The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

  She felt a shiver run from her feet to her head. She knew she did not have a fertile imagination and that the idea that had wormed its way into her mind was almost identical to the legend of La Llorona—the Weeping Woman—that had frightened her so as a child. The thought of the woman who had lost her children and was destined to wander aimlessly, endlessly crying out for them, still scared her. She did not deny it. The idea that she might know the protagonist, the origin, of a possible legend firsthand—even if that idea came from convoluted reasoning spawned only by her imagination in that moment—made her come out in goose bumps.

  She knocked on the door without wanting it to be answered.

  20

  The Story That Was Told, Is Told, and Will Be Told, Perhaps

  Simonopio knew almost all the paths: short ones, long ones, wide ones, narrow ones. He knew the paths of animals and the paths of men. Some had even been made by him when he came and went in pursuit of his bees, which rarely kept to the man-made tracks. But he did not know all of them, and some he had not traveled to the end or even to the point where the bees called it a day and decided to begin the journey home.

  For him, until now, only one path had been forbidden. He never understood why, but he had blindly obeyed; so until that day, he had never followed the track that would take him straight to Anselmo Espiricueta’s house.

  He could feel in the air around him that his swarm grew agitated every time the man with the irreconcilable grudges approached him. It was their way of warning him to flee when they felt Espiricueta close, to avoid crossing paths with him on the tracks where they might meet. Even so, sometimes Simonopio would stop at a crossroads of two paths near Espiricueta’s house, aware that the path on the left would take him straight there, and he felt drawn to the forbidden, to the unknown. But since it was a section of the hills that even the bees avoided, he had always obeyed them: Not there, there’s nothing good there, they often reminded him.

  He knew the hostility that the man had felt toward him since they met the first time: Simonopio, a newborn baby, and Espiricueta, a newcomer. How could he not know it, when he thought he could remember it? Or perhaps it was that—much like the old bees told the young bees about each success and failure of the past, to repeat the victories and to avoid the mistakes—his bees had told him so that he would never forget that first encounter. Or perhaps it was the looks Espiricueta gave Simonopio at every opportunity: intense, heavy, dark, ominous.

  Between Espiricueta and him there was a story that not even the wind knew yet. It was a story still unfolding that had begun on the day Simonopio was born, but it was also a story that had not yet happened: suspended in stasis, on hold thanks to his bees, but not dead or brought to an end.

  It was a story that was waiting patiently. Waiting to exist.

  This he knew with certainty. He had always known it, just as he knew the likely stories of others; all he had to do was search the corners of his mind to see them—his own stories or those of other people. Some stories—whether his own or not—he saw very clearly from start to finish. In certain stories, he could make out how they came to be before they had begun, though he did not have a clear picture of the outcome. Other stories materialized from nowhere, with no warning: they just happened.

  Some future events—seen in full or in part—were so desirable that he waited for them impatiently. Others made his hairs stand on end when he thought about them, and preferably would never come to pass.

  Francisco Morales had taken to telling him stories while they secretly cleaned the house. Simonopio always listened intently, for it was what he knew how to do best in a one-sided conversation, as any conversation in which he participated ended up being, silent as he was. He also listened because he was aware of his godfather’s need to express himself, even if it was merely through stories that he himself had been told as a boy. But his main reason for being such a committed listener was that nothing fascinated Simonopio more than the stories told by other people, whether through songs or tales.

  This is a legend, Francisco would say to him. And this one’s a fable.

  When it came to legends and fables, Simonopio also liked the ones told by Soledad Betancourt, the storyteller at the Villaseca Fair. She told her stories orally, from memory. He listened to her every year without fail in the marquees that went up on the outskirts of Linares. It was not that the woman arrived each time with a complete repertoire of new stories. He wondered at how she often told the same tales, but with little twists that she added masterfully to renew them, to make them fresh, more dramatic, or more terrifying. His godfather, clasping a feather duster, had told him some very similar stories—which, under his control, in his voice, charted their own new course.

  Simonopio knew there were stories that one could read in books, with black words on white pages. He was not interested in those, because once printed they were indelible, unchanging. Each reader had to follow the order of words indicated in those pages exactly, until they each arrived inexorably at the same outcome.

  Comparing the two storytellers, Simonopio had learned that, just as the words of a story told verbally had the freedom to change, its characters, the challenges they faced, and the ending were also free to change.

  His favorite story was the fable Francisco told him about a lion and a coyote in the land of light. Simonopio wanted to be the brave lion, like his godfather suggested to him.

  “In a fable, the animals possess human traits, their virtues and flaws. If you know the fable, you can choose to be the gazelle or the mouse, but I think you must be the lion, Simonopio. Just remember to watch out for the coyote.”

  Happy that his godfather had compared him to such a majestic character, Simonopio thought constantly about how to be the lion of the tale, how to live up to his godfather’s praise. And it delighted him that his was a story that had never been written down.

