Then I opened to the first chapter and my eyes were met once again by the same familiar pictures. The queen and her brood, which were just larvae in cells and all the golden honey they surrounded themselves with. Swarming bees on a frame in a beehive, crowded together, each identical to the next, impossible to distinguish from one another. Striped bodies, black eyes, rainbow-colored wings that shone.
I continued turning the pages until I came to the passages about knowledge, the same sentences I had read as a child, but now the words made an even greater impression: “In order to live in nature, with nature, we must detach ourselves from the nature in ourselves… Education means to defy ourselves, to defy nature, our instincts…”
I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. The guard came around a bookshelf and walked towards me. She didn’t say anything, but once again rattled the keys. Demonstratively now.
I nodded at her quickly to show that I was on my way out. “I would like to borrow this.” I held up the book. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Help yourself.”
When I got back to my room, still holding The History of Bees to my chest, I finally put it down on the bed along with a pile of other books. I’d borrowed as many as I could carry. Soon I’d continue reading. I just needed a shower first.
I peeled off my clothes while standing in the middle of the floor. I pulled off everything at once, my socks got stuck in the legs of my trousers. The clothes were left in a tangled heap on the floor.
I showered until the hot water ran out, washed my hair three times, scrubbed my scalp with my nails, to get out the dust from the dead city streets. Then I dried myself off for a long time. I couldn’t remove the dampness from my skin; the bathroom was foggy. Finally I brushed my teeth for a long time, feeling how plaque and bacteria disappeared, wrapped the towel around me and walked into the room again.
The first thing I saw was that my clothes had been picked up. The floor was empty. I turned towards the bed. A woman was sitting there. She was younger than me. Her skin was soft, no dirt under her fingernails. Her clothes were clean and sleek, snug, like a uniform. This was a woman whose occupation was something completely different from working outdoors among the trees.
In her hand she held one of the books. I couldn’t see which one.
She raised her head and looked at me, serious, dispassionate. I was unable to say anything, my brain was working intensely to make something fall into place. Should I know her?
She calmly stood up, put the book down, then handed me my clothes, which were now neatly folded and placed into a pile.
“I would ask that you please get dressed.”
I didn’t move. She behaved as if her presence here were a given. And maybe it was. I stared at her, searching her face to see if it stirred up any memories. But none emerged. I noticed that my towel was falling off, slipping down, about to leave me naked, and if possible, even more vulnerable. I pulled the towel up and squeezed my arms against it to hold it in place, feeling both awkward and exposed.
“How did you get in?” I asked and was surprised that my voice actually carried.
“I borrowed a key.” She said it smiling a tiny smile at nothing at all, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“What do you want? Who are you?” I stammered.
“You must get dressed and come with me.”
It wasn’t an answer, it was an order.
“Why? Who are you?”
“Here.” Once again she held out the pile of clothing.
“Do you want money? I only have a little.” I walked over to the bedside table where I still had a few coins in the drawer, turned around and held them out to her.
“I was sent by the Committee,” she said. “You must come with me.”
Chapter 55
WILLIAM
The drawings lay in my lap. I sat on a bench in the garden, at a distance from the hives, close enough to see and hear them well, but far enough away to avoid being stung. I sat as motionless as an animal following a scent, a prey that would soon be attacked.
But the attack was already over. I was a carcass now.
The bee dies when its wings are worn out, frayed, driven too hard, like the sails of the Flying Dutchman. She dies midleap, as she is about to take flight, has a heavy load, perhaps she has taken on more than usual, is bulging with nectar and pollen, this time it is too much, the wings do not carry her any longer. She never returns to the hive, but plunges to the earth, with her entire burden. Had she had human feelings, she would have been happy at this moment, she would have entered the gates of heaven well aware she had lived up to the idea of herself, of the Bee, as Plato would have expressed it. The worn-out state of her wings, yes, her death in its entirety, is a clear sign that she has done what she was put on earth to do, accomplished an infinite amount, taking into consideration her tiny body.
I would never have such a death. There were no clear signs that I’d done what I was put on the earth to do. I had not accomplished anything at all. I would grow old, my body would swell, and subsequently fade away, without any trace of me left behind. Nothing would remain, except possibly a salty pie which left behind a greasy coating in the mouth. Nothing but a Swammer pie.
So it all might as well just come to an end right now. The mushrooms were still there, in the top drawer furthest to the left in the shop, carefully locked, with a key only I had access to. They would take effect rapidly; in just a few hours I would grow lethargic and listless, subsequently unconscious. A doctor would diagnose it as organ failure; nobody would know it was self-inflicted. And I would be free.
But I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t move from the bench. I didn’t even manage to destroy the drawings, my hands refused to perform that simple movement, the muscular impulse stopped in my fingertips, paralyzed me.
For how long I was alone, I didn’t know.
She came without my noticing. Suddenly she sat down on the bench beside me. Without a sound, not even her breathing was audible. The close-set eyes, my own eyes, looked towards the bees that buzzed in front of us, or perhaps towards nothing.
In her hand she held the letter from Dzierzon. She must have found it among the chaos in the room, found it and read it, as she previously had also searched and gone through my things. Because it had been her all along, the tidy shop, the book on my desk. I just hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to see it.
The proximity of another human being caused the paralysis to release its grasp. Or perhaps it released its grasp precisely because it was her. She was all I had now.
I laid the drawings on her lap.
“Destroy them for me,” I said softly. “I can’t do it.”
She just sat there. I tried to meet her gaze, but she looked away.
“Help me,” I begged.
She put a hand on the drawings. For a moment she was silent.
“No,” she said.
“But they are rubbish, don’t you understand?” My voice broke, but it didn’t unsettle her.
She just shook her head slowly. “It’s too soon, Father, perhaps they may still be of value.”
I drew a breath, managed to speak calmly, tried to sound rational.
“They’re useless. I really just want you to destroy them, because I’m incapable of doing it myself. Take them away, put them somewhere I can’t see them and can’t stop you. Burn them! A huge fire, flames reaching up to the heavens.”