The Day of the Bees Read online

  I searched for you in the cherry orchard at the side of the road. Your laughter slipped around tree trunks, rippled through leaves. I couldn’t see you. I was a blind bear plunging toward honey. Branches struck my face, the stony ground snapped under my feet. I did not hear you approach from behind, your hands covering my eyes, your body coiling around mine, your bare knees bending into sharp stones. Sunlight flamed your red hair as your fingers undid my belt. You knew what you were doing. I didn’t recognize my own voice as your insistent lips pulled a roar of pleasure from my throat, startling the birds in branches around us. I lifted you up by your shoulders. You were unaware that your knees had been stabbed by sharp pebbles, pricks of blood trickled down your legs. I slipped the white dress off your body. Your lips, redder than all the surrounding red cherries, found my mouth. Your moan rocked us both. I backed you against a tree trunk. Your hands automatically snaked high overhead into sturdy branches, the blue veins of your wrists throbbing. I turned you to me and wrapped my belt around your wrists and yanked. Your body arched up. You did not see the cherries framing your flushed face, brushing against your cheeks as I looped the end of the belt over a high branch and secured it. You did not see sunlight through leaves slicing across the swell of your breasts as my face fell between them. The taste of your nipple filled my mouth as I rose up between your legs. The moan from your lips hardened to a presence in the orchard, a fierce presence we were swallowed into, where glass broke, a baby cried, a man was running. I saw him. The man was actually there, staring at you tied to a thick branch by my belt. I saw him over your naked shoulder. He studied the rhythmic curve of your body receiving me, your flesh exposed. He was perfectly still beneath the shelter of trees. He was unashamed and patient, an animal waiting for what had crossed its path. I caught his eyes with mine. The animal in me recognized what the other was waiting for, what it anticipated. You were the prey. It expected to make a meal of this tied and moaning female. The son of a bitch was waiting to fuck you.

  Can you ever forgive me?

  FRANCISCO

  Villa Trône-sur-Mer

  Côte d’Azur

  Still no word of you. Each morning when I awake my arm goes around your waist to pull the warmth of you next to me. There is only empty space and silence. You are nowhere to be found.

  With great sorrow I must bring Roderigo back from Ville Rouge. His loyalty runs deep, but I cannot in good conscience employ him further in this task. The situation in Spain has worsened. Roderigo has a chance to return there through the Pyrenees before the border closes completely. It is a dangerous plan but one that must be acted on.

  I am closing Villa Trône, boarding it up and returning to Paris. Roderigo will help me secure everything, then he is gone. He fears he will never see his family again. I fear I will never see you again. My spirit is breaking without you.

  FRANCISCO

  Village of Reigne

  Francisco, my rough man with gentle hands, how I long for your touch in these long days. It pains me to hear your pain, but I have reason to be strong now, I must stay steady on the course. My life grows despite our lives growing apart. I can’t return. I thank God our love exists, hovering above, a grace of memories to sustain me.

  My heart aches for Roderigo and his family. I remember when we visited them in Andalucia, the stone cottage by the sea, the children, the goats, the olive trees. I wonder how much that land has changed. I pray no harm has come to Roderigo’s wife and children. It is better he has left Ville Rouge. I am certain he told you there are many soldiers here now. The country is not safe, the days and nights are a danger and a curse to all.

  It is so sad to hear you must leave Villa Trône. Not only is our love there, but your studio, the space and light with you at its center, with your creation growing from it. You were dripping with so many ideas, always stroking brushes to paint, paint to canvas. I felt pregnant with you, something was forever on its way to being born. What a lucky woman I was. Every day ripe with ideas. Every day in a new way you folded yourself into my body as I opened to you. Every day the excitement of not knowing who you were at any moment, not knowing where we were going, what we were to become. Each time you were a new you creating another us. How I craved your brushing me, stroking me, trusting my yielding to you until I had you completely, right where I wanted you, originating new life on the canvas. I was your woman.

