The Day of the Bees Page 12

  Let me tell you that I was wrong about some things regarding Royer. Wrong about him in the most important way. He is a man who loves his country and takes great risks. And now I assist him. I am a small link in a larger chain. My assistance grew from my love for you. I will admit that in the beginning I was afraid to become involved, but it was the only way to get your letters. So my love for you led me on a path I otherwise would never have taken. I must speak in riddles of what I do, and even then I might divulge too much. I hope not. But I think you will understand how I have become what I am.

  At first Royer continued to give me sealed messages to deliver. I followed the directions mapped on the outsides of the envelopes. I had to elude armed patrols for I was always out at night after curfew. I did this again and again, reaching my appointed rendezvous point, then waiting for someone to come. But no one ever did.

  After a while I began to suspect that Royer was continuing to play some kind of game with me, to string me along and make me risk my life each night for a letter from you. I thought of him in his warm bed as I slept on the stony ground. I could see him snoring next to his plump wife, his extended belly gurgling and digesting whatever meal she had drugged him with that evening at dinner. I know she cooked him feasts. He bragged about the steak-frites he ate, the shoulders of pig, the breasts of chicken, the goose pâtés, the duck soups, the good wines he drank, the bottled Vichy water he brushed his teeth with. All of this at a time when many people are starving, when meat rations are often useless because there is no meat in the shops, when half the children in my classes are fading away from malnutrition, when many of the farms one walks by have no more barking dogs because the farmers have killed them to give their families a decent meal. Almost the only ones with dogs are the uniformed patrols roaming the countryside, guarding the main roads and important public buildings. When one does hear a barking dog it means trouble to steer clear of—or one will be met with suspicion, forced by uniformed men holding the dogs to show identity papers, prove one’s existence, explain one’s movements. In the center of all this is Royer, a well-fed postman coming and going with impunity. A man highly suspect, a man with whom I collaborate in order to get your letters. So what does that make me?

  Is not everyone who compromises a collaborator? There are no exceptions. This is what I told myself as I slept on the stony ground night after night waiting for the rendezvous that Royer promised but never came. Would he himself spring from the shadows to accost me—at the mouth of a cave, or on the twist of a mountain trail, or on a small wooden bridge crossing a torrent? Me there alone, waiting, shivering, with not even a sip of absinthe to keep me warm. Since that first night when I was sent out by Royer and discovered my bottle of absinthe smashed the next morning, I have never touched it again. That smashed bottle was a sign that I had to face my demons and fears alone. My baby shouldn’t be polluted by my weakness. I have to survive my hallucinating pain in order to prevail. I need your letters for my survival and my baby needs me for its survival. So who cares what it takes for me to survive? Who cares if I collaborate with Royer? In the end it is really a conspiracy of nature for my baby to be born, but it is up to me to make sure that it be born healthy.

  Another knock on my door. Is it the mistral? Where have I heard that knock before? Is it you? Is it someone to take me away? I’m afraid to look. I place my hand on my stomach instinctively to protect what is there. If I hold my breath, listen hard, and stay quiet, whatever is out there will think no one is home. My windows are heavily curtained because of the blackout restrictions. No one can see in. The knock comes again. Is it day or night out there? Maybe I should take this letter I’m writing, all the letters, and throw them into the fire so as not to incriminate myself, or others. I’m not sure … not sure. I think I feel the baby move. Could it be moving so soon? If you were here I would open my dress so you could kneel between my legs, put your ear to the mound of my stomach, and listen for the little heart beating. Or is that the wind beating again outside? I’m not going to answer it. Hear it? Little heart or big wind? Makes no difference now. If I let the fire die down, whoever is out there will think no one is inside any longer. They will go away.

