The yellowed, brittle paper was about to crumble into pieces, but Emma rescued it with glass and heavy gold frames. She even made sure the drawings were hung in a place without direct sunlight.
I didn’t need them anyway. Had built these hives so many times I could do it blindfolded. People laughed at us because we built them ourselves. I didn’t know any other beekeepers who built their own hives. It took too long. But we had always done it that way. These were our hives. I didn’t speak about it out loud, didn’t want to brag, but I was sure the bees were happier in our hives than in the mass-produced standard boxes. So people could just go ahead and laugh.
The equipment was ready and waiting in the barn along with thick, fragrant planks of wood.
I started with the boxes. Cut out slots with the electric saw and pounded the planks together with a rubber hammer. It went quickly; it was work that had visible results. The frames took longer. Ten frames per box. The only thing we bought prefabricated was the metal queen excluder, with 4.2-millimeter openings to ensure that the queen stayed inside the hive and the smaller worker bees could come and go freely. There were limits.
The work kept me from falling asleep. Out here in the cold barn where the sawdust flew like snowflakes through the air, drowsiness didn’t overcome me the way it did indoors. Besides, it was impossible to sleep to the angry sound of the electric saw. I usually wore earmuffs but now I took them off, let the sound fill my head. Then there wasn’t room for much of anything else.
I didn’t notice Emma come in. She could have been standing there watching me for a long time, had at least had time enough to put on safety earmuffs. When I turned around to get more wood moldings I discovered her. She just stood there with the big, yellow plastic earmuffs over her ears. She smiled.
I turned off the saw.
“Hello?”
She pointed at the earmuffs and shook her head slightly. Fine. She couldn’t hear what I said. We stood there like that. She continued to smile. No mistaking it, that smile. Menopause was a big topic these days, the women whispered when they thought we weren’t listening, about hot flashes, urination, night sweats and, yes indeed, we also picked up on that: reduced libido. But Emma was as she had always been. And now she stood there wearing earmuffs and it wasn’t hard to understand what she wanted.
It had been a long time, long for us. Not since before Tom was home. We became shy with him in the house, afraid he would hear, just as if he were still a toddler sleeping in our bedroom with us. We started whispering every time we got into bed. Moved carefully, lay right down under the duvet and quietly turned the pages of our respective books. And afterwards, after he had left, it simply hadn’t come up. I hadn’t even thought about it.
She put her arms around me, kissed me on the mouth, with her eyes closed.
“I don’t know,” I said. My body was stiff and slow, no pep in me. “I’m a little tired.”
She just smiled and pointed at the earmuffs again.
I tried to take them off, but she removed my hand.
We stood there like that. I held her hand. The smile remained plastered across her face.
“OK.”
I pulled out a pair of earmuffs, too. “Is this how you want it?” For some reason or other I came to life. It wasn’t quiet, it was never quiet when you shut everything out, the hissing of the brain, of my own breath, the heart pounding, all of it invaded you.
We kissed, her tongue was soft, her mouth open and warm. I pulled her up on the carpenter’s bench. Her head was level with mine. The air was cold, my fingers were like icicles against her skin. She winced, but did not pull away. I tried to blow on my hands, don’t think it helped much, because she trembled when I tried to push them under her sweater. She lay back on the table, with her legs dangling towards the floor. I kissed her on the stomach but she pushed my head down. Her body jerked when my tongue hit the spot. Perhaps she moaned, but if she did I couldn’t hear it.
Then we both lay on the table. She was on top. It didn’t take long, it was too cold for that. And the boards of the table were too hard against my shoulder blades.
Afterwards she took off the earmuffs, pulled up her pants and tucked in her shirt. Before I could say anything she had gone.
She left behind the warmth of her body, suspended in the air above the carpenter’s bench.
Gulf Harbors. There it was again. Gulf Harbors. The words wouldn’t go away, kept messing around in my head, Gulf Harbors, kneaded, like dough, Gulf Harbors, Harb Gulfors, Bors Gulf-harb, I shook my head hard, wanted to get rid of them, but they were damn well there all the same, Gulf Borsharb, Bors Harbgulf, Harb Forsgulf.
It was hot there now. I checked the weather report yesterday, without Emma noticing. Don’t know why, I just happened to find a national weather forecast on TV and sat there waiting for Tampa to show up. I could see that there wasn’t much precipitation this time of year. There was still a raw chill here, but the dream summer had already arrived there. The nightlife. Barbecuing. Dolphins. Manatees.
Gulf Harbors.
The words were permanently stuck, it was impossible to get rid of them. So they would have to stay.
She was something, Emma. I was lucky to have her. No matter what happened. That wouldn’t change, even if we did move to Florida.
Chapter 10
TAO
The Day of Rest finally arrived. Unannounced, like every year. We were not notified until the evening before that the Committee had decided the citizens had finally earned the right to a day off. The official announcement was made by Li Xiara, the Committee’s leader, a woman who always presented the Committee’s most recent decisions to us, on the radio, and on battered information screens. Her chanting, dispassionate voice was the same, regardless of whether the message was good or bad. The pollination was finished, she now reported, the blossoming season was almost over. They could treat us to this, she said, we, the community, could treat ourselves.
We had been waiting for this day for weeks. More than two months had passed since we’d last had time off. While the tendons in our lower arms grew more and more inflamed from the repetitive brushing movement, while our arms and shoulders grew stiffer and stiffer and our feet perpetually tired from standing, we worked and waited.
For once I was awakened not by the alarm, but by the light. The sun warmed my face, I lay in bed with my eyes closed, feeling how the temperature slowly rose in the room. Then I finally managed to open my eyes and look around. The bed was empty. Kuan was already up.
I went to him in the kitchen. He was having a cup of tea and looking out at the fields, while Wei-Wen played on the floor. It was so quiet, a day of rest for all of us, as had been decided. Even Wei-Wen was playing more calmly than usual. He drove a red toy car around the floor while making a soft rumbling sound.