The Day of the Bees Read online

  “I understand.”

  He did not let go of my purse. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary today?”

  “Only the dog at the last farmhouse.”

  “What about it?”

  “It didn’t bark as I passed.”

  “Get out of here.”

  I pulled my purse away from him. Had he only known the fear that seized my heart when he held your letters, and how ashamed I was for feeling that. I think people would rather be discovered carrying explosives than love letters. Love letters can seem so trite. The nakedness of desire interests only those in love; to those outside the love it is insignificant. I wanted at that moment not to be a woman in love. I wanted to be the fugitive in the hills, the one who had blown up the electrical line coming from Ville Rouge. I turned to leave but the Officer grabbed my arm. He heard something. I heard it too: dogs barking, the whine of a motorbike coming around a bend in the road. The Officer raised his pistol.

  The motorbike stopped before us, surrounded by panting dogs. Straddling the motorbike seat was the Bee Keeper. Roped behind him to the wide fender were three wooden hives wrapped in empty flour sacks. From inside the hives came a sound that never dies out of my days, never leaves my dreams: a dark humming of bright bodies. I felt the buzz of bees against my skin. A shiver ran through me.

  You and I first met the Bee Keeper on a market day. The streets of Ville Rouge were crowded with people pushing among the stalls displaying olives, melons, cheeses, rabbits, truffles, and herbs—the bounty of Provence spread out in the sun. Amid the noisy crush of people stood the Bee Keeper, aloof in his simple pride. His sharp face with piercing eyes surveyed the surge of shoppers surrounding his table of glass jars sealed with wax tops. The jars were filled with creamy honey. Each jar had pasted to it a scrap of paper bearing the Bee Keeper’s scrawl: Honey of Lavender, Honey of the Roses of Abbé Sénanque, Honey of Mont Ventoux, Honey of Wild Rosemary. You bought me every variety the Bee Keeper offered, enough, you said, for a thousand mornings of our being together. You had a theory about the solitary Bee Keeper. When a man gathers his own honey and has no wife, he spreads the sweet stuff on bread and shares it with his dogs. A man with dogs doesn’t have to share with another person.

  The Bee Keeper’s dogs circled me and the Officer in the road. The Officer pointed his pistol at the dogs, commanding the Bee Keeper to call them off, but the Bee Keeper only smiled as the dogs licked my ankles. The Officer shouted at him to present his identification. The Bee Keeper didn’t make a move. The Officer stepped up and pressed his pistol to the Bee Keeper’s temple, demanding to know what was in the three wrapped boxes roped to the motorbike’s rear fender. The intense gaze of the Bee Keeper’s eyes was fixed on me—large, bulging bee eyes. I noticed his misshapen hands on the handlebars of the motorbike, hands familiar with the flutter of light-winged bodies on the skin, at peace with a multitude of stinging insults.

  Under the Bee Keeper’s gaze I felt the same way I had as a girl playing outside Aunt Mimi’s house next to the canal, when I first became aware of another game being played. From the woods behind the canal a group of boys emerged. Their eyes lingered on my naked back as I bent, drawing my dream house in the dirt with a stick. I turned to the boys, my throat tight. No noise came from anywhere. I waited for the sound of my own voice, my own breath. Silence. I waited for Aunt Mimi to come running, to rescue me. The eyes of the boys moved over my skin. I was at an age when a girl doesn’t yet think of covering up in the summer sun; my rounding body was changing too fast for shame or joy. Only in the eyes of those boys did I see for the first time what age I was, what sex I was. My female eyes locked into male eyes. I knew instinctively that if I ran I would be hunted. I did not turn as Aunt Mimi approached from behind me. Her hands came down firmly on my trembling bare shoulders. I could not see but I knew her eyes were on the boys. Between them and us a distance was shortening, across the hard earth with its burnt summer grass an idea was growing. My hand went up to Mimi’s waist. She always wore Uncle Alphonse’s wide leather belt over her long dress. I undid the buckle and slipped the belt off, wrapping it around my bare chest, cinching the leather over my stiff nipples. Mocking male laughter burst in my ears. It was the first of many times I would hear that sound. A sound that said, I’m not looking at you, what makes you think you are worth looking at? A sound that said, what makes you think I need you, what makes you think you are special? A sound that said, next time you won’t be hearing this laughter, you’ll be hearing something else, and it won’t be funny. As the boys laughed and disappeared back into the woods Aunt Mimi’s words came down to me:

