The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

  “Ah, Son, there’s nothing to worry about. For the first three years of your life, I thought you were half-backward, and look at you now.”

  It had not until then crossed my mind that my baby might have some cognitive defect. I was worried only about a physical defect, like a sixth finger on one hand or something like that, so all my mama’s comment did was put ideas into my already confused head. But it wasn’t there, or then, that I asked her to explain this business of my alleged mental incapacity. I would do that later, when I was certain and had the peace of mind of knowing that my son’s body had nothing missing and nothing that wasn’t meant to be there, and that he reacted in the way the doctor had told me that any normal newborn should.

  My mama was also told by Dr. Cantú that her son was normal. That despite her having a premature baby late in life, he was not backward. That while it was precocious and inconvenient—for his caregivers—that a ten-month-old boy should run all over the place, it was common for a child his age to neither perceive nor understand dangers or warnings, and that, consequently, he would constantly encounter problems and live with bumps on his forehead. Later on, when some ability to communicate was expected of me at the age of two or three, the doctor assured her that it was not unexpected that I did not talk because, as everyone knows, boys take longer to learn.

  “But, Doctor, it’s not that he doesn’t want to speak—the boy’s a chatterbox—it’s just that nobody understands a word he says!”

  In fact, my mama used to say that they couldn’t shut me up. That I was so argumentative and so verbose that my papa swore that I’d be a lawyer when I grew up—which she doubted, because if she and the nanas couldn’t understand anything I said, a judge certainly wouldn’t.

  What was happening was that I spoke my fraternal language, which no one but Simonopio and I knew. Simonopio had been silent for so long that everyone had forgotten that he wasn’t mute. And he wasn’t. He never was: all those years before I was born, he had kept himself company with his stories and his songs, telling them and singing them to himself in the privacy of the hills. They were the same stories and the same songs that had been sung and told to him in Spanish, but from his incomplete mouth, they came out in his own way, a way I learned at the same time as my maternal language, from the crib.

  Because he was never silent with me.

  Why did my fraternal language carry more weight than my maternal one at the beginning? I don’t know, but I suspect it might’ve been because what Simonopio said to me, in my ear and in private, was always more exciting than what my mama or my nanas said to me. It’s always more appealing to hear about big adventures than it is to be constantly reminded that it’s time to take a bath, to go to sleep, to brush your teeth, or to wash your ears: stupid things for an active boy like I was.

  All of this is pure speculation on my part. I don’t remember deciding one day that I’d speak “Simonopio” and not Spanish. What I do remember is that I couldn’t comprehend why no one knew what I was trying to say, even though I understood everything they said to me.

  I was just a little kid, you see.

  When I reached the age of three and beyond, still refusing to utter a single word that wasn’t what my mama called “chatter,” even my papa began to worry. It wasn’t until someone found me deep in conversation with Simonopio that they realized or remembered that he had tried to speak when he was younger but had simply not been understood, and that now, under his influence, I was imitating his defect.

  My mama admitted to me, once I was a father, that they had asked Simonopio to keep away from me until I learned to speak properly. And he had tried to comply, but I wouldn’t let him. I followed him everywhere and demanded his attention. This I do remember: the empty feeling in the days—or was it months or hours?—when I believed, without comprehending, that Simonopio was mad at me, because he wasn’t waiting for me when I got up in the mornings like he always did, and didn’t pick me up right away when I approached expectantly with my arms outstretched.

  As I said before, since I was very restless even as a baby, and wouldn’t let anyone finish their chores, I was passed from person to person until I ended up with Simonopio, who was by then waiting impatiently to rock me to sleep—and later on, when I was a little older, to carry me out into the country while he sang his stories.

  He was the interesting part of my life.

  With him, I learned to climb trees and to distinguish animal and insect tracks; to throw stones into streams while I dangled my feet into the cool water from the bank; to cling to his back like a monkey while we crossed a stream on foot or swam across a river; to hide, without making any noise or moving, under a bush or behind a rock, the moment he told me to do so; to watch very carefully where I placed my feet on the hill paths near the house so as not to make noise or trip; to avoid the poison ivy, though I didn’t always succeed; to aim the slingshot that he made for me, though I didn’t yet have the strength to pull back the rubber band; to not use this on birds or rabbits, though I asked him what, in that case, it was for; to help transport some bees on my body without frightening them off with waving hands; to enjoy their honey and royal jelly even if sometimes it was for medicinal purposes, while we spent an afternoon at Nana Reja’s feet. With him, I learned to appreciate the music of the tambora bands, hidden from the eyes that made him feel so uncomfortable, sitting motionless in a corner of the third-class marquee at the Villaseca Fair, or—more carefully and stealthily because, according to Simonopio, in the second- or first-class marquees, the looks were darker—to listen to the marvelous Marilú Treviño sing “La enredadera,” which was his favorite, or “La tísica,” which became mine the first time I heard it, seduced by the image it evoked in me of the girl dying of consumption while a dog howled under her bed.

