Simonopio visited them often. He laid his hands on the firm structure of the living honeycomb, vibrant with their buzzing. Without coming out, they welcomed him, they consoled him in his solitude, and they asked him: Do you need us?
Just the knowledge that they would come if he called for them, ready for anything, calmed Simonopio. They would go wherever they were needed without hesitation, even to this undesirable place, if Simonopio called for them—but at great cost: with the low temperatures, most would die. That day, in that place, he was afraid, but that was not enough to make him call on his bees to sacrifice themselves. The day to summon them had not yet arrived.
Sitting on a rock behind a bush, waiting for his godmother to finish her duty, watching over her from a distance, Simonopio was not ashamed to admit that what terrified him most was the knowledge that, one day, he would face Espiricueta. He did not know where, how, or when it would be, and that caused him great anguish. That day, the man did not appear to be at home, Simonopio concluded with relief when the youngest daughter timidly answered the door.
It would come, but today would not be the day of the lion and the coyote.
He had no choice but to wait for time to make his story real. What he did know was that the day would arrive, that it could not be put off, and that his loss would be enormous and irreparable. Without knowing the story in advance, he was certain it would change everyone’s lives.
If, by avoiding Espiricueta, by evading him, he managed to prolong the wait, to grow strong until he lost his fear, to learn what he needed to know in order to change the words and elements of this inevitable narrative; if he bought himself enough time to grow physically, mentally, and spiritually; and if over this time he gradually became the powerful lion he imagined, then he would continue to avoid it for as long as necessary. Because Simonopio was certain that the tale the bees, the wind, and the trees would one day tell about him and Espiricueta would be a story of the kind one hoped would never happen.
“What’re you doing here, devil?”
Surprised by the violence in the voice, Simonopio turned around to see Espiricueta charging toward him, ready to deal him a blow with the stick he carried in his hand.
21
Gaps That Were Left
Sometimes when we do not have someone in front of us—in plain sight, in constant contact—while we know it does not mean that they no longer exist, it’s as if it were impossible that they should carry on without us, that they could continue to exist without our physical influence. Perhaps this stems from the depths of our early childhood, when we are reluctant to lose sight of our mother for fear of her disappearing.
I don’t know if it’s happened to you, but it has to me. It still does. Right now, as we travel away from my family, from my home, when it’s almost time for lunch and I know that the food is being prepared, I struggle to accept that, even though I’m not there, the broth or stew is still bubbling away, the same smells that are always there when I’m present are still wafting around the house, and the food will still taste the same in my absence.
This phenomenon does not occur, of course, when one goes out to buy some milk from the store on the corner. It occurs, to me at least, when one goes away, when there is a goodbye involved—or an interval, you might call it.
When I was away studying and returned for the holidays, it seemed very strange to me that my mother had had the initiative in my absence to change the upholstery on an armchair or donate the books from my childhood to younger eyes and minds. Then, when my own children studied elsewhere, I called them often so that they would not forget my continued presence in the day-to-day world: the daily routine where we feel hungry and eat, where our teeth rot and we have fillings, where we come down with diarrhea—not too often, hopefully—and treat it with an infusion of estafiata, grown in a corner of the garden. Where the light bulbs blow and we change them; where our electricity bill is double the usual amount, and seething, we just pay it; where sometimes we fight, but most of the time we’re happy; where we have dinner with old friends or even make new ones.
All of this in spite of your absence.
Of course, I know it’s not like this, that they won’t forget me and I won’t them, but it’s the first time I’ve tried to explain the concept to someone. I hope I’ve managed it. And no. I’m no more senile now than I was an hour ago, when we got into the car. I’m not senile, but at my age, I think I now have the right to say whatever I want. And this is what I want to say: my memories, my impressions come with me. I don’t know about yours, but my reality goes with me wherever I go and leaves behind its capacity to reinvent itself, to develop.
I imagine that, in much the same way, my parents thought they would return to a town frozen in time, fossilized. A Brigadoon. But no. Life—and death—continued without them.
It was not until they arrived back in Linares that my papa admitted to my mama the anguish he had felt when he drove through the town on the day he went to collect my sisters in Monterrey. During the three months of isolation, he had kept it to himself to avoid worrying her. But on their return, when the context was different, he allowed himself to confess that the experience had horrified him and kept him awake for several nights, for whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the empty streets again and the dogs hungry for human flesh, and he heard the sound of the horses and the funeral cart on the paved road. Even after receiving a few sporadic letters from Dr. Cantú and learning that life in Linares went on, albeit in a strained atmosphere, my papa struggled to imagine or remember the streets full of living people, like they had been before.
After thinking about it for many years, I’ve reached the conclusion that, with his last glance at his ancestral town after the arrival of the flu, my papa experienced the phenomenon I have been trying to describe: you leave a place or say goodbye to someone, and thereafter, you feel the existence you have left behind is frozen by your absence. On that last drive through Linares, my papa had been left thinking it was the end of the world. The end of his world, at least. All the usual sounds, smells, and sights had been wiped out, and I’m certain that he had the impression—a primeval instinct, perhaps—that all the bodies strewn on the roadside were people who had suddenly dropped dead as they went about their daily business, with no warning.
His first impression when they returned once and for all was, perhaps, of a gray Linares. In that January of 1919, Linares was icy and overcast, and the people walking in the streets wore black mourning clothes. The circumstances might have prevented them from saying goodbye to their loved ones at the grave, but as my grandmother used to say, decent people knew how to mourn properly: by wearing black for a full year.
My parents discovered a kind of mourning that they struggled to understand. People had lost husbands, wives, parents, children, or friends, and they wore black, but they went about their daily business as if nothing had happened. They were happy to be alive, I suppose. I would have been, too, frankly. In the new reality that the influenza brought about, it is easy to believe that people who were honest with themselves could admit such a thing—that they could think My sister died and What a shame, but how nice that I didn’t—even if saying so in front of others would have been in poor taste.
I do not wish to make light of the pain they must have felt at the loss of loved ones. Anyone who has been bereaved knows that the survivor’s recovery is a torturous road.