The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

  “Leave it on until I return.”

  My papa had been planning to go fetch my sisters by train from Monterrey when the news reached him that Governor Zambrano and the public health authorities had ordered a quarantine across the northern part of the country and the closure of public places, including the schools. The railway service had also now been suspended.

  “I’ll go in the car before they close the roads on us. No one must leave the hacienda,” he reiterated.

  In those days, there was no road like this one—wide, paved, and free of potholes. With the poor state of the rural lanes between the two towns, it would take him many more hours to arrive by car than it took by train. But there was no train, and nothing would deter him: he was intent on bringing Carmen and Consuelo back from Monterrey.

  Later, he would tell my mama that, driving through the streets of Linares that morning with the car windows firmly shut, it was as if he were passing through a ghost town, as if life had ended. The streets were devoid of living people, but there were shrouded bodies dumped in front of houses, some of them dear friends. He saw that the stray dogs, normally wary after a long education of kicks and beatings, were now beginning to lose their usual caution: they were sniffing around the bundles, attracted by the smell of death. It would not be long before they made up their minds to dig into the feast that the Spanish flu had left for them.

  So he stopped, the only time he would dare do so in the entire journey. Afterward, he would admit that, before plucking up the courage to open the door, he had taken a deep breath and held in the air, for two reasons: fear that the infection was alive in the Linares air in search of new victims, and fear that the streets would smell of dead townspeople. He did not want to live the rest of his life with that memory.

  With his lungs full of the clean air from his car, holding his breath, he climbed out with the .22-caliber rifle he always kept under the seat and fired three well-aimed shots. The five surviving dogs fled, frightened by the bangs or because they did not wish to share the fate of their partners in crime. He allowed them to scamper away, struggling because the air stored in his lungs was running out but satisfied he had scared them off for the time being. They would be back, he knew. The sickly sweet smell of decomposing flesh would embolden them.

  As he returned to the car, he saw Vicente López—the only living inhabitant of the town he came across—turn the corner and approach with the cart already half-full. They waved at each other. The gravedigger collected the bodies my papa had protected from being devoured and then lifted the dead dogs onto the cart as well. Only then did my papa continue his journey, speeding away and hoping the dogs would not end up in the same grave as the humans.

  The road to Monterrey, already long and difficult at the best of times, had never seemed so punishing to him, worried as he was for poor Simonopio and for the well-being of my sisters. He knew they might have already been infected in the communal living space of the boarding school, but he didn’t care. If anyone in his family had to die or if they all had to die, they would do so together.

  When he arrived at the Sagrado Corazón, only a few pupils remained. He didn’t let my sisters pack or say goodbye to anybody. Though they were still dressed in their uniforms, he made them get in the car, and they set off.

  It is easy to imagine that Carmen sat calmly in the car, content with the arbitrary decision, while Consuelo made my poor papa’s head spin all the way home with her grumbling and fussing. About what? I don’t know. About anything. She always found a reason to be unhappy and would make it known to whoever would listen. Imprisoned in the car, my papa would have had no escape. But that wasn’t what happened. Well, Consuelo was true to character, but Carmen surprised everyone. From comments made years later—reliable accounts of the event—it is known that Consuelo arrived home in a foul temper, and Carmen, far from exhibiting her usual equanimity, was angry, punishing my papa with her silence. What’s more, to my papa’s surprise, she had been the one to berate him most for ordering them to come back with him like little girls.

  To make matters worse, as they drove into Linares, my father informed them of his latest decision: they would not go near the dying town. Avoiding the most densely populated streets so his young daughters wouldn’t have to stare death in the face, he explained to them that, when they arrived home, the whole family would pack what they needed to relocate to Hacienda La Florida for a while, in the hope that the disease would not reach them there.

  “For how long, Papa?”

  “As long as necessary. Until people stop dying. Or stop falling ill.”

  My sisters had grown accustomed to living through one catastrophe after another, but not to life stopping altogether. They could barely remember a time without war, and yet they knew that every year they would plant crops, in spite of it, and later they would harvest crops if there was anything to harvest, regardless of the threat of a famished battalion passing through. People also carried on with their plans as much as possible: despite the war—and our parents always told them there was nothing worse than a war—there were weddings, births, baptisms. There were parties and days in the country. If an army was known to be prowling the surrounding area, people would stay close to home, but they would still go out to do their shopping. The milk reached the houses without fail, and friends met in the afternoon for a snack. That was the life they knew: the one that stopped for nothing. Not even for the death of a beloved grandparent.

  At their age, they were still strangers to the pain and irreversibility of death, for although they had attended the burial of their grandpa Mariano Cortés, the grown-ups had protected their feelings—the naive sensibilities of young children—from the violence of his death almost four years earlier. In their juvenile minds—for juvenile minds have evolved very little since the first adolescent existed—Grandpa had died because he was a grandpa, and old people die because it’s natural for them to die, while young people live forever and are immune to everything.

