His godmother seemed to want to go back to being whole again, but her husband’s death and the days of anguish and not knowing anything of her son’s whereabouts or well-being had made her crumble. The process of reconstructing herself would be very long, and Simonopio would not see it reach its conclusion, though he was glad to know that it had already begun: she feigned strength, as she would do for a long time, and by feigning it she would end up believing it, and by believing it, she would make it reality.
She would be all right, and with her, Grandmother Sinforosa, Nana Pola—who had of course agreed to come to Monterrey—and I would too. But he would not be there to witness it.
Simonopio would miss us all, but my absence in particular would leave him with just half a heart: the half that kept his body alive. I would take the other half with me to my new life; I would pack it in my chest; he would give it to me gladly so that it stayed with me forever, so that I could do something good with it, unburdened by the unbearable weight of the painful events.
Simonopio did not know when, but the day would come when I would be ready to remember. To return.
Still by my side, making the most of the time we had left in the last few days, Simonopio spoke to me about everything and nothing. Unable to go out walking in the fields, as he would’ve liked—prevented by my recovery and my mama’s understandable prohibition—Simonopio kept me entertained by talking to me about what the bees knew and how they knew it, and he reminded me how important it was to listen. To listen to what life sometimes murmurs into your ear, heart, or gut.
“Listen carefully and pay attention, Francisco.”
He told me the same stories as ever, and I listened as I always had: always as if it were the first time.
And just as he did every night to soothe me in the depths of my nightmares—which I wouldn’t remember the next day—the night before the Saturday of our departure, Simonopio kept vigil over me during the dark hours of the night; making the most of every minute; stroking me between my eyebrows, where I’d had the swirl of fluff as a baby; talking and singing into my ear about the truth.
Impassive, peaceful now thanks to the hypnotic effect of his voice and his words, I slept deeply, and not even when Simonopio shook me gently that night to pull me from my unconsciousness did I perceive any of the words about him loving me like a brother. Not the first ones, not the middle ones, and not the last ones, the most painful ones, the parting words:
“Goodbye, Francisco. You’re going because it’s where you’ll grow into a man, where your future is. I’m staying. If I go with you, I’m finished. If I leave them, they’re finished; everything’s finished. Do you understand? No. You won’t understand for a long time, but when you do, will you come back for me? Will you come back to find me? Yes. Goodbye, Francisco. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
When he left that bedroom where he had spent so many nights watching over me, he found his godmother, my mama, waiting for him expectantly.
“Have you packed Nana Reja’s rocking chair?”
She had been repeating it to him several times a day for weeks: Don’t forget the rocking chair, or We’ll have to cover the rocking chair well so that it doesn’t get damaged during the journey. It was her indirect way of making it clear that the family wouldn’t abandon the nana, and that, if the nana went, it was a given that Simonopio would too. It was the way in which she believed she made him feel the obligation, but which in reality communicated what she had already sensed from the beginning: that he did not include himself in our future.
That a goodbye was coming.
Simonopio shook his head. There was no point in pretending anymore.
“Ay,” she sighed, like she did when I got up to mischief. The difference was that this sigh wasn’t one of exasperation but of resignation. “Do you need anything?” Simonopio wouldn’t need anything, so he turned down the offer. “What am I going to tell him? What’re we going to do without you?” My mama didn’t wait for a response, because the questions weren’t for him. Still, she went on. “Will you take care of her?”
He nodded. Nana Reja was part of his life, and leaving her wasn’t an option.
“Goodbye, Simonopio.” With the hug she gave him and which he returned to her, they said everything to each other without words.
94
Goodbye, Francisco
Dawn that Saturday took them by surprise on Reja’s road, but not as far from the house as they would’ve liked. Nana Reja advanced slowly. It was not the lack of light that prevented her from moving more quickly, because she walked with her eyes closed anyway.
And they carried very little: a few clothes of hers in one knapsack, and a few of his in another.
The day before, the bees had not had to struggle so to move, because with no particular attachment to the place and the structure that had given them refuge for so long, but which was now too big for them, they had installed themselves temporarily in one of the wooden beehives that, years before, had been bought for them along with my papa’s tractor.
The bees had arrived with and because of Simonopio. Now they would leave with and because of him.
Which was why, from the first light of the previous day, the few that remained had allowed Simonopio to take them to where everything began, to the place where fate had woven the stories of their lives together for the first time, under a bridge, to the place where they would build a new hive, another one that would grow as successfully as the last. The land and the orange trees still needed them.
Transporting Reja’s rocking chair had posed more problems, but the nana refused to leave it behind, and Simonopio understood: it would’ve been as if, all of a sudden, someone decided to abandon a leg, just like that. So, the day before, without being seen, he had made a separate trip, carrying the chair up the hill to where they would continue to live, where it would await the arrival of its old companion.
On the day of their departure, their inadequate goodbyes weighing heavier on their shoulders than their knapsacks, they stopped when the first ray of light appeared: Reja pretending she needed a rest and Simonopio that his new shoes were uncomfortable.
