The Day of the Bees Page 10

  After mutual betrayals,

  We part one day without a tear.”

  “That’s it!” Royer was excited his words had provoked my memory.

  “No, that isn’t it.”

  Royer looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s more. Surely you remember there’s more?”

  Royer shook his head. “No. I don’t remember any more. I remember only, ‘We part one day without a tear.’ ”

  “But it’s much more interesting than that. To part without a tear is so trite, and it is never true, for if the tear is not shed on the outside it will make a cut on the inside.”

  “Well, that’s the end of the poem. I’m certain of it.”

  “No, it’s not. Maybe for your own reasons you have lost the last two stanzas of the poem.”

  He didn’t like being proved wrong by a woman. He fell into silence. If I were to recite the last lines his shame would be even worse. Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Now I remember, I have something for you!”

  All else slipped from my mind. At last I was to receive your letters.

  Royer went behind his desk and unlocked a drawer, sliding it open with great solemnity. As he reached down I peered over his shoulder. In the drawer were bundles of letters. How many of them were from soldier boys huddled in the rain thinking of their sweet mamas?

  “Ah, here it is.” Royer fished around at the back of the drawer and withdrew a large packet wrapped in plain brown paper. Before he could hand it to me I took it from him and clutched it close.

  “Go on,” he beamed. “Open it.”

  I did not want to open it. I did not want his eyes to see your handwriting on the envelopes, handwriting moved by the emotions of your heart. “I’d rather wait to open it.”

  “Wait? Wait for what? Do you think I haven’t seen what is inside? Who do you think put it there, you silly woman?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Open the package then.”

  My fingers couldn’t move. I couldn’t betray you.

  “Open it or leave it here.”

  “I can’t. Please let me keep it.”

  He grabbed the package and slit its string knot with a knife. He tore off the wrapper and held in his hand a bottle filled with thick liquid.

  I tried to hide my disappointment, my despair at having played his little game. I heard my words coming weakly, as if from a distance. “I thought you had letters for me. That is why I came here. That is the only reason.”

  Royer uncorked the bottle and held it beneath my nose. “I know all about you. I know you are not pregnant. I know the glow on your face is not a prenatal flush. No-no! It’s the flush of an absinthe drinker. You are a lush!”

  He pressed the bottle against my cheek. “Here. Take it. It’s better than what you’ve been buying in the back room of the pharmacy when you coyly ask for ‘something to cure the grippe.’ ”

  I took the bottle and slipped it into my basket. I looked him right in the eye before leaving. “You’re despicable.”

  “Now-now-now, watch where your pretty tongue goes. It might not get you what you want. It might get you into trouble.”

  I spun around to go but his words came after me.

  “I might have what you want.”

  His words stopped me. I turned around. “You have letters for me?”

  “I said might.”

  I turned to go again.

  “Wait! I have something stronger than might or maybe.”

  I turned again.

  “I have a premonition.”

  “A premonition?”

  “That tomorrow, letters from the great painter are going to fall from the sky. I can taste this premonition. I can taste it on the back of my throat. Can you taste it on your tongue?”

  “No.”

  “You must want it badly enough to taste it, badly enough to do anything for it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that.”

  “What are you asking?”

  “Two things.” He ran quickly and pulled down the window shades so that we were in semi-darkness. “The first thing is … I want you to let me look.”

  “At what?”

  “You! You are always bundled up in so many clothes that one cannot tell what is underneath. But I know what is underneath. I saw it last Bastille Day when you danced in the plaza. You had on a very thin dress. It didn’t hide a thing. It didn’t conceal the shape of your charms.”

  “It was summer then. It’s winter now, too cold for a thin dress. Too cold to show you what you want.”

  “How about a peek then? A teensy peek. That’s all. No touching! Just a hint of summer.”

  “Exactly what is it you want me to do?”

  “I saw your great painter slip and fall in the plaza, drunk with pleasure. And you danced over him, lifting your dress. There wasn’t a man in the plaza who didn’t see that. There wasn’t a man in the plaza who will ever forget his glimpse of heaven.”

  “You aren’t my lover.” I heard my angry words, but I did not move to go. He had your letters. I had to do something. This was no time for indignation. Those letters were your flesh and blood; without them I couldn’t survive. I stepped back into the shadows and placed my hands at the sides of my long woolen skirt.

  Royer sat on his desk, unable to conceal his smirk of anticipation.

  Slowly I raised my skirt. I could feel it brush above my boots and expose the curve of my calves. I could feel his eyes on me as my skirt rose upward; his gaze was like a filthy tide creeping up my legs. My skirt came to just above my knees and stopped.

  Royer’s words panted into the gloom.

  “Potato dumplings.”

  His filthy tide kept rising.

  “Higher!” he demanded.

  My skirt came up to my thighs and he shouted, “Vanilla custard!”

