What could a mother who had been forsaken by her children do?
The answer, as it happened, came walking into the shop one sluggish afternoon in August. Working alone, Eva was about to close early when the door swung and the golden bell jingled. For a second all she saw was sunlight, brilliant yellow, and a headless man in a military-style jacket standing in its midst. Then he stepped away from the light. Pale skin, long mustache, eyes the color of cobalt. Because his hair had the same radiance as the sun, she had not been able to see him before. Suddenly, as her mind rushed to excavate him from memory, Eva knew why he was there. The townspeople were right. Permony might yet be her one saving grace, but not in the way they thought.
WITHOUT PATINA AND GABILAN, Permony was left with all the bees. At first, she was able to rely on her cheerfulness to fend them off, but as summer descended into autumn, her optimism gave way to restlessness and despair. How would she ever escape her mother? She had no money, no skills or training, and her education was incomplete since Eva saw no point in keeping her in school after Elias’s death. For the past three years, she had been assisting her mother at the shop, an occupation that hardly qualified her for the workforce. The other prospect, to wed and start a family, seemed equally impossible. Though there was no lack of suitors, their interest evaporated quickly when they learned she had no dowry to speak of. What if she was doomed to spend her life on Orchard Road, enslaved by Eva’s temper and married to her outrageous demands?
On occasions Permony was tempted to confide in Meridia. However, when she saw how burdened her sister-in-law was with Ravenna, and how fraught with tension Magnolia Avenue had increasingly become, she decided to spare her. In the same way, though their relation had greatly improved since childhood, she could not penetrate the grief in Malin’s heart to speak to her. The only person she could approach was Daniel. But even he, as she soon found out, had his mind saddled with other matters.
She noticed that he had been coming to Orchard Road more frequently since Ravenna moved into his house. For hours, he would shut himself with their mother in the upstairs sitting room, and afterward would leave the house looking grim and extremely vexed. Permony could only guess the nature of their meetings until one night in September when she decided to question him. The instant he opened his mouth, she felt her blood go cold. There were bees in his voice. Bees in his breath. Bees shooting out of his eyes like needles.
“I know she thinks I’m nothing without her. She thinks it’s her talent, her cleverness, that made the shop into a success. Do you know what she did to let her deranged mother in the house? She threatened to take Noah from me if I refused! She knows how much I abhor that woman, yet she parades her in front of me every chance she has. You remember how she went behind my back to give money to Pilar, when that money was all we had to keep us from the poorhouse, and then she had the nerve to tell everyone that Patina would have died had it not been for her charity. Mama is right. She thinks she’s better than I am. That day when Mama was kind enough to rescue her mother, she gave me a look that cut me down in front of everyone. Why does she always try to humiliate me? I have tried my best to be a good husband and father, but she behaves as if any other man would do just as well. I know how people talk. I’ve seen the stares they give me. They say she’s prouder than a queen because I let her wipe her feet on my face. Mama told me so herself! And now she’s got Noah to back her up. They’re always scheming together, spending hours locked up with that infernal woman in my house. Well, I won’t be her fool anymore! One of these days, I’ll make her sorry for taking me for granted!”
Shocked and distressed, Permony recounted this outburst to her sister-in-law the following day. Meridia listened without interrupting, but it was clear that her mind was elsewhere. Every so often, face drawn and eyes tired with worry, she kept glancing at the door at the end of the hallway.
“I’ve heard them all before,” she said after Permony finished. “They’re your mother’s words. Let her say what she wants. Daniel knows better.”
“But he sounded so angry!” objected Permony. “Aren’t you at all worried…?”
A moan rose from the end of the hallway. In an instant Meridia was on her feet.
“I appreciate your concern, Permony, but your brother is a good man. He may feel resentful at the moment, but he knows what’s right and what’s wrong. This will pass. I trust Daniel—he will never hurt me intentionally. So no, I’m not worried. Nothing your mother throws will stick between us. Now you must excuse me. Mama isn’t feeling well today.”