  Now in this fearful time normalcy begins to fade, the past seems strange with its everydayness. Perhaps this is why I too cling to our memories, reading your letters over and over, seeing the same events through different eyes. If this war had not come between us something else might have. You always desired to make my body more than it was meant to be. You continually attempted to go beyond the mere possession of flesh. You did not see that in the end only the female bears fruit. What is created by the hands of man can never be anything more than man.

  The first pleasure boys handle is between their legs. They have time for that as long as it gratifies them, then their hands go on to making or unmaking other things. It is later, when boys become men, they pursue the knowledge of handling women in order to gain greater pleasure. Such pleasure for a man only resides in the moment; for a woman it begins in that moment. My great-aunt Mimi taught me this.

  Mimi taught me many things during the time I lived with her as a girl. She taught me how to be handled by men so that I could handle them. She had the education given most girls of small villages in the heart of France. The most that was expected of her was to count the eggs and measure the flour. But Mimi knew from the beginning that between men and women, one and one make three. So devoted was Mimi to her man, Alphonse, she left her village to marry him. She loved Alphonse’s drooping mustache, his hooded eyes gazing at her, his worker’s hands holding her in a steady way that never changed from their first night. Alphonse was lock master of an isolated country canal. I was sent to live with them during the last war—to live with her actually, for Alphonse was drafted into the army.

  Right after I arrived at their little house next to the rushing water, Alphonse went off looking very handsome in his uniform ironed stiff by Mimi. She told me he left to fight the good fight in a far and distant forest. Since I was from a large Provençal family I could be spared and put to best use by being with Mimi while she was alone, to keep her company and her spirits up. Perhaps I was only really meant to keep Mimi warm during winter.

  The house was two simple rooms and the toilet was in a shed behind, a cold run in the snow if a girl had to go. During the day Mimi braided my hair by the light of the few coals she could afford to keep glowing in the brazier. In bed her numb toes rubbed against my warm body, like a grasshopper scraping its skinny wings in the sun. At all hours of the night we were awakened when the bell from the canal rang. Out into the darkness Mimi went with her lantern swinging, lighting her way to raise and lower the water level in the locks, allowing loaded barges to pass through. With her husband gone she had inherited his work. There were soldiers on the barges gliding by, their rifles at guard, cigarettes glowing, respectfully saluting Mimi spotlighted by her lantern.

  I saw all of this from my window. I was too afraid of the soldiers to venture out. Mimi said I should leave the house and learn. She said, what if an enemy came and shot her dead? Then it would be left for me to know the ways of the canal water, its flows and levels, its inky life in steel locks. She said if something happened to her I would become the new Joan of Arc, responsible for the military supply barges headed to war. “Saint Louise of the Locks,” Mimi laughed often at me in bed, pulling me to her, her body shaking mirthfully through her thin gown, her grasshopper legs rubbing for warmth as I sank between the valley of her breasts, far from the sight of soldiers rising and falling on dark water as they passed in the night.

  There were no men around the canal during the day. Only boys strutted along the canal path, reveling because there were no real men to put them in their place, to peck them into the orderly behavior they surely needed. The
real men had gone off to soldier; everyone knew they might not come back. If they did, most likely they would be leaning on a crutch, or wearing a bandage over their eyes, or be like Alphonse.

  The day Aunt Mimi and I saw Alphonse coming along the canal path, returning from the far forest, we knew something was not right. But it remained unsaid. Mimi ran to Alphonse, squeezing the hand that once had handled her in a steady way. The other hand was gone, his arm blown away at the socket. An empty sleeve flapped at Alphonse’s side. Something else had been blown away that Alphonse could never replace. He sat out the rest of his life in the little house while Mimi maneuvered the canal locks. The paychecks still came in Alphonse’s name.

