The window would be made whenever it was made, but he wanted to move in right away. Before he could lose his determination, he went straight to the shed to try to open the door. Rusted and swollen from neglect and years of disuse, the door would not budge. Simonopio could not manage it alone and had to persuade Martín to pluck up the courage to help him.
“All right, Simonopio; if I’m with you, I suppose they won’t attack me.”
His bees had never attacked anyone, with or without him, but he had no means to explain that to Martín. And, given what was coming in the future, he thought with some regret that it was convenient for people to have that misperception: Don’t go near Simonopio’s shed, or you’ll get stung to death by a bee or a thousand.
He had spent much of his life sitting in the shade of the protruding roof, keeping Nana Reja company, learning the lessons of life that the wind and the bees taught him. But that day, having repaired the door, Simonopio went inside the shed for the first time.
It was true that it needed a window, not just because of the darkness but also to get rid of the stuffy smell that had built up over the years. The floor was firm, covered in the dust that even the swollen door had been unable to keep out, and in two corners, a buildup of honey that the bees had allowed to escape had crystallized over the years.
None of it bothered him. He would leave the door open all day and let the fresh aroma of wild herbs clean the stagnant air imbued with the smell of men returning from work, oil for the plow, spilled kerosene, broken plant pots, rotten rope, old sacks both empty and filled with earth, scaffold boards, and rusty pieces of metal. To the rhythm of the rocking chair’s creak outside, where Nana Reja looked out, as ever, to the road and the hills, he dragged everything from the shed.
He left the stalactites and stalagmites of soft, crystalized amber honey intact in their corners. They belonged there.
On the last shelf was something that, at first glance in the half-light of the shed, Simonopio thought was a piece of canvas. On closer inspection, he noticed the canvas covered something: an enormous box. He could not move it by himself.
When he finally persuaded Martín to help again, Simonopio was surprised at the man’s alarm when he saw the box, and at first, he did not understand why he was so afraid. It seemed a very fine box to him, though he had not opened it. Then he hesitated. What if it was where Nana Pola had stored the nocturnal dolls? It was not nighttime, but it was quite dark inside the shed. He was afraid the conditions were conducive to the dolls coming to life, to them coming out to scare him.
Simonopio ran out behind Martín, frightened by the product of his imagination.
After regaining his breath and composure, Simonopio pulled on Martín’s sleeve to insist they go back in to finish the job. They also managed to recruit Leocadio for the task. Between the three of them, they brought the heavy box out into the daylight after eight years of being left forgotten in total darkness. Reluctantly, Leocadio and Martín recalled the day when they themselves had very carefully stored it in the shed on the instruction of the lady of the house.
They broke out in goose bumps.
To Simonopio, on the other hand, the box seemed very beautiful. He thought that, if nobody needed it, perhaps they would allow him to store some things in it—provided the dolls were not in there. If they were, he would have to find them another prison.
That was the first test of his courage: to open it and then evict its possible inhabitants. When, with resolve, he tried to lift the lid, Martín stopped him.
“Don’t. It’s for a dead body. If we open it, it might want us to fill it.”
Martín said nothing more on the subject to the boy: in a way, he associated the kid’s arrival in the world with that box, and he did not think it would be a good anecdote to relay. He covered the box and then asked Leocadio to help him hide it again in the depths of another storehouse, where no one’ll see it, compadre, just in case.
Simonopio knew about death. He saw it often in his stories about what would happen and in some that had already happened. But he had never seen a dead person’s box. He did not want it. And Martín was right not to want it, either: that box was for neither one of them.
He spent the rest of the day cleaning. That night, once he was tired but settled in, with his bed made and in position, his godmother Beatriz arrived to inspect the results of his hard work.
“You’re going to need a wardrobe and a chair, at least. And you need a window as soon as possible, Simonopio. What a dreadful smell! Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the house, at least until we finish the window and bathroom?”
He appreciated the offer but refused. His mind was set on that night being the first he would spend in his new sleeping quarters, though his godmother was right: with the door closed, the unpleasant smell of the years of airlessness had returned.
With the ventilation from the open door during the day and with the smell of the soaps and oils he had used, he had thought he had driven the stink away. But night had fallen, and he did not think it would be a good idea to sleep with the door ajar: it was his first time sleeping alone, even if Reja was still outside. He was afraid. Not knowing the words of Nana Pola’s blessing, he had to invent his own, but he was unsure whether it would prove to be as effective as the one that had protected him every night until then. He did not know whether his words would persuade witches, assorted animals, monsters, or dolls to go elsewhere.
Or whether the words would protect him from the coyote.
After he closed the door very carefully, the bad smells invaded his nose again. He thought it was possible that, after so many years living in one place, they were reluctant to move, to be lost in the open air until their essence was gone. Now, in self-defense, they were clinging to the porous plaster on the walls and the old timber beams of the roof, and if Simonopio did not resolve it soon, it would not be long before they found his sheets, pillow, and mattress to be the ideal vessels in which to prolong their existence in the space where they had been born.