Meridia’s confidence was a quality both rousing and maddening. As Permony walked home in the dusk, slowing her steps so she could postpone her encounter with the bees, the girl wished she could have a piece of it for herself.
JUST WHEN THE BEES were getting the better of her, Permony began seeing the foreigner everywhere. Always in his long military-style jacket, patent-leather boots, and a square of white silk peeking from his breast pocket. At first she ran into him by chance, crossing Majestic Avenue or strolling through Cinema Garden. And then she saw him browsing the same stalls and exiting the shops she was entering. He never spoke to her, never acknowledged her presence. Had he done so, she would have thought he was following her.
After two months of running into him in public, he smashed into her private space in a way she could never have imagined. One afternoon, while she and Eva were at the shop waiting for nonexistent customers to show, the foreigner swung the glass door open and advanced directly toward them. He had no greetings to offer, simply looked at Permony with bulging blue eyes as if he wanted to consume her. It was Eva who saved her from embarrassment.
“Heavens! What have I done?”
The tension broke as beads of pearls hopped wildly across the floor. Permony jumped at the noise and began chasing them. Eva, nursing the broken necklace in her palms, turned to the foreigner in distress.
“How clumsy of me! Would you give my daughter a hand, sir?”
The foreigner agreed. Together with Permony he moved chairs and tables, inspected dark, dusty corners; and with every pearl collected they exchanged a brief smile. Crawling on their hands and knees, they bumped and jostled each other, while his strong scent of sun and tobacco pleasantly saturated her nostrils. “There!” Eva kept urging them. “Please make sure you find them all.”
After every last bead had been collected, Eva thanked the foreigner profusely.
“I can’t tell you how grateful we are. It would have taken us a whole day to search for all those pearls. But haven’t we met before? You look terribly familiar.”
“So do you, madam,” he replied in a raspy voice. “It was at a wedding, I believe.”
“Of course! My daughter Malin’s! You were a good friend of Jonathan’s father.”
“And you were the mother of the bride. I remember. This young lady here was the most beautiful girl at the wedding.”
Permony blushed as if he had set her on fire. His crude metallic accent pricked her like thistle, sharp yet not wholly unwelcome. He was big and rugged with a sinewy build; he had corn-colored hair and mustache, and a bulbous nose that reminded her of a tulip. Judging from his puckered eyes, he could not have been younger than forty.
Reading her daughter’s interest, Eva thrust her forward.
“This is Permony, my youngest.”
Permony offered her hand, which the foreigner brought to his lips. Unaccustomed to such boldness, the girl was taken aback.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” he said. “Call me Ahab.”
His smile was a pearl white gleam that lightened the puckered hardness in his eyes. It was this splash of sun that Permony seized, this field of white light that thrilled and drenched her, even as she withdrew her hand, with the nearness of hope.
FOR THE NEXT SIX weeks, she saw him every Tuesday and Saturday afternoon. If his attention at first left her tongue-tied, by the second week she could not wait for him to show up with flowers in his hand. She did not think he was
handsome; unlike those of the slim and refined noblemen in her childhood tales, his features were too large, his manner too gruff, and his pale skin reminded her of a cloth that had been left out too long in the sun. But what he lacked in appearance he made up plenty in ardor. He kissed her as if he might swallow her. He spun her, twirled her, clasped her in his thick arms until she thought she might break. In spite of herself, his bumbling roughness gave her pleasure. Gradually, she viewed him as a giant who would run through fire to carry her to safety.
To her amazement, the bees turned silent from the moment Ahab harvested pearls from the floor. Stranger still, Eva conducted herself like the happiest mother on earth. Warm and lovely, she served them tea and cakes on the terrace, urged Ahab to stay for dinner, and had a smile on her face that lasted all day. To Permony she could not behave more beautifully. She addressed her with affection, bought her dresses, took her to the beauty parlor every Saturday morning. Brushing Permony’s hair one night, she told her, “You won’t find a better man than Ahab, dear. Kind, hardworking, determined, wealthy. Don’t say a word to Malin, but I think he’s a better catch than Jonathan.”
