The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

How could one generation look the next in the eye and say: One of the few things I took for granted that I would pass on to you, I have allowed to die?

Sometimes a woman had to save herself, and for Beatriz Cortés de Morales, organizing this dance, joining the new charitable association, and devising and supervising any kind of social and charitable activity in the town represented just that: salvation.

She counted on the certainty that all the promises life had made her were, or would be, fulfilled in proportion to the work and effort invested. In life, only potential was free. The outcome, the achievement, the aim came at a high cost, which she was prepared to pay. So Beatriz Cortés was unstinting in her efforts to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, wife, mother, charitable lady, and Christian. How did one woman persuade an entire foolish nation to lay down its arms, return to work, and start producing again? How did a woman pretend that the events happening around her did not affect her? What could she do to change the trajectory of a bullet? Of ten bullets? Of a thousand?

But it was one thing to say it with her head, and another for her heart to believe it and stop sending pain signals to her soul.

houses die when they are no longer fed with the energy of their owners.

That day I was more bored than ever, but I felt proud: I had defended my brother. But there was nothing I could do to defend myself against authority.

“Francisco: tell Francisco Junior to stop fighting.” “No. There’re fights that are worth fighting.”

If she had fallen into a dramatic downward spiral from the moment of her husband’s death and my disappearance, that was the moment when the descent ended. It would be the point from which the new Beatriz would rise up, the one born from sheer willpower and the one that would last for as long as there was life in her body. The arrogant Beatriz she had been when she was young; the new fearful one; and the other, even newer, more battered one learned to live together in peace until they completely merged. It would take years, and the climb would be slow, but everything starts somewhere, and for her, it had begun listening to Simonopio’s songs.