  “Never be ashamed of how God made you, Louise. Someday you must go where the men go. You must not be afraid, for they are the fearful ones. If you open yourself to them as a woman, then you will lead. That is the power of a woman, but only if the woman knows who she is, only if she knows where she is going.”

  The soldiers guarding the road laughed as the Bee Keeper’s dogs pressed their noses to the hem of my dress, their tongues lapping at my bare legs. I walked past the soldiers to the Bee Keeper on his motorbike. Aunt Mimi’s words were in my ears. Only if the woman knows where she is going. The soldiers fell silent.

  I placed my hands on the shoulders of the Bee Keeper. His clear gaze turned to me. I felt the vibration of bright humming bodies in the hives stacked on the fender behind him.

  “He cannot speak.” I spoke these words for him.

  The Officer pressed the tip of his pistol deeper into the Bee Keeper’s temple. “I want him to open these boxes!”

  “There are only bees inside.”

  “So then he can open them!”

  “No, he can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he is transporting a queen.”

  “Let’s see her.”

  “If he exposes her, you will be attacked by the colony.”

  “Shit!”

  “It’s best you let him pass, especially if you like honey on your toast.”

  The Officer angrily turned his pistol on me. “Why should I give a damn about honey?”

  The bright buzzing sound of golden bodies was in my blood, as it had been on the Day of the Bees, when the Officer pressed his sex into me. This time the Officer was holding a pistol. This time he had another way to kill me.

  The Officer waved his pistol. “You tell that son of a bitch to keep his queen at home where she belongs.”

  “He is taking her home.”

  “Then he should get out of here and not waste my time. He’s only dumb, not crippled.”

  I lifted my hands from the Bee Keeper’s shoulders. “Yes, he is only a dumb keeper of bees.”

  I watched the Bee Keeper turn his motorbike around and clatter away down the twist of road away from Reigne, his barking dogs chasing behind.

  The Officer slipped his pistol back into its holster and allowed me to pass, giving me a sarcastic salute. I continued my journey with your letters in my purse. I walked the stony road to Reigne laid down centuries before by Roman conquerors. Aunt Mimi’s words came to me along the road, just as they had when I walked the rain-slick streets of Paris to meet you that very first time at dawn in Cathedral Sainte-Chapelle.

  Only if the woman knows where she is going, my love.

  PART THREE

  Day of the Bees

  Village of Reigne

  My Most Darling Francisco,

  I sit in front of my morning fire and attempt to write. It is a letter from a talking bird. Feathers and flight and bursts of song. A song that begins to repeat itself, sung over and over. Our song. Words of love always sound so mundane to others, but they strike a perfect note to the ear of the beloved—the beat of their own music, a blood pulse stronger than any symphony.

  Do you want to know what I dreamt last night? I dreamt of a fire, just like the one in the fireplace before me now. But in the dream I am inside the fire, I am the flames illuminating a view outward, my invisible flesh radiates a comforti
ng heat. I am the only witness to a miraculous moment. I do not exaggerate; the quality of the dream is so rich it smells of the hot spice of your skin. So it must be real. Someone I cannot see plays a folk song on an accordion. The dancing notes come from far away, quick and agile, snake-wrapping around the melody, our melody. It undulates through the scene I am about to relate. Remember, listen to the music: without it you cannot see my dream.

  A mournful fiddle joins the accordion. All at once from inside the fire I see a dark silhouette—your back, bent in thought. Behind you the wide windows are open to the night. From the dark pitches a sparkling of light, white on blackness—a moth. Ordinary, except the moth’s wings are woven of satin tulle. The winged creature is the size of a green apple, a ripe green apple like those found dangling from a lone tree in front of a deserted farmhouse.

