“. . . Simonopio.”
“What?”
“I think you mean ‘pardon me?’ Your mama brought you up better than that. What are you thinking about, anyway?”
Tired of all the responsibility and uncertainty, so defeated that he could barely deal with what already existed, let alone proceed with plans for the future—such as expanding the plantations, hiring more campesinos, building more barns for equipment and crops, extending the workers’ lodgings, and buying the coveted tractor—he, too, wondered what he was thinking. Why he was wasting so much time sitting there. Why he did not feel up to anything that afternoon beyond his whiskey.
Even if all the crops came through, even if they were sold at the best price, in their entirety, without being stolen by the rustlers or the government for its armies, it might all still be of little use. He might end up working his fields so that someone else could harvest them, so that someone else could occupy his property. Why invest time, money, and effort in these inherited lands if he did not know to whom they would belong in a month or a year?
Would it not be better to buy properties in Monterrey? To enjoy what was left of his daughters’ youth? The war had stolen time from him, on top of everything else. He wished he had more time for his wife, for his daughters; more time for the boy who had arrived in their lives.
That day, he realized to his surprise, there was time. That day, the war, by taking his maize in a 100 percent tax, had taken away his planned work. However, it had left him time. It had left him with a rare day when his hands were empty, with no maize to protect, no goods to deliver. He would stop grumbling, then. That day, he would not waste any more time on the war or the reform. Or on the lost maize.
The whiskey could wait until the usual hour. The sugarcane could wait for his visit. He would use this time for something else.
“Francisco, I’m speaking to you!”
“Pardon me, pardon me,” he said as he left the glass of whiskey half-drunk on the table and went to hold his wife and smile at her, as he did only when they were alone.
“Ay, Francisco . . .”
“At your service, ma’am?”
“No! Stop fooling around. I came to tell you that Anselmo wants to use soap on the bees to kill them. He says they’re messengers of the devil, or some nonsense. He won’t shut up. I don’t even know what he’s saying anymore.”
“Tell him no.”
“I have! Do you think that man listens to me? No. You go. I left poor Nana Reja sitting on the rocking chair, waving her stick. She’s furious. She even opened her eyes!”
“And Simonopio?”
“Simonopio’s never there when Anselmo arrives. I don’t know where that boy hides himself.”
Neither the years nor the stern lectures had persuaded Anselmo Espiricueta to give up his superstitions, thought Francisco, frustrated. He looked at his whiskey. He looked at his wife, sorry to abandon the game they had started playing. The war and the land left him with little time for Simonopio, but today Francisco would give him some. He would defend the boy’s bees for him, because they were his, because they had arrived with him, because although Simonopio had always had hands to take care of him and godparents to watch over him, Francisco—on his monotonous rides from ranch to ranch—was plagued by the thought that the bees were the boy’s primary guardians. Killing them would be like killing a piece of Simonopio. It would be like orphaning him.
Besides, though the bees had gradually covered the roof of Reja’s shed and no one dared go in there to store things, they never hurt anybody. Most people had become accustomed to their presence around the boy. They seemed interested only in Simonopio, and he appeared interested only in them. His life would be hard enough with the bees by his side. What would become of him without them?
They had arrived with the boy. There must be a reason for it. Francisco would ensure they were left in peace.
“Let’s go.”
That day was Simonopio’s; it was his bees’. Some other day, Francisco would also find a way to defend his land.
9
The Bee Boy
At Nana Reja’s feet, Simonopio learned to focus his eyes by watching the hive. Even as a baby he learned to distinguish them individually, watching them leave the honeycomb early and awaiting their punctual return in the afternoon. He lived his life by the bees’ schedule and soon learned to crawl away from the mat to follow his tireless companions around the garden.
The day would come when he would follow them beyond the boundaries of the garden and beyond the hills that he could see.
Reja, who had resumed her wooden motionlessness, kept silent but constant watch over him. She no longer fed him herself, but since the beginning, she had made it clear that the bee boy was to be fed goat’s milk and honey, first with a cloth, then with a spoon, and later with a cup. In the early days, she did not allow anyone near the child for fear that somebody with bad intentions might harm him or somebody with good intentions might drown him by feeding him like an ordinary baby. The only people with permission to go near the child were Beatriz, Nana Pola, and Lupita.
Reja would never have let Beatriz feed him. Beatriz was always in such a rush to be somewhere else: if she wasn’t supervising the house or her daughters, she was at her club’s social events. Reja also knew that, if she allowed it, Beatriz would turn Simonopio into an indoor boy, a child of books. That was not Simonopio: Simonopio was for the outdoors, for the wild. He was for reading life, not books. When Beatriz wanted to see and hold the boy, she had to go to Reja’s rocking chair to do so.
Pola was old and patient, and in Lupita, though she was young, Reja saw a goodness that enabled her to look beyond the cavity in Simonopio’s face. Both would feed the child until the last spoonful, unhurriedly. Nana Pola and Lupita would never kill Simonopio, not with bad intentions or good.
And while no one else felt welcome when they approached, once Simonopio became mobile like any other normal boy, he would approach them, always with his version of a smile. Those closest to the Morales house stopped being frightened by the boy’s deformed face, and in time they began to feel familiarity and affection, even forgetting the defect that marked him. They heard him coming near and welcomed his presence, for with his pleasant personality, he was the best company while they did their daily work.
As the years passed, it became clear that, though he had survived and grown proficient at eating, Simonopio would never master communication. The consonants made with the tip of the tongue, which are most of them, escaped back into the cave that was his mouth. And while he could pronounce any sounds that emanated from the back of the mouth, like ka, ga, and ha, as well as all the vowels, most people with whom he spoke lost their patience too soon. The little noises and mumbles baby Simonopio tried to produce to imitate them made them feel most uncomfortable; the words he tried to pronounce without success, even more so. Unable to understand him, some thought he not only had a facial defect but was also soft in the head—and that, consequently, he could not understand them either. Poor Simonopio, some well-intentioned people began to call him. Poor Simonopio is distracted and stupefied by the bees; he laughs by himself, he can’t talk, he pretends to sing, he doesn’t understand anything.
How wrong they were.