The History of Bees

by Maja Lunde

  I didn’t breathe easily again until I’d found my seat, sat down and felt the chair beneath me. I rested my spine against the seat’s worn plastic. I lay my head back and found the headrest. I stayed seated like that, watching the houses, the people, the trees and the fields outside. They didn’t concern me. The train slid through the landscape so quickly that the trees we passed became mere shadows. The 1,800 kilometers were supposed to be behind us by evening, according to the timetable, but that depended on the number of checkpoints along the way.

  My own world vanished behind me. The landscape changed, gradually, as we eventually got further north and higher up. From the mild fruit orchards of my home district, the tree-covered hills, the terraced gardens, to the wide flatlands of rice fields, and further, as the train climbed upwards into the mountains, to more barren, more fallow areas. When we came down again, a deserted landscape met me. Dry, barren, almost no trees. Mile after mile of the same monotony. I turned my face away from the window, there was nothing to see.

  I had been in Beijing only once before, when I was little. My parents had friends there. We went to visit them. I remember only some images. A large and lively street, dusty, intense. Deafening noise, people everywhere, many more than I’d ever seen before. And the train trip, I remembered it well, exactly the same as now. The train, too. The technology hadn’t changed throughout my entire lifetime. Nobody had time for innovation anymore.

  I nodded off. Dozed in and out of dreams that resembled one another, that I came to Beijing and searched, that I found someone who would lead me to him. On one occasion it was a hotel employee. He knew where Wei-Wen was, he said, and took me through narrow alleyways and busy streets. We ran, him first, me behind him. I bumped into people all the time, almost lost sight of him. I caught him, but he tore loose. I woke up out of breath. The next time I fell asleep, it was a woman in a store. The same thing happened. She said she would bring me to him. She led me out into the jungle of streets, where the skyscrapers blocked the sun and the street vendors kept trying to stop us. She ran so fast that I lost sight of her, and sobbing, I had to stop and realize that my only chance to see him again was gone.

  And then I was immediately somewhere else. A garden party. A dream, a memory? I was wearing a summer dress, it was hot. I was a child and attending an end-of-term party. We ate cakes, dry cakes made with artificial low-fat lard and an egg substitute. And a watery Popsicle, artificial, but good nonetheless. I was sweaty; the ice slid coolly down my throat.

  Some of the girls were doing a circle dance, the sound of their singing rose through the garden, growing louder and louder, some voices clear and pure, others a little off-beat and off-key, the way children often sing. I stood quietly in the shade and observed them.

  The cake table was being emptied. Some children went to take an extra serving. Daiyu was one of them. She was wearing a light blue jumpsuit with short trouser legs, and her hair was put up with clips. Her shoes were tight and shone brightly in the sun; they looked hot. She stood at the cake table and took a piece. Put a piece of cake on her plate. One of the very biggest. Then she found a fork and went to sit with the parents.

  Another child came forward to the table. A boy. Wei-Wen. My Wei-Wen. What was he doing here? He took a piece of cake as well. A big piece, even bigger than Daiyu’s.

  And then he left.

  No, I thought, not the cake. Don’t take it.

  But he slipped away from me, always with the cake in his hand, slipped away among the people, then he appeared again. I had to reach him before he took a bite. He must not eat any of the cake. Must not. I was an adult now, following after him, jogging, clearing the way in front of me, caught a glimpse of him anew, but then he disappeared again, turned up, disappeared. The party grew around me, there were more and more people.

  His red scarf in the crowd, a patch, in the distance.

  And yet again he slipped away.

  I was awakened by the train driving into a large, dark and run-down railway station. Beijing.

  GEORGE

  We were in the motel room. The walls of the room were a pale yellow and the wall-to-wall carpeting was stained. We sat there immersed in the smell of mothballs and mildew.

  Outside the window was a wall of water. Not the kind of light, cozy rain shower that left behind a sweet fragrance and twittering birds. No. This was rainy weather of biblical proportions, as it’s called. Even on the fifth day. I began to wonder whether there was somebody out there who had it in for me, if maybe I should be building an ark.

  Tom was leaving the next day. He had his nose in a book, highlighting with a neon-yellow marker. The sound of the marker was the only sound in the room. Over and over. You’d think he needed to highlight every single word in the book.

  There was nowhere to go. The room had seemed large when we got it, I’d asked for a suite, since both of us were staying here, but it had shrunk dramatically over the past few days. Just one window and a view of the back alley. The two queen-size beds took up way too much space. I sat on one of them, the one closest to the wall, the bedspread with a large floral pattern rolled up underneath me. I was already tired of looking at the two pictures on the wall, a field of flowers and a lady in one, a boat in the other, the glass not quite clean, plenty of fingerprints in the middle of the lady’s face. Tom had taken the group of chairs by the window. His books covered the entire table, and next to him was his bag full of things for school.