  I pull a blanket over myself and my baby, and I think back to when I was a little girl. I had my first cat and treated it like a baby. I used to make a bed of flowers in a straw basket. Then I’d put the cat in and rock the basket. That cat never wanted to stay in that damn basket. Later, when I was a teenager—and this is the truth—I put another of my cats in a basket, but this time it couldn’t get out because I danced with that basket as if its handle were the hand of my Prince Charming, swinging around and around. That terrified cat couldn’t get out until the ball was over and the pumpkin coach showed up. What music was it I used to dance to then? Oh yes, Billie Holiday! Now that’s a woman who knew how to keep a pussy in a basket.

  Am I asleep yet? That damn knocking. Trees swaying, cradle rocking in the treetops. Who smashed my absinthe bottle while I waited with Royer’s first letter? Someone watching me? Watching over me? Are you really here, my darling? Am I dreaming? I like to think that my baby and I have the same dreams. Maybe we dream of the milky breath of goats on our bodies. Maybe we dream of silkworms. Do silkworms dream? Do they dream they will one day end up as a holiday tablecloth folded up in a dresser drawer every day of the year but one, when they are brought into the splendid light? Do they dream of being a bride’s finest undergarment, carefully constructed, painstakingly woven, silken perfection of such chaste intentions, only to be so hastily discarded on the wedding night? Do they dream as they circle and cloy, swimming upstream, already spoken for by sly haberdashers and coy handmaidens? I will never have a wedding day. I will never have the honeymoon night.

  Am I crazy or dreaming with this loud knocking in my head, as if the golden green honey of absinthe still singes my brain, sings a different kind of holiday jazz? Go away, whoever, whatever is outside my door! There’s no one in here, don’t you know? No one except a pregnant woman with a bundle of letters in her hands. She’s ready to throw the letters into the fire.

  Village of Reigne

  My Lost Man,

  Last night I woke up in the cold. I was alone in the forest. The camp fire had gone out. Something was nudging at the back of my neck as I lay on the ground shivering beneath my blanket. I came out of my groggy sleepiness, feeling that nudging. Then I realized what it was. A damp nose, a breath that smelled of earth and newborn lamb. In my terror I knew I had one moment before I was dead. I had to be very still as the last nudge pressed into my neck, searching for the softest spot to bite. I swung around with my elbow striking straight into the teeth of a wolf. It glared at me with its yellow eyes, then ran off, disappearing into the night. I looked around. Where was my baby? Did the wolf take my baby? I felt my stomach. There was a hole in it. A deep hole gnawed away, a bottomless pit. I had fallen asleep. I was not a good mother. I was not a protector. I was not on guard. I had fallen asleep and the wolf ate the baby out of my belly.

  That was my dream, and I remembered it clearly as I came awake. I felt my stomach. My baby was still there. My nipples ached, the skin of my breasts swollen with the job they will have to do. Your letters? Did I burn them? I looked at the fire. It is out. I am cold. I am shivering. Scattered at my feet are your letters. I did not burn them. There is no more knocking at my door. All is silence. Is it still night? I don’t know. I open the thick blackout curtains. It is day. The passing mistral has polished the sky a diamond blue. All the distance glitters in sunshine. Mont Ventoux, kilometers away, seems just beyond the tips of my fingers. Its plateau is smoothed with snow, like the pure white wing of a sleeping swan.

  I must start a fire for my baby. I stir what few coals are left in the fireplace. I kneel to the coals and blow. A few flames come up and I toss on some sticks of olive wood to snap and sparkle with heat. This is my life, the beginning of a day, simple things. Simple things without you. Like the thunder in the distance last night. For
some reason I have always been afraid of thunder, even as a child—especially as a child. You thought it funny when my body tensed as booming thunder unfolded across the sky. But you loved the way I curved to you, seeking shelter in your arms, my lips finding safety in the soft nest of your chest hairs. Last night it thundered. My body moved to the space you once filled, but you were not there. I felt the swell of my belly, the baby beneath. I am no longer afraid of thunder.