Permony’s fate was sealed one afternoon in November. She was walking arm in arm with Ahab in Cinema Garden when she suddenly stopped and stared at him. It was the hour when the sun gilded every surface with a million tiny lights. In those million lights Ahab’s face blazed like fire, burnishing his hair more goldenly, and from this conflagration emerged the vision of another face. Permony stood transfigured. How could she not have noticed before—the lazy mouth, the same broad forehead, this man and her father? Something contracted inside her. All at once she yearned to throw herself into the center of that brilliance, to caress and cradle the miracle of the million lights for as long as she could. But before she could move, Ahab beat her to it. He swept her off her feet and closed his lips forcibly around hers. In his arms she wilted like a little girl. His hoarse grunt followed on the heels of her surrender.
“Be my wife,” he said simply.
Permony replied by wrapping her fingers around his nape. His large, rough hand snaked up her belly and crushed her breasts. His mustache stabbed as she closed her eyes and slipped to a place where she could kiss him with all her worth.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in memory, Eva embraced her youngest with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Your father will be proud,” she kept repeating while her head, now completely white, shook with emotion. “Will you tell him I’ve done well by you?” Moved to tears herself, Permony soaked up the blessing. It was the first time and might be the last, but to see her mother’s eyes awash with love, proud of who she was and what she had done, touched her deeper than anything that had passed between them. Without a doubt in her mind, Permony nodded.
THIRTY-THREE
The news took Meridia by storm. Despite Permony’s hints that she was seeing a man with a stiff tongue and a yellow mustache, the girl had not once spoken of marriage. Neither had Daniel said anything. Since Ravenna took up residence in the room at the end of the hallway, Meridia was no longer privy to his thoughts, and her questions, before she learned not to ask them, were frequently met with a vexed gaze. Of course there was the endless wind of gossip. “Eva’s youngest and the hulking foreigner,” it breezed by Magnolia Avenue on the way to the market square. “If he doesn’t propose soon, she’ll walk down the aisle with her stomach big as a drum.” But talk of this sort, however spiced with scandal, never sustained Meridia’s interest for long.
Meridia finally met Ahab when Eva brought him to the shop. In one glance she recognized him as the distinguished-looking man who gazed at Permony all night long at Malin’s wedding. He was certainly cordial in a brash way, but more than that she did not know what to make of him. His accent and foreign manners aside, it was the glint in his eyes that she found odd, flashing now and then as if he was laughing at them. Daniel liked him well enough; the two were sharing business advice before tea was served. Permony looked happy and pretty, but her joy was nothing compared to her mother’s. Beaming with triumph, Eva was gregariousness made flesh, her voice alive and her laughter deft against pauses. And yet, unlike her other victories in the past, this one carried no trace of gloating. Her bees were nowhere in sight, and she even seemed kind to Permony. Meridia suspected something was afoot.
Fired by curiosity, she made an appointment to see Samuel in his office the next day. The renegade dealer, who knew just about every merchant within a fifty-kilometer radius, was eager to help. He told her that Ahab owned several businesses in neighboring towns, among them a lumber mill, a rubber plant, and a sugar factory.
“He trades goods overseas for very large profits,” Samuel said, stroking his beard confidentially. “From what I heard, he came to this part of the world with his country’s backing. A pioneer, if you will, to see what else they can get.”
“You mean a secret agent?”
Samuel laughed. “I’d call him an exceedingly adventurous businessman.”
“What about his personal life?”
“He keeps to himself and doesn’t have many friends. You know how foreigners are. But I haven’t heard his name attached to any scandal. Is everything well at home?”