  Come to think of it, he’d been sitting like that most of the time. Not that there was much of anything else to do, but still. There wasn’t a trace of interest. Not in the bees, not in the rain, either. He could have allowed himself to get worked up—get irritated, yell, but he just read. Read and highlighted with fat neon-colored markers. Pink, yellow, green. It seemed as if he had a kind of system, because the markers were lined up in a tidy row in front of him on the table and he alternated between them.

  I jumped when the telephone rang. I stood up. Lee’s number lit up on the screen.

  “Yes?”

  “Anything new?”

  “Not in the last half hour, no.”

  “I checked another weather report,” Lee said. “They predicted good weather starting this afternoon.”

  “And the other five you checked?”

  “More rain.” His voice was flat.

  “Guess there’s some things we can’t control,” I said.

  “Is there . . . ?” He hesitated. “Is there any chance you could stay a few more days?”

  We’d been through this before, but he’d never asked so directly.

  “I’ve booked the cars for the way back already. And the crew.”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t say anything else, knew that it wasn’t possible.

  “It’ll let up soon,” I said, trying to sound like my mother.

  “Yes.”

  “And a day or two, give or take, won’t make a big difference.”

  “No.”

  We were silent. Just heard the rain tumbling down out there, and car tires splashing through the puddles.

  “I think I’ll go out there now,” he said suddenly.

  “Really?”

  “Just to check.”

  “I was out there this morning. They’re inside. Nothing’s happening.”

  “No, but still.”

  “Do as you like, they’re your bees.”

  He laughed softly, but there wasn’t much joy to be heard in his laughter.

  Then we hung up.

  Tom looked up from his book.

  “Why don’t you just tell it like it is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious that this will have an impact on his crop.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “He’s an adult, he can handle hearing the truth.”

  He put the cap on the marker with a decided click. The click, the way he did it, made me itch inside. And his words—he expressed himself like a fifty-year-old professor.

&nb
sp; “I thought you were studying,” I said.

  “I’m done now.”

  “Like you weren’t listening to my phone calls.”

  “Jesus, Dad. We’re ten feet away from each other.”

  “And how come you have so many opinions all of a sudden?”

  “Excuse me?”

  The itch was horrible. I couldn’t sit still.

  “Excuse me?” I mimicked. “After having loafed around for a week, you’re suddenly getting involved?”

  He stood up. He was taller than me.

  “I haven’t been loafing around. I’ve been working. Every time I’ve had the chance, I’ve been lifting and sweating more than you have. And you know it.”

  “But you didn’t want to.”

  I took a step towards him. He backed up automatically, but maybe he noticed it himself, because all of a sudden he stood up straight and placed his feet soundly on the floor.

  “I never claimed to be very interested. You were the one who asked me to come with you, remember?”

  “Kind of hard to forget.”

  He fell silent. Just looked at me. A penny for his thoughts.

  Then all of a sudden he came out with it: “Can you describe Jimmy and Rick for me, Dad?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are they like? Describe them for me.”

  “Jimmy and Rick? When did you get so interested in them?”

  “I’m not that interested in them. But if I ask you to describe them, you’d have a lot to say, right?”

  I just looked at him.

  “I know lots about them, too,” he continued. “Just because I’ve heard you talk about them. And about Lee, too. I know what they like, what they do in their free time, even what they’re afraid of. Because you’ve told me.” His voice was gentler now, softer. “That Rick doesn’t have a girlfriend, for instance. And Jimmy, I’ve heard enough about him to know that you actually wonder whether he’s playing for the other team.”

  I was about to answer, say something about Jimmy, but didn’t know exactly what to say. Because strictly speaking this had nothing to do with either Jimmy or Rick. I understood that Tom was going somewhere with all of this, but I didn’t know where. It was as if he’d pushed my brain into a can and was shaking it hard.

  “How would you describe me, then?” he asked.

  “You?”

  “Yes. What do I like? What am I good at? What am I afraid of?”

  “You’re my son,” I said.

  He sighed. Smiled, almost scornfully.

  We just stood there looking at each other. The itchiness was getting intense.

  Then his gaze broke away from mine. He walked towards the bag of books.

  “If we’re not going to do anything anyway, I’ll get started on my history.”

  He picked up a thick, dark blue book. I could just make out Big Ben on the cover.

  Then he sat down, turning the chair around so that the back faced me.

  I wished I had a really thick book to read myself. And a chair to turn around. Or most of all a really smart comeback at the ready. But he’d gotten me now. I was speechless.

  An hour passed, maybe an hour and a half, before the rain let up. The sky cleared up into something that wasn’t exactly blue, but at least a little less intensely gray than what we’d seen the last few days. Lee’s seventh weather report had clearly been onto something.

  Tom finally put his book down. Got up and pulled on a jacket. “I’m going out for a walk.”

  “You can’t take the car.”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  “I might need it.”

  “I know. I won’t take the car.”

  “Fine.”

  He was about to open the door when the telephone rang again. It was Lee. He asked us to come right away.

