The Day of the Bees Read online

  I struggle to pull my arms free but the soldiers hold them tight, squeezing my wrists.

  “Now Joan of Arc can serve her country!”

  I feel a sharp nail press into the palm of my hand. The hammer flashes by my head, strikes the nail, pierces it straight through my hand into the door. My body stiffens against the pain. A second nail pricks my other palm. The hammer slams again, pounding the nail down through the bone. I hold my breath against the electric jolt of pain.

  “No last words?”

  I’m not going to cry out my agony.

  The Officer pushes my face up again with his fist. “Your lover became famous by nailing your nude image to the walls of museums. I have nailed your body to our Lord’s house for the world to despise.”

  I will not speak. I throttle my moan.

  The Officer turns away with his men. They get in the truck and drive away.

  I gaze down. The steps before me run red in the rain. Red from paint and blood.

  I see myself through the eyes of the dark bird hovering above the village square. I see the rain has stopped, and in the church tower the priest rings the bell, calling the faithful. But there will be no morning mass, for the church door remains locked. The priest is doing what he was told to do by the Officer: calling the people to come and bear witness. I see through the dark bird’s eyes that I am slumped against the door, hanging by nailed hands, the painted word TRAITOR still visible above my head. The trail of blood from my body leads down the church steps to the worshipers dressed in their finest for Sunday-morning mass. Some hold their children’s hands. All are motionless. Not one steps forward to help or to see if I am alive. In the back of my throat is a thirst so savage it tears at me with greater pain than that in my hands, a thirst that grates as if all the sand of the Sahara fills my mouth. I am ashamed. I am ashamed for myself, and for those who cannot step forward because of fear or disgust, who cannot reach out in order to save themselves. Theirs is a complicity of silence.

  As the morning moves on they begin to drift away until only a young girl is left watching me. She looks like the beautiful girl I saw that day in the garden below the castle. Is it really her? She stares, trying to divine what the woman nailed to the door has to do with her Lord nailed to His cross inside the church. The girl’s mother comes and pulls her away. The girl tries to say something, but her mother places a hand over her mouth. I try to call to the girl but my own lips are cracked, my mouth filled with sand.

  I cannot speak as the life drains from me, but I can think. Think of something beautiful. How can I think of something beautiful with holes in my ruined soul? Think. The wind howls through the holes. Something beautiful. I want to be surrounded by children. The wind blows. It’s cold and I’m thirsty. Think to stay alive. There once was a sea captain from Provence who brought his true love back from China. On a hill he built a tower for her to watch the sea’s horizon for his ship. One day he returned, only to discover that her homesickness had outweighed her love for him—she was gone. After that the sea captain was a captive in his own tower, watching the horizon for his love to return.

  Think. Francisco, I send you my love shaped like a boat, carrying kisses to you. My breath fills the sails and the wondrous boat moves on, battered by so many storms, but I will survive until the boat reaches shore. Think. Francisco, it was only when I lost you, and could not stop loving you, that I knew I was destined to be yours forever. In my eyes you saw my need, my desire: I wanted only to be looked at by you. I did not betray you with the Bee Keeper; his heart belongs to the queen and in the end he will return to her. Think. Francisco, in the winter of our days I keep the candle for you burning, it shines through the window of my heart. Think. I feel my Aunt Mimi’s hand on my bare girl’s shoulders. I hear her words—“only if a woman knows where she is going.” Think. The Bee Keeper takes a honeycomb from a damp cloth and breaks it in two. Honey cascades onto my skin. The wings of the muse stir after the long winter. I am in the center of the hive surrounded by the brilliant gold light of a thousand bright bodies. Specks of gleaming amber coalesce into a perfect sphere, a ball of heat. A woman must have the courage to love a man as a mother loves a child, to be naked and ruthless with her emotions. The milk from a mother’s breast can make the blind man see. My milk flows. Think. The bird sings the beauty of the flower it has eaten; the bee transforms beauty into honey. Francisco I cling to the memory of your face. There is the scent of wax, dust, and pollen. I am buried in the Bee Keeper’s gold honey but I am forever bound by the weight of gold chains you tied me with. The bird slips through gold into me, filling me, then escapes.