  I open my front door. The little cobblestone lane is empty. No clouds, no thunder, no people. I hear something knocking against the other side of the door. I step around and see that on a nail pounded into the door hangs a basket by its handle. I look up and down the little lane. There is still no one. Should I open the basket? Who knows what could be inside. A torn piece of a flour sack covers the top of the basket. There could be a bomb inside. I carefully take the basket down from the nail, step back inside my house, close the door, and bolt the lock.

  I place the basket on the table. It must have been what was knocking against the door all night in the wind. Royer said he was going to send me another communication to deliver. Is this what he meant? But then he doesn’t know where I live, I’m certain of that; I always elude him when leaving Ville Rouge. Who could this basket be from? Carefully I pull off the cloth cover.

  Wrapped in oak leaves is a bar of handmade soap. I pick it up and smell it—honey and lavender. Soap is precious; as you know, it is rationed. There is cheese, a smooth goat cheese bound in grape leaves, just the thing to make my baby’s bones strong. And there is sausage, a dark slab of cured boar meat with the scent of truffles and wild herbs. I sit down at the table, overcome as I dig deeper into the treasure chest. At the bottom of the basket is a large jar of honey with a label pasted on it, which reads: Honey of All the Flowers. Where have I seen that style of jar before? That kind of handwritten label? Then I remember the honey we bought from the Bee Keeper. I recall that market day in the street with you, next to the Bee Keeper’s stand, was the stand of the little lady we called “the nun of cheese.” She always dressed in a starched convent-style blue dress and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a thin veil protecting her face from the sun. She had her jewels spread out on a damp linen cloth, round eucharists of cheese, all in service of Our Lord of the Goat Cheese. She was tiny, but stood erect with dignity, never taking her eyes off the perfectly lined rows, a true saint serving in the holy order of the curdled chèvre. Could she have left the basket? How could she know that these things were what I cherished most, for my baby’s health and my own cleanliness?

  Then I suddenly thought that you had left the basket for me. That you had found me. Once in Paris you gave me honey lavender soap for my birthday, to remind me of my Provence childhood. Such a simple and true present, the thoughtful one, not the expensive one. I remember bathing with that soap for the longest time, running its sweet scent on my skin. Then I brought myself to you, glowing and naked, a country girl wanting to be corrupted by your city kisses.

  But no, you didn’t leave the basket. If you found me you would take me away with you, of that I’m sure. I have made certain that you cannot find me, for within my womb is the ache for life that all women have, an ache denied or accepted. Deep within there is still a war between us. The life of art is creation, the creation of woman is life. If you returned to me now I would be mere putty in your hands, the golden light of the muse transformed. But you cannot get your hands on me. Perhaps one day, my love, I can give myself to you that way again. A day when all the wars between men and men, between women and men, are ended. But as for this day? I must admit, I don’t have a clue as to who left the basket. So now I am concerned with only two things: to eat cheese and take a long bath in honey and lavender.

  I have not had a bath like this in such a long time and as I bathe I think of my new-found treasures. It would take six months’ worth of ration coupons to obtain what I now have—if it were available at all. Maybe some black marketeers left the basket on my door by mistake? Will they come back to get it? Perhaps the police will break in and accuse me of being a smuggler? Who cares. In my bath the water is creamy honey, the lavender tickles my nostrils. I run the smooth bar of soap over my skin. I feel myself as you feel me. It’s been so long. My swollen breasts are like those of a strange woman. My hips are now broad and my buttocks rounded by new muscles from carrying the weight I’ve gained in my belly. You would hardly know me. Would you still want me? More? Or less? It has been so long. I soak and soak. When I get out of the tin tub my skin glistens. I see myself in the mirror as I run the towel over my body. This is not the body you have sketched, drawn, and painted so many times, in so many ways, from so many angles, as if I were a mathematical problem you were trying to solve, as if I were an amorphous weight in the universe that you needed to shape in order to secure earth’s gravitational balance. I see the bright gold ring in the shadowed V between my thighs. It burns a pretty color as I move my legs. No one except you knows the meaning of this ring. You have never painted me with it. No one knows its origin. It is our secret.

