by Maja Lunde
No near-gale howled any longer through the streets driving customers to the shop. The novelty had definitively worn off and half the day had already passed without anyone coming by. The large orders of seed corn were long since completed, now it was mostly spices and seeds for fast-growing plants, such as lettuce and radishes.
I ate a few more bites, although the pie was too salty. I drank lukewarm water from a dipper to alleviate it, but it didn’t help much.
Then I walked to the door. The afternoon carriage from the capital drove down the street. The diligence stopped at the end and people streamed outside, but nobody came in my direction.
I nodded to the saddler who was standing outside in the sun greasing a saddle, smiled politely at the wheelwright who rolled a new wheel out of the workshop, briefly greeted my former employee Alberta, who was carrying two large rolls of cloth into the dry-goods shop, all of them hardworking ants, with their hands full. Even Alberta was clearly managing to make herself a little useful, with rolling hips and rapid feet, saying hello right and left, while she stepped lightly up the stairway.
“Mr. Savage.” She smiled in my direction.
Then she hesitated for a second; evidently something had occurred to her. “I have something you have to taste! Wait a minute.”
She disappeared quickly into the shop with the rolls of fabric. Shortly afterwards she came out again with a bundle in one hand.
She stood in front of me. I could smell the scent of her. It made me unwell.
“What’s this about? I have a great deal to do.”
“I hear that you’ve begun with bees,” she said and smiled with crooked teeth behind lips a little too moist.
I was suddenly reminded of Swammerdam’s sea monster, but pushed the thought away.
“My father also keeps bees. He has five hives. Look here.” She held up the bundle. “You can have a taste. It’s the very best.”
Without waiting for an invitation she walked into the shop. She laid the bundle down on the counter and undid the knot. It contained a loaf of bread and a small pot of honey. She held it up, looked at it and smacked her lips loudly. “Come.” She waved for me to come closer.
Her skin was rough, spotty, on her chin two pimples were pushing their way to the surface. How old was she now? Well over twenty at least. Both her hands and face showed that she had already spent too many working hours in the sun.
She gave me a piece of bread. The honey, not translucent, but rather a cloudy color, coiled over the slice, oozed out and down into the bread.
“Taste it!”
She took a large bite herself.
The smell of honey, of her and of a half-eaten Swammer pie on the counter turned my stomach. Nonetheless, compelled by my upbringing, out of foolish courtesy, I took a bite.
I nodded as it swelled in my mouth.
“Very good.”
I chewed while I tried not to think about the brood and larvae that were in the honey, crudely pressed out of the straw hive.
She kept her eyes on me at all times while she ate. Finally she licked the honey off her fingers, excessively, with a self-assurance verging on the ridiculous. “Lovely. Now it’s time to do a bit of work.”
At long last she walked out, although walked . . . Her hips undulated out the door, I was unable to refrain from looking at them and ended up just standing there, in the middle of the floor.
Then she was finally gone. I took two steps around myself, breathing rapidly. A drop of honey remained on the counter. I wiped it away quickly, trying to erase it from my mind, along with her, the moist lips, the pimples, the almost obscene movement her midsection performed with every tiny gesture she made. Hips I could pound up against, as if she were earth. But I restrained myself. I took control. Even if it would require all the strength I had.
The only chair in the shop beckoned me. I stumbled over to it, placed my expanded backside on the seat. I crossed my hands over my abdomen as if to hold myself in place.
I just sat there and breathed deeply. Several minutes passed, the fever in me cooled down, the nausea subsided. Yes, I was able to control myself.
It was hot, a strip of sunlight revealed dust particles in the air right in front of me. They moved calmly, suspended weightlessly in the air. I pursed my lips and blew at them. They leapt away, but stabilized again with surprising quickness.
I blew again, harder this time. They flew away this time, too, before quickly reverting to their former shapeless existence, so light that nothing could fetter them. I tried focusing on them one by one. But my eyes stung. There were too many.
So I shifted my attention to the entirety. But there was no whole, just infinite amounts of uncontrollable dust particles.
It was no use. Not even that. They defeated me. Not even this was something I could control.
And so I sat, completely overpowered. An impotent child once again.
I was ten years old. Streaks of sunlight shone through the foliage in the forest, spreading a golden tint over it all, everything was yellow. I sat on the ground. The soil that throbbed up from beneath me was warm and damp through my trousers. Motionless, with intense concentration I sat there, in front of the anthill: at first glance, a blessed chaos. Every single creature so tiny and insignificant, it was inconceivable how they could have built a hill that almost towered over me. But with time I understood more and more. Because I never grew weary, I could sit for hours and watch them. They moved in clear patterns. Carried, put down and retrieved. It was meticulous and peaceful work, systematic, instinctive, hereditary. And work that was not about each individual, but about the community. Individually they were nothing, but together they were the anthill, as if it were a single, living creature.