The suddenness of the question startled her. For a brief second Meridia thought that if there was anyone she could talk to, it would be patient and perceptive Samuel.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“You look tired, that’s all.”
His audacious black eyes bored into her. Feeling herself weaken, she resisted him.
“My mother’s a handful these days,” said Meridia. And finding it difficult to believe her own words, she fumbled for her coat and took leave.
Next, she turned to Leah for information. Her friend, now pregnant with her second child, was only too willing to play detective. “I need the exercise,” she explained, patting her swollen belly glowingly. A few days later, the steadfast woman returned with an even rosier complexion. She had scoured the town for news, she said, and at first could find nothing on Ahab. But just that morning, she had the good fortune of running into an old cloth-dyer who told her the following:
A few years ago, Ahab was planning to build a warehouse in a distant town. However, when he exerted pressure on the residents to sell their homes, they not only cursed his blue eyes to the sky but chased him away with sticks and stones. Three weeks after the dispute, twelve of the residents’ daughters began to exhibit symptoms of hysteria. Night after night, at precisely the same hour, the girls fell into the same dream where they were ravished by a half-swine, half-human creature. At dawn they woke up screaming along with the roosters, their faces flushed, their clothes torn, their wombs bleeding painfully. The girls never left their rooms and no one had broken in. The parents, realizing their daughters were no longer virgins, were horrified. They stood watch all night long, banging gongs and swinging censers, yet the dream persisted. Soon, all twelve girls developed a scarlet flower that burned between their thighs and secreted pus. Believing it was the work of the devil, the parents sold their land to Ahab for peanuts and fled town.
“No one ever proved anything, but they suspected him all the same,” said Leah, clearly relishing her role as talebearer. “I must warn you, though, the cloth-dyer mistakes gourds for chicken, so I can’t vouch for her accuracy.”
That evening after the shop closed, Meridia placed herself once again before Daniel in the little office.
“Permony looks so happy these days,” she began delicately. “Everyone thinks Ahab is a good match for her.”
Without sparing a glance, Daniel shoved the jewelry trays into the vault.
“He’s better than good. Everyone thinks he’s perfect.”
It was too early for his back to be up. Meridia waited until he looked at her.
“Do you agree with them?”
Daniel frowned. The resulting lines mapped to an uncanny degree the turbulent nature of their recent interactions.
“H
e’s friendly, he adores her, and he’s a top-notch businessman. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”
Meridia chose her words carefully. “I want you to tell me if I’m wrong, but I just can’t convince myself that Permony is making the right choice.”
His face, which he now left unshaved for days, darkened with more lines.
“Why can’t you convince yourself?”
“I have a strange feeling about Ahab.”
“Come to the point. What are you trying to say?”
She proceeded to tell him what Leah had told her. Midway through the story, a crooked smile appeared on Daniel’s face and stayed there.
“Let me understand this,” he said after she finished. “You’re accusing him of ravishing virgins in their dreams?”
“I’m simply telling you what I heard.”
“What you heard is an old wives’ tale.”
“There’s truth even in the strangest story.”
Daniel threw his hands up in the air. “Where are the witnesses, testimonies, proof? You need more than idle talk to implicate someone in a scandal. I’ve held off long enough to say this, but I suggest you spend less time with your mother. You’re beginning to sound as crazy as she is.”
Meridia felt her skin heat up from the attack. Daniel’s irises were unusually pale, cold as snow, and in them she could read his desire to hurt her. This collision of fire and snow dredged up something irrevocable between them.
“My mother is not insane,” she said, as evenly as she could.
His hollow laugh exploded in her ear. “You’re the coldest woman I know. Always together, calm as marble. Do you ever show anyone what’s in your fist?”
Her slender throat pulsed with emotion, yet she refused to acknowledge his taunt. Slowly she peeled her gaze off him.
“I only want the best for Permony. To make sure she doesn’t make a mistake.”