  He taught me to keep quiet while he told me his stories, without asking anything or demanding to know the ending before it was time, because, Francisco, the ending only comes when it’s meant to come and not before, so sit quietly, or I’ll never be able to take you to listen to Soledad Betancourt’s stories when she comes to Villaseca. With this threat, I obeyed immediately. He also taught me to fall asleep while we looked up at the stars above the roof of his shed, when they allowed me, on warm days, to stay outside with him at nightfall; to tell the morning greeting of a bird apart from its call to a mate or its danger warning sent up into the air; to follow the bees with my eyes and to know whether they had just left or were now returning; to discern which tree would bear fruit first; to know, just by looking, whether the oranges were ready to be tasted, and to never pick them green to use wastefully as projectiles.

  From one moment to the next, I lost all of this. We both lost it: Simonopio was left with his arms empty, and I at the mercy of the regimented activities they imposed on me at home. Perhaps he was prepared to make the sacrifice, convinced that it was for my own good, but, ignorant of the situation, which I would never at any rate have agreed to or cooperated in, I didn’t allow Simonopio to vanish from my life easily.

  One day, when I was supposed to be napping, I went to look for him and found him under the pecan tree that marked the boundary between the grounds of the house and its gardens, in the company, as ever, of some bees perched lazily upon him. I remember throwing myself onto him with no warning or care, in an attempt, perhaps, to become just another bee that he transported on his body.

  His eyes opened immediately, showing no surprise.

  “Let’s go to the orchard,” I said.

  “We can’t. You have to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to learn to speak properly, like everyone else.”

  I went back into the house intrigued. Was that it? Speak properly?

  My mama assured me that a miracle happened that day, for after waking from what she assumed had been a peaceful nap, I emerged from my bedroom cured, and surprised everyone.

  “Mama, I want to go to the orchard with Simonopio to look for my papa.”
<
br />   In this complete and clearly enunciated sentence, I said the words mama and papa in the language that they understood for the first time.

  Of course, that afternoon when I learned to distinguish between Spanish and “Simonopio,” we went to look for my papa without impediment, without Simonopio returning to the silence that my mama had imposed on him, and therefore without depriving me of everything he taught me in his own language.

  Then I became his translator. Although almost everything Simonopio said was just for me—in the moment, things that you had to be there to understand—some things were useful to others.

  “Papa, Simonopio says the bees say it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

  It didn’t matter that the sky was completely clear. Simonopio was adamant that the drought of several months would come to an end and that we had to believe him, because it was true: the next day it would rain. I don’t know whether my papa received the prediction with surprise, skepticism, or complete acceptance, because as soon as I translated the message, I ran off thinking about what the rain would be like.

  That was the first rain in my living memory. That’s the nice thing about that age: experiencing every event as if it were the first time. By the age of three, I must’ve already witnessed rainy months before, though at that age, the months are endless and the brain doesn’t retain the memory of something as fleeting as rain, which my mama might have forbidden me from going out to play in.

  I can just imagine her now: The boy mustn’t get wet or he’ll get sick. It’s curious how we sometimes forget something as simple and as immediate as an appointment with the dentist or a birthday, yet never forget something as ephemeral as feeling a drop of cold rain bouncing and rolling on our faces for the first time.

  In all my years, it has not rained again without me remembering that day and the pressure and silence in the atmosphere before the rain. The fat drops of water soaking my eyelashes and hair in an instant. The aroma of the countryside wet not from irrigation but from rain, which isn’t the same. Going from the intense heat of the inside of the house to the immediate cool of wet clothes. Seeing—and hearing—the water finding the best way to come together, first running in brooks and streams, then reaching a tributary of the river. Ignoring my mama’s warnings of Francisco, don’t get wet or you’ll get sick and ruin your shoes and clothes. The tremendous feeling of having something to be excited about: Simonopio had promised he would take me to the place where, with the earth moist at last, the toads that had spent months submerged to protect their delicate skin would come out.

  Hours later, I returned soaked and covered in mud. They wouldn’t let me in the house in that state, so Lupita undressed me and washed me in the laundry. I don’t know where the clothes I wore on that adventure ended up, but my mama had been right: my shoes were beyond repair and no good even as a gift for the workers’ children. I remember that, as she lectured me—Spoiled child. Why won’t you listen? You’ll get sick and then you’ll see, and look at your ruined shoes, what will you wear tomorrow?—she made a point of sighing, so loudly it was more like a snort, before throwing the shoes in the trash.

  My mama knew exactly how to add drama to her admonishments. Even now, I still don’t know which sound rings most loudly in my ears: that fatalistic sigh or the emphatic clang of my shoes meeting their end at the bottom of the metal trash can.

  Contrary to my mama’s prediction, that night I didn’t fall ill, but I did drop down exhausted. I slept deeply, happy with my memories and also lulled by a sound, because on my bedside table, in a box, the toad I’d adopted croaked for me—contentedly, I wanted to believe. A toad that, at the moment of emergence, had seemed confused by his sudden freedom in the boundless world.

  Turn here. Slowly, we’re almost there now.

  43

  Unrequited Desire

  More than seventeen years wanting it. And the land would not come to him.