  Now it seemed as if an eternity had passed since Grandpa Mariano’s death, just as the days they would spend without seeing their friends in Monterrey or Linares because of their father’s whim would seem eternal.

  Because it seemed—and they had complained at length about it to each other—that our father announced and feared many calamities that had yet to happen, such as the threat that an army of bandits passing through would steal all the pretty young women, which was why he had sent them to board at the nuns’ school in Monterrey. Or the threat that men might come one day to snatch their lands from them by law or force. Time passed, and as yet, none of that had happened. Maybe the Spanish flu was just another of these catastrophizing exaggerations.

  Our father was firm: they would not see their friends even to say hello. There would be no trips to the square. There would be no parties. He knew they thought they would die of boredom in their exile on the remote hacienda. But he also knew they would survive the tedium and, with a little more luck, the epidemic as well.

  In an attempt to be kind and patient, as they climbed out of the car, my papa told them that they could read as much as they wished at La Florida.

  “You can even read that novel you like so much, that one about heights.”

  His well-meaning comment was not well received by either of them: since he had not given them time to pack, he had forced them to leave behind not only Wuthering Heights but also their new favorite novel, Emma. And no, they had no desire for him to lend them any of his books—who was interested in reading A Tale of Two Cities?

  My mama used to say that the moment Simonopio heard my papa coming into the house and irritably informing my sisters that Dickens’s novel contained romance, too, and not just killing, he woke up, alert and free of fever or weakness.

  And that was that: one minute he was motionless, burning up; the next it was as if the last few days of unconsciousness and convulsions had never happened.

  My papa, delighted to see the boy cured thanks to the wisdom of his
grandmother, instructed them to continue the treatment for a few more hours to prevent a relapse. Then he left to organize the family’s relocation and speak to the workers who lived with their families on the hacienda. He could do nothing for the people who lived in the town, but he could save as many lives as possible. If they had not visited Linares in the last two days, they were welcome to travel with the family, he told them. They would find a way to house them all on La Florida, where, with luck, all the families would be far enough away from the sickly air of Linares. The men would make the short journey each day between the two haciendas to tend to the sugarcane and other crops on both, but they would not visit the town or have contact with anybody from Linares.

  When he finished his speech, Lupita was waiting for him.

  “Doña Reja says Simonopio can’t stand his little chest wrap any longer.”

  “Well, he’d better stand it.”

  The family moved to La Florida the next day. All the workers decided to go with them.

  We now know that the epidemic lasted three months, but on the day they covered all the furniture in sheets, when they locked the windows and doors, my family did not know when they would return or if they ever would. The house had never been left unoccupied, even when the family spent a few days on another hacienda.

  This would be the first time they left it abandoned.

  I managed to grasp what my mama was saying when she admitted, years later, that when the last door was bolted, her heart had tightened in her chest until it squeezed tears from her eyes, hidden but painful tears.

  They were leaving behind the house, and they were also leaving behind mementos such as photographs, my sisters’ childhood clothes, the tea set my mama had inherited from her grandmother, the English dinner service she had bought on her only trip to Europe with her father, and her Singer sewing machine.

  But her tears were not for the house or for the things. That abandonment hurt, though she knew that the house, with everything that filled it, would be there waiting for them when they decided to return. But that final bolt marked something worse: their abandonment of the town’s people, of her two brothers, of all their cousins and aunts and uncles, of her fellow club members, of the family’s friends. Their abandonment of all the people who gave Linares life. Who would still be there when they were finally able to return?

  My mama’s tears, which she quickly got under control, came to her eyes because, that day, it was as if the world were ending.

  After locking up, they turned away from the house and did not turn back. My sisters were already waiting for them in the car. They had my grandmother with them, of course, and all the domestic staff and almost all the hacienda workers traveled in other vehicles with their families.

  Only Anselmo Espiricueta and his family were missing from that caravan of one car, four carts, and a pickup truck.

  To my papa’s great displeasure, he learned from another campesino that Espiricueta had obeyed the order to stay on the hacienda to guard the entrance, but keen smoker that he was, he had sent his wife to the grocery store in the center of Linares the day before to buy tobacco and rolling papers. Knowing that Espiricueta’s family, as unsociable and unfriendly as they were, always kept its distance from the rest of his workers’ families, my papa felt there was little danger that any infection had spread to the rest of them. But he did not think it prudent to take the Espiricuetas to live in the close proximity that awaited at La Florida. They would stay on La Amistad. My papa wished them luck and good health, but Espiricueta did not accept his good wishes.

  “You won’t take us, but you take Simonopio. He’s the sick one. He’s the one who brought the disease.”

  “Still on about that? Simonopio had something different, and he’s better now. You knew the danger and knew my orders: you should not have allowed your wife to leave, let alone ask her to go to town and run an errand for you. Had you followed my instructions, you would have had to shoot her rather than let her return.”

  “Then maybe I shoulda shot you, Señor, when you came with your daughters.”