  Being in possession of that story meant Simonopio could make endless changes, could add or remove characters as he saw fit and give them the traits of the people around him. And he was the lion. Though his mind sent him on thousands of different fictitious adventures, he was the lion. The coyote was always the same, as well, and as much as Simonopio tried, not even in his most skillfully constructed narratives did he manage to remove that character from his story. He suspected that, for as long as there was a lion, there would always be a coyote.

  While that fable was just one tale, an invention, the stories Simonopio stored in his mind—the ones only he knew or saw—spoke to him of reality.

  The stories of Villaseca and those of his godfather had taught him that he who has a story in his mind, he who does not put it in writing, enjoys the freedom to reshape it at will, and Simonopio thought he had the power to do the same with the stories of real life that he saw in the privacy of his mind. They were not written, either, so he felt it was his duty to be a good, albeit silent, narrator. To twist them, like Soledad did at Villaseca. If, by filling a hole, he could erase an unhappy ending for a horse, then he did it. If allowing himself to fall ill for a few days changed the fate of many of his characters and saved their lives, he would not hesitate. He could not stop those future stories; he could not choose which ones to tell or know them all in full and in time to make plans and changes, like Soledad and Francisco Morales did. But there was always some adjustment he could make, as minor as it might be.

  About his own story, which he knew would come—the latent story about him and his coyote—he still did not know what to do.

  Simonopio was not a boy who allowed fear to control him. Every day on his walks, he came across bears and pumas in the wild and looked them in the eyes to say, I am the lion, you go your way, and I’ll go mine.

  But never until that day had he walked down the forbidden path, and Simonopio knew that an accidental encounter with a wild beast was preferable to a collision with the man who had made this track, pressing down the earth with the weight of his footsteps, his envy, and his grief.

  He h
ad to admit that, in a way, he was glad to have the perfect excuse to invade Espiricueta’s territory as his godmother’s escort, with his bees not there to forbid him. Finally, he could sate the curiosity he had always felt: What was there, or what was missing from there, that made the bees avoid the place?

  What he discovered with each step he took toward the epicenter of that living piece of land was the same thing he perceived in its tenant’s eyes: that there was only disquiet and unhappiness there. That the land breathed but would struggle to allow any crop to live. That the air blew and brought oxygen, but it also poisoned something deep within the cells. That life there was heavy, dangerous, dark, ominous.

  His curiosity sated, he decided that, like his bees, from that day onward he would never set foot on a single grain of earth that Espiricueta occupied.

  It had not been easy to take the turn that he had never dared or been allowed to take before. It was the pressure in his chest. It was his body’s instinctive rejection when it breathed that air, and the instruction the bees had given him all his life. It was, of course, because of the risk that he knew he would run.

  In spite of the fear, which almost paralyzed him and which he had to hide so as not to alarm the woman under his protection, Simonopio remained steadfast in the task of accompanying and watching over his godmother, observing her closely all the way: Was she short of breath, like he was? Was the palpable weight of the atmosphere affecting her? Was she turning pale? Was her pace slowing as they drew closer to the house? If so, thought Simonopio, we’ll stop and go back. But no. Beatriz Cortés had a mission to complete, and nothing distracted her from the obligation that she had imposed on herself. So, despite his unease, Simonopio walked on with the firm intention of avoiding the coyote’s lair, of remaining hidden.

  He promised himself that he would not detonate the future that day.

  He longed, at that moment, for the company of his bees, for in their absence he felt blind, restricted to what his body’s eyes could see and the limited information he obtained with his immediate senses from the physical world around him. He was aware that this was the normal state for any person, but for him it equated to extreme myopia and deafness, because without his bees, he could not see or hear beyond the hills. Without them, he could not see behind him or observe the world from above when he chose to do so. In their absence, Simonopio could not smell the exquisite aroma of the pollen, just as the bees did.

  Without the bees swarming around him, coming and going, the information he received from the world was linear; while with them, from the moment he had begun to feel sensation, he had grown accustomed to perceiving the world as it was: a sphere.

  As much as he wanted to, he could not summon them now. They did not necessarily sleep when winter arrived; rather, the bees hid away in their honeycomb for as long as possible, sharing the heat of their bodies, particularly during a severe winter like the one they were enduring that year. They remained in their beehive, which grew in size and prosperity under the shed roof they had been invading and covering, hexagon by hexagon, with their wax structure. And there they remained for months, living off the fruit of their tireless work the rest of the year.

  Simonopio visited them often. He laid his hands on the firm structure of the living honeycomb, vibrant with their buzzing. Without coming out, they welcomed him, they consoled him in his solitude, and they asked him: Do you need us?

  Just the knowledge that they would come if he called for them, ready for anything, calmed Simonopio. They would go wherever they were needed without hesitation, even to this undesirable place, if Simonopio called for them—but at great cost: with the low temperatures, most would die. That day, in that place, he was afraid, but that was not enough to make him call on his bees to sacrifice themselves. The day to summon them had not yet arrived.

