That a goodbye was coming.
Simonopio shook his head. There was no point in pretending anymore.
“Ay,” she sighed, like she did when I got up to mischief. The difference was that this sigh wasn’t one of exasperation but of resignation. “Do you need anything?” Simonopio wouldn’t need anything, so he turned down the offer. “What am I going to tell him? What’re we going to do without you?” My mama didn’t wait for a response, because the questions weren’t for him. Still, she went on. “Will you take care of her?”
He nodded. Nana Reja was part of his life, and leaving her wasn’t an option.
“Goodbye, Simonopio.” With the hug she gave him and which he returned to her, they said everything to each other without words.
94
Goodbye, Francisco
Dawn that Saturday took them by surprise on Reja’s road, but not as far from the house as they would’ve liked. Nana Reja advanced slowly. It was not the lack of light that prevented her from moving more quickly, because she walked with her eyes closed anyway.
And they carried very little: a few clothes of hers in one knapsack, and a few of his in another.
The day before, the bees had not had to struggle so to move, because with no particular attachment to the place and the structure that had given them refuge for so long, but which was now too big for them, they had installed themselves temporarily in one of the wooden beehives that, years before, had been bought for them along with my papa’s tractor.
The bees had arrived with and because of Simonopio. Now they would leave with and because of him.
Which was why, from the first light of the previous day, the few that remained had allowed Simonopio to take them to where everything began, to the place where fate had woven the stories of their lives together for the first time, under a bridge, to the place where they would build a new hive, another one that would grow as successfully as the last. The land and the orange trees still needed them.
Transporting Reja’s rocking chair had posed more problems, but the nana refused to leave it behind, and Simonopio understood: it would’ve been as if, all of a sudden, someone decided to abandon a leg, just like that. So, the day before, without being seen, he had made a separate trip, carrying the chair up the hill to where they would continue to live, where it would await the arrival of its old companion.
On the day of their departure, their inadequate goodbyes weighing heavier on their shoulders than their knapsacks, they stopped when the first ray of light appeared: Reja pretending she needed a rest and Simonopio that his new shoes were uncomfortable.
Looking back, they knew they would see the house waking up for the last time, and neither of them resisted the temptation to do so.
It was from the top of the hill that Simonopio saw me searching for him in his shed. It was from there that he then saw me come out, my face distorted. And it was from there that he made out the words that my mouth could not form through my screams and tears: Come-come-come-come, Simonopio, come-come-come-come.
My unanswered call would torment him forever. How easy it would’ve been to go to me. To forget everything. To forget debts and commitments. To forget all the danger for a few more days by my side. He wanted to run after me, his resolve weakened. But he controlled himself: his destiny was the same as the destiny of the blossoms that had borne fruit on that land. If he left it, he would wither. My destiny was in the city. Our lives—our whole lives—depended on our separation.
Goodbye, Francisco.
Simonopio closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see me leave. He turned around with my cries swirling in his ears, and he hoped that Nana Reja would turn as well, to continue the walk to a little bridge that crossed a stream where, years before, Nana, the bees, and Simonopio had begun their story.
95
I Always Thought
that it was Simonopio who’d abandoned me.
It never occurred to me that it was me who abandoned him, leaving him only with the hope that I would return.
96
It Took Me Longer Than He Thought It Would,
but in the end, I returned.
In part—and with no remorse whatsoever—I’ll blame my lateness on the fact that I became the man he saw in my future: a man who might not have gone through the same trials as his father, who might not have been forced to defend his land and son by shielding him from a bullet with his body, but one who always did everything possible to live his life with integrity, with courage—which has always come in useful in these parts—and to stick close to his family.
That man would not have been able to come when he was young, with the ties he had forged in his life, with the urban roots he had put down and watered and which depended on him so completely.
Time passed, and it has been years since anything or anyone depended on me, whether for sustenance or for character. Not even as an example or for company. It has been a long time since I became superfluous, unnecessary. For a long time, in complete and resigned solitude, all I’ve done is sit on a faded old La-Z-Boy, waiting for my life to end so that I am reunited with those who went before me.
Why didn’t I escape before falling into that? Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t I return?
I admit that I also owe my lateness to a factor that Simonopio did not count on and for which I now blame myself and nobody else: the same stubborn energy that, as a boy, drove me to insist and insist until I got what I wanted, I invested in the resentment that came from feeling abandoned.
For some reason, perhaps because I didn’t remember how it had happened, it was easier for my child’s mind to understand my papa’s death, even if I always lamented it.
But Simonopio’s abandonment, on top of my father’s absence, was impossible to overcome. It made me believe, at the age of seven, that, contrary to what I had thought, Simonopio did not live for me or because of me. I know: at that age I was an egotist who thought the sun revolved around me. I and me must’ve been my favorite words at the time. It was a very tough blow, realizing that Simonopio made the deliberate decision to leave me, that he packed whatever was important to him—without forgetting anything—and neither said goodbye to me nor offered me an explanation.
I thought that meant Simonopio wasn’t bound to me like I felt bound to him.
And for a long time, I banished him from my mind, just as he had banished me from his life.
Later I spoke of him again, and I began to remember him with more fondness as the years went by, though the bitter questions never stopped seeping into my memories: Why didn’t he even say goodbye to me? Why pretend that he would come with us, when he didn’t intend to do so? Why the deceit?
So much time lost on those senseless questions.
Listen carefully and pay attention, Francisco, Simonopio told me, but I didn’t listen or pay attention.
Until now, when I’ve finally opened myself up to truly seeing and listening to everything, as he had tried to teach me, as he asked me to do with the last words he said to me. Now I know and I understand why he did it, the reason he hid it from me and deceived me: I was the only person in the world who, with my stubbornness—and my blackmailing, perhaps?—could have managed to dissuade my mama from moving. He knew that I would’ve refused to leave Linares had I learned in time that he wouldn’t be coming with us.