Exhausted, lying on the bed that still smelled clean—but unable to sleep because, in the dark, one’s nose sharpens and something that smells bad begins to smell worse—Simonopio concentrated on breaking up the invasive stench. Before long, he was able to make out the individual smells. One by one, he tamed them with his nose in order to ignore them, until he came to the last one—one that, until then, all the other smells in concert had prevented him from detecting: the sweet scent of the enormous honeycomb his bees had built between the roof beams.
Now he felt comforted, because this was the smell that belonged to him. The one that he carried on his skin. The bees were glad of his presence and welcomed him, because he belonged there, too, with them, just like the crystalized honey formations.
For the time being, he escaped the fear he had been filled with. When he closed his eyes and opened not just his nose but also his ears, when he heard the vibration his bees gave off through the ceiling that covered and protected him, he reckoned he had made the right decision to take shelter there.
With his bees for company, he escaped the lingering memory of Espiricueta, the coyote in his story. Of Espiricueta with his stick, with his unfounded grudge, his threats, his dying land. Simonopio knew he would have time to grow and build strength for what would happen between them, and sleeping here was a good start. The next day, he would renew his efforts to follow his bees to the end of their daily journey, because it was important—he knew—that he understood what they searched for and what they would find before turning around to return home before nightfall. He did not know when he would do it, but he challenged himself to go a little farther each day. Guided by his bees, he would reach the end of the road.
Little by little, he forgot his doubts about how effective his blessing had been, because what better blessing could there be than to be under the protection of his bees?
And so, sleeping and growing under a living roof that gradually changed its rhythm and breathing to
match his—that was how Simonopio would conquer his fear.
28
A Journey of Thorns
Simonopio began his travels the next day, after resting better than he had managed in months: he would go in search of the treasure that awaited his bees every day of spring.
He knew that he would not find it right away, that it would take him a while to reach it, and that it would require a great deal of effort, for the strength and daring needed for such a journey would not be gained from one day to the next or just by wanting it.
The nearby paths he had explored over time had grown easier, but now he would have to go much farther, discover new trails and places. Make new paths.
What’s more, after three months without exploring the hills as he normally did, he paid dearly for the lost time.
For the bees’ path was not the path of men: while Simonopio took tentative steps, they flew over the thickets and thorns, without caring that there was no open road. The hollows between the sierras were no problem whatsoever for them; the slopes did not tire them; and the canyons—always difficult to negotiate for a two-legged animal like Simonopio—were no obstacle. If it rained on the way, they shook off the water. If the cold caught them unawares before they returned, they knew that, at the end of the day, they would be back in the warmth of their honeycomb, full of energy from their spring honey. They were never afraid, and nothing deterred them from their goal. Only death would stop them, and they did not mind dying in the act of completing their daily mission.
They had to complete the journey in one day, so they had no time to wait for him.
Simonopio, restricted by his human state and his young age, had to find or make passable trails, which slowed his progress. He also tired; he tripped, and when he fell, he cut his knees or hands. The rain soaked his clothes. The cold, when it came, seeped into his bones. The intense heat of summer and thirst made him stumble. The thorns in the undergrowth caught him, and the stones did their utmost to twist his ankles.
The fear that struck him at the sudden realization that darkness was coming and he was far from home made him turn around more than once and return exhausted, defeated, giving Nana Reja explanations with his eyes. She opened her eyes for him, and with them she said: Keep going. Then she closed them again. She had said all she needed to say to him. And the next morning, she said goodbye again with nothing but the movement of her rocking chair.
Little by little, his excursions that spring, summer, and autumn made his feet nimble again; he grew faster, his sense of direction sharpened, and his self-confidence returned and increased. With his daily, constant exercise, he also strengthened his bond with the bees. In doing so—step by step, hour by hour, and day by day—he shook off the fear just like they shook off the raindrops. And he felt stronger.
He knew that he still had time and that time would work in his favor: if he did not manage to complete the journey that spring or summer, he would do so the next or the next. In the end, he would do it.
The bees had been patient with him. They had waited for years for him to be ready to complete the journey with them. At the end of the road, something important awaited him, something they had always tried to share with him, to make him understand.
Soon he would see it. Soon he would know.
29
The Train Passes through Alta and So Does Simonopio
My mama immediately regretted allowing Simonopio to have his own space, because he started vanishing into the hills for ever-longer periods, until one night he returned neither to his bath nor his dinner nor his bed.
Alarmed, my parents summoned the peons for a nocturnal search, which proved fruitless: they spent hours looking for him on the road to La Florida, hoping that Simonopio had reached the estate before night fell.
My papa returned that night frustrated and worried. There was no trace of Simonopio anywhere.
“No sign of him.”
That night, my parents did not sleep. There was nothing they could do except continue their usual routine: wash, change, turn out the light.
“We’ll find him tomorrow, you’ll see,” my papa said to my mama in a comforting tone.