  Above me the dark bird soars higher over the bell tower until I am a mere black dot nailed to the door below. Maybe I am dead. Maybe my heart is pulsing in the bird’s throat. Maybe I couldn’t think enough beauty to keep myself alive. Maybe I am lost to myself, to consciousness. Maybe what I see when I struggle to lift my head is not true. Why should it be true? Coming up the red-stained steps toward me is Madame Happy. How did she know I was here? Who told her? Maybe she has come from Ville Rouge only to spit on me one last time. She is a blur. Something in her hand … a hard object. Is she going to deliver the coup de grâce? She raises her hand: she is holding a hammer. She hooks the hammer’s claw under the nailhead pounded down into the flesh of my right hand. She yanks the nail from the door and out of my hand. I feel nothing. My hand is numb from shattered pain. She quickly pulls the nail from my other hand. Freed, I fall to the ground.

  The bird in the sky follows as Madame Happy helps me through the streets. All the houses are shuttered, no one is in sight. The secret of Reigne’s silent complicity holds; the people guard their shame. Madame Happy takes me home. How does she know where I live? She lays me on my back on the bed. She puts my hands in porcelain bowls filled with warm salty water. Her stout body bends over me. Her tears fall with her words as the blood from my hands leaks into the white bowls.

  “Can you ever forgive me? I had to spit on you in Ville Rouge. I had to put as much distance between you and me as I could, there could be no civility between us. I can help you because they haven’t made the connection between us. They will think I am just taking pity on you. Tonight I have a doctor coming, for a hospital is too dangerous.”

  Madame Happy pulls my hands from the water and binds them tightly with strips of cloth. I am confused by what she says.

  “The fly hunts the eagle.”

  She’s telling me she is the one. She is the one who orchestrates the night moves. Working from her little baby shop, Madame Happy is the deadliest weapon of all.

  “Flies don’t hunt eagles in a normal world, but we do.” She smooths my brow with her hand. “Someone has betrayed you … betrayed us. I will find him, and he will be no more.”

  I try to move my tongue to speak and to my surprise the words come, hoarse and direct. “I know who he is.”

  “Tell me and I will do it.”

  “No, I must.”

  “But your hands …” Her voice chokes and she holds back more tears.

  “I can do it.”

  “We can’t wait if there is a collaborator among us.”

  “It must be me. I am the only one he won’t suspect, who can get close enough.”

  “I’m sorry to say,” Madame Happy’s tears begin again, “but you will never be able to use your hands.”

  “That would be true in a normal world. This is not a normal world.”

  From the window of my cottage I see Mont Ventoux. It has stopped raining. The sky has been swept clear of winter and shines with the promise of spring, pulling from the damp earth the rooted scent of plants. Green leaves burst and bright red poppies flicker across the fields. Swallows dip and dive over budding vineyards; bird’s wings in the air rustle like a woman’s silk skirt against her legs as she hurries to a rendezvous. Specks of young bees dot the air, drunken acrobats loaded with nectar, zigzagging with excitement.

  One bee drifts up from the fields and lands outside my win
dow as I lean gazing at Mont Ventoux, my bandaged hands folded beneath my chin. What is this bee doing here? Why isn’t she in a hive, rubbing her body in the rhythmic waggle dance that tells the others where more pollen beckons? She flies up, then drops onto my bare arm. I see the throb of her overflowing nectar sacs. She has visited over fifty flowers in the past hour, and now she comes here. She buzzes up and alights on my cheek. The vibration of her body becomes more insistent. She crawls into the corner of my mouth, wedges between my lips. Does she think she has found her hive and wants to deposit her pollen? Her feet press into my flesh. She darts away, straight up, then hovers in the air and faces Mont Ventoux in the distance. She buzzes off toward Mont Ventoux where my baby is buried, where the Bee Keeper is. Something is happening on Mont Ventoux.