Something was awakened in me when I understood this, a warmth unlike any other, a fervor. Every day I tried to get my father to come with me, in here, in the yellow wood. I wanted so much to show him what they had accomplished, what such small creatures could manage together. But he just laughed. An anthill? Leave it in peace. Do something useful, lend a hand, let’s see what you’re made of.
That’s how it had been on this day, too. He had mocked me, and again I was here alone.
All of a sudden I discovered something, a breach in the system. A beetle had crept up on the outside of the hill, where the sun was shining. It was of monstrous proportions compared to the ants. The sunlight reached down between the trees and a ray hit the beetle’s back. It stood completely still now. A space opened up around it, none of the ants walked past, they left it alone, they continued with their purposeful work. Nothing more happened.
But then I became aware of an ant on its way towards the beetle; it broke away from the customary patterns, was no longer a part of the whole.
And it was carrying something.
I squinted. What was it? What was it carrying?
Larvae. Ant larvae. Now more of them were coming, more of them broke the pattern and they all brought the same thing. They were all carrying their own children.
I leaned closer to look. The ants dropped the larvae in front of the beetle. It stood still for a moment, rubbing its front legs against each other. Then it started to eat.
The beetle’s jaws worked furiously. I leaned over as closely as I could. The larvae disappeared into its mouth, one after the next. The ants stood in a long row, ready to serve the beetle their own offspring. I wished I could look away, but was unable to keep myself from watching.
Another larva, down into its mouth. And the ants waited, they had interrupted their usual patterns, liberated themselves from the whole to carry out this atrocity.
They crawled on me, within me. My cheeks became red hot, the blush spread through my whole body, the blood reached every part of me. I didn’t want to see, became unwell, but was unable to stop myself. To my astonishment I felt a pumping sensation beneath the fly of my trousers. A sensation I had only barely discerned previously, but which was suddenly all-consuming. I squeezed my thighs together, squeezed around
what had grown hard. Another larva was crushed between the jaws of the beetle. The wide-set eyes glistened, the antennae moved. I lay down on my stomach, flat on the ground, striking against the earth, thought my trousers would be soiled and ruined, but was unable to stop. At the same time, there were waves of nausea inside me, because the larvae were killed. They disappeared into the beetle’s bowels. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. And it aroused me.
While I was lying there and pounding hard against the earth, I heard footsteps behind me, my father’s steps. He’d come after all, he stopped and he observed, but didn’t see anything of what I wanted to show him. He just saw me, the child I was and my infinitely great shame.
This moment, me on the ground. My father’s initial astonishment, subsequently his laughter, short and cold, was without joy and full of loathing, of scorn.
Look at you. You are pathetic. Shameful. Primitive.
It was worse than everything else, even worse than the belt I had a taste of when evening came and the glaring pain across my back all through the night. I just wanted to show him, explain to him and share my enthusiasm, but all he could see was my shame.
GEORGE
I drove down to the center of Autumn. Well, center is a bit of an overstatement. Autumn was actually just a single intersection. A northbound highway met another heading east, and there were a few houses gathered there. I didn’t have a lot of gas left, but didn’t fill up. Never more than half a tank. It was a new gimmick I’d come up with. And I drove until the tank was empty. As if it cost less to fill up an empty tank halfway than a half-full tank all the way.
The disappearances had been given a name now. Colony Collapse Disorder. It was on everyone’s lips. I tried it out. The words rotated through my head. There was a rhythm to them, and the same letters. The Cs and the Os and the Ls and the Ss. A little rhyme, Colony Collapse Disorder. Dilony Collapse Collorder, Cillono Dollips Cylarder, and something medical about the whole thing, as if it belonged in a room with white coats and intensive care equipment, not out in my field with the bees. Still, I never used those words. They weren’t mine. Instead, I said the disappearances, or the problems, or—if I was in a bad mood, and quite often I was—the damn trouble.
There was a narrow space between a green pickup and a black SUV in front of the bank. I looked around—no other spaces on the rest of the street. I pulled the car up right against the green pickup and tried backing in. I’ve never liked parallel parking; I’m not much of a man when it comes to that, so I avoid it as much as possible. Don’t think Emma knows how terrible I am at it, even. But I had to go to the bank. Today. Had put it off for too long already. Lost money with each passing day, every day without hives out there in the sun among the flowers.
I pulled the wheel all the way to the side, backed up until the car was halfway past the pickup. Then I pulled the wheel back and kept backing up.
Completely crooked. Almost on the sidewalk.
Out again.
A lady walked past, staring at me. Suddenly I felt like a teenager, a greenhorn behind the wheel.
I tried one more time, took a deep breath. Took it easy, twisted the wheel all the way, backed up slowly, halfway, and straightened out.
Shit!
The space was too small, that was the problem. I pulled out, drove into the middle of the street and set out for the parking lot a little down the road. Parking like this right in front of the bank was just laziness, we were too lazy in this country. I was perfectly capable of walking.
In the rearview mirror I saw a huge Chevrolet come rolling up. It slid into place in the too-narrow space in a single movement.
