The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

Meanwhile, Carmen and Consuelo went through various states of mind. Sometimes they were happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes they cried without any provocation whatsoever. At other times they screamed with fury at some offense, real or imagined, but then returned to being complicit in a secret that made them double up with laughter. Worst of all was when they went through all these states in a single day;

Beatriz remained impassive at all times, but Francisco knew it was a mask she put on each morning when the sun came up.

From time to time she would go out to see Nana Reja. While they did not complain, neither the nana nor her rocking chair could get used to their new location or their new view: the former barely ate, and the latter hardly rocked.

But she kept going. She kept going because she had to. She would finish one thing and move on to the next, until everything was done, until she had no option but to continue her embroidery by the light of an oil lamp. She kept her body busy so that her mind did not have the energy to wander, to think about anything else, to explode.

Much like his mother-in-law stirring her cajeta, he had his ranches and plantations to exhaust his body but give respite to his mind.

Beatriz had nothing to bring her comfort. She kept busy all day but without anything really bringing her peace.

teetotaler:

Each time he had considered it, sympathy had gotten the better of his determination.

There was much to do every day. The social life of Linares might have halted, but the land stopped for neither death nor mourning.

It occurred to him that houses die when they are no longer fed with the energy of their owners.

Then, a few years or a generation later, nobody would remember the original settlement, which, under sustained neglect, bit by bit, dust mote by dust mote, would return to its mistress, the earth. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return: as certain for living cells as it was for any heap of bricks, whether Roman, Mayan, or Linarense.

In this particular case, the heap of bricks being suffocated by dust was the one that formed the protective shell around the hopes and dreams of generations of the Morales family. And he would not let it die.

The house reeked of neglect, a smell his nose recognized despite never scenting it before. Maybe this was the smell given off by dying bricks, like the sickly sweet aroma that emanated from dead flesh during decomposition, he thought.

Sheets protected the furniture, but they were also covered in an extremely fine powder that managed to find its way through cracks imperceptible to the human eye, covering memories and remnants of entire civilizations.

And these tasks, to his surprise, would bring him peace, comfort, and a challenge once a week when, in the company of Simonopio—always present on the day set aside for this almost military campaign—Francisco fought against a bitter, invincible, indefatigable enemy. It did not matter how much care and effort he and his army of one soldier devoted to the task of banishing their adversary from their kingdom: it immediately began its slow, silent return, intent on smothering Francisco Morales’s hopes for the future.

I don’t know whether you have to be as old as me to have learned that women can never be fully understood. Their minds are a labyrinth that men are only permitted to glimpse from the outside when they want us to, when they invite us. Until then, the labyrinth remains a mystery.

Years later, she told me that she never knew where all the tears that sprung forth that day had come from. She would always refer to it as “the day I cried for no reason.” She had cried over her father’s death, of course, but that was a discreet, dignified crying filled with pride, with no outbursts or drama, though not without bitterness. Knowing my mama, she would have made use of her embroidered handkerchief, careful as she always was not to show her natural—but uncomfortable and shameful—secretions. It had been elegant and justified crying. But there’s crying and there’s crying.

My mama did not know, either, whether it was better to receive this news that only tormented her or to remain oblivious to everything.

And that was the little glimpse my mother gave my father into the labyrinth of her thoughts.

But my mama, who at her age had learned there was no pain—and now shame—that would stop her, got up from the chair, took off her apron, splashed cold water on her face, and seeing herself in the mirror, ignored the question. And then she went to find my papa.

My heart, your automobile, time—it all moves forward and ages at that rhythm. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.

If absolutely necessary, she would have unpicked old clothes and even new ones in order to reinvent each garment, so that she didn’t have time to think or give in to sorrow.

It was not his first winter there—he had arrived in the North eight years ago. But he still did not understand the cold. Where did it come from? Who sent it and why? And when it went away, where did it go? Where was it kept? And also, how did the cold manage to get inside him, into his flesh and bones? However much he wrapped up, the cold always found a way to seep in, and sometimes it seemed that, while it began outside—near the trees on the hills, perhaps—it ended up occupying his entire body until it made him tremble. As if it were trying to shake apart his skeleton, to dismember him, to scatter his parts around that land that held him prisoner.

