The History of Bees

Chapter 25 TAO

It was nighttime and I was awake again. Sleep had no meaning; neither did anything else. I was in the sitting room with my back against the one wall. I bowed my head and looked down at my hands, put my fingertips against each other. The nails were too long, I pushed them under each other until it hurt. Wondered how long I would have to push until I drew blood.

I’d been able to handle Mom’s disappearance. She was sick, old. It seemed like she’d come to a good place, it looked beautiful on the film, and safe. But Wei-Wen… The tears burned in my chest, tightened my throat, were so physically painful that I struggled to breathe. But I didn’t release them.

Nobody required us to work. The supervisor of my work team showed up the day after we came home, together with Kuan’s supervisor. They had both been informed. By whom he didn’t say, and I forgot to ask. They stood stammering outside the door, wouldn’t come in, and said we must take all the time we needed.

We didn’t know how long they would leave us in peace.

On the first few days gifts arrived at our door. Mostly food. Canned goods. A bottle of real ketchup. Even a kiwi. I didn’t even know that anyone produced kiwis any longer. But it had no taste. Somebody had also gathered up our things and had them delivered to us. Everything was there, even the empty plum tin. The smell of it nauseated me.

In the beginning, Kuan just lay in the bedroom. He cried for both of us. Sobs filled the apartment, unfurling through the narrow rooms. But I was unable to go in and see him.

Then he got up. We walked around each other in silence. The days slipped by; we lived in a vacuum, just as stagnant and closed as the room where Wei-Wen had been lying. The only voice that spoke in our home was that of Li Xiara over the radio, giving a speech about national sacrifice. Kuan was still silent. And I was unable to say anything, because I didn’t know how. Perhaps he didn’t blame me, perhaps he hadn’t even thought that thought.

Yes.

The vacant gaze. The distance he kept from me at all times. He had previously been so physically intimate, now our bodies were never in close proximity. But he was too passive to say anything. Perhaps he didn’t dare. Or was it an attempt to protect me? I didn’t know.

But this thing that was between us had grown to be so insurmountably large. He kept his distance from me, but neither did I manage to touch him, talk to him. It became almost unbearable to be in the same room. He stirred up the same thoughts again and again. The same two words. My fault, my fault, my fault. That was why everything about him was repulsive. His body disgusted me. I felt sick at the thought of him touching me, but hid it the best I could. We played house, but without the child. Cooked meals. Tidied up. Did laundry. Every day was the same. We got up, got dressed, ate a little. Drank tea. The eternal tea. And waited.

I kept trying to call the hospital. I was always the one who did it, as he didn’t even have the initiative to do that much. I never spoke to Dr. Hio again and after a few weeks it was revealed that she had quit. The other doctors said nothing about why.

The answers were the same regardless of whom I talked to: We don’t know anything else. You will have to wait. Of course we will find you a name. Of course. Just wait a little longer. Just a few days. We will look into it. We will get back to you. You will just have to wait.

In spite of the fact that we had been given all the time off we might need, Kuan came out one morning wearing his work clothes after his shower.

“Just as well,” he said softly.

I was surprised, almost dumbfounded, not that he was going out, but over how relieved I was. This, to get rid of him, to be by myself—I experienced it as the first bright spot in all of these weeks.

“Is that all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Just go.”

“If you think it’s difficult to be alone, I don’t have to.”

“It’s fine.”

But he kept standing there. His clothes hung loosely on him; he was even thinner than before. He just looked at me. Perhaps he expected me to say something. Get angry, shout, explode at him. But why did he expect me to go into a rage? Had that also become my responsibility? His huge eyes stared at me, begging, his soft mouth slightly open. I turned away, was unable to look at him. That handsome man who formerly had caused me to forget myself. Now I just wanted to get him away from me as quickly as possible.

“Tao?”

“You have to go if you’re going to make it in time for roll call.”

I still didn’t look at him. Heard how he took several breaths, wanted perhaps to say something, but couldn’t find the words.

Then he disappeared—his steps across the floor, the door slamming shut—and finally left me alone in the empty apartment. I went into the bedroom. On Wei-Wen’s bed lay his pajamas. I picked them up and sat there holding them in my arms. I hadn’t wanted for us to wash them. They’d only been worn for two nights, and were lying ready for him on his bed. Until he came back. The fabric felt thin between my fingers, smiling moons against a background of blue. They still smelled faintly of child sweat.

I sat like that all day.

After this I began gradually to reverse my sleeping pattern. While Kuan slept his heavy manual-labor sleep, I was awake in the sitting room. I paced and stood still, and it was not until dawn that I collapsed into bed. I could not rest; if I sat down, if I relaxed, if I slept, then Wei-Wen would be gone forever.

I turned to face the window. We had a view directly facing the white fence that enclosed the fields. Guards were posted at one-hundred-meter intervals. I could make out the silhouette of the guard closest to me. He was staring out into space and did not move. I would have done anything to find out what he was guarding.

The fence was so high that we couldn’t see inside, not even from the roof of the house. I’d been up there and tried. A net had been stretched on top of the fence, which the wind caught hold of constantly. During the initial weeks there had been workers up there several times to secure it better. Every day people appeared who were curious to see it, but they were all turned away. The area was heavily guarded. I had walked along the fence to see if there were any openings, places one could crawl through, but there were guards everywhere.

Kuan spoke of how people talked. The work team had to report to another field now. It was a mile’s walk each way and people had plenty of time to talk. He heard them. The speculations ran wild. It had something to do with Wei-Wen, everything that happened, they thought. The fence, the closing off, the military. It must be so, because we were the last ones who’d been there. And Wei-Wen was in the hospital. But when they became aware that Kuan was listening, they fell silent. And the moment they felt confident that he wasn’t listening, they continued. The jabbering was about us now and sensational in nature. We were the target of everyone’s attention and there was nothing I could do.

We knew as little as they did. Something had happened to Wei-Wen out there, and now he was gone. That was all we knew.

All of a sudden I noticed the guard down there. He had collapsed by the fence, sat with his knees curled up beneath him and his head dipping gently forward. He was asleep.