Every time Simonopio moved his bed and placed it in front of the shed, Beatriz or Francisco sent someone to return it to the house.
“No, Simonopio. You can’t sleep there. If you don’t want to sleep with the nanas anymore, come to the house with us.”
They continued to explain to him how the bees had gradually taken possession of the rafters of Nana Reja’s shed—because they had not dealt with the problem in time, they admitted—and that now it was too late: for years, nobody had been brave enough to store tools or anything else in the storehouse.
“How’re you going to sleep there, Simonopio?”
As they asked him the question, in spite of the boy’s expected silence, the answer—clear, logical—came to them by itself. And if they had not been persuaded by the fact that there was no one better for that space than Simonopio, who was rarely seen without his bees, they would have witnessed Nana Reja—who nobody ever saw move, speak, or show any interest—attempting to remove her beloved boy’s bed from their shared bedroom herself.
They laid down some rules, of course. First, that before moving there, Simonopio must clean the shed. And second, that he allow them to build an adjoining bathroom and make a window to improve the ventilation and natural light in the space. For the time being.
Simonopio gladly agreed: he did not want to put his bed where the nocturnal dolls that Nana Pola had sent to some unspecified storeroom might have been left and forgotten. He would do the clearing out.
The window would be made whenever it was made, but he wanted to move in right away. Before he could lose his determination, he went straight to the shed to try to open the door. Rusted and swollen from neglect and years of disuse, the door would not budge. Simonopio could not manage it alone and had to persuade Martín to pluck up the courage to help him.
“All right, Simonopio; if I’m with you, I suppose they won’t attack me.”
His bees had never attacked anyone, with or without him, but he had no means to explain that to Martín. And, given what was coming in the future, he thought with some regret that it was convenient for people to have that misperception: Don’t go near Simonopio’s shed, or you’ll get stung to death by a bee or a thousand.
He had spent much of his life sitting in the shade of the protruding roof, keeping Nana Reja company, learning the lessons of life that the wind and the bees taught him. But that day, having repaired the door, Simonopio went inside the shed for the first time.
It was true that it needed a window, not just because of the darkness but also to get rid of the stuffy smell that had built up over the years. The floor was firm, covered in the dust that even the swollen door had been unable to keep out, and in two corners, a buildup of honey that the bees had allowed to escape had crystallized over the years.
None of it bothered him. He would leave the door open all day and let the fresh aroma of wild herbs clean the stagnant air imbued with the smell of men returning from work, oil for the plow, spilled kerosene, broken plant pots, rotten rope, old sacks both empty and filled with earth, scaffold boards, and rusty pieces of metal. To the rhythm of the rocking chair’s creak outside, where Nana Reja looked out, as ever, to the road and the hills, he dragged everything from the shed.
He left the stalactites and stalagmites of soft, crystalized amber honey intact in their corners. They belonged there.
On the last shelf was something that, at first glance in the half-light of the shed, Simonopio thought was a piece of canvas. On closer inspection, he noticed the canvas covered something: an enormous box. He could not move it by himself.
When he finally persuaded Martín to help again, Simonopio was surprised at the man’s alarm when he saw the box, and at first, he did not understand why he was so afraid. It seemed a very fine box to him, though he had not opened it. Then he hesitated. What if it was where Nana Pola had stored the nocturnal dolls? It was not nighttime, but it was quite dark inside the shed. He was afraid the conditions were conducive to the dolls coming to life, to them coming out to scare him.
Simonopio ran out behind Martín, frightened by the product of his imagination.
After regaining his breath and composure, Simonopio pulled on Martín’s sleeve to insist they go back in to finish the job. They also managed to recruit Leocadio for the task. Between the three of them, they brought the heavy box out into the daylight after eight years of being left forgotten in total darkness. Reluctantly, Leocadio and Martín recalled the day when they themselves had very carefully stored it in the shed on the instruction of the lady of the house.
They broke out in goose bumps.
To Simonopio, on the other hand, the box seemed very beautiful. He thought that, if nobody needed it, perhaps they would allow him to store some things in it—provided the dolls were not in there. If they were, he would have to find them another prison.
That was the first test of his courage: to open it and then evict its possible inhabitants. When, with resolve, he tried to lift the lid, Martín stopped him.
“Don’t. It’s for a dead body. If we open it, it might want us to fill it.”
Martín said nothing more on the subject to the boy: in a way, he associated the kid’s arrival in the world with that box, and he did not think it would be a good anecdote to relay. He covered the box and then asked Leocadio to help him hide it again in the depths of another storehouse, where no one’ll see it, compadre, just in case.
Simonopio knew about death. He saw it often in his stories about what would happen and in some that had already happened. But he had never seen a dead person’s box. He did not want it. And Martín was right not to want it, either: that box was for neither one of them.
He spent the rest of the day cleaning. That night, once he was tired but settled in, with his bed made and in position, his godmother Beatriz arrived to inspect the results of his hard work.
“You’re going to need a wardrobe and a chair, at least. And you need a window as soon as possible, Simonopio. What a dreadful smell! Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the house, at least until we finish the window and bathroom?”
He appreciated the offer but refused. His mind was set on that night being the first he would spend in his new sleeping quarters, though his godmother was right: with the door closed, the unpleasant smell of the years of airlessness had returned.
With the ventilation from the open door during the day and with the smell of the soaps and oils he had used, he had thought he had driven the stink away. But night had fallen, and he did not think it would be a good idea to sleep with the door ajar: it was his first time sleeping alone, even if Reja was still outside. He was afraid. Not knowing the words of Nana Pola’s blessing, he had to invent his own, but he was unsure whether it would prove to be as effective as the one that had protected him every night until then. He did not know whether his words would persuade witches, assorted animals, monsters, or dolls to go elsewhere.
Or whether the words would protect him from the coyote.
After he closed the door very carefully, the bad smells invaded his nose again. He thought it was possible that, after so many years living in one place, they were reluctant to move, to be lost in the open air until their essence was gone. Now, in self-defense, they were clinging to the porous plaster on the walls and the old timber beams of the roof, and if Simonopio did not resolve it soon, it would not be long before they found his sheets, pillow, and mattress to be the ideal vessels in which to prolong their existence in the space where they had been born.