Looking back, they knew they would see the house waking up for the last time, and neither of them resisted the temptation to do so.
It was from the top of the hill that Simonopio saw me searching for him in his shed. It was from there that he then saw me come out, my face distorted. And it was from there that he made out the words that my mouth could not form through my screams and tears: Come-come-come-come, Simonopio, come-come-come-come.
My unanswered call would torment him forever. How easy it would’ve been to go to me. To forget everything. To forget debts and commitments. To forget all the danger for a few more days by my side. He wanted to run after me, his resolve weakened. But he controlled himself: his destiny was the same as the destiny of the blossoms that had borne fruit on that land. If he left it, he would wither. My destiny was in the city. Our lives—our whole lives—depended on our separation.
Goodbye, Francisco.
Simonopio closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see me leave. He turned around with my cries swirling in his ears, and he hoped that Nana Reja would turn as well, to continue the walk to a little bridge that crossed a stream where, years before, Nana, the bees, and Simonopio had begun their story.
95
I Always Thought
that it was Simonopio who’d abandoned me.
It never occurred to me that it was me who abandoned him, leaving him only with the hope that I would return.
96
It Took Me Longer Than He Thought It Would,
but in the end, I returned.
In part—and with no remorse whatsoever—I’ll blame my lateness on the fact that I became the man he saw in my future: a man who might not have gone through the same trials as his father, who might not have been forced to defend his land and son by shielding him from a bullet with his body, but one who always did everything possible to live his life
with integrity, with courage—which has always come in useful in these parts—and to stick close to his family.
That man would not have been able to come when he was young, with the ties he had forged in his life, with the urban roots he had put down and watered and which depended on him so completely.
Time passed, and it has been years since anything or anyone depended on me, whether for sustenance or for character. Not even as an example or for company. It has been a long time since I became superfluous, unnecessary. For a long time, in complete and resigned solitude, all I’ve done is sit on a faded old La-Z-Boy, waiting for my life to end so that I am reunited with those who went before me.
Why didn’t I escape before falling into that? Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t I return?
I admit that I also owe my lateness to a factor that Simonopio did not count on and for which I now blame myself and nobody else: the same stubborn energy that, as a boy, drove me to insist and insist until I got what I wanted, I invested in the resentment that came from feeling abandoned.
For some reason, perhaps because I didn’t remember how it had happened, it was easier for my child’s mind to understand my papa’s death, even if I always lamented it.
But Simonopio’s abandonment, on top of my father’s absence, was impossible to overcome. It made me believe, at the age of seven, that, contrary to what I had thought, Simonopio did not live for me or because of me. I know: at that age I was an egotist who thought the sun revolved around me. I and me must’ve been my favorite words at the time. It was a very tough blow, realizing that Simonopio made the deliberate decision to leave me, that he packed whatever was important to him—without forgetting anything—and neither said goodbye to me nor offered me an explanation.
I thought that meant Simonopio wasn’t bound to me like I felt bound to him.
And for a long time, I banished him from my mind, just as he had banished me from his life.
Later I spoke of him again, and I began to remember him with more fondness as the years went by, though the bitter questions never stopped seeping into my memories: Why didn’t he even say goodbye to me? Why pretend that he would come with us, when he didn’t intend to do so? Why the deceit?
So much time lost on those senseless questions.
Listen carefully and pay attention, Francisco, Simonopio told me, but I didn’t listen or pay attention.
Until now, when I’ve finally opened myself up to truly seeing and listening to everything, as he had tried to teach me, as he asked me to do with the last words he said to me. Now I know and I understand why he did it, the reason he hid it from me and deceived me: I was the only person in the world who, with my stubbornness—and my blackmailing, perhaps?—could have managed to dissuade my mama from moving. He knew that I would’ve refused to leave Linares had I learned in time that he wouldn’t be coming with us.
And he couldn’t see any possibilities for my future in Linares, as much as he tried to find them. I don’t know exactly what he saw: perhaps just a life cut short by drowning under the mill wheel at the river or another bullet that hit its target. Perhaps my life would have ended because of another stunt with a train in my wild young country life. I don’t know. All I know is that something there would have stolen my days and years from me. In Linares there would’ve been no falling in love, no studies, no children or worries. Nor would there have been the pain of losing my wife, hemorrhoids, or the digestive problems of recent years. I’m not the same man now, I know, and that’s why Hortensia makes nothing but soup.
I very much enjoyed the whole of what now, looking back, I can see is my life: the many good things and the not-so-many bad things—old age included, because it wouldn’t have happened had youth not also existed. I am what life has made me. I would’ve been nobody without Simonopio’s sacrifice, and I’m grateful to him for it. Only now, but I am grateful.