  I follow the slow movement of the creature. It seems to float as its delicate bowed wings flit rhythmically. You do not notice its approach. Lost in your own world, you peer at an empty canvas on a tall easel before you. I know the hovering apparition is benevolent. It is goodness. Its trajectory lies in your direction. It moves from the dark exterior toward the light of your studio, following a course across the room; and as it does, its color changes from green to that of aged linen, to an increasingly brighter cream on the absolute edge of incandescence. Then its wings burst into the petals of a voluptuous gardenia. I can smell the scent of its pure flower.

  You come into my frame of vision, a brown shadow standing before the fire in deepening thought. Your fingers hold your paintbrush, ready to conjure your inward vision. Your brush moves up, preparing to stroke from air a shape, the shape of an emotion. Behind you, over your shoulder, the moth slows its pace until it hangs suspended in air. Perhaps the light that drew it has blinded its delicate sight, or it respects your intense concentration. It barely moves, hovering above your shoulder, then comes to rest upon your fingers curled around the paintbrush. It does not stir for some time. You remain unaware of its weight on your skin as its velvet wings begin to pulse. You turn abruptly toward the easel. The brush dips into the oils, then slashes color across the canvas. It happens so suddenly I almost lose sight of the moth, then see it darting toward me. I shout for it to stop but it doesn’t—it flies straight into my flames. In the hiss of an instant it is extinguished. No one would know it ever existed, except for the faint essence of … not gardenia … but bee pollen, its golden hue clinging to dust motes floating in your studio.

  This was my dream. Then I awoke and thought, “Yes, she will be attracted to the quality of light. Magical and bewitching light.”

  LOUISE

  Village of Reigne

  Darling Man,

  I am going to confess to you in this letter. Confession is the wrong word—it will be a revelation, a clarity between us, the truth about the Day of the Bees from this woman’s point of view. Since I had the dream of the moth consumed in flames I realized that only my own fire can illuminate the truth, and not the winged muse perched on your shoulder, whispering into your ear.

  How I wish I could tell you of my daily life here in more detail, give you all the intimate, tiny moments that go to make up my days without you. How I once craved to have you share those moments. Was I too harsh, demanding everything from you? Demanding that you give yourself up to me as I had to you? You told me some do not seek to be artists, they seek to be the art. So what was my sin? The art of life? The art of loving you? The art of losing myself to you? Was the ultimate sin the fact that I have regained myself? Now that is an art!

  I never knew if I put myself in the hands of a monster, because love is a monster, or if I put the monster of myself in the hands of a man. Women think this way: that if they had only been a bit saner, older, wiser, more calculating, then the monster within could have been contained, what was craved could become instead something created. Do not think you are the only one who awakens with shaking hands, fearing what those hands are capable of. Don’t be misled. It’s just that I have other ways, other motives. A calm woman is not a disarmed woman. See how I talk, carry on, a circle without a center. I am without you now—for that I can forgive neither you nor myself. Time is moving fast and I am haunted by the cries and laughter of unborn children. I accept nothing less than this passionate mystery, all else is false. I am willing to stand alone. My roots weren’t strong enough before; now they are. New things crowd my days, things worth living for. I hear that accordion in the moth dream. That sound I know: I’ve heard it before in the non-dreaming world. It reverberates in my bones.

  There was an accordion player on a bandstand beneath a full moon. I see him swaying heavily from side to side as he squeezes out his tune. Behind him a band made up of local farmers backs up his every note with cheerful, off-key playing. The small plaza is filled with dancers swirling around us. We have already forgotten that afternoon in the cherry orchard. We have forgotten it is the Bastille Day celebration in Ville Rouge. It is midnight, it is hot, we are in each other’s arms. That is all that matters, holding tight, as if to prevent our very spirits from flying away in sweet delirium. Was I ever so happy? In such a moment happiness seems a bright string unraveling into eternity’s darkness. Even when you miss a dance step and slip, taking a bad fall—lying on the cobblestones beneath me, you are not hurt. I dance over you, our rhythm carries on, my skirts billow out around my waist, my legs are bare; you gaze up in wonder. Was I ever so happy? And if I had eyes to see others, I would have noticed how many men envied what you had—a woman unguarded, open to all love’s promise. How many men approached me asking for a dance that was denied? How many men tried to break our spell? How many watched silently from the crowded café tables surrounding the plaza? Was I ever so happy? Was I ever so oblivious? Lovers who have eyes only for each other are blind to the world, and the world is unforgiving to those who lose sight of it.

