The History of Bees

Chapter 4 TAO

If I have three grains of rice, and you have two, and we put them together, how many does that make?”

I took two grains of rice from my plate and placed them on Wei-Wen’s plate, which was already empty.

The faces of the children were still with me: the tall girl tilting her face towards the sun and the boy whose mouth stretched open in an unwitting yawn. They were so tiny. And Wei-Wen was so big all of a sudden. He would soon be just as old as they were. In other parts of the country there were schools for a select few. Those who would become leaders, those who would assume responsibility. And who were spared having to work out there. If only he excelled enough, stood out as one of the best at a young age…

“Why are there three for you and only two for me?” Wei-Wen looked down at the grains of rice and pouted.

“I have two, then, and you have three. There.” I switched the grains of rice on our plates. “How many does that make when we put them together?”

Wei-Wen placed his whole stubby fist on the plate, moved it around as if he were finger painting.

“I want more ketchup.”

“Oh, Wei-Wen.” I firmly removed his hand, it was sticky after the meal. “It’s may I have more ketchup.” I sighed, pointed at the rice grains once more. “Two for me. And three for you. Then we can count. One, two, three, four, five.”

Wei-Wen wiped one hand across his face, leaving behind a streak of ketchup on his cheek. Then he reached for the bottle. “May I have more ketchup?”

I should have started earlier. This one hour was all we had together every day. But I often squandered it, spending the time on eating and cozy pastimes. He should have made more progress by now.

“Five grains of rice,” I said. “Five grains of rice. Right?”

He gave up trying to get hold of the bottle and threw himself back into his chair with such force that the chair legs hit against the floor. He often acted like this, with large, dramatic movements. He’d been robust ever since he was born. And content. He’d started walking late, not having the necessary restlessness inside of him. He was content to remain seated on his bum, smiling at everyone who talked to him. And there were many who wanted to, because Wei-Wen was the kind of baby who smiled easily.

I took the bottle containing the red substitute and poured some out onto his plate. Maybe he would cooperate now. “There. Help yourself.”

“Yeah! Ketchup!”

I took two more dried grains of rice from the bowl on the table.

“Look here. Now we have two more. How many does that make?”

But Wei-Wen was busy eating. There was ketchup all around his mouth now.

“Wei-Wen? How many does that make?”

He emptied his plate again, looked at it a bit and lifted it up. He started making rumbling sounds, as if it were an old-fashioned airplane. He loved old vehicles. Was obsessed with helicopters, cars, buses, could crawl around on the floor for hours on end and create roads, airports, landscapes for transport vehicles.

“Wei-Wen, please.” I swiftly took the plate away from him and put it down, out of his reach. Then I continued pointing at the cold, dried grains of rice.

“Look here. Five plus two. How many does that make, then?”

My voice trembled slightly. I covered it up with a smile, which Wei-Wen didn’t notice, because he was reaching for the plate.

“I want it! I want the airplane! It’s mine!”

Kuan cleared his throat. He was in the sitting room having a cup of tea with his legs on the table and he stared at me over his teacup, demonstratively relaxed.

I ignored both of them and started to count. “One, two, three, four, five, six, and… seven!” I smiled at Wei-Wen, as if there were something extraordinary about these seven grains of rice. “Altogether that makes seven. Right? Do you see? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

Just this, if he understood this, I’d let up, then he could play. Baby steps, every day.

“I want it!”

He reached out his chubby hand as far as he could.

“Little one, it has to stay over there,” my voice rose. “We’re going to count now, right?”

Kuan let out an audible sigh, stood up and came in to join us. He laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s eight o’clock.”

I twisted out of his grasp. “It won’t hurt him to stay up another fifteen minutes,” I said and looked up at him.

“Tao…”

“He can manage fifteen minutes.” I continued staring at him.

He looked perplexed. “But why?”

I looked away, couldn’t bring myself to explain, to tell him about the children. I knew what he’d say anyway. They haven’t become younger. They’re just as little as they’ve always been. They were eight years old last year, too. That’s how it is. That’s how it has been for many years. And if he continued, words would be spoken that were so big that they didn’t belong to him: We must be happy that we live here. It could have been worse. We could have lived in Beijing. Or Europe. We must make the best of it. Live in the here and now. Make the best of every second. Phrases, unlike those he otherwise used, like something he had read, but spoken with conviction. He really believed these words.

Kuan stroked Wei-Wen’s bristly hair. “I’d like to play with him,” he said softly and gently.

Wei-Wen squirmed in his seat, a high chair he was really too big for, but where he sat securely buckled in and couldn’t run away from my home school. He reached for the plate. “I want it, it’s mine!”

Kuan didn’t look at me, just said in the same controlled tone of voice: “You can’t have it, but you know what, a toothbrush can also be an airplane.” Then he lifted up Wei-Wen and walked towards the bathroom.

“Kuan… But…”

He heaved Wei-Wen easily from one arm to the other as he walked towards the bathroom, pretending not to have heard me, continuing to chat with Wei-Wen. He carried his son as if he weighed nothing. Personally, I felt that the child’s body was already growing heavy.

I remained seated. Wanted to say something, to protest, but the words didn’t come. He was right. Wei-Wen was exhausted. It was late. He should be put to bed before he became overtired and refused to sleep. Then we were in for it, I knew that. Then he could keep it up until long after our own bedtime. First foolishness, the door to the bedroom being opened and shut, then he would come into our room again and again, peals of laughter, come and get me. This would be followed by frustration and anger, howling, wild protests. That’s how he was. That’s how three-year-olds are.