He let me go, he saw me leave, and he let me break his heart when I turned around and climbed into the car to leave. I, me, I, me . . . I never learn. I’m stubborn: I keep doing the same thing. I’m an old man and I keep doing the same thing. I’m back here, and I keep on and keep on.
97
But It Wasn’t All about Me
With my departure, he was left alone, sharing Nana Reja’s fate on this land, sharing the fate of the flowers and bees, waiting for my return. Owing a debt for my life and committed for life.
A question would plague my mother every day and night of her life: What happened to the Espiricuetas? When she was brave enough to say it out loud, to nobody, to God, I could never hear it without adding a silent question of my own: What happened to my .22? She replied, as I also replied: God knows. Those questions were impossible to answer at the time.
Until today.
On the day my father died from two bullet wounds, my .22 ended up with its new owner at the bottom of a ravine.
And there it still lies, slowly disintegrating out in the elements, returning to the land, which reclaims everything—from flesh to iron.
Although iron lasts longer than flesh.
It’s what remains on the land as a souvenir of that Saturday when it was my birthday: Espiricueta’s son was already dead before he had finished falling to the bottom of the ravine. The bees showed him no mercy, no matter how fast he ran, or how he tried to escape them, and in spite of the rounds he fired at them from the .22.
It was all in vain. All of them died, yes, but not from a bullet—they died killing him.
The son met his end without knowing his father’s fate, and the father died without even thinking of his son, just minutes later. But he didn’t fall like his son into a ravine, or make the same futile attempt to kill the bees with his Mauser, or even try to hide from them, perhaps sensing that it would be of no use.
They attacked him first from behind, like he did with my father. He died enveloped in them, terrified, curling up like a newborn with his body covered in wings and stings. He died knowing that the devil had sent them after him, that the demon had stung him to death. He died a long distance from his son, facedown, tasting the earth that he had coveted so much.
They did not take long—bees, father, son—to turn to dust. They did it for Simonopio, but the bees, in their swarm, died to save my life and to avenge my father and the land stained with the blood of its owner. The debt was mine, but Simonopio took it on.
And I never thought about them; I never noticed their absence or questioned Simonopio. I didn’t even stop to notice his sadness and loneliness in the days before I left.
I never thanked him for the sacrifice.
Now I know that very few of the bees that answered Simonopio’s call to save me returned to the hive. Those few arrived weak from the cold and from the heat of the fury that they didn’t expend with their sting. Their queen and their young welcomed them home; they were received by a silence full of regret and echoes in the void. They were received by great uncertainty: What will become of tomorrow? What will become of the flowers, the trees that produce them, the land that needs us? What will become of us, Simonopio?
Simonopio took shelter under this pain every night until I left, but he needed only one night to know what he had to do for them.
Their numbers reduced, they needed care; they needed someone to complete their memory, to pass on the flying map to the new generations. Just as they had guided him, now they needed him to be their guide and teacher. They needed time, and they needed to rebuild their strength.
I always thought Simonopio was mine: my brother, my guide, my savior . . . but Simonopio belonged to them. Just as they belonged to him. Before he was mine, he was their brother, their son. Simonopio of the bees, the bees of Simonopio. That was how it was from the beginning. It was the first thing he knew in his life. They told him with their first whisper into his ear; in the early hours of his first day, when wrapped in their warm wings, they introduced him to life.
And they reminded him on the first night Simonopio spent under his cold, empty roof.
>
Simonopio would’ve slowly died in Monterrey, without doubt. But for me—just to protect me from the pain of his abandonment—he might have given himself over to that incomplete life and to death. He might’ve surrendered to the limitations of those of us who live deaf and blind with just five senses.
But he knew that the few bees that remained in the hive, the ones who saw him being born, the ones who protected him and guided him all his life, the ones who were his first family, they needed him now more than I did. He was theirs and they were his. Both, in turn, belonged to the land, the land they’d filled with orange trees after many patient years and many journeys in the hills. He could not break their pact. There was no way that one part of the triangle would survive without the other.
If he went away, he would die a useless death. Without him, they would die, and without them, the land and the trees for which they had fought so hard would too.
It was not all about me.
Even without infestations, even without frosts, Linares had a very poor orange harvest for the next few years. The owners, accustomed to abundance, counted the fruit one by one and counted them again, but however many times they did so, there was no mistake: there were spaces in the crates that they could not fill.
None of them missed the bees. None of them went to the trouble to count them.
Only Simonopio did.
98
And Here I Am
Stubborn, foolish, egotistical as I am, I’m still talking to you, knowing that he has been waiting patiently for me all these years, that he’s waiting for me on the other side of that hill, along Reja’s road.
99
He Knows I’ve Arrived,
but he’s patient: he has waited so long that he doesn’t mind waiting a little longer.
He has all the time in the world.
Nana Reja’s rocking beside him, in that world that allowed them entry and welcomed them, under the bridge where they both spent their first hours and saw their first light. They’re waiting in that world where there is no time, where they’ve kept a space for me.
The Murmur of Bees Page 41