The Day of the Bees Read online

I’m crawling through the dead sunflower people.

  Good. Keep going. Can you stand up?

  Yes, but I must bite my tongue.

  Why?

  To stifle the pain in my stomach. My tongue is bleeding.

  Keep going, it’s you and you alone now. No one can save you but yourself.

  Yes, I’m running. It hurts.

  You’re lying to me. You’ve stopped.

  I feel wetness on my thighs again. I’m afraid.

  You can rest when you are dead. Keep going.

  Gunfire is all around, bullets smash through the dry faces of the sunflower people.

  Is there any way out?

  No. Flashes of light on the ridge, tracer bullets stream through the air, cutting down the sunflower people around me. Trucks close in, guns mounted on them firing rapidly.

  You’ll die if you don’t start moving.

  Shush. The bullets have stopped. Someone’s close to me, crawling through the mutilated sunflower people.

  Take out your knife and hide it in your skirts. When he gets close enough, stab him. It’s him or your baby.

  I understand.

  Don’t lose your nerve.

  There’s a loud blast. One of the trucks has exploded; soldier-flesh and metal are blown into the air and whistle by me. A ball of flame billows over the disfigured sunflower people. Fire. The sunflower people are on fire.

  Stab the man!

  I can’t.

  Why?

  It’s the Fly! He pulls me to my feet and supports me as we run through smoke and flames. The sunflower people moan and crack in the intense heat. Flames catch my skirts. The Fly beats the flames out with his gloved hands. It is so hard to breathe! How can he breathe in that leather mask? I want to pull it off to give him more air. He doesn’t have to hide from me. The leather around his mouth is wet from saliva and sweat. I start to cough, choking from the smoke, the heat is burning my lungs. The Fly puts his hand over my mouth to keep me from being heard. The smoke ahead becomes thicker, a roiling cloud; from it bullets flash and dogs yelp. We plunge straight into the darkest part of the cloud.

  Lucretia, I lost you in the smoke. Where are you?

  I’m in my cottage.

  You are safe! Maybe you were dreaming and you didn’t cross a field of burning sunflower people?

  No, it happened. But now there are growling dogs outside.

  Oh God!

  The dogs are panting, racing back and forth before the stone walls. They leap against the locked door, their claws tearing at the wood, trying to get to me.

  Where is the Fly? I hope he is gone. Perhaps the dogs will give up and go after him.

  The Fly brought me here. I could barely walk. He didn’t have time to leave before the dogs found us.

  What’s that pounding?

  The soldiers, banging on my door with their rifle butts.

  Do you have a gun?

  Yes, the Fly’s sten gun, but I’m not going to shoot myself.

  I didn’t mean that. You can defend yourself!

  How? If I start shooting they will kill me and my baby. The best thing is to stay calm, to let them capture me and take me out. They can’t prove I wasn’t here all night.

  What about the Fly? They will find him.

  He’s in the cellar. They will find him, and they will find these letters hidden in baskets.

  But everything, everyone, will be exposed!

  The soldiers will find the Fly. That is why I must give him time to finish what he is doing. When the soldiers go down into the cellar the Fly will blow it up with plastic explosives. Everything will be destroyed.

  He doesn’t have to sacrifice you too. Your baby must live. Shout to the soldiers that you will surrender!

  The door splinters, breaking open to the night. Black faces of dogs lunge from the dark, their mouths exposing slashes of white teeth.

  Can they get to you?

  No, the soldiers hold them back on leashes.

  If you keep still the dogs won’t attack.

  Their mouths foam, their teeth snap, they’re crazed from hunting me all night. They have me cornered. One voice rises above the shouting and barking. I know that voice. I seek it out. There he is, standing behind the dog handlers, his words commanding silence. It is the Officer: his face flushed from exertion, the red scar on his cheek standing out vividly.

  Ask for his mercy. He saw you at the school, he knows you are pregnant, he knows the baby might be his—

  I won’t ask him for mercy.

  You must!

  He’s demanding that the soldiers quiet their dogs. The animals sit stiffly on their haunches, breathing rapidly, their pink tongues dangling with anticipation as the Officer speaks.

  “Did you really think you could escape me?”

