Of Bees and Mist (8 page)

THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE
rest of the house slept, Elias the jeweler was kept up by bees. Sullen with doubts and imagined slights, the insects tirelessly buzzed inches away from his face. Elias was an anemic man who was prone to headaches after a sleepless night, but as the bees chipped away at the hours, he knew better than to try to swat them. At two o’clock, when he staged his first snore, the bees flew in closer circles and increased the volume of their buzzing. At four o’clock, when he pretended to be sullen himself and hid his face under the blanket, the bees shrieked like mad and stung him wherever they could. All Elias could do was toss and turn, hoping the roosters would soon crow and put an end to his misery. Unbe
knownst to him and the bees, his older daughter, Malin, was standing outside the door in her nightgown, pressing one inquisitive ear to the keyhole.

When morning brought not only breakfast but also a migraine, the bees cleared from the air as though they had never existed. As Elias sat facing his poached eggs and ham without appetite, his wife uttered a few words to which he could give only a distracted nod.

“I’ll consult the fortune-teller today,” said Eva. “If he thinks the signs are auspicious, I don’t see any reason to oppose the match…”

F
our days later, Meridia was dressing for school in the perpetual chill of the house when the front door opened with a bang. A violent scuffle rattled the porch, sending a tremor along the house, and a second later, something heavy tumbled down the stone steps. More shouts followed, and by the time Meridia looked down from her window, an oddly dressed man was dusting himself up and shaking his fist at Gabriel. He was wearing a red silk robe with wide sleeves, a golden sash across his chest, and a conical black hat that made him look like a messenger from the afterlife.

“There is no need for this kind of behavior, sir!” cried the man angrily. “I came in good faith, bearing a most excellent intention…”

Gabriel stood inside the ivory mist, folding his arms and laughing his grim laugh.

“Watch where you blow hot air. Next time, I won’t be so gentle.”

“But sir, at least consider what I proposed!”

“I’ve heard enough! My daughter is of no age or condition to marry. Now leave before I do something I’ll truly enjoy and you’ll bitterly regret!”

Gabriel went in and slammed the door. The matchmaker, for there was now no question of who he was, went after him with his last shred of dignity. One thing the man did not count on, however, was the ivory mist picking him up by his sleeves, twirling him like a marionette, stripping him of his hat, and sending him rolling across the lawn. For the second time that morning, the man peeled himself off the ground. Cursing the mist loudly, he slapped his hat back on his head and stormed away.

In an instant, Meridia put together the chain of events. The matchmaker must have arrived while she had taken her morning bath, for she had not heard the front door open since the blue mist deposited Gabriel a half hour ago. Their discussion, then, had lasted no more than ten minutes, which did not at all bode well for her chances. Thinking quickly, Meridia paced the narrow space between bed and window, alternately clasping and flexing her hands. Outside, the sky was gray and leaden, as the sky always looked when viewed from inside the house.

She made up her mind in seconds. The shoes came off first, then the socks, followed by the school clothes she let drop on the floor. Shivering in her undergarments, she went to the closet and selected a knee-length black dress with a teardrop cutout below the neck. She put it on with an almost military precision, smoothing the bodice, puffing the sleeves, fastening the two back buttons in one continuous motion. Sitting before the dressing mirror, she stared at the apparitions with such solemnity that they all departed without a gibe. Next, she unpinned her hair and shook it loose. She applied powder and blush to her face, mascara, lipstick, and a dab of perfume behind each ear. For a finishing touch, she pinned a camellia pendant on her chest, a treasure Daniel had found in a secondhand shop. Studying her reflection, she was pleased with her effort, for she now looked twenty-six instead of sixteen. She had just enough time to strap on a pair of patent leather heels when an urgent knock came at the door.

“Your father asks to see you, Miss,” said a flustered maid. “If I may say so, he looks like he’s just swallowed a toad.”

“He always does,” said Meridia. Without another word she swept past the maid and flew down the stairs in ten steps, reciting Ravenna’s lessons under her breath. She entered the study without knocking and, without giving in to a moment’s doubt, marched past the towering books to the massive desk in front of the window. The air was dense as mud, but determinedly she pushed her way in. It was not until she found herself staring at the back of Gabriel’s head that her heart pounded like a hammer.

“I want to marry him, Papa.”

Gabriel, who had been staring out the window, spun around in his chair. The floor had not betrayed her footfalls.

“You’re a child. You’re in no position to know, let alone tell me, what you want.”

