And you suddenly feel the greatest pain of your life invading you, a pain that must be let out or you will die. You comprehend that the pain belongs to someone else, but it is your responsibility. You know that it comes from the past, though it has reached you only these many years later. Now you know that the pain is called Simonopio. You think about it for a moment with the little good sense that you have left, because you feel your windpipe seal, and the thin trickle of air that reaches your lungs barely oxygenates your blood and is only just enough to make a lucid decision. With no energy in your old body to vent the pain from your body with a great scream to rival the one that Simonopio let out on that Saturday, your birthday, your only option is to continue telling the story.
You turn to the taxi driver, who you now know is called Nico, even though at no point during the journey have you asked him his name, nor has he offered it.
“That’s better. Shall we carry on?”
Yes, Francisco. Get into the cab. Reach your destination. Carry on, Francisco. The memories and the pains, all of them—yours, other people’s—from start to finish, they require you. Today they will not let up: you must go to them. It hurts and it will hurt more, but you’re on the right path.
68
Following the Bee Trail
Simonopio had to go cross-country. Using the map of the hills he had made in his mind during his endless walking in pursuit of the bees—the map he also traced on the land, through the vegetation, with the weight of his body—he chose the fastest route and ran at full speed.
He could not feel his heart beating. He could not control his breathing or see beyond the next hill. He knew it was beating, that he breathed, and that the world existed beyond his field of vision, but only because he was still alive, moving, and with a destination in mind. If it was cold, he no longer felt it. He didn’t care anymore. If he trod barefoot on stones, branches, or thorns, driven by compulsion, he could only take a firm, quick step and follow it with another, and another, and another, and as many as were necessary to take him to where everything was calling to him, to where he had known he would be called all his life.
With each step he sent out his own urgent and repetitive signal: It’s today, come today. Deafened by anguish, he did not know whether he was receiving a reply.
Indifferent to the scratches, he stopped for nothing. He did not reduce his speed even to carefully make his way through the thorny plants, which had grown back since his last visit. He did not stop, as he normally would, to admire the view that suddenly opened up of the tallest hills from an angle that could be appreciated walking on only that route. When an unsuspecting rabbit crossed his path, he did not stop to let it pass freely. For the first time in his life, he ran thoughtlessly, indifferent to whether he caused alarm or damage in the hills, and not even an encounter with the bear that roamed that area would have stopped or diverted him.
He had a long way to go and very little time: the day of the clash between the lion and the coyote had arrived, and he was going to meet his adversary.
He did not know whether he would arrive in time.
69
. . . Dies by the Sword—or the Bullet
He could not help it: seeing Espiricueta in the distance, standing on the hill, darkened Francisco’s good mood.
True: it was what they had agreed—though he had thought it canceled—and working with the campesino had been his original intention when he had brought Francisco Junior with him that day. But now that they had spent all this time alone, he did not want to share the day with anyone else. They had begun a task together, and he wanted them to finish it together. He knew that, had they had help from the beginning, had Espiricueta arrived on time, the same task would have taken a few minutes, while he—a clumsy digger—and a small boy who returned more earth to the hole than he managed to extract would have taken around two hours.
Now that he had the first tree at the edge of its hole, he decided he would ask Espiricueta to come back the next day, when they would start to plant the new orchard in earnest. For today, Francisco and his son would plant these trees alone, and Francisco Junior would always remember that, as a boy, he had started an orchard with his father.
He and Francisco Junior still had work to do that day, but it did not matter. He had enjoyed himself with his son, being inefficient and sweating together in spite of the cold, and the boy seemed to have enjoyed himself too. That night they would arrive home hungry and with blisters on their hands, but satisfied at a job well done and at their achievements that day, which were far more important than the five trees they would plant.
After that long day of work, they would drop down dead, he predicted.
He waved his hand, expecting the gesture to be returned. Instead, he saw Espiricueta raise his hand—not to return his greeting, but to accommodate his Mauser and take aim using the sight, nice and slowly, without rushing, no doubt holding his breath, like any expert marksman would do when he wants to hit a target.
It took Francisco Morales Senior only an instant to realize that Anselmo Espiricueta was not aiming at anyone behind him, and to understand with horror that the campesino would fire the weapon Francisco had given him using the bullets he had also provided, insisting the man practice to improve his marksmanship. And in that instant, he concluded that the target was him, and with him, his son.
Just an instant.
He turned, with the intention of protecting Francisco Junior with his body, and the shot rang out, echoing between the hills of the land that still belonged to him.
70
. . . Lives by the Sword—or the Bullet
Anselmo Espiricueta went to meet the boss as they had agreed. He arrived early with his son, almost at dawn, which was the usual time to start work. But the boss had not arrived and—after several hours sitting there, cold and hungry, resting against the trunk of a tree at the top of a hill—Espiricueta, at his son’s insistence, had been about to give up and go home, resenting the boss’s lack of consideration.