  I could not bear to look at him, the little rodent. I thought … I thought of not betraying you, of the ends justifying the means, of the last stanzas of the absinthe poem:

  We burn letters and bouquets,

  And Fire takes our bower;

  And if sad life is salvaged

  Still there is absinthe …

  My skirt went higher, stopping short of what schoolgirls call “on the edge of the flowers.”

  The portraits are eaten by flames,

  Shriveled fingers tremble,

  We die from sleeping long

  With flowers, and with women.

  I dropped my skirt in disgust. “That’s it! That’s all!”

  “You can’t stop now, we’re only at the appetizers! I want to see the main course and the delicious dessert!” Royer peered at me, glassy-eyed. “The painter got to see more than me.”

  “He is my husband.”

  Royer jumped up from the desk. “Francisco Zermano is your husband! My God, I didn’t know you were married!”

  “In a secret ceremony. Private. Almost no one was there.”

  “My-my, I was unaware! I must apologize. I thought you were an unmarried woman, a … you know?”

  “A loose woman?”

  “Yes … I mean, no. I mean, forgive me. I would never have insulted the wife of the great master if only I had known.”

  “Now you know. So give me my letters.”

  “But there is one more thing left for you to do. We had a bargain. Have you forgotten? There were two things for you to do.”

  “Quickly then. What is the second?”

  Royer slipped a key from his pocket and opened another drawer in his desk. He took out a sealed envelope and handed it to me. On the face of the envelope were scrawled directions.

  “What am I to do? Deliver this?”

  Royer winked slyly. “You could say that. Yes, let’s say that.”

  “Well, I can’t do it until tomorrow, it’s almost dark.”

  “That’s the point. It can only be delivered at night.”

  “I can’t deliver something at nigh
t, there is a curfew in effect. There are roadblocks, there are patrols of militia and police. They will throw me in jail or shoot me.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic—they will only shoot you if you run.”

  “But why would I risk my life to deliver this letter, when I don’t even know what it is?”

  “Because if you deliver this letter, you will receive a letter from your beloved Zermano.”

  “Then tell me please, who am I delivering this letter to?”

  “That is the mystery, my dear. It is better you do not know. If you did, and you were captured, and they tortured the information out of you, then you surely would be shot. Under no circumstances should you ever open this letter.”

  Village of Reigne

  My dearest man, forgive the abrupt ending of my last letter, but I had written late and my fingers were so cold. The absinthe was gone, the fire had died down. I thought I felt the baby move. How startling these times are. How I want to be with you, but there is no turning back now, as there was no turning back when I agreed to deliver the letter Royer handed me in his office. Had I not become at that moment an accomplice? The worst kind of all, the one who will ask questions, but be satisfied with no answers. To whom was I to deliver that letter? Friend or foe? You see, I was guilty of complicity on either side. I was like all the others who made secret compromises in order to survive.

  Where was I headed that night after leaving Royer’s office? I’m not quite certain of the streets and roads I followed, though they were all mapped out on the front and back of the letter Royer gave me to deliver. Because I had to avoid roadblocks and police patrols, I did not arrive at my destination until well past midnight. When would the person come to whom I must give the letter? I had not been told. I thought of all the possibilities that could befall me. That after passing the letter on I would be shot. That the militia might find me and torture me to reveal the identity of a person I did not know.

  There was no moon. Low clouds obscured the stars. Not even a barking dog could be heard from distant farms. All was darkness and silence. I had only the absinthe to keep me warm on such a cold night, and my thoughts to keep me company. I thought of you with your knees smashed on the Day of the Bees. The Bee Keeper lifting you from the ground and carrying you to a car he flagged down on the road. He carefully placed you into its back seat and then walked away into the fields. I thought of your moans, and how they weren’t from your own pain, but from the pain inflicted upon me, as if you were unaware that your knees were broken and useless. I told you, as I held your hand while the car sped along the mountainous road toward the nearest hospital, that there was nothing to worry about, that I had been saved by the bees, that they protected me.

  And you said, “What bees? There were no bees! Only those bastards on the motorbikes! I will kill them all if I have the luck to see them again!”

  I assured you the bees were there. You couldn’t see them because you were blinded by tears of rage.

  “No, Louise,” you insisted. “There were no bees. But I think I heard a buzzing.”

  A silence came between us and slowly filled with humiliation. We felt violated at the center of our souls. I realized that no doctors would be able to make your knees good as new. I realized that I would never be able to make you see the bees. My mind hums with their memory. Those bees separate us with their golden cloak. I try to put my hands through the cloak, reaching out to you, to touch your face. But I am spun deeper inside the cloak, the lavender light from the fields that gave birth to the bees shines ghostly on my skin. There is bee pollen in my hair. Honey fuses me with the earth. I try to lift my feet, move my arms. I cannot go forward to you. I find no release. On that Day of the Bees I lost my way. I did not fail as a woman, but was being punished for my happiness. Why couldn’t you see the bees?

