Of Bees and Mist

by Erick Setiawan

  WHEN GABRIEL HEARD ABOUT his daughter’s expulsion, he did not burst into laughter or throw her out of the house. Instead, he shattered a table with his fist and swiftly dispatched an ultimatum to Orchard Road. Meridia, moved, observed his reaction with gratitude, even though a part of her suspected he was outraged chiefly for his own name.

  That night, the first in her memory, Gabriel let the yellow mist drift by. When the doorbell rang, he emerged from the study in a solemn black suit and took his place in the center of the hall. “Go to your room,” he ordered her sternly. Meridia climbed the stairs and hid behind the banister. A moment later, a maid ushered Eva and Elias into the hall, followed by a terrified Daniel. Eva was high-colored and defiant, Elias pale and frazzled. Before they said a word, Gabriel lunged for Daniel, seizing his collar without ceremony.

  “Son of a bitch! I wouldn’t wish a cockroach to have you for a husband!”

  Reeling with terror, Daniel sputtered for breath.

  “Control yourself, sir,” said Elias. “There’s no need for this kind of behavior.”

  Though he sounded grave, Elias made no move to help his son. It was Eva who jumped and placed herself between the two men.

  “My son has done nothing wrong! It’s your daughter who’s perverse and impertinent! She said she couldn’t care less if we live or die.”

  Gabriel’s violent turn forced Eva to step back. For a moment it seemed that he would throttle her as well. Spying from the top of the stairs, Meridia was seized by affection for her father.

  “Watch what you say, madam. I can spot a lie from miles off.”

  “She’s dishonored us!” shouted Eva with equal violence. “She abused me in my own house and refused to apologize. I don’t know what kind of daughter you think you raised, but it’s clear she’s selfish, spoiled, callous, and arrogant. It’s a pity you never took a whip to her back when she was little!”

  Before a word could escape Gabriel, a thin shadow sliced in between him and Eva. Twice the room exploded, stunning the men and jolting Meridia from behind the banister. The next thing they saw was Eva nursing her face. Towering over her with a splendid calm was Ravenna.

  “How dare you!”

  Livid, Eva turned to Elias, who stood immobile with his jaw open.

  “Are you going to stand there and let her assault me? Do something!”

  Eva’s narrow eyes were gutting him. Seeing no reaction from Elias, she turned to Daniel with a deathly aim.

  “First the daughter, now the mother. Brand this moment into your memory, son. Tell your sisters they weren’t conceived from the seed of a man, but from the sap of a coward!”

  Elias shuddered. Slowly a faint smile surfaced on Ravenna’s lips. Gabriel, who had been watching his wife with a mixture of wonder and disbelief, hollered with laughter at the other man’s expense. It was this laugh that snapped Elias into action.

  “Let me handle this!” Looking at the far wall behind Gabriel, avoiding Ravenna’s eyes at all costs, Elias bellowed, “Your daughter must apologize to my wife. I don’t see any other way to resolve this.”

  Gabriel smirked. “What if she doesn’t?”

  “But she must!”

  “What if I forbid her? What are you going to do?”

  Elias swallowed hard. Sidling up to his side, Eva declared decisively, “Then we won’t take her back. She can stay here and look for another husband.”

  “You’ve gone too far, Mama!” Daniel broke his silence for the first time. “Meridia is accountable to no one but myself. I intend to have her back at any price.”

  “Quiet!” rebuked Elias, suddenly emboldened. “That woman you married is more trouble than she’s worth.”

  “Don’t bully me, Papa. I’m taking my wife home no matter what you say. If I lose her then you’ll lose me. I’m prepared to fight anyone who comes between us.”

  A slow and chilling applause stunned the room for the second time. Without losing her calm, without even clenching her eyes, Ravenna inspected Daniel as if she might reduce him to ashes.

  “How noble of you,” she said. “If only you had delivered that speech before it came to this. You’re mistaken now if you think I’ll let my daughter return to hell.”

  Gabriel stared at his wife as though he had never seen her before. At that moment something he had condemned to die stirred suddenly within him.

