The bees would hesitate for a moment before approaching the tulips. Then, as if making up their minds, they came to rest on the thinnest edge of a petal, their striped abdomens quivering. The wings seemed to melt in the rain.
As we sat silently in the Manager's room, the buzzing seemed to grow. The thrumming, which had been muffled by the rain, became more and more distinct, filtering into my head like a viscous fluid seeping through the tubes of my inner ear.
Suddenly, a bee flew in through the open window above the veranda and came to rest on the spot in the corner. The spot had grown again and stood out vividly against the white ceiling. I was just going to ask about it when the Manager spoke.
"There is something you could do for me," he said, as the sound of the bee's wings died away.
"Anything at all," I said, putting my hand on the bed where his right hand would have been.
"Could you get my medicine?"
"Of course," I said. I took a packet of powder from the drawer of his nightstand and filled a glass from the pitcher of water that had been left by his bed. Everything he might need-the telephone, a box of tissues, the teapot and cups-had been brought from elsewhere in the apartment and arranged close to the bed. The change was minor, but to the Manager it must have seemed as though his world was shrinking along with the space in his chest. I watched a drop of water fall from the lip of the pitcher, and a chill went down my spine.
"I hope this helps," I said, trying to appear calm as I tore open the packet of powder.
"It's just to make me more comfortable," he said, his face expressionless. "To relax the muscles and soothe the nerves."
"But isn't there anything they can do?" I asked again.
The Manager thought for a moment. "As I've told you, the dormitory is in a period of irreversible degeneration. The process has already begun. It will take some time yet to reach the end-it's not a matter of simply throwing a switch and turning out the lights. But the whole place is collapsing. You may not be able to feel it; only those of us who are being sucked in with it can. But by the time we understand, we're too far along to turn back."
As he finished speaking, he tilted his head back and opened his mouth. It seemed delicate and almost feminine. On the undersides of the soft lips, two rows of even teeth were lined up like carefully planted seeds. His tongue was curled back in his throat.
I poured the powder into his mouth in a thin stream. Then he took the glass between his chin and collarbone, just as he had always done, and drank without spilling a drop, and I thought about his pitiful ribs, about the X-ray of translucent bones aimed at the heart.
Another letter came from my husband: "How are your preparations coming? I haven't heard from you, and I've been worried." There were more descriptions of Sweden: the supermarkets and the vegetation, museums and roadways-sunnier than in the last letter. And at the end, as before, was an itemized list of my "homework":
Contact the telephone company, the electric company, the gas company, and the city about the water.
Apply for an international driver's license.
Check into the tax code for overseas residents.
Reserve a storage unit.
Gather up as much nonperishable Japanese food as possible. (I'm beginning to get tired of the salty, tasteless food here.)
If you added these to the ones in the last letter, I now had ten tasks to complete. I tried reading them out loud to put them in some sort of order, but it didn't help. I had no idea how to prioritize or where to begin in order to get to Sweden.
I put the letter in the drawer and took out my quilting. I had no particular need now for a bedcover or a wall hanging, but I couldn't think of anything else I had to do.
Blue checks, and then black and white polka dots. Plain red, and green with a pattern of vines. Squares, rectangles, isosceles triangles, and right triangles. The quilt grew, but as I sat there in the stillness of the night, sewing patch after patch, I suddenly heard the thrumming of bees; and the sound, no matter how faint, would not go away.
I began to go to the dormitory every day to look after the Manager, and each time I took a different treat: madeleines, cookies, cream cakes, chocolates, yogurt, cheesecake. At last I got to the point where I had no idea what to take. The tulips bloomed, the bees buzzed, the stain on the ceiling grew larger, and the Manager, with each visit, grew rapidly weaker. He stopped going out to shop, and soon he was unable to prepare his own meals. He began to have difficulty feeding himself or even getting a drink of water, and, finally, he was barely able to sit up in bed.
I went to take care of him, but there wasn't much I could do. From time to time I would make him some soup or rub his back, but for the most part I simply sat in the chair next to his bed. His ribs were slowly caving in on his body, and I could only sit and watch.
It was the first time I had ever nursed someone, and the first time I'd seen someone deteriorate so quickly. It frightened me to think how things would end if he went on this way. I became unbearably sad when I imagined the moment his ribs would finally pierce his heart, or the weight of his artificial leg as it was removed from his cold body, or the deep silence in the dormitory when I was left all alone. The only one I could count on was my cousin, and I found myself praying he would come home soon from his handball camp.
That day, it began raining in the evening. I was feeding the Manager the pound cake I had brought him. He lay in bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, staring off into space. From the way the blanket rose and fell, it was obvious that he was having trouble breathing. Pinching off bits of cake in my fingers, I held them near his mouth. His lips parted only slightly, and when I had slid the cake in, he held it there without chewing, as if waiting for it to dissolve. Over and over, he pecked at bits of cake until the slice was gradually consumed. My thumb and index finger were shiny with butter.
"Thank you," he said, a bit of the cake clinging to his lips. "That was delicious."
"I'm glad you liked it," I said.
"Food actually tastes better when someone feeds it to you." He lay on his back without moving, as if his body had been stitched to the bed.
"I'll bring something else when I come next time."
"If there is a next time," he said, though the words were little more than a sigh. Unsure how to respond, I pretended I hadn't heard him and stared at the butter on my fingers.
I realized it was raining. The tulips in the flower bed were trembling and the bees' wings were damp. The tulips today were a deep blue, as if someone had spilled a bottle of ink on them.
"What an odd color for tulips," I murmured.
"I planted them with the boy who disappeared," the Manager said. "He came home one day with a bag of bulbs. He said he'd picked them out of the trash bin in back of a flower shop. They were tiny things, and I didn't think they'd amount to much…" His pupils shifted to look out the window. "But he was absolutely convinced they'd bloom. He dragged an old desk into the courtyard and laid out the bulbs on it. He divided up the different varieties and figured out how to fit them all in the flower bed. The plan came to him in an instant, and it turned out to be exactly right. He seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing. It was probably because he was a mathematician, but it still impressed me. There was a different number of bulbs for each color, but he came up with a way to fit them all in the bed, without a single one left over."
The evening shadows crept in from the corners of the room. The box of pound cake on the kitchen table disappeared into the darkness. The Manager looked away from the window and continued his story.