Although… I couldn’t remember that I’d behaved like that. I learned to read when I was three. I picked up the characters on my own, surprising the teacher when I skillfully read fairy tales for myself, but never for the other children. I stayed away from them. My parents were amazed spectators on the sidelines, letting me read fairy tales, simple stories for children, but never daring to challenge me with other texts. But at school they noticed. The teachers gave me the opportunity to read books when the others were outside, presented me with what they had of teaching programs, texts and choppy films. Much of it stemmed from the time before The Collapse, from the time before the democracies fell, before the world war that followed, when food became a commodity bestowed upon only a select few. At that time, the production of information was so enormous that nobody had full oversight any longer. Trails of words stretched as far as the Milky Way. Expanses the size of the sun’s surface, made up of pictures, maps, illustrations. Time attached to film, time equivalent to millions of human lives. And technology had made everything available. Availability was the mantra of that period. Human beings were at all times logged on to all of this information with increasingly more advanced communication tools.

But The Collapse also affected the digital networks. In the course of three years they had completely disintegrated. All human beings had left were the books, choppy-quality DVDs, worn-out videotapes, scratched compact discs containing outdated software and the ancient, deteriorating landline network.

I devoured the dog-eared old books and choppy films. Read and remembered everything, as if the books and films made a precise imprint in my memory.

I was ashamed of my knowledge because it made me different. Several of the teachers tried to speak with my parents about how I was a gifted child, had abilities, but during these conversations they smiled shyly, would rather hear about normal things, like whether I had any friends, was good at running, climbing, arts and crafts. All of the areas in which I was not successful. But my shame was gradually consumed by my hunger for learning. I studied the language in depth, learned that every single thing and feeling did not have a single word or description, but many. And I learned about our history. About the mass death of pollinating insects, about the rising of the ocean, the temperature increase, about nuclear power accidents and about the former superpowers, the US and Europe, who had lost everything in the course of a few years, who had not managed to adapt and were now living in the most abject poverty, with a population reduced to a fraction and food production consisting only of wheat and corn. While here, in China, we had coped. The Committee, the Party’s highest council, our country’s efficient government, had led us through The Collapse with a hard hand and a series of decisions that the people often didn’t understand, but had no opportunity to question. All of this I learned. And I just wanted to keep going. To have more and more. I wanted to fill up on knowledge, but without reflecting upon what I learned. It wasn’t until I came upon a tattered printout of The History of Bees that I stopped. The translation from English was clumsy and artless, but the book nonetheless intrigued me. It was published in 2037, a few years before The Collapse became a fact and pollinating insects were no longer to be found on earth. I brought it to show my teacher, shared with her the pictures of beehives and detailed drawings of bees. It was the bees I was most interested in. The queen bee and her children, the latter no more than tiny larvae in the cells of the hive, and all of the golden honey with which they surrounded themselves.

The teacher had never seen the book before, but was, like myself, fascinated. She stopped at passages of rich text to read out loud to me. She read about knowledge. About acting against one’s instincts, because one knows better, about how in order to live in nature, with nature, we must detach ourselves from the nature in ourselves. And about the value of education. Because this was what education was actually about, defying the nature in oneself.

I was eight years old and only understood a small portion. But I understood my teacher’s reverence, that the book had moved her. And I understood the part about education. Without knowledge we are nothing. Without knowledge we are animals.

After that I became more focused. I did not want to learn solely for the sake of learning, I wanted to learn to understand. I soon advanced far beyond the level of the others in my class and was the youngest in the school to become a Young Pioneer in the Party and was allowed to wear the Scarf. There was a banal kind of pride in this. Even my parents smiled when the red piece of cloth was tied around my neck. But first and foremost the knowledge made me richer. Richer than the other children. I was not beautiful, not athletic, not good with my hands or strong. I could not excel in any other fields. In the mirror an awkward girl stared back at me. The eyes were a little too small, the nose a little too big. That ordinary face revealed nothing about what she was carrying—something golden, something that made every single day worth living. And that could be a means of getting away. By the age of ten I had already outlined the possibilities. There were schools in other parts of the country, one day’s journey away, which would accept me when I turned fifteen, the age when I was actually supposed to start working out in the fields. The school supervisor helped me to find out how to apply. She thought I’d have a good chance of being accepted. But it would be expensive. I spoke with my parents but got nowhere; they grew anxious, looked at me as if I were a strange creature they didn’t understand and didn’t even like. The school supervisor also tried talking to them, I never found out what she said, but the only effect it had was to make my parents even more resolved. They had no money, and they weren’t willing to save. I was the one who would have to give in, they felt, I was the one who would have to settle down, stop “dreaming foolish dreams.” But I was unable to. Because this was who I was. And always would be.

I started at the sound of Wei-Wen’s laughter. He laughed a loud, warbling laugh in the bathroom and the acoustics in there amplified the sound. “No, Daddy! No!”

He laughed as Kuan tickled him and gave his soft tummy a raspberry kiss.

I stood up. Put the plate in the sink. Walked towards the bathroom door and stood there listening. When I heard Wei-Wen’s laughter I felt the urge to record it, so I could play it back for him when he grew up and acquired a deep voice.

All the same it didn’t make me smile.

I put my hand on the latch, pushed the door open. Wei-Wen was lying on the floor while Kuan yanked and pulled at one of his trouser legs. He pretended that the trousers were fighting against him, did not want to come off.

“Can you hurry up a bit?” I said to Kuan.

“Hurry up? That’s impossible with these obstinate trousers!” Kuan said and Wei-Wen laughed.

“Now you’re just winding him up.”

“Listen here, trousers, now you have to stop fooling around!”

Wei-Wen laughed even more.

“He’s getting too wild,” I said. “It will be impossible to put him to bed.”

Kuan did not reply, looked away, but followed my instructions. I went out and closed the door behind me. In the kitchen I quickly did the dishes.

Then I took out my pen and paper. A brief fifteen minutes more, that much he could stand.