  “You heard the mistress.” Gabriel said. “Meridia stays here. I’ll send for her things in the morning.”

  Eva gasped furiously. “What do you take us for? Have we no say? No weight in this matter? So be it. From now on, your daughter can consider herself a free woman.”

  Meridia was on the verge of exclaiming, but Daniel beat her to it.

  “Have you all gone mad? She’s my wife, for heaven’s sake! I’m not leaving this house without her!”

  Ravenna swung on him without a warning.

  “Listen to me, little boy! I delivered her to you once, and you failed to honor and protect her. I’ll be damned if I should do so again. Now leave my house and never enter it while I still have breath in my lungs.”

  Eva was screaming now, spurring Elias to defend their name, but to Daniel, all else had become silent. Ravenna’s eyes had cut him, deep in a place he could not heal. In the years to come, it was those eyes he would remember and refuse to forgive.

  Gripping the banister, Meridia bit her lip to keep her tears from falling. The staircase reared, galloped to the roof, and suddenly a thousand steps stretched between her and the mayhem below. From that great distance she began to shout as she watched the speck that was Daniel leave without a single glance in her direction.

  EVA DID NOT WAIT for Gabriel to carry out his threat. Early the next morning, she dispatched Gabilan to Monarch Street with a sack full of Meridia’s clothes. Sweaty and breathless, the servant girl barreled right through the mist and hollered for Meridia.

  “Oh, Young Madam, they turned your room upside down as soon as you left!”

  “Slow down, Gabilan.” Meridia took the sack and stowed it in the hallway. “What happened?”

  “Master ransacked all your drawers, even pried the ones that were locked. He snatched your dresses from the hangers, your undergarments from the drawers, tossed them to the floor, and spat on them. Madam egged him on. She made him smash your dressing table and your jars and powder bottles. Miss Permony cried and cried in the hallway, but Miss Malin went up to Madam and shouted at her. She tried to rescue your wedding pictures, but Master was like a man possessed. Madam had him go at it for a good hour, then she took some of your things and carried them upstairs—your brooch, your lace, your gloves, the pearl earrings she herself had given you for your wedding!”

  Gabilan was in tears and Meridia found it increasingly difficult to swallow. Had she not taken the jewelry set at the last second…

  “And Young Master?” she forced herself to ask. “Where was he during all this?”

  “Young Madam, I haven’t told you the worst of it. It was wrong and cruel, what they did to him…”

  Gabilan, overcome by sobs, needed a minute before she could speak again.

  “When Young Master tried to chase you, Master grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. ‘You weakling!’ he shouted. ‘No son of mine runs after a woman like a whipped dog!’ He began calling him names, things too ugly to come from a father’s lips. Whenever Young Master tried to speak, Madam drowned him with her cries. Provoked to the limit, Master then did something unthinkable. He dragged out your wedding dress from the bridal trunk, wrestled it to the floor, and began clawing it like a mad beast. It was the ghastliest sound I ever heard, all that cloth and lace screaming in pain. Young Master backed away from the room and stood very still and I could see something go out of his eyes. He looked as if he was watching an animal being gutted.”

  While Gabilan continued to sob, a cold sensation clamped down on Meridia’s spine. She could not speak, could not move, could not locate the outrage she ought to have felt. All she co
uld see was Daniel’s face, lost and wounded, washing itself up on the plundered wall of her heart.

  TOO RAW, TOO BROKEN, Meridia would not see Daniel that day. Though he knocked and pleaded, she did not allow the front door to open. Angry on her behalf, the ivory mist attacked him, and finally succeeded in driving him away by yanking off all his clothes and sending him to chase after them. He did not give up. When the next day found him standing with three layers of clothes on the stone steps beneath her window, it was another force that came charging to her defense.

  It seemed he had stood there for hours. She could hear him arguing with one of the maids when a furious voice blasted him like a whirlwind.

  “Why are you still here? Can’t you see she doesn’t want you? Whatever claim you had on her, you gave it up when you proved yourself a coward!”