  I try to find my way from memory across the fields, through the forests, up trails and down ravines, over footbridges and along ledges carved into the rocky sides of high precipices that plunge into distant valleys. Brambles tear my legs, ferns whip my face, but the buzz of bees pulls me forward. Ahead looms the cliff I know so well from heartache and healing. Voices stop me, strange voices floating up. Why should there be voices? Only the Bee Keeper and I know of this spot. I bend down and crawl among the bushes, inching toward the voices. A hand comes from behind a bush and grabs me, covers my mouth, and pulls me down. I stare into the face of the Cat Surgeon.

  “Lucretia, what are you doing here?” he asks in a low voice, releasing his hand from my mouth.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He nods toward the cliff. Through an opening in the bushes I see soldiers with rifles standing before the cliff. In front of them is an armored truck with a machine gun mounted on top. Behind the machine gun is the Officer.

  The Cat Surgeon whispers. “They followed us here after we tried to destroy a troop train. It was a trap—they knew exactly where we were going to sabotage the railroad track; someone told them. They ambushed us. That was two days ago. They’ve been hunting us ever since. We had to split up.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Only five left, hidden in the bushes around us. One made it into the cave at the base of the cliff behind those rows of wooden beehives. Shhh!”

  I hold my breath and hear the Officer shout. “Fly, surrender! It’s impossible to escape!”

  I nudge the Cat Surgeon. “We’ve got to help him.”

  “It has to be the right moment, otherwise we all die.”

  “Give me a gun.”

  The Cat Surgeon looks at my bandaged hands. “You can barely crawl, and you want a gun?”

  It is true. I am helpless.

  “Lucretia, you must leave because—”

  The Officer’s voice interrupts. He aims the machine gun at the bee hives. “I’m losing patience!” The metallic clatter of the machine gun bursts out, bullets firing into the hives, shattering the wooden boxes. Pieces of wood, clumps of honey and wax explode into the air with specks of bee bodies. The deafening clap of the gun echoes off the face of the cliff, stirring more activity from the bees hived in the rock crevices. A strong buzz fills the air.

  “One last chance!” the Officer shouts into the buzz.

  Soldiers run along the base of the cliff, pouring kerosene onto the shattered wooden hives.

  “Surrender or burn!”

  The only answer the Officer receives is the angry buzzing of bees. He signals his soldiers, who light torches, then throw them onto the kerosene-soaked hives.

  An air-sucking roar explodes in a wall of flame racing up the cliff. The angry buzzing of bees turns to fury. Thousands of maddened bodies spiral out from crevices in the rock, swarming in a torrent of black clouds.

  A whistle sounds from the Cat Surgeon next to me. He leaps up, firing his rifle at the soldiers. Other men jump from the bushes, shooting. Bullets whiz over my head. Soldiers fall and the men around me are struck with rapid thuds, until everyone is down except the Cat Surgeon.

  The Officer on the armored truck swings the machine gun around quickly. A spray of bullets cuts through the Cat Surgeon; his body falls next to me. I grab for his bloody rifle, forgetting my hands are bandaged. I try, but I can’t pick it up. I rip at the bandages with my teeth, tearing them off. My hands are yellow and shriveled, palms pierced with deep purple wounds, fingers curled inward like the claws of a dead chicken. I force one hand around the rifle, pushing a finger through the trigger hole, and jump up.

  The Officer’s back is to me. He is firing the machine gun at a ghostly figure emerging from smoke at the cliff’s base. I try to pull the trigger of the rifle but my finger won’t move. The Officer keeps firing at the figure. The ghost shoots the last two soldiers, then runs toward the Officer. The ghost is dressed in leather and his face is masked. I have the Officer in my sights but my finger refuses to bend. Machine-gun bullets hit the ghost’s smoking body.

  My mind screams at my lifeless finger—MOVE! Nothing. I jam the rifle butt into my shoulder, aim awkwardly, and with my other hand push the stock of the barrel toward my stiff finger in the trigger hold. A shot fires. The Officer slumps over his gun. He seems dead, but then his body shifts, swinging the gun around to shoot me. Two shots sound, hitting the Officer from behind. His lifeless hands fall to his sides but his eyes remain open, staring straight at me. Behind him the wounded ghost staggers into smoke and flames and disappears.