  More than four years searching for her, looking at her, waiting for her, but the woman still did not so much as say hello or send a smile in his direction. He looked at her, and after doing it so often, he had noticed how she looked elsewhere, always elsewhere. Never toward him. For years, he had suspected that a lot of it had to do with the influence exerted on her by that parasitic demon she had helped raise from the day he arrived.

  But Espiricueta knew that, with Simonopio, all he had to do was intercept him at the right moment so that he could erase him from his life. He was trying: he searched for him, he listened, he planned. He would find out where the demon went with the boss or the child that was always entrusted to him now, and he hurried out to find him. The problem was that he never did. By the time he arrived, the demon had gone. When Espiricueta waited for him on a road, between two points, he never appeared.

  It was as if, sensing Espiricueta nearby, the boy created another path out of nothing.

  The devil was the devil, but a woman was just a woman. What could the problem there be? What obstacle? What resistance? But there was. He felt it. Espiricueta had never been a womanizer, but he knew from experience that, with women, making eye contact was enough. Not with this one—she didn’t even turn around to see him. What was it? What did she see when she turned away, when she refused to look at him?

  The angle at which Anselmo had positioned himself that night enabled him to see precisely where she was looking. She stared as if trying to shoot an arrow, as if she could send a message to her love interest with the force of her gaze: I’m here, come get me. But it was an unrequited love, Espiricueta noted with satisfaction, because the elusive man ignored her and looked purposely elsewhere, always elsewhere—in whatever direction, provided she was not there, provided their eyes did not meet.

  The woman did not seem to grasp it. She did not seem to want to give up.

  Anselmo Espiricueta had been patient with this ungrateful woman, with her devotion to the boy and his tricks, but he did not forgive her devotion—even if it was only in a simple look with her big eyes—to any other man. The devil was the devil, but a man was just that: a man. And if she was looking for one, then he, Anselmo, would be adequate, just as the efforts to which he had already devoted too much time must be adequate for her. He waited for her on the road when she returned from town on her day off. He followed her when she walked through the dark on the nights when the señor and señora allowed her to go to Villaseca to dance in the pavilion to the music of the tambora. He also paid for a ticket so that he could go see her, even if from a distance, while she waited for someone to ask her to dance.

  She was asked to dance less and less, and never by the man she most wanted to press her body against to the rhythm of a song, however much she tried to send him a message of love with her gaze.

  The years were slipping away from Espiricueta, but they were for her, too, and fast. If he did not hurry, she would no longer be of any use to him. He wanted land and wanted a wife to fill it with children. He was growing tired of waiting for them to give him the land and for the woman to start seeing him as a man and not as a shadow she came across once in a while.

  So that night, he had been bold enough, for the first time, to ask her to dance, even though he did not know the steps of the schottische that she liked so much.

  With effort, she had looked around when she heard his voice to see him standing there, in front of her. But she did not look him in the eyes, or register his slightly imploring tone, or seem to care about the humiliation to which she subjected him when she replied that she did not want to dance, before quickly looking back at the object of her attention.

  With that uncaring little roll of her eyes, she had made him feel insignificant. She had managed to remind him that he had nothing: no land, no wife, and no possibility of obtaining either by fair means.

  Some of his friends, the more docile ones, all of them laden with children, had already obtained their plots: with so much pressure to give up their good land, the owners had yielded, but not the decent fields; instead they handed over
some in Hualahuises, with less water and of lower quality.

  Now those friends had their poor land. They had made do with whatever they were given.

  But Anselmo Espiricueta would not be content with any old handout. He kept it to himself, but he was reaching the end of his patience waiting for his land, which was gradually, steadily being taken over by orange trees and flowers. It was a war against time that he seemed to be losing. Anselmo knew what the land he trod every day was worth. It was his; he worked it and deserved it. Just as he deserved the woman, for desiring her so much and for so long, for too long.

  That day, his patience with the woman reached its end, and as was now his habit, he followed Lupita along the dark tracks to La Amistad.

  44

  They Happen in the Depths of Sleep

  Simonopio woke with a start. It was not dawn yet, but a terrible feeling of falling endlessly had shaken him from the depths of sleep, which was where he most feared going each night. He knew that bad things happened when one—when he—allowed himself to fall so far asleep. Bad things that he could not then see in the instant of the first warning, when his eyes suddenly opened, with no gradual process of waking.

  His heart gave a sudden leap, seized with fear. Francisco Junior? No. He breathed deeply, relieved. Francisco had gone to stay at his cousins’ house. He was safe. Simonopio knew it. Perhaps that was why he had relaxed that night, feeling unburdened of his ever-present worry for the boy.

  Then what had it been? What had woken him?

  He was no longer a child. He was sixteen but remained as afraid of falling into the void as he had been as a youngster huddling near his nana’s warmth. He no longer had anyone to seek refuge with, for he could not allow himself. Little by little, training himself on the nights he spent out in the elements faraway, as he searched for his bees’ treasure, he had acquired the ability to stop himself falling, to avoid passing a certain point while he slept.