  TAO

  I found a hotel that was open right by the railway station. Run-down and empty, but cheap. Across the street there was a restaurant that served simple, inexpensive food. I went in and treated myself to a hot meal today, knew that I couldn’t afford one every day, at least not if the money was going to last for more than a week. And I had no idea how long I would have to stay here. Until I found him. I wasn’t leaving until I found him.

  A young boy put a plate down in front of me. Fried rice—that was all they had at this family-run place. It was the father who did the cooking, the boy told me while serving me. Nobody but the two of them worked here.

  I was the only customer in the large restaurant. I hadn’t seen many people on the street, either. Everything was different from what I remembered. The noisy, intense city was gone. Most of the houses were vacated now, the roads quiet. There was no basis for survival here anymore. I knew that many had been forced to move away to other parts of the country, where more hands were needed for agriculture, but the complete silence surprised me all the same. The city had grown and developed to a certain point, then everything had come to a halt, and was now deteriorating. Like an old person approaching death. More and more alone, more and more quiet, at a pace that slowed with every passing day. The only place with the lights on was the little restaurant right across the street from the hotel; otherwise the street was deserted.

  I pulled the chair closer to the table. The sound of the legs against the floor sounded hollow and strident in the empty establishment. The waiter stood by the table waiting as I ate. He was young, no more than eighteen, and skinny. His hair was longish; it looked as if it had been a long time since his last haircut. He wore his uniform with a youthful negligence, and moved lightly and casually. In a schoolyard he would have been someone you’d want to be seen with. Someone who didn’t need to try, someone whom nature had given that little something extra. He was the kind of adolescent who should have had a group of friends around him.

  He noticed that I was observing him. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he stuck them quickly behind his back.

  “Is the food to your liking?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Sorry we don’t have any of the dishes on the menu.”

  “That’s fine. I wouldn’t be able to afford them anyway,” I said, smiling. He smiled back and seemed relieved; perhaps he understood that we were in the same situation.

  “Is it usually so empty here?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The past few years that’s how it’s been.”

  “What do you live on?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Some people come in from time to time. And we’ve sold some of the utensils and equipment.” He nodded towards the kitchen, where his father was doing the dishes. “All of the good knives, a meat grinder, some pots, the big stove. That will do for a while. We have worked out that we have enough money to manage until November.”

  He fell silent, thinking no doubt the same thing I was. What would they do after that?

  “Why are you still here?” I said.

  He started to wipe invisible dust off a table.

  “When everyone we knew was forced to leave, we were allowed to stay because we run a restaurant with a long history. Father struggled for months to get permission.” He rolled up the rag, squeezed it. “I remember how happy he was when he came home and had finally gotten confirmation that we didn’t have to move. And wouldn’t have to leave our home.”

  “But what about now?”

  He looked away.

  “Now it’s too late. Now we’re here.”

  He tugged a little at his bristly hair. Reminded me suddenly of Wei-Wen. He was so young, this boy, perhaps even younger that I’d first thought, just fourteen or fifteen years old. At the growing age.

  I pushed the plate towards him.

  “You take the rest. I’ve had enough.”

  “No.” He looked at me in confusion. “You’ve paid for it.”

  “I’m full.”

  I handed him the chopsticks.

  “Go ahead. Sit down.”

  He stole a glance at his father in the kitchen, but he
wasn’t paying attention to us out here. Then the boy quickly pulled out the chair, sat down and grabbed the chopsticks. As quickly as a dog, he ate the rice, like Wei-Wen when he had wolfed down the plums. But all of a sudden he stopped and looked up, as if embarrassed by my attention. I smiled at him in encouragement. He began eating again, clearly trying to slow down. I stood up to leave, wanting to leave him alone.

  But then he stood up as well.

  “Just sit,” I said and walked towards the door.

  “Yes.” He stood there, hesitating. “No.”

  He came towards me.

  I put my hand on the door handle and was about to open it. I looked at him, didn’t quite understand.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  “There.” I pointed across the street at the hotel.

  He came over to me, looked out at the street. Not a vehicle in sight, no people, no life of any kind.

  “I’ll stand here until you’re inside.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll stand here, the whole time.”

  He spoke with a conscientious gravity on his young face.

  “Thank you.”

  I opened the door and left. The street was deserted. There was a smell of damp brick, dust and something slightly spoiled. A husk of a city. Dilapidated facades. There was a battered information screen hanging on a wall. The first ten seconds of a film played over and over. Li Xiara, the leader of the Committee, intoning about community and moderation, perhaps. The message was gone because the soundtrack had stopped working long ago but her moderated voice was ingrained in my head after all of these years. The shops were all closed and had bars in front of the doors. Broken windows. Only shades of brown and gray. No colors left, as if everything was covered by fog. And a huge, heavy silence.

  I turned around when I’d crossed the street. Yes, he was still standing there. He nodded towards the hotel, as if he wanted me to hurry inside.

  GEORGE

  Lee was hanging over the hives trying to tidy up. Even though he was hidden by coveralls, a hat and veil, I could see he was upset. Four hives were turned upside down on the ground. A big cloud of bees, confused, homeless, angry, hovered above the hives in the humid air following the rain.