during the years when I’d been a student. At that time I happily sacrificed my midday meal for a week in exchange for a new book. But this book in particular I’d never got around to reading, probably it had been purchased towards the end of my time as a student. It was written by François Huber, published in Edinburgh in 1806, almost forty-five years ago and the title read: New Observations on the Natural History of Bees.
It was a book about bees, about the beehive, the superorganism, where each individual, each tiny insect was subordinate to the greater whole.
Why had Edmund picked out this book? This book in particular?
I took out my spectacles, had to wipe off the dust on my shirt, then I sat down. The feeling of the desk chair against my back was like meeting an old friend.
The cover creaked in protest when I opened the book. I carefully turned the title page and then I began to read.
I knew of François Huber’s story from my student days, but had never really studied his theories in depth. He was born into an extremely well-to-do Swiss family in 1750. The father had ensured the wealth of the family, and unlike himself, little François had never been obliged to work, but there were clear expectations on the part of his family that he should immerse himself in intellectual pursuits and in this way justify his position on this earth. He had to create something, something that put both his name and the family name on everybody’s lips; he was supposed to write them into the history books. François did his utmost to please his father. He was an intelligent child and read difficult works even as a young boy. He stayed awake into the wee hours, hidden behind a stack of exceedingly thick books, reading until his eyes burned and ran, until they were gleaming with pain. Finally it was too much for him, the pressure too great, and his eyes couldn’t take anymore. For the books did not lead him into an era of enlightenment, they led him into darkness.
As a fifteen-year-old he was almost blind. He was sent to the countryside, told to rest and not exert himself, he could help out with simple farm work, that was all.
But young François couldn’t rest, because he hadn’t forgotten the expectations which once had rested on him, and his mind was designed in such a way that he viewed his blindness not as a hindrance, but as an opportunity, because even though he could no longer see, he could still hear, and around him, on all sides, was life itself. Birds sang, squirrels chattered, the wind blew through the trees and the bees hummed.
The latter in particular caught his attention.
He slowly commenced his scientific work, which became the foundation for the book I held between my hands. With the valuable assistance of his faithful apprentice and namesake François Burnens, he started mapping out the honeybees’ different life phases.
The first important discovery the two of them made was in connection with fertilization itself. Nobody had formerly understood how the queen was impregnated; the process had never been witnessed before, although various scientists in different periods had carried out enthusiastic observational studies of life in the hive. But Huber and Burnens understood what was crucial, that fertilization did not take place on the inside, but rather, outside. Newborn queens left the hive, flew away and it was there, on these flights, that it happened. The queen came back, full of the sperm of the drones but also covered with their reproductive organs, which had been torn off in the act. How nature could demand such a ludicrous sacrifice on the part of the drone was a question to which Huber never found an answer. That nature actually demanded the greatest sacrifice of all, death, was not discovered until later, and perhaps it was just as well that Huber never understood precisely this. Perhaps it would have been too much for the blind Huber to take, that the drone’s only duty in life was to reproduce, and in so doing, to die.
Huber not only studied the bees, he also did what he could to improve their lot. He set about constructing a new type of beehive.
For many years, people’s contact with bees was limited to the harvest of natural hives, crescent-shaped honeycombs, built by the bees themselves on branches or in hollows. But with time, some people became so obsessed with the bees’ gold that they wanted to keep them like domestic animals. Attempts were made to build ceramic beehives, but with little success, and then the straw hive was developed, which was the most common in Europe in Huber’s day. In my district they still predominated, they blended in like part of the wildlife in the fields and on the roadsides. I had never before reflected upon these hives, not before now, reading Huber’s book, but they had their shortcomings. It was difficult to inspect the inside of the straw hive and when the honey was to be harvested, it had to be pressed out of the honeycombs, destroying eggs and larvae in the process, so that the honey was impure. Not to mention that the honeycombs themselves were destroyed. The bees’ ho
me.
To harvest the honey it was, in other words, necessary to deprive the bees of their basis for survival.
Huber set out to change this. He developed a hive that was easier to harvest. It opened up like a book where each leaf of the book was a frame for larvae and honey: the movable-frame hive.
