The History of Bees

Chapter 55 WILLIAM

The drawings lay in my lap. I sat on a bench in the garden, at a distance from the hives, close enough to see and hear them well, but far enough away to avoid being stung. I sat as motionless as an animal following a scent, a prey that would soon be attacked.

But the attack was already over. I was a carcass now.

The bee dies when its wings are worn out, frayed, driven too hard, like the sails of the Flying Dutchman. She dies midleap, as she is about to take flight, has a heavy load, perhaps she has taken on more than usual, is bulging with nectar and pollen, this time it is too much, the wings do not carry her any longer. She never returns to the hive, but plunges to the earth, with her entire burden. Had she had human feelings, she would have been happy at this moment, she would have entered the gates of heaven well aware she had lived up to the idea of herself, of the Bee, as Plato would have expressed it. The worn-out state of her wings, yes, her death in its entirety, is a clear sign that she has done what she was put on earth to do, accomplished an infinite amount, taking into consideration her tiny body.

I would never have such a death. There were no clear signs that I’d done what I was put on the earth to do. I had not accomplished anything at all. I would grow old, my body would swell, and subsequently fade away, without any trace of me left behind. Nothing would remain, except possibly a salty pie which left behind a greasy coating in the mouth. Nothing but a Swammer pie.

So it all might as well just come to an end right now. The mushrooms were still there, in the top drawer furthest to the left in the shop, carefully locked, with a key only I had access to. They would take effect rapidly; in just a few hours I would grow lethargic and listless, subsequently unconscious. A doctor would diagnose it as organ failure; nobody would know it was self-inflicted. And I would be free.

But I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t move from the bench. I didn’t even manage to destroy the drawings, my hands refused to perform that simple movement, the muscular impulse stopped in my fingertips, paralyzed me.

For how long I was alone, I didn’t know.

She came without my noticing. Suddenly she sat down on the bench beside me. Without a sound, not even her breathing was audible. The close-set eyes, my own eyes, looked towards the bees that buzzed in front of us, or perhaps towards nothing.

In her hand she held the letter from Dzierzon. She must have found it among the chaos in the room, found it and read it, as she previously had also searched and gone through my things. Because it had been her all along, the tidy shop, the book on my desk. I just hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to see it.

The proximity of another human being caused the paralysis to release its grasp. Or perhaps it released its grasp precisely because it was her. She was all I had now.

I laid the drawings on her lap.

“Destroy them for me,” I said softly. “I can’t do it.”

She just sat there. I tried to meet her gaze, but she looked away.

“Help me,” I begged.

She put a hand on the drawings. For a moment she was silent.

“No,” she said.

“But they are rubbish, don’t you understand?” My voice broke, but it didn’t unsettle her.

She just shook her head slowly. “It’s too soon, Father, perhaps they may still be of value.”

I drew a breath, managed to speak calmly, tried to sound rational.

“They’re useless. I really just want you to destroy them, because I’m incapable of doing it myself. Take them away, put them somewhere I can’t see them and can’t stop you. Burn them! A huge fire, flames reaching up to the heavens.”

I wanted the words to provoke a reaction, get her to stand up and obey my earnest appeal, as she usually obeyed all my requests. But she just sat there, leafing through the pages, with one finger lightly tracing the lines I had done my best to draw straight, the details with which I had struggled so. “No, Father. No.”

“But that’s all that I want!” All of a sudden there was again a tightening in my chest. I had my father’s hand around my neck, his scornful laughter in my ears, dirt on my knees and a belt waiting. She was the adult and I was the child, ten years old again, with the heavy weight of shame on my shoulders, because yet again I had failed. “Burn them, please.”

It was only then that I noticed the tears in her eyes. Her tears. When had I last seen them? Not when she sat beside me during all those hours last winter, not when she came home with a dead-drunk Edmund, not when she found me almost swallowed up by the earth.

And then I understood. These were her drawings, too, her work. She’d been there the entire time, but I’d only seen myself, my research, my drawings, my bees. Only now did I really absorb how there had been two of us from the first day. They were hers, too, the bees were hers, too.

“Charlotte.” I swallowed. “Oh, Charlotte. Who have I really been for you?”

She looked up in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… you should have had something more.”

She drew her hand over her eyes; there was only amazement in her gaze now.

“Something more? No.”

I wanted to say so many things to her, that she deserved a better father, one who also thought of her, that I’d been an idiot, only concerned about my own affairs, while her support was completely unshakable, regardless of the nature of my undertakings. But the words grew too large, I wasn’t equal to the task.

All I could do was to take her hand. She let me do it, but hastened to lay the other one protectively over the drawings so the wind wouldn’t take them.

We sat there in silence.

She inhaled several times, as if she wanted to say something, but no words came.

“You mustn’t think like that,” she said finally. Then she turned her head and looked at me with her clear, gray eyes. “I’ve received more than any girl could expect. More than any other girl I know. Everything you have shown me, told me, let me participate in. All the time we’ve spent together, all the conversations, everything you’ve taught me. For me you are… I…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, just sat there, and finally she came out with it:

“I couldn’t have had a better father.”

A sob escaped from me. I stared out into space, focusing blindly on nothing, while fighting back the urge to cry.

We remained seated there; time passed, nature surrounded us with all of its sounds, the birdsong, the whistling of the wind, a frog croaking. And the bees. Their subdued buzzing calmed me.

Carefully Charlotte wriggled her hand out of mine and nodded gently.

“You won’t have to see them anymore.”

She stood up, took the drawings with her, carried them with both hands as if they were still something valuable and disappeared in the direction of the house.

A deep sigh escaped me, of thankfulness and relief, but also with a certainty that it was finally over. I remained seated, sitting and looking at the bees, at their perseverance, back and forth, never resting.

Not until their wings were torn.