I heard the steps again, closer now, and saw a bright flash under the leaves. The man who was approaching carried an axe on his shoulder and a pitchfork in his hand. He was naked from the waist up, his forehead smashed. His face had been disfigured by the rushing river, and he was unable to shut his eyes because the skin on his forehead had healed poorly. His red, shrunken skin was pulled tight, always leaving a slit in his eyes. He had patches of black hair on his chest; his body was sunburned.
The bee seemed to be asleep, the flower too, until a gust of air arose and the flower swayed and the bee escaped from inside, grazing my cheek; and as soon as the flower was still again, the bee flew back in. The man left his axe and pitchfork at the foot of a tree, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked round as if he were lost. I was afraid he had seen me because his eyes stopped on the shrub. But he hadn’t. He began moving from one tree to another, reading the plaques that hung from the rings. He tripped on a root and almost fell. Then he went deeper into the forest. When he was out of sight, I breathed deeply; the anxiety in my chest had kept me from breathing all that while. Flocks of clouds passed slowly by; I wished I could control them, sending them where I wanted. A cluster of very small ones came to a halt directly above the forest and stayed there a long time, giving the impression they did not want to leave. When the cluster of little clouds started to move away, the man returned. With his axe he began making a cross on a tree trunk; he had marked it with a stone, top to bottom and side to side. He worked mechanically, and after a while he dropped to his knees and began to cry. I held my breath. Still crying, he stood up, spit in his hands, and rubbed them together. The bee buzzed in and out of the flower. As the axe cut the trunk, you could see the line begin to emerge. With the first axe strokes, the butterflies went wild. Two of them flew down to the grass and stuck on one of the man’s legs as he was cutting open the tree trunk. The bee was sucking the flower. The man rested and again spit in the palms of his hands. While he was rubbing his hands together, the axe under his arm, he looked up and seemed enthralled for a moment by the flutter of butterflies. He appeared more tired when he resumed work, as if each stroke of the axe bore all the weight of life.
Much later, the man began cutting the transverse line on the cross. One blow after another. The two butterflies caught on his leg were so close together, their wings folded up so tightly, that they looked like one butterfly. The man’s back shone with sweat, his ribs too; he was very thin. I wanted to go over to him, speak to him, wanted to tell him that the blacksmith sometimes talked to me — between hammer blows, near the forge and sparks — about the forest and the dead people inside the trees.
The blacksmith had a house at the entrance to the village, a house with two wisteria vines, one on each side of the huge door, winding upward, covering the roof in a tangled mass of branches. As the sparks flew from the forge, the blacksmith told me: you too have your tree, your ring, and your plaque. I did it when you were born. When someone is born, I make their ring and plaque right away. Don’t tell anyone I told you. All of us have our ring, our plaque, and our tree. And at the entrance to the forest stand the pitchfork and the axe.
V
I wanted to tell him that two butterflies were stuck to his leg, but I stood still behind the shrub, shut my eyes so I wouldn’t see, and tried not to think. I didn’t open my eyes for a while, not until I could no longer hear the axe striking. The man finished the transverse line of the cross and, using the pitchfork as a lever, he was prying the bark from the tree. It was difficult. When he had separated the bark, he grabbed one of the four ends with all his might and yanked it upward. He folded it back and nailed it to the tree with a large nail, using the back of the axe as a hammer. One after the other he nailed the ends — the four parts folded into the center — through the middle of the cross, then to the bark, the second nail above, the other two below. The trunk looked like a splayed horse. The tree was as wide and as tall as a man, and I noticed the seedcase inside. It looked slightly green in the green light of the forest, the same color as the tree trunks in the nursery. The man poked the seedcase with the pitchfork, first on one side, then the other, until it fell to the ground. Smoke rose from the gap left in the tree. The man put down the pitchfork, wiped the sweat from his neck, and rolled the seedcase to the foot of another tree. Some leaves were caught on it. He knelt down, head bowed, hands open on his knees, not moving. Then he sat on the ground and looked in the direction of the setting sun, at the butterflies.
Many of the leaves on the lower branches were partially eaten away, others merely pierced by little holes. The caterpillars never stopped chewing as they prepared to become butterflies. The man looked up with eyes he could not completely close. The air became wind. The man turned round, picked up the iron plaque, and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. He rubbed a finger over it, following the letters, one by one, until finally he stood up, seized the pitchfork and axe and headed toward the entrance to the forest, the axe on his shoulder flashing from time to time among the low-lying leaves. He came back empty-handed; and as if everything were going to recommence, the bee returned and entered the flower and the man approached his tree. He was weeping. He stepped backwards into the tree. The two butterflies had disentangled themselves from his leg when he rolled the seedcase and were now circling together above some blades of grass. They entered the tree with him, but flew out before the final entombment and landed briefly on a tree knot before moving to the soft, rubbery seedcase, where they stayed. I had turned my head, and when I looked back at the tree, I saw only the cross and the four nails on the ground. The bee was buzzing furiously before my eyes, like a pouch with yellow and black stripes. Tiny.
I stood up, rubbing my eyes from the sulphur-laced dust, and walked to the foot of the tree. Everything was still, more so than by the shrub. Everything was calm: the flutter of butterflies, the living and dying of caterpillars, the resin bubbling up and down and side to side on the cross as it healed the tree’s wound.
I was frightened. Frightened by the resin bubbling on its own, the ceiling of light hidden by leaves, and so many white wings flapping. I left, slowly at first, backing away, then I started to run, as if pursued by the man, the pitchfork, the axe. I stopped by the edge of the river and covered my ears with my open hands so I would not hear the quiet. I crossed the river again, swimming underwater because the bee was following me: I would have killed it if I could. I wanted it to be lost and alone in the dog roses where spiders lay in wait for it. On the other side of the river, I left behind the odor of caterpillar-gorged leaves and encountered the fragrance of wisteria and the stench of manure. Death in spring. I threw myself on the ground, on top of the pebbles, my heart drained of blood, my hands icy. I was fourteen years old, and the man who had entered the tree to die was my father.
VI
I passed by the stables and took the shortcut through the horse enclosure. Right away I heard the sound of hammering. In the last rays of sunlight, the village seemed to be wrapped in lilac-colored smoke. Bees were everywhere. I glanced at the slaughterhouse tower with its handless clock and the straggle of houses, some still standing, many leaning to the side from the weight of so much wisteria, so many jasmine vines. The sound of the river was louder once you left the village.
The blacksmith was short and wide with crooked legs. I had always liked going to see him: the hammer and anvil, sparks shooting from the forge, the iron screaming as if it were alive in the water. I had enjoyed these things since I was little, since the first day I had gone to see the blacksmith make rings, awls, plaques. The plaques for the villagers bore only their names. But a bee flying into a bird’s open beak was engraved above the names of the dead from Senyor’s household. They used to say Senyor was the last of his race. And then they would laugh.