I studied the pictures of Huber’s hive in the book, the frames, the visually beautiful but patently inexpedient design of the leaves. It had to be possible to develop this further, to work out a solution that was better, so the harvesting could be done without hurting the bees and the beekeeper could more effectively inspect and keep an eye on the queen, larvae and production. Suddenly I noticed that I was trembling with excitement. This was what I wanted, this was where my passion lay. I was unable to take my eyes off the drawings, off the bees. I wanted to go in there. Into the hive!
TAO
One, two, three—jump!”
We followed the tire ruts inwards across the fields. Wei-Wen walked between Kuan and me. He was wearing my old red scarf around his throat. He loved it, wanted to wear it every day, but was only allowed when nobody else could see. It was awarded as a kind of badge of honor, not a dress-up garment. But I liked that he wore it, perhaps it would inspire him, make him want to have one of his own someday.
Wei-Wen was holding each of us by the hand and demanded that we pull him up through the air in long jumps forward. “More. More.” The scarf was blown upwards into his face, almost covering it, hiding it and without thinking he pushed it aside.
“Look!” he shouted again and again and pointed. “Look!” At the trees, the sky and the flowers. Being out here was new for him, the fields were usually a place he observed from the window, before he was forced out the door to get to school on time or lifted into bed in the evening.
We were going to walk to a hilltop not far from the forest and eat there. We could see it from our house, it was located no more than three hundred meters away, so it was not a long walk for Wei-Wen, and we knew that up there we would have a nice view of both the city and the fields. We had packed fried rice, tea, a blanket and a tin of plums we had been saving for a very special day. We would then take out the pen and paper, and sit in the shade and work. I hoped I’d manage to teach him the numbers up to ten. It would be easier today. Wei-Wen was well rested. So was I.
“One, two, three—jump!”
We pulled him up into the air again, this had to be for the fifth or sixth time.
“Higher!” he shouted.
Our slightly defeated gazes met above his head. Then we lifted him, yet another time. He would never tire of it, we knew that. It was in the nature of a three-year-old never to tire. And he was used to getting his way.
“Imagine when he doesn’t have us all to himself any longer,” I said to Kuan.
“That will be tough on him,” he said and smiled.
We were very close now, just a few more months, and then we would have enough money. All the extra money we had went to the battered tin box in the refrigerator. When we could demonstrate a sufficient amount of savings, we would receive the permit. 36,000 yuan was the requirement. We had 32,476. And it was urgent, because soon we would be too old. The age limit was thirty years old and we were both twenty-eight.
Wei-Wen was to have a sibling. It would presumably be a shock, having to share.
I tried to release his hand.
“Now you can walk by yourself a little, Wei-Wen.”
“Nooo!”
“Yes. Just a bit. To that tree there.” I pointed to a tree fifty meters away.
“Which one?”
“That one over there.”
“But they’re all the same.”
I was unable to keep from smiling, he was right. I looked at Kuan. He grinned at me, his face open and happy. He was not angry because we were here, but in fact seemed satisfied with the compromise. He was, like me, determined for this to be a good day.
“Carry me!” Wei-Wen squealed and attached himself to my leg.
I shook myself free.
“Look. Take my hand.”
But he kept whining.
“Carry me!”
Then suddenly he was flying through the air, as Kuan hoisted him easily up onto his shoulders.
“There. Now I can be a camel and you can be the rider.”
“What is a camel?”
“A horse, then.”
He neighed and Wei-Wen laughed. “You have to run, horse.”
Kuan took a couple of steps, but stopped. “No, not this horse. This is an old and tired horse who also wants to walk together with the mommy horse.”
“The mare,” I said. “It’s not called a mommy horse, it’s a mare.”
“Fine. The mare.”
He continued walking with Wei-Wen on his shoulders. He reached for my hand and we walked hand in hand for a few meters, but Wei-Wen swayed precariously up there, so he hastened to take hold of him again. Wei-Wen’s entire body bobbed with each step he took, he held his head high, looked around and discovered suddenly that he had acquired a wholly new stature.
“I’m the tallest!” He smiled to himself, as happy as only a three-year-old knows how to be.
We reached the top of the hill. The landscape was spread out before us. Rows of trees, as if drawn using a ruler, blossoming, symmetric cotton balls, against brown soil where the grass had only just begun to sprout through last year’s rotting leaves.