  “Escape what? I was here all night.”

  “Sooner or later, my clever Joan of Arc, you had to be caught.”

  “I’m no Joan of Arc. You don’t know your history. She was brave. I’m just a schoolteacher.”

  “You are not, you are much more. The first time I saw you in the cherry orchard, I thought, I’ve seen this one before, I know this body, this naked body.”

  “Impossible.”

  “And later I remembered your painter friend. Where is he now, this famous man? Is he hiding under a rock, or in your cellar? Perhaps he has run away to America with all the other intellectual heroes.”

  “I don’t know where he is. If you think he’s here, why don’t you search for him?”

  “Then I remembered where I had seen you before: in a museum, in a painting enclosed by a heavy gold frame. I know who you are. Your body is quite famous.”

  “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Ah, but you are, I’m certain.”

  “If I were that woman I would be with the famous painter. He would have saved me.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps you like to play night games in your scenic countryside.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “I could never discover where you lived. That is one thing you were quite clever about.”

  “You can’t prove I wasn’t here all night.”

  “We do not need proof to charge you. Partisans are not protected by international law. They are no better than common criminals, thieves, or murderers.”

  “Then arrest me, but your charge will never hold up.”

  “Yes it will, for there is someone waiting to step forward and denounce you.”

  “That is only accusation. You still have no proof that I wasn’t here all night.”

  “But I do have proof, right here in this house. Don’t you know how the dogs found you?”

  I don’t speak. I think of how the Fly had feared the dogs would pick up my scent when my water broke. He made us walk four kilometers in a shallow stream to put the dogs off our trail.

  “You fail to answer me, but I shall not arrest you. You will not have to stand trial. You are going to die without my laying a hand on you.”

  I don’t understand what he means. I need to get out of the house before he discovers the Fly and everything blows up. “If you have someone willing to denounce me, take me to them so I can confront their lie.”

  “Once again you are in a hurry to be arrested and taken away. Why?”

  “To clear my name.”

  “But you will soon be dead. You are already condemned.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “How do you think the dogs found you?” He points to the floor.

  In the dim light I see reddish-brown spots glistening on the tiles. In my haste, in my chaotic state, I believed that my water had broken. But what drips down my thighs is not water, it is blood. I am nauseated. The pain at the center of my stomach punches like a fist. I hear a whimpering sound. I see one of the dogs licking a splatter of blood off the floor.

  The Officer steps forward and unbuckles Aunt Mimi’s belt, which is loosely cinched around the waist of my heavy coat. Two soldiers grab
me by the shoulders and throw me onto the bed. The Officer raises my hands above my head, wraps the belt around my wrists and ties its end to the iron bedpost. The dogs strain at their leashes. Is the Officer going to let them have me? The dogs whine with expectation. I pull hard at the belt with my upstretched arms.

  “There’s nothing you can do to escape.”

  I know the Fly is in the basement. There is no way he can surprise the Officer and the soldiers, for he has given me his gun. If the dogs are going to chew the baby out of my belly I want everyone to die. I want the Fly to detonate the bomb in the cellar.

  “So, my little heroine, I am going to leave you in your bed of roses. I am going to let your bastard baby be the death of you.”

  The pain in my stomach is unbearable. I bite my lip to keep silent. Blood fills my mouth. I want to spit it at the Officer, to color him with my rage, but I do not. I do not want to give him any satisfaction, any indication of the shame he has inflicted on me. He clicks the heels of his boots together and spins around, commanding the others to follow. The soldiers pull the leashed dogs away from the bed. In a moment they are gone.

  A fire burns in the ice cave and rain slashes across my forehead. Dogs howl in the distance. I float alone on a raft in a sea of blood. The howling of dogs is the howling of wind blowing through the smashed open door of my house. My house is freezing, it is the ice cave. A rain of sweat spurts from my forehead. I clench my fists against the pain invading my body; a thousand barbed fishhooks rip at my flesh. I rise from the raft of the bed, a ghost of myself, a smear of a cloud, nearly lifeless, cut loose. I see myself on the blood-soaked bed. My baby is down there inside me, tearing the life from me, trying to tear itself free. I plummet back into my body. I can’t escape this pain. I want this pain. It is the only way I know I am still alive. It is the only way I know another life lives, taking me with it as it rips and kicks.