His eyes narrowed with rage, but for the first time in her life, she confronted them head on. The collision released a shiver into the air, and in the crucial second that followed, it was Gabriel who felt the greater impact. Standing before him was not the little girl he could familiarly disparage, but a young woman inflamed by passion. Her beauty, a thing he had never previously valued or acknowledged, suddenly dazzled his vision with a lover’s shine. Gabriel, resenting this, held back none of his disdain.

“You think you can fool me with that cheap dress and that vulgar lipstick? You think I can’t see how your heart is beating so pitifully in your throat, or how your knees are trying their hardest not to shake? You are never a clever one, and when you try to deceive me, it only shows what a truly foolish child you are. Go to your room and wipe that paste off your face! I will let you know when you can take a husband.”

Meridia quivered visibly but took hold of herself. “I’m not a child, Papa. You can’t stop me from marrying him.”

Gabriel burst into a laugh. “Yes, I can. And if you force me, I will.”

“What have you got against Daniel?”

“For a start, his father is a middling tradesman, and his mother has a reputation for being a pest. You have nothing in common with them.”

“It’s not them I’m marrying. Besides, I have met his mother. She’s a perfectly lovely woman.”

“Then you are even sillier than I thought. Your young man, this so-called Daniel”—Gabriel crinkled his nose in distaste—“has no higher education and no money of his own. How do you expect to start a family with someone who still lives on his father’s bounty?”

“We’ll get by, Papa. We’ll get by.”

Gabriel scoffed loudly. “Sure you’ll get by. With my assistance.”

Stepping forward, Meridia placed her palms on the surface of the desk. “I swear I will never ask you for a penny, even if it costs me my life. We’re in love, Papa. You have no right to stand between us.”

Gabriel appeared to relish this. Like a scientist entertaining an impossible theory, he leaned back against the chair and locked his hands behind his neck.

“Ah, love…Tell me, what do you know about it? Judging from the way you speak, you’re barely capable of forming a thought. But please, don’t let that stop you from expressing your mind. What do you know about this love?”

Meridia shook with anger, but his mocking smile drained all words from her lips. Relenting slightly, Gabriel unlocked his hands and eyed her with a milder gaze.

“Here is what you’ll do. You will finish school, go on to the university, break a dozen young men’s hearts, and become a real woman. I’m far from being old-fashioned, you see. I give you permission to have as many suitors as you like—I encourage it actually, seeing that you are no longer chaste and can do no more damage to yourself. But by the grace of heaven, do not bore me with talk of love when you don’t have the slightest idea what it is.”

Meridia reddened. This time, before she could stop them, words had sprung to her lips. “I know that whatever it is, I didn’t learn it from you!”

Gabriel did not leap to his feet and strike her. On the contrary, his eyes scarcely flickered, and not a muscle moved on his face as he continued to regard her with amusement. This was the moment when she no longer doubted that he was made of ice.

“You’re right,” he said calmly. “I don’t know the first thing about love, nor do I understand why people lose their heads over it. And if you ask your mother, she will tell you she is cut from exactly the same cloth. Neither of us is capable of loving anyone, or each other, and certainly not you. Given this unfortunate pedigree, what makes you think you can do better with your young man?”

It was the cruelest thing he had ever said to her, and his smile drove the blade deeper into her flesh. Under his wintry gaze she felt her heart collapse against her ribs, but something inside made her go on.

“You can’t deny me the happiness you denied Mama. I won’t let you break me the way you broke her!”

Gabriel considered this by cocking his elegant head a fraction to the left. “Many things have been said about your mother, but one thing she isn’t is broken. If you think I’m cruel and heartless, then you don’t know what your mother is made of. We both know she does nothing but plot my death every second of her life.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out, She wouldn’t hate you if you hadn’t taken a mistress! but she checked herself in time, seeing how it would not help her cause. Instead, she asked him simply, “Why do you hate me, Papa?”

It was a question she had been dying to ask all her life. As an answer, she received an unequivocal silence. Imploring him with her eyes, she detected a droop in his right shoulder. His hand unconsciously rose to it, tried to correct the imbalance without success. All of a sudden his contempt seemed to desert him, leaving behind a fa
tigue that charred his countenance of ice. As she watched a lone vein throb on his forehead, the revelation came to her without a warning.

“She did this to you, didn’t she? The blinding flash and the tumble. It was Mama who put that stoop in your shoulder!”