  Ravenna wielded a broom, chased him off the steps as she might a stray pup. As Daniel scurried, mortified, into the street, the ivory mist pelted him with laughter. Then and there, though she did not know it, Ravenna made herself his enemy for life.

  Up in her room, eyes swollen from crying, Meridia let the curtain fall from her fingers. How long would it take until his name was erased from her lips, his face reduced to a shimmer of a dream?

  SIXTEEN

  The impasse continued for weeks. Despite threats made on both sides, neither house was willing to back down. When Eva declared to Monarch Street that she had engaged the services of a renowned attorney, Gabriel gave her three days to produce the divorce papers. When Eva shot back that Meridia’s transgressions required more than three days to tabulate, Gabriel laughed in her face and said that he could have the marriage annulled in half the time. More arguments followed, more vituperative exchanges, during which no one noticed that the newlyweds themselves were silent.

  Immersed in the task of forgetting, Meridia paid little attention to the stalemate. She nodded carelessly to Ravenna’s plan of sending her abroad, ready to sign whatever document was put under her nose. She had no desire to eat, speak, or do anything that might make her remember. At times she was without emotion, almost without consciousness; at others she could not stand up without trembling. In the loneliest hours she folded her knees to her chest and rocked without sound. The wound was deep, immeasurable. The pain of knowing he had not come to her rescue.

  Despite her attempt to foil memory, she started remembering how they met. The Festival of the Spirits. The Cave of Enchantment. His reckless and fatal disregard—she knew it now—of the seer’s warning. She remembered their first dance in Independence Plaza, their clandestine meetings around town, the kiss on the beach when his touch had allayed the horror of the gutted fawn. She remembered that glorious day in spring when Eva’s laughter had seduced her, wrapped her so tightly like a quilt that she traded the cold of Monarch Street for its warmth. How could she have expected happiness when every room in the house reeked of deceit?

  She found comfort in shadows. In foundering doggedly into gloom. Nothing mattered then, not the recollection of his smile or his hot breath on her nape. And she would have been content to sink, for fifty or a hundred years perhaps, had she not been roused by a melody from another time. It happened one night when visions of him burned like live coal in her eyes. Part humming, part singing, the lush and vibrant song that had lured her into the Cave of Enchantment now drew her toward the window. “Nothing but a cheap trick,” Daniel had scoffed at the seer. But just as she did not feel swindled then, she did not refrain from lifting the curtain now.

  It was nothing short of a siege. There he stood, just outside the reach of the mist, shamelessly appealing to her sentiment. Despite the wind, he wore neither hat nor coat, his pose plaintive, hair tousled, face handsome and penitent. There was no drizzle that night, yet he appeared wet to the skin. Torn by a hundred feelings, Meridia pulled the curtain shut.

  The next evening he was back. No sodden clothes, no music, only flowers in his hand. The banality of the gesture made her grit her teeth, yet tears stubbornly sprang to her eyes. How many nights had he spent out there? How many more was he prepared to stay?

  Twenty-seven, she counted. Perhaps twenty-eight. He stood there waiting in fog and heat, taking his post after the yellow mist departed and deserting it before the blue arrived. It was too late, she thought. She did not know how to trust him again. What did he think he might accomplish, wooing her with songs and flowers? When she needed him most, he had not been there for her. And yet, as he continued to disrupt her sleep with phantom kisses, she began to crave the weight of him, the sun-and-sea smell of his skin. In league with cicadas and moonlight, he assailed her with a mood so rapturous she began to feel his touch across the distance. His gaze never wavered from her window. She knew this, too, without having to lift the curtain.

  On the last night of his watch, the wind pounded the window like an angry hound. Just when it dawned on her that this might be the same wind that years ago had knocked Ravenna to the ground, the window blew open with a great force. A cold gust punched Meridia flat on the bed, penetrated her stomach, hardened inside into a knot. The blow stilled her for an instant, not painful but vital enough for her to understand. The next second she was flying out of the room, racing down the hallway, thumping the banister, reaching the front door in six steps. The massive oak swung without being touched. The ivory mist whisked to the side. Daniel was running with his arms out.