  For the rest of her life, my mama rued my papa’s overly patient decision not to respond to that seditious comment, taking it as nothing more than a rash outburst.

  “This is only going to get worse, Anselmo. Here on the hacienda you have provisions. For you and your family’s own good, forget about your tobacco, because as things are, that vice of yours is going to kill everyone.”

  And after this declaration, he turned around and climbed into the car that would lead the caravan of people and supplies.

  Out in the open for the first time in days, Simonopio traveled in the first cart behind my family’s automobile. My papa had finally given in and allowed him to take off the mustard sinapism but told him that he had to remain lying down for the whole journey. Martín drove the cart with Trinidad, one of the campesinos, accompanying him. Nana Reja sat beside Simonopio, silent and with her eyes closed as always. Pola, Lupita, and the rocking chair were also with them, of course.

  My parents spent the whole journey between the adjoining haciendas discussing Simonopio’s illness and sudden recovery. The discussion would continue for years, but they would never settle their doubts or get to the bottom of the mystery. My mama always took the view that it was no coincidence that the unexplained fever had struck Simonopio just as the Spanish flu gripped Linares, keeping her away from the town and preventing them from attending her friend Mercedes’s deadly wake or returning to town in the early days of the epidemic. The boy’s recovery also seemed suspect to her: What a coincidence that, as soon as you returned saying we were leaving Linares, he woke without a temperature. No aftereffects, no discomfort, she argued.

  “It was a miracle,” she insisted.

  My grandma Sinforosa, certain that such a declaration could come only from Rome, would always say, Ay, my girl! How? How could it be? And my sister Consuelo would say, Enough arguing! What does it matter?

  My papa could not think of any arguments to refute what my mama said, but he did not want to agree with her either. I suppose it would have meant getting into more discussions and questions that were hard to explain or grasp. It would have meant openly accepting that, aside from the strange circumstances of his birth and his arrival in the family and even aside from the inexplicable way that more and more bees followed him, Simonopio was not a normal boy. And so, all the way to the hacienda, my papa insisted, as he would insist for the rest of his life, that he had saved Simonopio’s life with a sinapism.

  15

  The Abandoned Body

  The day when the plague and death arrived in Linares, Simonopio woke very early feeling perfectly calm. Nothing had alerted him to what was coming: neither his bees nor the bright sun nor the cloudless skies. It was a beautiful fall day. An ordinary October day.

  Simonopio woke only with the certainty that the Morales girls would soon arrive for a long visit, and that was good.

  Later, worried that the red horse could twist its leg in a pothole, he ran to fill it with earth. He was pleased when he was able to get there in time; had it injured itself, the horse would never have recovered.

  Satisfied with his day’s good deed, he would have liked to have gone running up into the sierra, following his bees as far as he dared go, but his affection for Lupita kept him close. He did not want her day to be ruined because she had to wash the clothes twice, so he kept watch while Lupita sang and washed, for when she finished, the basket of clothes was going to fall onto the muddy ground while she was distracted, looking at Martín.

  What’s more, Simonopio knew that Martín was not right for Lupita. Not because he was a bad man; it was just that, as much as she wanted it, Lupita would get nowhere with him.

  To save her happiness that day, Simonopio would offer to carry the basket, knowing that she would not allow it, believing it too heavy a load for him. But Simonopio would insist in order to keep her attention, so she would not notice the presence of the man who made her mind
wander. And without the distraction, there would be no stumble, and she would not have to wash all the clothes a second time as a result.

  But then, with no warning, between a clean shirt and a dirty underskirt, he saw the new thing, the bad thing that was coming, so he forgot Lupita and abandoned her to her fate as she yelled, “Where’re you going, Simonopio?” from behind him, surprised by the suddenness of his departure.

  He ran without stopping down a path he rarely traveled toward the town square. That was where his godmother was, in the big house where people like her gathered.

  He knew that folks were looking at him as he passed, but he did not care: he had to get her out of there, he had to take her far away. So that she would live, he needed to get his godmother out of the town. The urgency he felt was great. Sometimes things were hazy at first, but with patience and time, everything would become clear. While he waited outside, he did not know whether there would be a fire, whether some army would pass through firing indiscriminately, or what. But looking around the square filled with people doing what they did every day, strolling in a leisurely, carefree way, he could not shake off the certainty that something terrible was about to happen.

  When he saw the ladies come out of the building, he knew: the pretty pregnant lady carried death inside her. She was poison that would kill whatever it touched. Poison that would kill even after she was dead. That very same day.

  He saw it. He saw death spread across the square, through the streets. He saw the bodies piled on top of one another on the full cart. He saw them cast outside the houses. He saw the street dogs feasting. He saw the deaths of the Morales family, one after the other. With them, he saw the end of the potential of the child that did not yet live.

  And he did not know what to do to stop it.

  When Simonopio approached his godmother, he was already hot and sweaty from running all the way there, from the anxiety. Beatriz interpreted his body heat as fever and was alarmed. Then he knew that his temperature would save many lives.