Gabriel stood up to his full height, and instantly she knew she was losing him. Like a thing of majesty, his face shut in upon itself, sealing the lines and the tremor, and with a single innocuous blink, his eyes became as inexorable as night.

“You have wasted my time,” he said. “As long as you are still a child of this house, I forbid you to marry that boy.”

“Tell me about that night, Papa!” she persisted. “What happened in that room between you and Mama? Papa, tell me!”

Even before her voice cleared from the air, Gabriel had banished her into a desolated corner of his memory. Meridia could not focus her eyes, could not feel her breath, could not hear her voice. Her perspiring palms, when she finally lifted them from the desk, left no visible prints on the surface of the wood.

RAVENNA’S KITCHEN WAS NO
easier to penetrate than Gabriel’s study. From the doorway, Meridia inspected the iron knot on her mother’s head and hoped that her ear would be more yielding than her back. A glance around the room told her what she was up against: a knife furiously beheading cauliflowers, a teapot shrilling like a banshee, shallots frying on a hot pan, the eyes of a flounder staring in deathless rage. Imperious in solitude, Ravenna reigned over them with her dark and private language, bewitching the shallots, entrancing the cauliflowers, casting a spell over the flounder to preserve her bitterness from the rust of time.

“Rattling the house like dice before breakfast settled in his stomach! If he wanted to raise the dead with all that racket, he should have warned me to plug my ears! What will the neighbors think? They’re already laughing at him for slinking around every night to see a woman who actually looks worse than a warthog! And now that
someone is asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he makes himself even more of a laughingstock! Who will want to propose after this? I gave him a clever and beautiful daughter when everyone thought he was as barren as the desert, but did he ever thank me for my trouble? Oh no, he said he wanted a
son.
Well, he should have advised me of this before my womb dilated so I could make a little arrangement with God! The next thing I knew, before his child could pass her first gas, off he went to suckle that gorilla’s breasts, mounting and riding her like she was the last humpback whale in the sea—”

“Mama!” Meridia stepped into the kitchen.

“—Anybody who’s got no more sense than to impale a primate’s ass should be hanged on the street for crows to feast on—”

“Mama!” Meridia turned off the stove so the banshee would stop shrieking, covered the flounder so the eyes would stop glaring.

“—Does he think she’s going to give him a son? How can something so old and desiccated produce anything but its own shit—”

“Mama!” Meridia sidestepped the vegetable crates scattered on the floor and tossed the hissing shallots onto a plate, all the while trying not to breathe that reek and stink of solitude she had come to associate with forgetfulness.

“—He’s got no shame carrying on like a lecherous goat now that his daughter is old enough to marry—”

Meridia placed a hand on the small of that ramrod back, not a moment too soon, because the furious chopping of the knife was beginning to sound like thunder.

“Mama!”

Ravenna turned in surprise. Holding the knife to her waist, she regarded Meridia without the faintest awareness. Her tense eyes were ringed with shadows, and her frown deepened the imminent network of wrinkles she never once fought with creams other mothers purchased by the jars. Despite the strong aroma of shallots, her scent of lemon verbena dominated the air. A full minute passed before her frown eased in recognition.

“Is everyone in this house trying to burst my eardrums?” she chided, the sleet in her voice slowed into a gentle rain. In the next breath she was off again, registering Meridia’s face for the first time: “Child, you look miserable! Are you unhappy?”

Meridia tried to speak, but a painful rush of emotion stopped her. She could not remember the last time she had stood this close to Ravenna, breathing her scent and reading her face as if it were a map of another world. There was so much to be said, so many questions unasked, yet already she found herself thrust into the same vacuum that had bound her inside the ivory mist. There was no stopping it. In a second Ravenna would fade, retreat behind her veil of forgetfulness without a trace for her to follow.

But the veil did not descend. For once in her life, she had her mother’s attention.

“What is it?” Ravenna laid down the knife in alarm. “What is troubling you?”

Unable to collect herself, Meridia began to tremble. The words she wrested from the depth of the vacuum sounded frail and hollow.

“Papa. Why does he hate me, Mama?”

Ravenna, far from surprised, replied instantly. “Have you gone mad? You know very well he doesn’t hate you. Your father hates me.”

Her tone was not dismissive, her gaze even tender and patient. Yet it was with a deeper chill that Meridia greeted the distance between them.

“I’m not a child anymore, Mama. When I was little you always told me that some things are better left as dreams, but I’m old enough now to know the truth. What happened between you two? Why did you stop loving him?”