  Sitting on a rock behind a bush, waiting for his godmother to finish her duty, watching over her from a distance, Simonopio was not ashamed to admit that what terrified him most was the knowledge that, one day, he would face Espiricueta. He did not know where, how, or when it would be, and that caused him great anguish. That day, the man did not appear to be at home, Simonopio concluded with relief when the youngest daughter timidly answered the door.

  It would come, but today would not be the day of the lion and the coyote.

  He had no choice but to wait for time to make his story real. What he did know was that the day would arrive, that it could not be put off, and that his loss would be enormous and irreparable. Without knowing the story in advance, he was certain it would change everyone’s lives.

  If, by avoiding Espiricueta, by evading him, he managed to prolong the wait, to grow strong until he lost his fear, to learn what he needed to know in order to change the words and elements of this inevitable narrative; if he bought himself enough time to grow physically, mentally, and spiritually; and if over this time he gradually became the powerful lion he imagined, then he would continue to avoid it for as long as necessary. Because Simonopio was certain that the tale the bees, the wind, and the trees would one day tell about him and Espiricueta would be a story of the kind one hoped would never happen.

  “What’re you doing here, devil?”

  Surprised by the violence in the voice, Simonopio turned around to see Espiricueta charging toward him, ready to deal him a blow with the stick he carried in his hand.

  21

  Gaps That Were Left

  Sometimes when we do not have someone in front of us—in plain sight, in constant contact—while we know it does not mean that they no longer exist, it’s as if it were impossible that they should carry on without us, that they could continue to exist without our physical influence. Perhaps this stems from the depths of our early childhood, when we are reluctant to lose sight of our mother for fear of her disappearing.

  I don’t know if it’s happened to you, but it has to me. It still does. Right now, as we travel away from my family, from my home, when it’s almost time for lunch and I know that the food is being prepared, I struggle to accept that, even though I’m not there, the broth or stew is still bubbling away, the same smells that are always there when I’m present are still wafting around the house, and the food will still taste the same in my absence.

  This phenomenon does not occur, of course, when one goes out to buy some milk from the store on the corner. It occurs, to me at least, when one goes away, when there is a goodbye involved—or an interval, you might call it.

  When I was away studying and returned for the holidays, it seemed very strange to me that my mother had had the initiative in my absence to change the upholstery on an armchair or donate the books from my childhood to younger eyes and minds. Then, when my own children studied elsewhere, I called them often so that they would not forget my continued presence in the day-to-day world: the daily routine where we feel hungry and eat, where our teeth rot and we have fillings, where we come down with diarrhea—not too often, hopefully—and treat it with an infusion of estafiata, grown in a corner of the garden. Where the light bulbs blow and we change them; where our electricity bill is double the usual amount, and seething, we just pay it; where sometimes we fight, but most of the time we’re happy; where we have dinner with old friends or even make new ones.

  All of this in spite of your absence.

  Of course, I know it’s not like this, that they won’t forget me and I won’t them, but it’s the first time I’ve tried to explain the concept to someone. I hope I’ve managed it. And no. I’m no more senile now than I was an hour ago, when we got into the car. I’m not senile, but at my age, I think I now have the right to say whatever I want. And this is what I want to say: my memories, my impressions come with me. I don’t know about yours, but my reality goes with me wherever I go and leaves behind its capacity to reinvent itself, to develop.

  I imagine that, in much the same way, my parents thought they would return to a town frozen in time, fossilized. A Brigadoon. But no. Life—and death—continued without them.
r />   It was not until they arrived back in Linares that my papa admitted to my mama the anguish he had felt when he drove through the town on the day he went to collect my sisters in Monterrey. During the three months of isolation, he had kept it to himself to avoid worrying her. But on their return, when the context was different, he allowed himself to confess that the experience had horrified him and kept him awake for several nights, for whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the empty streets again and the dogs hungry for human flesh, and he heard the sound of the horses and the funeral cart on the paved road. Even after receiving a few sporadic letters from Dr. Cantú and learning that life in Linares went on, albeit in a strained atmosphere, my papa struggled to imagine or remember the streets full of living people, like they had been before.

  After thinking about it for many years, I’ve reached the conclusion that, with his last glance at his ancestral town after the arrival of the flu, my papa experienced the phenomenon I have been trying to describe: you leave a place or say goodbye to someone, and thereafter, you feel the existence you have left behind is frozen by your absence. On that last drive through Linares, my papa had been left thinking it was the end of the world. The end of his world, at least. All the usual sounds, smells, and sights had been wiped out, and I’m certain that he had the impression—a primeval instinct, perhaps—that all the bodies strewn on the roadside were people who had suddenly dropped dead as they went about their daily business, with no warning.

  His first impression when they returned once and for all was, perhaps, of a gray Linares. In that January of 1919, Linares was icy and overcast, and the people walking in the streets wore black mourning clothes. The circumstances might have prevented them from saying goodbye to their loved ones at the grave, but as my grandmother used to say, decent people knew how to mourn properly: by wearing black for a full year.