A peon’s time, he concluded, is not worth the same as the boss’s, who, breaking his word, had not showed up at the agreed-upon time. Then he felt disappointed: he had waited anxiously for this day—not for the excitement of changing the crop or out of curiosity, like everyone else who went to the party at the river that day, but because it was the day when he would begin the life that he had been planning for so many years.
Espiricueta had interpreted their meeting that day as a threat, but it would be the last time that anyone dared threaten him: he, in turn, had responded with a serious promise that he intended to fulfill. And it had nothing to do with orange trees.
With this in mind, Anselmo remained on that rise, not knowing when he would have another such opportunity to defend his land from the man who wanted to snatch it from him with incomprehensible changes, with changes that, like everything, were good only for him and his family. Anselmo’s belly was beginning to complain by the time he saw them arrive in the afternoon, carrying trees and spades. He stopped his son in his immediate impulse to go to their boss’s aid.
“No, my boy. Not today.”
He forgot his hunger. He forgot the cold.
And so, out of sight of his boss, who had not stopped to wait for his obedient peon’s arrival, father and son watched the other father and son struggle to dig five badly made holes. And seeing them—clumsy, tall, white, and elegant campesinos—confirmed what he had always known: the fields belonged to those who worked them, those who knew how to do things, how to plant, and not to those who supervise everything from on top of a horse without dirtying their hands.
“This land’s mine.”
He had waited for years and would not wait another day to remove the trespassers from his land. All the patience and all the waiting that he had in his body and spirit, all the silence he was capable of, he had expended a long time ago.
And if he had spoken into that woman’s ear to end his silence, spoken to her close up, as close as possible, mos
tly about her wrongdoings—You didn’t look at me when I looked at you, and now you won’t look at anyone else—while their sweaty bodies fought hand-to-hand, eye to eye and chest to chest, one to live and the other to kill; and if in the end he had felt pleasure on his skin in depriving her of her life with fingernails and teeth, and pleasure in his ears in hearing her breathe for the last time, now he had no problem doing the same, but from afar, armed with his Mauser, with which he had practiced and practiced and caressed like a lover, for want of a woman.
That day, he wanted his voice and his will to be heard in gunfire, to rumble like thunder.
The boss, with his boy, had managed to bring the first tree into position. But Anselmo Espiricueta would not allow a single one of those trees on his land. He stood, to be seen. The boss, with his usual arrogance, waved at him; and with the arrogance that Espiricueta revealed for the first time, he aimed his rifle.
Contrary to what Francisco Morales thought in that tiny instant, at a distance of just over three hundred paces, Espiricueta was not in the habit of taking a deep breath and holding it before firing. As he aimed at his boss’s head, Anselmo Espiricueta did what he had been doing for years when he practiced.
He sang.
Now the golden eagle has flown
and the finch is chased away.
At last the day must come
when the mule takes the reins . . .
And he fired.
71
So Close and Yet So Far
Simonopio was close when he heard the bang. Close, but too far, too late, and now the air that he breathed had changed: now it smelled of burned gunpowder and of death, and the absolute silence in the hills, after the gunshot, thundered in his ears and punctured his heart.
72
Irrigating the Land
Francisco did not feel the impact of the bullet.
All he felt, without understanding what was happening, was his body losing its strength, flying forward, and falling face down on his son.
Suspended for a moment between voluntary verticality and permanent horizontality, between lucidity and confusion, Francisco had the time to think that, when he reached the end of the fall—why was he falling, if it had been so long since he last fell to the ground?—he would tell Francisco Junior that it was time to go home, because he felt tired and they would not finish planting the trees that day, but tomorrow we’ll come back, we’ll finish, we’ll irrigate them and watch them grow, you’ll see, the trees grow fast, they bear fruit fast, but you have to protect them from infestations, from the cold, from the dry season, from the Reform. You’ll see. When you’re older, you’ll see: these trees that we’re planting today will bear a lot of fruit, and you’ll bring your sons here to get covered in earth, so their mama scolds them, which is what mamas do: they lecture you because they love you, because if they didn’t do it, who would put us right, Son?
Then he remembered that they had not finished planting the trees: Don’t worry, but let’s hope someone remembers to irrigate them, because I’m tired and I might not come tomorrow. I might stay in bed, so that Beatriz spoils me with caresses and pampering. Now as soon as we can, we’ll head back in the cart, because she’s waiting for us with hot chocolate and a cake for you, and sure, to scold us, too, for the earth that you’re covered in: sometimes mothers do that, but don’t worry, Son, it’s your birthday, and today I’m going to ban any nagging.
No. As soon as he could, he thought—now facedown on the ground, feeling the effects of the blow to his left temple against a stone, and trying without much success to spit out the earth that had entered his mouth—that the moment he regained his breath a little, he would tell Francisco that it was best he went home without him.