They had had nothing more than they were searching for: land and freedom.

For the first time, on that little piece of land, Anselmo Espiricueta felt he was the master of his own time, of his free will, and of his destiny. Until then, he had lived a life of brutal punishment and poorly paid and thankless work.

Hunger and thirst, the new masters of their existence, subjugated him and his offspring faster than any whip.

He wanted something. He wanted to save his family. He wanted to block the path through his property, to rob the people on the cart of something, even if just their feeling of safety. If their efforts were interpreted by the group they intended to accost as a plea for help, it was only because of the arrogance of the driver, the leader of the group.

overcome by the ambition to survive above all else.

prisoners of their will to live

northern landowner entered one ear, reached his mind like a whirlwind inside his head, and then escaped out of the other ear as quickly as they had arrived. He managed to retain only the words that invaded his heart.

Anselmo thought that all the consideration, all the kindness, and the lack of beatings had ended up taming them, had made them conform. But he had learned from every lash of the whip and every blow he had received in his life, and the good treatment did not fool him: it was just a crueler form of control.

All I know’s what life’s taught me. What I learned in the firelight at midnight, listening to the old shamans.

The three months of exile had marked Beatriz Cortés de Morales. They had changed her. Sometimes she felt as if she had spent what should have been the best years of her life as a silent spectator in a drama in which the lead role was her double: sharing the same name and identical features, but with an adversarial temperament.

They changed subjects, moods, interests, and conversations at a giddy speed. A speed that Beatriz had neither the mind nor the energy to match. A speed, it seemed to her, that made her age.

In the day, it was as if she did not recognize them, but in the solitude of night, she was reunited with her little girls.

run off, and nothing got between them: they were hers again.

because if Francisco had known how much protection she requested for him in particular, he would have realized his wife was not the pillar of strength she pretended to be.

Beatriz grew accustomed to the taste of the honey sweetening her coffee. It became such a part of her ritual that, with the simple act of pouring a fine trickle into her cup, she found some peace, renewed spirits, and the energy to continue with the strange routine of that place.

For some reason, because the eyes were Simonopio’s, the scrutiny did not unsettle her. It seemed natural to her that she had no privacy with Simonopio. There was never any judgement or disapproval in his eyes. Simonopio was who he was, he was how he was, and all one had to do was accept him, just as she knew he accepted her.

During one wakeful night, Beatriz concluded that the bees were more than just a coincidence or a curiosity for Simonopio. They accompanied him; they guided him; they watched over him.

From blessing to blessing, the days, the nights, the months passed. Three months.

I’ll be company for everyone, but little more than that for anyone.

She did not dare do it, of course, for the old Beatriz would never shrink from a problem or a responsibility. Then she thought that this would be one of her new challenges: to find the old Beatriz again, to rescue her from the miasma that enveloped her.

However, not even in her old age would she become anybody’s shadow or be left drifting, at the mercy of other people’s decisions. She would never allow herself to grind to a halt. And under no circumstances would she ever allow a grandchild of hers to call her anything other than Grandma Beatriz. No Gran, Granny, or Grandmom. She would make that very clear from the beginning.

What was more, bit by bit, if possible, she would reunite the two parts into which her consciousness had been split: the old one and the new one. She would be one again and would leave behind the stand-in that she had discovered in recent months.

Between Espiricueta and him there was a story that not even the wind knew yet. It was a story still unfolding that had begun on the day Simonopio was born, but it was also a story that had not yet happened: suspended in stasis, on hold thanks to his bees, but not dead or brought to an end. It was a story that was waiting patiently. Waiting to exist.

Simonopio knew there were stories that one could read in books, with black words on white pages. He was not interested in those, because once printed they were indelible, unchanging. Each reader had to follow the order of words indicated in those pages exactly, until they each arrived inexorably at the same outcome.

he who has a story in his mind, he who does not put it in writing, enjoys the freedom to reshape it at will,

Simonopio was not a boy who allowed fear to control him. Every day on his walks, he came across bears and pumas in the wild and looked them in the eyes to say, I am the lion, you go your way, and I’ll go mine.

pressing down the earth with the weight of his footsteps, his envy, and his grief.