  The wind hurls around the room, an icy hand slapping my face and punching my stomach. My legs are raised, my knees are cocked, bending my stiffening body in ever-deepening pain, breaking the life from me. All at once I want to stand, to protect, to be a tree with roots refusing to be ripped loose in this hurricane blowing through my body and out my soul. But I cannot stand. Some unseen force holds me, pushes me back down. The whir of the wind beats a distinct pulse in my ear, like a small baby’s fist banging at the back of my eyes. Why don’t I hear the baby cry? Why do I hear only my own voice, screaming, then strangled to silence? Darkness.

  The wind departs the ice cave, sucked away in bleakness. There is crying. I do hear it. It is far away. No. It is next to me. Someone else is clinging to this raft in a sea of blood. My baby! My baby has survived, my baby is with me! I reach out my hand. I feel a smooth head, but it is large. Did I give birth to something awful? I struggle to rise. I struggle to see in this room dripping blood-red icicles. I must focus. I am a mother. I am a mother no matter what I gave birth to.

  I see my feet. They are naked and white, bound by barbed wire and thorny stems of roses. What is this smooth head I feel, the sobbing I hear? Something is coming clear now. I am touching the leather mask of the Fly, who kneels beside my bed. I cannot see his eyes behind the goggles, but I can hear sobbing. The Fly sobs.

  I am a casualty, something has been torn from me that can never be replaced. I am a casualty of war, of those who destroy love. This I do not want to admit, even to myself, for I thought I was stronger, I thought my female nature and my secure sense of self would rise above all else.

  I cannot explain the enormous emptiness engulfing me as I awake in my red room. I am still numb, not realizing wholly what has happened, not knowing completely who I am. How long have I been alone? The Fly is gone. My hands are free, I have been untied from the bed. The sheets around me are hard with dried blood. I summon the strength to lift my head and move its aching weight to look down across my body. My ankles are bound tightly together by Aunt Mimi’s belt. What I had thought, in my painful hallucinations, was wire and roses binding my ankles, is really Mimi’s belt. Things come back, pieces of the puzzle float through the haze. As I recall particulars of what happened my mind refuses to go there, can’t go there—not across the clamoring void where the raft sank in a crimson sea. As I breathe my split lips tear even more. The cottage door is open, the winter sun scars my eyes with brightness. I don’t want to live another day.

  A silhouette appears against the sun in the doorway; someone in a straw hat and carrying a harvest basket, the kind of basket I found nailed to my door in the past. Maybe it’s not the sun that scars my eyes, but the piercing blue light of his eyes. He enters and sets the basket on the table. I try to speak but only hollow coughing comes, choking me back to silence. He closes the door and lights a match to wood in the fireplace. The slightest heat begins. From the basket he unpacks honey, sausage, lavender soap, and powerfully scented bundles of herbs. Water boils in a pan on the stove. A warm cloth covers my brow. His eyes are near, shining down. I move my hand toward him. I thought he was so close but he is an eternity away, untouchable. My hand falls back to the bed, weakened from the exertion. I struggle to find breath to speak. “Bee Keeper, my man is gone, my baby is dead.”

  He speaks. I am startled that he isn’t mute. His words are as direct as the countryside he lives in.

  “I tied your feet together with a belt, like one of my goats in the mountains when she miscarries. I tied your feet together so all the life wouldn’t bleed out of you.”

  He lifts my unresisting body and pulls the bloodied sheets from beneath me.

  Then I say something unlike me but so true it is only natural: “You saved me.”

  Darkness closes in and releases me. I fall into that darkness, spinning away in a clean bed, free of blood and sweat, screams and tears, rocking away from agony. I hear the Bee Keeper in the darkness. “Mother yourself, woman. The milk from your own breast is your salvation. Your milk has the power to make the blind man see.”