  How well I remember when the ring was embedded in my flesh. It was cold. It was Paris. It was not the Paris of light, it was silence and darkness. An occupied city. A city mourning for itself. But still you painted. You painted in a fury. You painted as if all life depended on it. As if you sought to revive with a counter-energy all the life of the streets that had been strangled. Your studio filled with work, stacks of completed canvases. The smell of turpentine and oils permeated the air, your hair and skin. There was a light you were trying to seize, a light that had died out of the city.

  Then you read in the papers that it was going to be a hundred years since the ashes of Napoléon were brought back from St. Helena to Paris. The memory of that day, a century before, still excited Parisiens. Never had there been such pomp and glory as the ceremony when Napoléon’s ashes were deposited in the tomb of Les Invalides. By comparison it made the ticker-tape parade in New York, celebrating Lindbergh’s first airborne transatlantic journey, seem like a mere high school graduation in a tiny village. Now, to commemorate the anniversary of Napoléon’s triumphant posthumous return, the new emperor of occupied Paris was returning Napoléon’s son’s ashes from Vienna, where they had been interred in a crypt of the Capuchin church among the tombs of the imperial Habsburgs. At last father and son could be reunited on French soil after the historic consequence of tragic separation. At first the papers reported that there was to be as much fanfare for the return of the son as there had been for the father. But then the papers were controlled by the new emperor, so who was to know the truth? As suddenly as news of this great day appeared it seemed to disappear. No one quite knew when the son was to be brought back, and whether the public was to be invited or just the great generals who served the new emperor’s armies. But you found out that the son was to arrive at night by a special armored train to the Gare de l’Est. His coffin would be carried through the streets to Les Invalides. You wanted to paint that scene. Not the literal scene—the pomp of a cavalry escort of plumed horses and uniformed men, the caisson wagon draped with the French flag rolling along cobblestone streets, the flaming torches throwing flickers of illumination up the walls of massive buildings. No, not that. You wanted to capture the mood of light that played in men’s hearts. You were not a figurative painter in search of a passing landscape. You were a madman who dragged me into the darkness with you, even though the streets were heavily guarded because of the curfew. You pulled me through shadows, up alleys, along narrow passageways, stopping beneath the arch of a stone bridge spanning the river. The sound of horses’ hooves and the mournful beat of military drums drew closer, until we heard the snorting horses and marching boots above, crossing the bridge with the caisson. This is what you had come for, what you had risked our lives for. Or so I thought, until you pushed me against the wall of the tunnel and kissed me, as if you could find the light you sought inside of me rather than on the surface of the river glittering from torchligh
t around us. I raised my skirts to you, feeling the cold stone wall on the back of my legs as you pressed against me.

  You whispered, “Will you marry me?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Impossible. How can we be married tonight?”

  You didn’t answer. A strange look came into your eyes as you nearly shouted, “The Duke of the Reichstadt is passing by and we are making love in front of him!”

  I pressed my lips to yours to silence you. Over your shoulder I saw a young man stop before the wall on the opposite side of the river. He quickly scrawled in red paint across the stone: KEEP YOUR CORPSE! GIVE US BACK OUR MILLION PRISONERS!

  From the bridge above came the sounds of shouting, gunning motorcycle engines, and squealing tires. You pulled me closer, your words insistent.

  “You’ll never regret marrying me. Trust me.”

  You kissed me before we ran into the shadows and gunshots echoed along the stone wall where we had been standing.

  It took us until dawn to make our way undetected through the heavily patrolled streets, around sandbagged guard posts manned by steel-helmeted soldiers with machine guns.

  When we finally climbed the stairs to the atelier and were once again safe I surprised myself by saying, “I want a church wedding.”