My mama, with the pessimism that comes only when the night stretches out without end, pictured Simonopio at the bottom of a canyon, unable to move, his legs broken, frightened, and surrounded by bears and pumas. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the boy they loved so much utterly forlorn, facing a night that would undoubtedly seem more eternal to him than it did to her. Eventually, she stopped pretending to rest and went to the kitchen to make coffee. She turned on every light in the house and opened the shutters and curtains: if Simonopio was lost, he would see the lights in the distance and find his way home.
My papa, who got up to keep her company with the excuse that he felt like some coffee—a complete lie, because nobody knew better than he how bad my mama’s coffee was—knew that Simonopio was not lost. That Simonopio would never get lost. He was sure of it because Simonopio had always managed to reach him without any help or guidance: if my papa was in the maize fields, Simonopio would find him there; if he was in the sugarcane fields, the boy would find him there as well.
Before that wakeful night, my papa had told my mama he’d been missing Simonopio since the boy’s decision to watch over Nana Reja. Years ago, before Francisco grew accustomed to seeing him appear here and there, emerging from the bushes to meet him, he would ask, Simonopio, what’re you doing here? How did you know where I was? But he soon stopped asking his stupid questions, because Simonopio would never answer him and because the boy’s unexpected visits became part of his working day—the most pleasant part, perhaps.
However, after Simonopio stopped visiting him, after he decided to stay close to the house and then, later, to go on his solo expeditions, his absence was always a surprise. My papa did not comprehend why Simonopio, after ending his period of reclusion, had not come to find him.
That night, he was sure the boy had not gone astray. My papa had searched—as much as the darkness allowed—for any indications of where Simonopio might’ve gone, hunting along the path that led to the maize fields near Espiricueta’s, where my papa had spent most of that day. He was certain the boy would’ve had no difficulty finding him. Simonopio always found the way.
No. That night, my papa hadn’t been searching for a beloved child: he had been searching for his lifeless body. The lights shining in the house were a waste of electricity, but he didn’t have the heart to take the hope or the good intentions away from my mama. Days later, he admitted to her that, when the boy didn’t appear, he was overcome with the certainty that the boy had died, because what would prevent Simonopio from coming home for dinner and to sleep in his shed?
My papa filled his belly with my mama’s coffee so he was awake and alert at sunrise, when he had summoned every able-bodied person to continue the search. At the agreed-upon time, he went to his bedroom to splash cold water on his face.
My mama had fallen asleep in the parlor, because not even for the sake of putting on a brave face had she been able to continue drinking the poor imitation of coffee she had prepared. I think it would have been better had she spent the night with her sewing, though I wasn’t there to suggest it to her. Instead, she spent it either worrying about Simonopio or being surprised at my father, who served himself cup after cup without once grimacing in disgust.
My papa opened the front door without waking her, and the first thing he saw in the semidarkness was Simonopio waiting for him on the porch.
Do you have children? No? When you do, you’ll understand what motivates any parent of a child who decides to go missing or disappear on an adventure to say, When I find him, I’m going to throttle him, or When he comes down from that tree, I’m going to kill him. I never understood it when I was the recipient of such affection, though I heard it a lot from the lips of my usually calm mother.
You must be a parent to understand that from great love there also comes a great violent impulse
. You must have feared for a child’s safety in order to comprehend and forgive the violence that hides or bubbles behind the anguish of anyone who, after giving up a son for dead, finds him playing at a neighbor’s house or with his buttocks full of thorns from falling on a nopal. Or in this case, returning from an adventure on his own two feet, having suffered no apparent harm.
If you were a parent, you’d understand why my father’s first impulse was to go up to Simonopio, take him by the arms, shake him, and keep shaking him until the boy fell to pieces—while screaming at him until he was deaf. But after two or three rough movements, my papa’s shaking turned into a hug. A huge hug.
That was how my mama found them. She immediately felt the same impulse, which she must have contained because the job had already been done and because, after drinking so much coffee, she had to run off to the bathroom to empty her bladder.
As I was saying, my mama regretted allowing her godson to move to the shed. I suppose my papa did too. For as much as they tried, they could not understand why Simonopio would give up his role as a constant companion to my papa and go off without telling anyone, sometimes for up to three nights in a row. That same day when my papa gave him such a huge hug, Simonopio escaped again to wander unknown paths. They noticed that there was no blanket on his bed. Nana Reja, in her eternal place outside the shed—now his sleeping quarters—didn’t open her eyes even to blink. She didn’t seem anxious, which my parents took to be a sign that the boy knew what he was doing.
Yet they could not help continuing to worry about him. On one occasion, my mama said to him, “We’re going to Monterrey on the twelve o’clock train tomorrow to visit the girls.”
By dawn the next day, Simonopio had already left his shed.
My mama would always invite him along to stop him from straying when she was in Monterrey and my papa was on his ranches, but Simonopio refused and made his refusal known by disappearing. Before another trip to Monterrey, she said, “Come on, Simonopio, come with me. There’s a circus with elephants, clowns, lions . . . I’ll take you.”
The Murmur of Bees Page 19