  I did not remain in the little house after Alphonse returned. I did stay long enough to see what was missing in him turn up in Aunt Mimi. She gained a certain command of life. She knew the man who returned to her would never be capable of giving her a child. He became that child for her. What happened in the muddy trenches of the far forest had removed his bravado and replaced it with a child’s fragility. It made no difference to Mimi. She counted herself lucky. At least her husband had come home.

  Francisco, how fearful I am. This madness of nations can take not only your body from me but your spirit as well. I couldn’t survive the loss of both. I would be broken to know you were lost to the world. As long as you are alive and kept from harm I feel safe, knowing your hands are free to create, knowing your memory can touch mine. I am here, wherever the here is, loving you always.

  LOUISE OF THE LOCKS

  Villa Trône-sur-Mer

  Côte d’Azur

  I write quickly, the last letter from Villa Trône. There is no longer electricity here. One of the main power lines from Cannes was sabotaged. We can’t get any information about when power will be restored—we can’t get information about anything at all. Everything is in darkness tonight so I write by candlelight. At dawn I will leave on the train for Paris, if trains still run to Paris. The Bearcat cannot be driven north; petrol is scarce and the roads are unsafe. So I have asked Roderigo to take it to the farm of the collector, Elouard, and bury it beneath the hay in the cow barn. I have left instructions that if anything should happen to me you are to be given the key to the Bearcat. I want you then to go to the barn and look in the Bearcat. In its trunk you will find something I have left for you, something you must know in the event of my death.

  I keep writing these letters in hope you will answer. Do you receive them? Everyone constantly asks about you. When I am vague with my answer they smile knowingly, certain that I have sent you out of the country. It is best they think that, for it spares them the loss of yet another loved one. But I suffer the loss. I am tortured by the damnedest memories, heartened by the sweetness of others, such as the day we saw the naked children laughing under the clock tower on Château-Colline. I don’t know what it is about us that caught fire so quickly and continues to burn right through my soul. It’s as if love’s flames can’t get enough oxygen in this world, they have to burn memory too. Each remembered moment is another log thrown on the fire. I keep pricking memory to keep the fire going. That is why losing you so quickly made me like a man who walks out into freezing weather without gloves, distracted by his thoughts. The man puts his warm hand on an iron pipe, remembering too late he is without protection. His flesh is caught to the iron as he pulls his hand away, ripping the skin, leaving his own imprint in the cold.

  I go cold even though I am within the hot memory of you in the cherry orchard. I look over your bare shoulder, sunlight drifting down through the leaves. I look into the eyes of the man watching. He is oblivious to me. He is transfixed by your wrists tied with my belt to the limb of a tree, the naked rhythm of your body swaying beneath. As I come out of you the slickness of your skin sucks back on me, your head rolls involuntarily, your teeth bite into my lips. Your eyes flicker apart. You hear the sound of birds. You are aware of your exposure. You feel the intense stare of the other man fingering down your back, along your stiffening spine, the curve of your buttocks. You follow my gaze going over your shoulder and see what I see—the man in uniform, an officer in the army of the new emperor who has occupied our land. Your toes curl into sharp pebbly ground. The Officer shifts his stance, legs spread apart. His eyes lock on to yours.

  Insects hum in the weeds as I move toward the Officer. He doesn’t regard me as a threat; he doesn’t regard me at all. His military uniform is crisply pressed, the handle of his revolver gleams from a black holster strapped at his waist. I am shirtless and shoeless, with a beautiful woman tied to a tree whom I can protect only with my bare hands. Bare hands are not enough against bullets. The Officer doesn’t take his eyes from you as I walk past him. He smells the scent of your sex on me. I keep walking. I hear his boots scraping across the pebbly earth as he moves toward you. I reach the edge of the road, stepping through the last row of trees onto pavement. Next to the Bearcat is the tire iron we used to jack up the car. The iron weight is comforting in my hand as I lift it. Now I have something to protect you with. I turn back toward the orchard. The sound of my own voice precedes me. The sound is not a scream or a plea, but a hurtling challenge as the Officer steps before you.

