Though he’d been warned that the Black Lady, as faithful and loving as the bees, would follow him anywhere, he went to the cemetery, pushed aside the ladies who were holding up the seven sheets, and looked into the deep grave. He saw exit the bloody temple the most beautiful of girls. A strange wind whipped the white cloth and carried the sheets toward the mountains as if they were immense doves.
The mother was now dying. “Fool!” the women shouted. “Why did you come? You’ve brought your ferocious lover. She’s already devouring the mother. The daughter is next.” They poured salt and vinegar over the child’s head and baptized her with a name that would shock and disgust Death: Fiera Seca. Then they put her in a basket, swaddling her in clusters of grapes, and carried her off to a secret place the father could never know, to hide her from the Enemy. Fiera Seca had to live as a prisoner in a barn until she was thirteen, when her menstruation began. When childhood came to an end, the danger disappeared. Death was looking for a girl, not a woman. Fiera Seca was led home by one of the old gossips. As she walked along the streets, the terrified townspeople closed doors and windows. To scare off Death, in case she discovered the child’s hiding place, they’d taught Fiera Seca to make horrible faces, one after another. Her face, like a soft mask, passed from one ugliness to another. If you looked at her for more than ten seconds, your head would ache.
When Fiera Seca entered the room, which was simultaneously kitchen, dining room, and bedroom, Teresa ran out to the garden along with the dogs, which began to howl, and the cats, which began to hiss. Fiera Seca was all alone. She heard footsteps. It had to be Death! Out of her hiding place she felt more vulnerable than ever. Besides contorting her face, she’d also begun to deform her body. She bowed her legs, twisted her spine, and made her hands look like claws. She drooled and foamed at the mouth, tinting that wretched mess with blood she sucked from her gums. The door opened with an insect-like screech. Abraham saw a monster, a kind of giant spider, but he did not run because he was covered with bees. To Fiera Seca, the buzzing of that dark mass seemed like the song of the Black Lady.
There they stood, face to face, sweating in terror. Perhaps the only beings that understood the situation were the bees. They began to fly in a circle that became larger and larger until it surrounded father and daughter. Within that living cordon, the girl saw the most beautiful man she could have imagined. In the depth of his green eyes, she found an ocean of goodness. That sublime spirit became a world where, if she could make herself small, she would have wanted to live. Little by little, she stopped making faces and stretched out her body, revealing herself as she was — a beautiful woman. Abraham realized that all the others, those who died giving birth, had been nothing more than sketches of the thing that, without knowing it, he’d sought forever: standing erect before him, like a tremendous miracle, his own soul was calling him. They submerged one into the other, they spoke words of love to each other, they wept, laughed, sang, and fell into the bed. The bees formed a curtain that separated them from the world, and there they remained, two bodies transformed into a single bonfire, not thinking of the consequences.
Teresa felt superfluous. Her father and sister disappeared forever, transformed into lovers. She put what little she had in a sack and went to live with her aunts. Two years later, she received news from her sister, a letter:
Forgive me, Teresa, for having forgotten you all this time. Dad is dead. You are the only one who knew our secret. I hope you’ll understand. It was stronger than we were, a passion we couldn’t control. No one in the neighborhood dared to imagine anything like that. Whenever I went out to shop, I made my faces and contortions so that no one would speak to me. My father, my lover, only showed himself covered with bees. Our real bodies were a miracle we only enjoyed in the intimacy of the house. To ward off spies, Abraham taught the insects to rest on the roof and exterior walls of the house until they covered it with a thick quilt. We made love inside a gigantic honeycomb, drunk on pleasure, unable to stop, again and again, wishing we could fuse and become one single being. That insatiable quest, that impossible dissolution; mixed in with the pleasure was a constant pain, a dagger piercing our string of orgasms. A short time ago, I became pregnant. We thought we were angels, beings from another world, unaffected by human phenomena: we had to return to reality. After five months, my stomach began to bulge. In dreams, Abraham received a visit from the Black Lady. She was insane with fury and jealousy. When he awoke, he said, “I am going to cause your death. She will not listen to my pleas. Her cruelty knows no limits. You will never be able to give birth and survive. Understand me, my daughter, my wife, I must sacrifice myself, hand myself over to Death, let her carry me off to her palace of ice. That way her love will be satisfied, and she will not devour you.” I wept for days, but I could not convince him that it was I who should disappear. He filled a bathtub with honey and submerged in the golden syrup. He died looking at me. He never closed his eyes. A tranquil suicide — he was smiling, and the bees flew, forming a crown that slowly circled over the yellow surface. Under the mattress, I found a note: “I shall never stop loving you. Please look after the bees. Don’t abandon them. They are my memory.” I fell into the bed. I spread my legs, and as my stomach shrank I expelled an interminable sigh from my sex. Nothing remained of our child. It turned into air.
Teresa never answered that letter and hadn’t returned to her paternal home until the day she went to live in Odessa with Alejandro and the four children. An obscure shape came out to meet them. When they walked into the room, the bees separated from Fiera Seca and went to suck at little plates filled with sugared juices. Crying out, Fiera Seca threw herself into Teresa’s muscular arms. She did not seem to notice the presence of my grandfather and the children.
“Oh, sister! No one knows about Abraham’s death. I still make the atrocious faces when I go shopping, and I receive those who come here to buy honey covered with insects, so they go on thinking it’s Abraham. I never buried our father.”
As the family was moving in, she led Teresa to the barn. Among the honeycombs, from which came a buzzing similar to a requiem, was the bathtub filled with honey with the smiling corpse beneath its yellow surface.
“Honey is sacred, sister. It preserves flesh eternally. He never wanted to leave. I feel him stuck to me. He’s waiting for me.”
As she said that, Fiera Seca took off her clothes. She revealed her naked body, a delicate structure with a skin so fine that the pattern of her veins, like those of a leaf, could be seen. A thick, animal-like pubis contrasted with that angelic delicacy: it was so black it emitted blue sparkles and covered her belly up to her navel.
“I shouldn’t abandon the bees. They are the reason I remained in this world. That’s what he asked me to do. But now you’ve come, and I can leave. I’m leaving these wise animals in your care. If you look after them carefully, they will feed your whole family.”
And with no further explanations, she leapt into the tub, embraced her father, and allowed the honey to cover her. She made no signs of drowning and seemed neither to suffer nor to die. She simply became forever immobile, her eyes wide open, staring into the open eyes of the other cadaver.
Teresa felt as dead as her father or her sister. Only her obligation to her family kept her alive. And hate as well. Especially hate. It was a source of energy that allowed her to tolerate the world only so she could curse it. In all things she saw the presence of a cruel, despicable God. There was nothing that didn’t seem absurd, impermanent, or unnecessary to her. The plot line of life was pain. She could detect the incessant fear hidden in laughter, in moments of pleasure, in the stupid innocence of children.