  We lost sight, my darling. That earlier afternoon in the cherry orchard, with my hands tied and my head in a cloud of blossoms, the game shifted. I wanted to be tied, yearned to be bound, ached to be chained by you—and I was. I lost sight of those who had sensed our vulnerability, watching us all night in Ville Rouge into the early dawn. The crowd cleared from the plaza, the little band packed up and left. We continued our dance around the Roman fountain, its splashing water all the music we needed. The sound of the water merged with the first chirp of birds calling from the bell tower of the church. It was our dawn. We were the first and only ones on a newly born earth. Such is the conceit of lovers, and we were no different.

  We were ahead of the rising sun as you drove from Ville Rouge into the mountains. There was no way to stop the rhythm still undulating in our blood. You pulled over to the side of the road, next to the ruins of an abandoned abbey. The Bearcat motor hummed, then you turned the engine off and another humming surrounded us: the morning’s rising heat had awakened the cicadas in the tall sycamore trees lining the road. The insect humming became more insistent, a scratching sound rubbing open the eye of the sun to a fierce glow. We left the Bearcat and drifted into the stone shadows of what had once been the abbey’s inner cloister. It was here I became your Salome, dancing sacrilegiously in the temple. You slumped back against a broken stone pillar, sliding to the ground with exhilaration, exhausted from the night but ready to be my audience. You watched my every move. Where those moves came from I’ll never know, fluid and precise, not so much to entice as to express the most humble of all origins, the selflessness of an innate sensuality given over to another. So I served myself on a platter to you, food for the soul, and I both the chef and the feast. I glimpsed you through the swirl of my transparent skirts twirling above your head. Now we weren’t surrounded by people as we had been in the plaza when I danced over you after you slipped on the stones. You did what you could not do in the plaza: your hands slid up my bare legs and traced my thighs. I was naked for you. All that glistened at the center of me was reflected in your eyes. You opened your pants and I lowered myself upon you. The
rasps of the cicadas’ cacophony licked the air around us. I felt you coming to me with a shudder. My breath exclaimed into your mouth as our lips met in a violent kiss. I clung to you as if I could suck that kiss into my very being, as if the very exclamation of my moan was beginning a new life, as if a shadow fell across my soul that wasn’t my own, wasn’t yours, and took its own form, unexpected and insistent. Only if a woman knows where she is going, my love. I knew in that instant where I had gone with you. There was no turning back. A woman knows when she is ready to be made pregnant.

  YOUR LOUISE

  Village of Reigne

  Darling Francisco,

  Forgive me for stopping my last letter where I did. I never told you before that I was pregnant, nor did I tell you the moment when it might have happened. I suppose when I stopped writing last night I was exhausted from the toll of reliving so much happiness, as we were exhausted that morning in the abbey when the sun rose above the ruins. You were still seated on the ground with your back against the stone column; I was on your lap, facing you, my legs spread open. As the sun warmed us I could feel you move inside me again. I opened my eyes, you were still asleep and yet you moved inside of me. Do you know how it is for a woman when a man does that? It is a reassurance that even in his dreams his wandering will take him straight to her. That even in his dreams she will receive him. And all I had to do was shift the weight of my hips and you would come running harder to me. I shifted my hips. My laughter, at how easy and miraculous this was, awakened you. Your eyes opening became the sun for me, the light burning all shadows of doubt from my life. You said you never had been awakened like this before, with such laughter. I wanted to hear more. You said the sound of my happiness was the purest you ever heard, a laughter that flowed like honey from the horn of an angel.