  The Officer ignores my challenge. He is fixated on the deep-breathing heave of your breasts. His eyes trace down the contours of your belly, contemplating the glistening dampness in the dark V between your thighs. He sees the thin pricks of blood dripping from your knees, left from when you knelt before me. Did he watch that too? I am coming as quickly as I can, running to you. His eyes follow the smoothness beneath your upstretched arms to where your wrists are tightly bound by the leather belt. He leans down and pulls a knife from a sheath in his boot. His face is close to your face. His breath mingles with your breath. He places the knife blade to the pulse of your throat. A rush of anger erupts from my chest. He turns, seeing me coming at him. He knows that before the tire iron I hold in my hand cracks his skull he can pull the knife across your throat. Then what is won? Only his death after yours. The ticking pulse in your throat against his sharp blade binds us all. We know the price of pleasure. Without warning your swollen lips open, firing a kiss of spit into his face. The Officer recoils, stunned. You have gone past the animal in him and disarmed his male pride. He shoves the knife back into its sheath. Before I can reach him he is gone.

  * * *

  Louise, the candle by which I write this letter has burned down to a pool of wax, the wick is flickering, my mind is wavering. I am concerned if our atelier in Paris is safe. Are my paintings still there? Have they become like so many other things, leaves blown away in the storm? The candlelight is gone. I write in darkness. I embrace you across time, across land, across the sea of memory. Your Columbus of the night sails on,

  FRANCISCO

  Village of Reigne

  My Francisco,

  There was a time not so long ago when I needed your love as protection, but you abandoned me. You drove me to Ville Rouge on the one tank of petrol you were able to find. We made the drive from Nice at night. Because there was a blackout curfew we could not use the Bearcat’s headlights. Even under a full moon it was a dangerous drive. Glancing over at me you saw my sadness but did not know its true origin. You were blind in the end. Even so, I could not bear to be parted from you. As we drove I sucked in oxygen, drinking it like a drunkard, knowing it was the last air we would breathe together. Overhead the night sky was swept clear of clouds by the mistral. Stars fell over darkened hills. A fox darted across the road before us, disappearing quickly into the shadows of a vineyard. In the moonlight an ancient village was silhouetted, its stone ramparts wrapped around the peak of a distant mountain. As we sped past the village it looked deserted, a lost and secret place. It is where I am now, with secrets beating in my heart. From the heights of this village I can look down onto the road we traveled together that last night on the way to Ville Rouge.

  I write this letter in a stone cottage dusted by clouds high in the village of Reig
ne. Desire still runs in my veins for you. Tears run down my cheeks. You do not know the price I pay. You do not know that without your letters I might give up. I fear you might meet the horrible fate so many are meeting now, both the innocent and the not so innocent. Your letters hold back the fear. Even though I do not mail you my answers I am secretly overjoyed that you continue to write. Your love refuses to surrender to my silence.

  I have had to make a compromise with a certain postal official in Ville Rouge in order to obtain your letters. Ville Rouge was too dangerous for me to stay in. I knew when you did not find me there you would search for me, ask everyone in the area if they had seen me. I knew you would send Roderigo, the one you trust most, to keep up the search. If I stayed in Ville Rouge I would be discovered and you would be alerted. So I went to Reigne, the nearly deserted village we once glimpsed from the road below. It can only be reached by a treacherous mountain path. When one finally arrives in Reigne there is nothing of consequence. There is no future, only a past forgotten by the present.

  Monsieur Royer, the postal official in Ville Rouge, is an odious man. I had no choice but to turn to him. Even he does not know my true whereabouts—Reigne, my secret in stone. I knew you would go to the post office in Ville Rouge asking if I had collected your letters and where I might be found. I needed someone in the post office to intercept those letters and hold them for me, someone to tell you they had been called for by a person with no address. I wanted you to know I was receiving your letters so you wouldn’t stop writing. I need you to write to me but not to find me.