  “Please forgive me,” he said. “I’ll do anything to win you back.”

  She gasped hard for air, filling her lungs to the brim. It was too much, his arms around her, his heart in her ear, pounding along to her own intractable rhythm. She lifted her head quickly and kissed him.

  “Why did you stay away?” he said. “It was winter here without you.”

  She dug her fingers into his shoulders, looked at him sternly through her tears.

  “To put back what you broke. Did you think it was easy to do?”

  His pale eyes gleamed with remorse. “I swear I’ll never hurt you again. Will you take me back? Will you give me another chance?”

  She did not answer but allowed him to hold her. By degrees the howling died to a soft moan. Telling herself it was not the same wind, she guided his hand to her belly.

  WHEN RAVENNA DISCOVERED THAT Meridia was with child, she broke her vow of decades and marched straight into Gabriel’s study.

  “The child’s still in love and she’s carrying his baby.”

  Sitting behind the desk, Gabriel suspended his pen midsentence. It was impossible to tell if he was more alarmed by his wife’s words or her sudden materialization.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Did you not hear me the first time? You’re going to be a grandfather.”

  Gabriel let go of the pen and leaned back against the chair. Without betraying his surprise, he tried to match her blank tone word for word.

  “She told you this herself?”

  Ravenna nodded. She seemed then a creature born of water or ether, marvelously unaffected by human trials. In spite of himself, he felt her unflappable attitude begin to irk him.

  “What does she propose to do?”

  “Go back to that boy. On her terms, of course.”

  “And you’ll let her go—‘return to hell,’ as you said?”

  His mocking tone hit a nerve. He took pleasure in watching her jaw clench, in disarranging her, and for a moment she seemed to retreat behind her veil of forgetfulness. But then a tremendous change swept over her face. At once she righted herself, so cold and soldierly he could not imagine a single capillary of warmth to exist inside her.

  “I won’t stand in her way. But neither will I allow that larcenous woman to lay a hand on her.”

  Gabriel sat still. Even as it dawned on him that this was the most she had spoken to him in months, their eyes clashed like daggers, scourging the deep in each other. It was Gabriel who looked away first, aware that neither of them would emerge a victor.

  “Let me hear it from her mouth,” he s
aid.

  A moment later, Ravenna left Meridia in front of his desk without a word. His daughter’s face, in contrast to his wife’s, was ennobled not by frost but by love.

  “Is it true what your mother said? You wish to return to your husband?”

  Meridia nodded. It did not escape Gabriel that her cheeks had the wild flush of berries.

  “You want to go back to that house?”

  “I want to be with Daniel.”

  “Even when you know his family can toss you whenever they feel like it?”

  “Daniel won’t let it happen again. He swore.”

  Gabriel’s scoff was something she had more than expected.

  “If you believe him, then your brain is far more addled than your mother’s.”

  Meridia bowed her head. She realized they had been here before, hurling the same arguments, the day the matchmaker came to the house. And once again, just as on that day, she found herself dueling the onset of invisibility as his glare raked her. Whatever made her think she could sway him to her side?

  And then she felt the kick in her belly. The knowledge that she was no longer fighting for herself lifted her chin and made her inspect the man who had never loved her. There was no doubt he looked older, grayer, but every line of his majestic face still retained its cruel and scrupulous hardness. Meridia decided she had nothing to lose.

  “I have to believe him, Papa. He’s the man I love, the father of my baby. Please don’t sneer at me. Say what you want, but he’s the only person who ever cared for me, who comforted and held me when the rest of the world was determined not to see me. Before I met him, I didn’t know what it was like to be happy. I’ve forgiven him, Papa. That’s also something you and Mama never taught me.”

  She said this with tears in her eyes. To her absolute shock, Gabriel winced and raised a hand to his shoulder. His stoop, courtesy of Ravenna, now inflamed with pain. After what seemed an eternity, he replied in a voice gentler than she had ever known.

  “I’ll let you go back to him. But you won’t live in that house again.”