And tell your mama I’ll come later, as soon as I can. Tell her to wait for me to have dinner, because she has a cake for you. It’s your birthday today. I wanted to show you everything today, but she stopped me. She said to me, “Bit by bit, Francisco.” And she was right: bit by bit. But I’m tired now. Look at me lying here. You go, but stay in the shade. Let me rest in my shade. Run so you reach the cake before the candles go out—they don’t last long. You’d better blow them out, blow hard, because I can’t now. I’ll stay to water the trees, soon as I can, because if you don’t irrigate them as soon as they’re planted, the roots don’t take. The roots are important, Francisco. Water the roots. Come on, Francisco, we’re a long way from home. Run now, or the candles will go out. I’ll watch you go, Francisco. Go on. Where are you? Have you gone?
Then he heard it: a little sigh that seemed to come from the earth beneath him, a little groan. He understood—remembered—with apprehension that he had fallen on top of Francisco Junior. Worried, he thought that Francisco Junior would not want to come back to work with such a clumsy papa who fell and crushed him under his weight. He had to move to let him go, to let him breathe, and as soon as he could, he would roll over to allow him out from the prison under his body. As soon as he could.
Now Beatriz will be mad at me for sure.
Are you all right? I’ll get up right now, Son, wait, he tried in vain to say; no sound came from his mouth.
The blow had dazed him, he thought, and he tried to remember the last time he had fallen, but it would not come to mind. When he was a child, no doubt, and no doubt he would have gotten straight up, brushed off his knees, and carried on with the game—playing hide-and-seek, which had always been his favorite. And how he had liked hiding among the close rows of sugarcane, paying no attention when they told him, Boy, you’ll get bitten by a snake, but none had ever bitten him: he had gotten lost only once in the depths of that maze, going around and around without finding a way out, seeing nothing but the matte green of the sugarcane in front of him and the blue sky above as his only, useless, guide. Finally, with great relief, in one of the spirals that his feet took him on—though his head had now surrendered to his being completely and eternally alone—he came out into a clearing. But only he had noticed his absence, only he had felt lost, and the eternity he had spent lost in the undergrowth of the sugarcane field might have been just ten minutes in the known world: the other children continued playing without interruption. He did not cry with relief when he reached freedom; he contained the urge. But he had to take only a single deep breath to resume the game of hide-and-seek, and it was only a few more minutes before he forgot the terror he had just felt.
Now he needed more than a moment to regain his breath and his bearings; he was no longer the agile, quick-to-recover child he had been before. Now a fall felled him like a great tree that, once felled, does not stand up again. Perhaps this means I’m getting old, he thought fearfully.
Now he felt a pressing need to stand and shake off his fear. Urgently. Urgently because . . . Why urgently? He had to stand up because he had fallen, but why had he fallen? Something had pushed him. Where’s Francisco Junior? Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tree they had been about to plant, hoping to see Francisco Junior come out from behind it with a leap and a scream to surprise him, but then he thought that a tree with such a young trunk would be no use as a hiding place, even for such a small boy. And there was not a single sound. Only the wind blowing through the distant bushes and then softly, but icily, across his face. And he did not like that silence, for he had never known it to exist when Francisco Junior was in the vicinity.
He tried to call to him, to scold him: No more hiding, Francisco. It’s not the time for hide-and-seek. Come out now—you’re scaring me. The words formed in his mind but not on his tongue or in his breath, because he barely had the strength to breathe, and only without filling his lungs to full capacity. Then he heard it again: a weak sigh coming from underneath him; and he remembered again that, when he fell, he had fallen on top of his son, and that now Francisco would be asphyxiated under the weight of his father’s body. Under the weight of his father’s clumsy decisions.
Then all the confusion that had seized him suddenly went away, though with his mind clearin
g, there came no relief or solution to his predicament. With his mind clearing, there came only terror.
He tried to move but could not. He tried to feel his son underneath him but perceived only the icy wind caressing his forehead, the cold earth under his face, and the hardness of the stone that he had hit with the side of his head.
Then he remembered Espiricueta in the distance and a greeting of lead.
A greeting that had hit him in the back, he concluded, because he noticed with desperation that his head was the only part of his body that seemed to work, and with great difficulty: all the feeling in the rest of his body had gone. In front of his eyes he saw a hand. He identified it as his own from the scar on the knuckles and the long, crooked fingers that he had inherited from his father—Yes, that’s my hand. He recognized it, but it no longer recognized him: the hand, which had always been so fastidious, refused to obey his order to clean the earth off, to quickly get out of the way of the stream of blood that was running toward it. That reached it. That wetted it.
That hand was the only part of his body that he could see, and it seemed as if it were the only part of him that remained, because without seeing the other hand, his arms, his torso, his hips, his legs, it was as if they did not exist.
Then he understood that his body had succumbed to death before him.
And his heart—that organ that one feels beating, if not in an insensible body then beating in the soul—his heart broke. But now he could not even surrender to the impulse to wail. He did not have the air for it. There was only moisture for the tears, which flowed freely and without shame and which, in his imagination, watered the orange tree and mixed with the blood that he knew he was giving to his land, draining him, even if he could not feel it.
The Murmur of Bees Page 34