  There is a pungent taste on my lips, not mother’s milk, something different, a warm liquid fills my mouth. I swallow. A heady aroma engulfs me—basil, wild marjoram, sage and savory, juniper and mint. I am being fed the essence of the Provençal earth. The medicinal liquid of plants courses through my veins, revives my blood. With each suck the pain ebbs, with each suck another hurt falls away. Finally there are flames unseen but blessed heat felt, and unfamiliar hands caressing.

  I am released, for the time, for the moment. A moment arches into hours, perhaps days. Rocking between life and death until I am succored toward light and awake to see a brilliant shape, my baby. Half the size of a normal baby, it is being washed gently with lavender soap, then rubbed with almond and rosemary oil, its smooth skin anointed. My baby’s shiny being is wrapped carefully in a blanket, spun into a wool cocoon, and placed in the Bee Keeper’s harvest basket.

  I am beckoned to leave. I rise from my bed, dazed by the day. At first I don’t feel my knees, nor my feet, but they are moving. I hear my breath like that of a stranger as I go further from the cottage, leaning against the shoulder of the Bee Keeper. We travel higher, leaving all time behind. My heart is confused as I enter a country I’ve never encountered before, a wild forest, a tangle of green, narrow paths and footbridges across streams. I fall behind. The Bee Keeper waits, standing in his rough flannel shirt and thick corduroy trousers, his eyes gleaming beneath the broad-brimmed hat. In one hand he holds the harvest basket; in the other hand he carries a pickax. I catch up to him. He tucks the ax under his belt and puts his arm around my waist for support. He could take me to jump off a cliff and I would follow. He is mine to follow now.

  The Bee Keeper’s solid boots dig into the earth as we continue. The forest darkens the day, the sun glides behind the vast plateau of Mont Ventoux. We climb. I hope I never see the world below again, I hope we’ll keep walking across the clouds. A sound ahead grows louder. It is like a river rushing over stones, then the cascading roar of a waterfall, then onrushing waves smashing against the shor
e. We emerge into a meadow and the sound becomes overwhelming, a mighty buzz vibrating the earth.

  Across the meadow the sheer face of a cliff looms; before it millions of orbs dazzle the air in a translucent flurry of wings—bees. A world of bees such as I never knew existed. Bees swarm on the riddled face of the cliff, in and out of crevices and holes tunneled through stone by the driving force of rain over centuries. Now the ancient erosions are inhabited by thousands of bee colonies, a universe of bees, touching, buzzing, flying, crawling. The atmosphere throbs. I am at the source of all humming. I stop before the cliff. I go into the hive of myself, mother my emotions. The whir of wings beats a fierce pulse in my ear, like a small baby’s fist banging at the back of my eyes. Why don’t I hear the baby’s cry? The pickax swings in front of me, its blade slices the earth, sparks fly off sharp steel, stones scatter. The cliff shimmers through a curtain of bees. The hole in the earth deepens.

  The Bee Keeper takes the perfect body wrapped within its wool cocoon from the basket and lowers it into the hole he has dug. He covers it with earth and stones to form an impenetrable sarcophagus. I fall to my knees and press my ear to the stones. Now I hear my baby cry. Now I know my baby lives. The deep hum of bees vibrates up from the earth, filling my emptiness. My tears splash on the stones.

  Francisco, what came to me on that original Day of the Bees now leaves me. My baby’s spirit is alive, borne away in the living drone. I hear laughter reverberating across the face of the beehived cliff. The laughter of a thousand children, bubbling over from a thousand fountains in a thousand towns. There is no more sorrow. There is no sorrow when the child becomes the mother, when the mother returns to herself.

  I am healing now, the Bee Keeper is healing me, he straightens my bent spirit. He knew there was still something in my Provençal soul that would respond to the ancient Romans who once ruled here, some trickle of blood memory that would rouse me. It wasn’t until my strength returned fully, replenished by the Bee Keeper’s herbal concoctions and the nourishing foods of the forest, that I recalled something I had read as a schoolgirl. During Roman times, wives of the centurions would anxiously await their absent husbands. When the soldiers returned and news of the missing spread among the waiting women, the inconsolable widows wept and banged their foreheads against the ground. The only thing that could heal the widows was to take them to a place of bees, where the immense drone of the colony would overwhelm the women’s burdened souls, suck their wailing grief, and disperse it in dissolving shards of light.