  Is it the honey sticking me to the earth, or is it the absinthe coursing through my veins? I hear you calling to me, as you did so many times before: “Louise, lavender light of my life.” I hear your voice so clearly. You are seated at the little table beneath the spreading branches of an olive tree. You are shirtless and laughing, waiting for me to bring the rabbit I have cooked. Rabbit is your favorite. You couldn’t wait for the scent of rosemary on its grilled skin. You tore the rabbit apart with your hands, its flesh steamed. You fed us both, searing our mouths, the taste of burnt meat on our tongues. We could not stop laughing with such simple pleasure. Your grease-smeared lips covered my face with kisses. You pushed the table aside. You stopped laughing. You bowed your head between my thighs. Your lips touched me through the thinness of my summer dress. I murmured above you, “My tiniest man.” My fingers tangled in your hair. Tears fell from my cheeks onto your bare shoulders. It was the first night we realized we were a couple. I suppose if I had thrown my head back in joy I would have seen the stars shake loose from the summer sky, streaking in a brilliant descending path across the cobalt horizon and out of sight. But I did not.

  I just felt tears falling, a raining premonition that the romantic is impossible, that truth is impossible, that such happiness cannot exist—and no one ever does believe it, except the couple. Like every couple, we thought we were different, exempt.

  Did you not know when I cooked the rabbit I was cooking you? The oldest trick in the book of tricks that every French girl learns at her mother’s knee. How easy are the lesser weapons of love. I should know, I used every weapon against you in order to win you.

  But now I was left unprotected, watching the night slowly fade into morning around me. As the darkness became visible I saw that what I thought were barren hills were actually steep mountainsides planted with rows of cherry trees. The pale trunks and twisted bare branches transformed the trees into macabre people, watching me, mocking me. Rubbing my eyes fully awake, I rose from the pebbly ground where I had fallen asleep. As the day shone more visibly I felt where I was, where the map scrawled on the envelope had led me. It was familiar, a place I had visited before. Then I realized exactly where I was: on the road between Ville Rouge and Reigne. The map had led me to the exact spot where I had found the dead woman one week before. I gazed around at the stark trees. They were moving in on me. I grabbed the envelope from my basket and tore it open.

  Why was I led here? What game had I been forced to play? What deadly ruse had I been fooled by? I pulled the letter out and unfolded it. The entire page was blank, except for one small line inked in at the lower corner:

  I told you not to open this.

  Village of Reigne

  Francisco, can you imagine my fury with Royer for playing such a cruel trick on me? Can you imagine his toying with my vulnerability, my willingness to do almost anything to get word from you? If you knew of this incident you would come here immediately. But then, you can’t know of this, for I cannot tell you, I cannot be found by you. I must remain hidden. I must find devices of my own to overcome the Royers of this world, those petty and self-serving ones who sometimes wear the face of the clown, sometimes the face of a civil servant or a general.

  I did not go back to my cottage after awakening that morning at the side of the road where I had found the dead woman. I went straight back to Ville Rouge to confront the man who likes to play with his food.

  In the post office, Royer had a long line of people in front of his desk, all hoping that letters sent to them months before had finally passed through the censors. He saw the look on my face as I barged into the line. He hurriedly jumped up, pulling me off into a side room where he locked the door and spoke in a nervous whisper.

  “Control yourself, you look like you’re going to explode. You’ll get us both thrown into jail, or worse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The letter I gave you to deliver.”

  “What could possibly be troublesome about that letter? It said nothing.”

  “You opened it?”

  “No one came for it. I could have been murdered out there.”

  “It was very important that yo
u not open it. What did you do with it?”

  “I burned it.”

  “Burned it … burned it! How did you know that it was not written in code?”

  “Well, what good is a code if no one gets the message in the first place?”

  “I gave you that letter to see if you could be trusted. To do as you were instructed.”

  “No one came. I had no instructions for that. So I destroyed the letter.”

  “How do you know no one came?”

  “Because I was there all night. I did as you instructed.”

  “Did you fall asleep?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can never fall asleep in this situation. You must always remain awake, you must remain vigilant. That is the lesson of last night. You fell asleep—and so you could not be trusted.”

  “Well, no one came.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I awoke with the letter still in my basket. But …”

  “But?”

  “But the bottle of absinthe you had given me was gone from the basket. I looked for it in the bushes, thinking perhaps I had dropped it. But that couldn’t be, because I had had a few sips of it trying to keep the cold off.”

  “And did you ever find it?”

  “Yes, on the way back here. It was in the middle of the road, smashed by a rock. There was shattered glass and a damp spot in the earth.”

  “So you see, someone was there. You were being observed the entire time.”

  “What kind of foolish game are you playing?”

  “It wasn’t me who took the bottle from your basket as you lay sleeping. I was at home snuggled in my bed with my good wife all night long.”

  “Then who?”

  “That is a question you must never ask. You must never ask anything. You must do only as you are told. Do you understand that now?”

  “Only if you give me my letters from Zermano.”

  “One letter. One letter for each message you deliver for me.”

  “This is blackmail.”

  “No, this is war. You must decide which side you are on. We all must take sides.”

  “I’m not for any side that uses violence.”