  Village of Reigne

  My Darling Francisco,

  My sweet Columbus discovering the night. I know that it has been difficult for you to read these last letters, and to see by my tortured scrawl across the pages the trouble I’ve had forcing my maimed hand to write. For the rest of this war my hands will prevent me from being anything but a bystander. My hands will heal but the doctor says they will never be of much use. I can write by taping a pen to my index and middle fingers, a trick I have become quite good at. I must laugh, for what good is the muse with her wings clipped? But I still have my school children to look after, to protect from burning skies and bullet-ridden winds. I rejoice in these children and how they grow in surprising ways under my guidance, for even though my hands are crippled my mind is supple. I am consoled by this when I attempt to knit, clumsily holding the needle between stiffened thumb and forefinger, concentrating on the task of trying to make something, no matter how crude the creation. You and I are alike now: me with my mending but mutilated hands, you with your smashed knees leaving you forever off center when you walk. And each of us has letters to the other that won’t be read. The truth is I will never open a letter of yours again. Let me explain why.

  The day after the bees were destroyed on Mont Ventoux I returned to Ville Rouge. When I did, Royer informed me that he still had many letters from you, so many that he did not feel safe giving them to me in public during the day. He asked me to meet him that night, since he was being transferred immediately to a post office in another town. When night fell I walked from the center of Ville Rouge up the hill, past the last houses and the cemetery with its skyline of carved angels and crosses silhouetted in the moonlight. The hill I was climbing ended abruptly. Before me was a precipice hundreds of feet deep, an immense pit created when the hill was half eaten away by ochre mining.

  I sat on a bench overlooking the pit, a place where schoolchildren were brought during the day to see a marvel. This giant abyss was the work of Roman slaves who were lowered by ropes to fill buckets with precious red dirt that was loaded onto donkeys, carted to Marseille, and shipped to ports around the Mediterranean. The pit was so enormous that the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris could be slipped inside it and buried. The pit’s slick sides of orange and red glowed, and in places green swords of pine trees protruded, having tenaciously grown back over the years, clinging to the sheer walls of this man-made scar. A sweetly damp mineral scent carried from the pit’s distant depths, and the sound of bats swirling in a void echoed up.

  “Who are you tonight? Lucretia … or Louise?”

  I turned toward the voice. I
t was Royer, puffing and breathless from the steep uphill climb.

  “I am me. Simply that.”

  He sat beside me and placed at his feet a sack he had been carrying. He squinted in the moonlight. “So good to see you are shapely again. Such nice curves. Not that you weren’t sumptuous when you were pregnant. I like stuffed goose, it’s delicious. But I’m no snob, I will settle for a lovely summer partridge in wine sauce.” His nostrils twitched as he leaned toward me, sniffing my hair. “Did you come because you too are hungry? Are you setting the table for me?”

  “I’m here because of the letters.”

  “No more brave Lucretia of the night?”

  I nodded at the black shawl covering my hands in my lap. “I can’t do anything for you. My hands are useless.”

  “Oh, you are not entirely useless.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps your hands are no longer the pretty picture they once were, but when the chef prepares the partridge he always cuts off the extremities, the rest of the body is left untouched and succulent. You are no longer Lucretia, but you are Louise. You have one thing left to offer.”

  “If I had hands to slap you with I would. Give me the letters so that I can leave.”

  Royer smirked and pressed his shoe against the sack on the ground, pushing it toward the edge of the precipice. “Don’t be so sensitive. You should be flattered that I find you have anything at all left to barter with.”

  “Barter?”

  “After I’m gone you must still be able to receive your letters, those precious letters for which you risked so much. I can make certain they will continue to reach you.”

  “How can you do that if you are transferred?”

  “I have my ways, but you must fulfill your part of the bargain. There is still more for you to do, if you wish to keep your secret safe and get what you want.” He peered at me closely, judging the effect of his words, waiting out my silence until I replied.