The wide and shady forest lay just a hundred meters away. Dark and overgrown. There was nothing for us there, and now these areas, too, were going to be planted.
I turned around. To the north there were fruit trees from here to the horizon. Long, planted lines, tree after tree after tree after tree. I had read about trips people made, in former times, tourists. They traveled to see areas like this in the spring, making the trip solely to see the blossoming fruit trees. Was it beautiful? I didn’t know. It was work. Every single tree was a dozen hours of labor. I couldn’t look at them without thinking that soon they would be full of fruit and we would have to climb up them again. Pick with hands just as attentive as when we pollinated, pack every single pear in paper with extreme care, as if it were made of gold. An overwhelming amount of pears, trees, hours, years.
But all the same, we were out here today. Because I’d wanted to be.
Kuan spread a blanket on the ground. We took out the boxes of food. Wei-Wen ate quickly and spilled his food. He was always in a hurry at mealtimes, thought food was boring, was picky, ate little, even though we always sat there waiting with our portions, ready to give him more if he should want it.
But when we opened the tin of plums, he calmed down, perhaps because both Kuan and I were quiet. We put it between us. The tin opener made a scraping sound against the metal as Kuan twisted it around. He tilted the lid to the side and we looked down at the yellow fruit. It smelled sweet. I carefully took a plum with a fork and put it on Wei-Wen’s plate.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A plum,” I said.
“I don’t like plums.”
“You don’t know that until you’ve tasted it.”
He leaned over the plate and stuck his tongue into it, tasting the flavor for a second. And smiled. Then he snapped it up like a hungry dog, the entire plum went in his mouth at once, the juice ran out of the corners of his mouth.
“Is there more?” he asked, still with his mouth full.
I showed him the tin. It was empty. One for each of us, that was all.
“But you can have mine, too,” I said and passed the plum to him.
Kuan gave me a defeated look. “You need your vitamin C, too,” he said softly. I shrugged my shoulders. “It just makes me want more. Just as well not to have any.”
Kuan smiled at me. “All right.” Then he also let his plum slide onto Wei-Wen’s plate.
In just two minutes Wei-Wen had eaten all of them. He was on his feet again, wanted to climb the trees. And we had to stop him.
“The branches can
break.”
“I want to!”
I opened the bag looking for the pen and paper.
“I thought instead that we could sit here and play with arithmetic a little.”
Kuan rolled his eyes, and Wei-Wen didn’t seem to have heard what I’d said.
“Look! A boat!” He held up a stick.
“That’s nice,” Kuan said. “And there’s a lake.” He pointed towards a mud puddle a short distance away.
“Yeah!” Wei-Wen said and ran away.
I put the pen and paper back into the bag without saying anything, turned my back to Kuan. He ruffled my hair. “The day is long.”
“It’s already half over.”
“Come here.” He pulled me down onto the blanket. “Feel how lovely it is, just lying here like this. To relax.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “OK.”
He took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed his back. He squeezed mine in return. We both laughed. The usual discord was nowhere to be found.
I turned over onto my back. Stretched out completely, without any fear that someone would come and order me up from a break. The sunlight blinded me. I closed one eye, the world lost its depth. The bright blue sky merged with the white blossoms on the tree above us. They became the same surface. The sky peeked through between each individual petal. If I looked at it long enough, the foreground and background changed places. As if the sky were a blue crocheted blanket with holes against a white backdrop.
I closed both eyes. I could feel Kuan’s hand resting in mine, completely still. We could have talked. We could have made love. But neither of us wanted to do anything but lie like this. Down by the mud puddle we could hear Wei-Wen put-putting, the boat sailing back and forth.
After a while I had to change positions. My shoulder blades were digging sharply down into the ground. The small of my back started aching a bit. I turned over onto my side and supported my head against my arm. Kuan had of course fallen asleep, and was snoring lightly. He could probably have slept for a whole week, if given the chance. He was always a little too thin, a little too pale, his body at all times running on a deficit. He got less sleep than he needed, less food than his metabolism consumed. Still, he kept himself going, worked longer days than I did, but was never dissatisfied. He rarely complained.