The air-conditioning was like a wall I had to break through when I opened the door to the bank. I was still shaking a little from the parallel parking crisis, but shoved my hands into my pockets.
Allison sat behind her desk, tapping on the computer, as usual. She had the sense to dress like a lady, flowery blouse, freshly ironed, against freckled, young skin, perfectly green eyes. She looked clean, smelled clean, too. She looked up and smiled with toothpaste-white teeth.
“George. Hi, how are you?”
She always made me feel a little special, Allison. As if I were her absolute favorite bank customer. She was good at her job, in other words.
I settled into the chair in front of her desk. Sat on my hands, wanted to hide the shaking, but the wool fabric of the chair made my palms itch. I took them out again. Put them in my lap, where I managed to keep them still.
“Been a long time.” Her teeth sparkled at me.
“Yeah. Been a while.”
“Everything fine with you guys?”
“Not as fine as it should be.”
“Oh dear, no. Sorry. I’ve heard.”
The row of pearls disappeared suddenly behind her soft, young lips.
“But I hope you can help us out of the worst of the trouble,” I said and smiled.
No sign of her showing more of those pretty teeth, unfortunately. She just looked at me gravely.
“I will of course do my very best.”
“Your best. Can’t ask for more than that.” I laughed. Suddenly noticed I was showing off a little, stuck my hands under my thighs again.
“OK.” She turned towards the screen. “Let’s see. Here you are.”
She was quiet. Looked over the account. The sight didn’t exactly make her jump into the air with enthusiasm.
“What did you have in mind?” she said.
“Well. It would have to be a loan.”
“Yes. How much?”
I told her the amount.
The freckles on her nose jumped. The answer came without a trace of consideration.
“I can’t do it, George.”
“Golly. Can you at least do the calculations?”
“No. I can tell you right away that I can’t do it.”
“OK. Can you talk to Martin, then?”
Martin was her boss. The type who shied away from conflicts, not one to end up in a bar brawl, to put it that way. Mostly stayed in his office. Just came out every once in a great while, when large sums of money were to be assessed and signed for—I knew that from Jimmy, who had just taken out a mortgage on a house. Martin had less hair every time I saw him. I glanced towards him, where he was seated behind his glass wall. The bald spot shone in the glare of the ceiling light.
“There’s no point. Trust me,” she said.
A lump rose insistently in my throat. Should I sit here and beg? Was that what she wanted? She was almost twenty years younger than me. Emma used to babysit for her once upon a time. Delicate as a little fairy, who’d believe that she’d grow up to become a ball-breaker?
“Honestly, Allison.”
“But George. Do you really need that much?”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet her green eyes from across the desk.
“The entire operation is down,” I said quietly to the floor.
“But . . .” She was quiet for a while, thinking. “Can’t we look at how we can get it up and running again without your needing to make such big investments?”
I had the urge to roar, but didn’t answer. She didn’t know shit about beekeeping.
“Where are the majority of your expenses, would you say?”
“Manpower, of course. I have two men working for me, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“And then there’s running costs. Feed. Gas, that kind of thing.”
“But now? Investments you must make?”
“New hives. We had to burn a lot.”
She chewed on a ballpoint pen.
“OK. And what does a hive cost?”
“Materials. Hard to say. They have to be built.”
“Built?”
“Yes. I build them from scratch. Every single one. Except for the queen excluder, that is.”
“The queen excluder?”
“Yes. The part that’s put between . . . Never mind.”
She took the pen out. H
er teeth had left marks on the top. If she chewed harder, she’d crack the plastic, get ink on those white teeth of hers. That would be something. Blue ink on white teeth, on the freshly ironed blouse, on soft lips, like clumsy Halloween makeup.
“But . . .” She reconsidered. “I’ve seen Gareth Green have hives delivered. I mean, I’ve seen them arrive, on a truck. Ready to go.”
“That’s because Gareth orders them,” I said clearly, as if I were talking to a child.
“Is that more expensive than building them?”
She put the pen down. Apparently she wasn’t going to give me the pleasure of soiling her clean appearance.
The lump pushed its way upwards. Soon it would reach the point where it was no longer possible to hide it.
“I just mean,” she continued and revealed once again the white teeth, as if this were just so amusing, “that perhaps you can save some money by ordering them. And time. Time is money, too. Don’t build them yourself any longer.”
“I understood that,” I said quietly. “I understood that’s what you meant.”
WILLIAM
When I finally managed to move again, it was completely dark. The street outside was quiet, with the exception of yelling from the tavern a little way down the street. A sad place, cramped and oppressive, where the village tosspots met night after night and drank themselves senseless. Some ran past, on the way out of there, shadows across the window, howling and singing, rude laughter, which became gradually fainter the further away they got.
I was cold. The room had grown chilly, the evening air flooded through the door, which I hadn’t gotten around to closing before falling asleep. My neck was stiff, my head had toppled towards my chest and my shirtfront was damp with saliva.
I stood up, stiff and sore, hurried to the door and quickly closed it.
