November holds up her hand; her skin is a mass of stings and welts, little ropes of hardened skin where venom flew fast through her veins. But she smiles-the wounds make a kind of map of her known world, circumnavigated by pain and need, an echo of the black lines on her face. She will never be clean again, or walk without wincing, but the joy of the bees of Palimpsest shrieks in her.
St. Folquet, presumably, stares at her from the face of his building-a tall statue of polished red wood, its features half-eaten by wood lice, the thin, imperious saint holding in one hand a divining rod and in the other a cello bow. At his feet infant bears rock on their haunches, regarding him with ursine awe and adoration.
Though deep in the city, the street is empty-November can see nothing but the long canyons made by buildings stretching up into the heavens, so far, so high that the moon is hidden. The sky seems to have given up a silent battle against the city and surrendered its heights to concrete and marble. But yes, there it is, she had known it would come for her: a carriage sliding up its slick tracks and small, surely green-shod feet stepping toward her, a hand slipping into hers. She knows the weight of Casimiras hand by now and enjoys it. It is familiar, kind, like sinking into warm water, to be held thus.
“Would you like to go in?” Casimira says brightly. “I donate a great deal toward the upkeep of St. Folquet s; I am sure we would be welcome. The new graduates will be having their last meal.”
“Did you graduate from this place?”
Casimira smiles in her secret way. “Don't be ridiculous. Though,” she pauses thoughtfully “Aloysius did, you know.”
“Then why donate so much?”
“It can only benefit the city to have endless waves of exceptionally capable, even brilliant, folk unfettered by class and family connections. They change the world once a generation. That is certainly worth something.”
The two women pass under the knowing gaze of St. Folquet and into a grand hall filled with tables, which are draped in black linen and spattered with empty plates, starkly white against the tablecloths. The professors, when they finally sight Casimira, draw up to their full height and smooth the wrinkles from their stern and byzantine clothing, which to November is a blur of suit tails, high boots, corsetry, epaulettes, and dashing capes. The women have partridge feathers in their hair, the men have crow. They encourage the students to stand, and though the Brauria are awkward, shy of their new faces, their new voices, they rise as one and applaud Casimira, their benefactress, their mistress.
She demurs, too far above them to need their praise, and leads November to a long bench like one found at a monks mess hall. A young man moves aside to allow her access, blushing beneath exquisite features. He clutches the arm of a radiant young woman, whose gaze is appraising and steady. She does not blush at all.
“Casimira,” November says quietly, so that they will not be overheard as the suddenly loquacious children laugh and tell old jokes which are for them raw and new. “When will I feel like myself again? I feel all the time as though I am about to fall into a great depth, and my blood is always singing, singing as though the world is ending. So many voices, all those bees-I know all their names! How can I know all their names?”
Casimira turns to her in frank joy, and her face in that moment is so full of surprise and sisterly recognition, of relief in the presence of a compatriot, that November does not suppress the need to touch her: she presses her cheek to the matriarchs and kisses her roughly, a savagery which may only exist between queens. The children around them exchange grins and stare-they have not yet learned not to stare.
“Never, poor girl,” Casimira says when they part, and her eyes are full of tears. “You are like me now, the only one like me. It will never stop, and you will know all their children's names, too. And the names of everyone they touch, everyone they sting, for they will not be able to wait to tell you, to report to you all they know, to make you proud of them. You must be gentle, for they are tender-hearted as you and I cannot be. You have their stewardship, and it is a great task.” She squeezes November s hand. “But you have me, and I have you, now. And we shall not either of us be alone again.”
A great bell sounds and supper arrives-a tiny roasted finch placed on each plate, its head and beak and body intact, overflowing fig and breadcrumbs from its unfortunate mouth. The faculty and graduates draw great black napkins from beside their plates, and Casimira follows suit, smirking slyly as she lifts it and drapes it over her head. As one creature, the hall plucks the tiny birds from their plates and slips them beneath the napkin whole. November stares as two hundred people eat draped in black, as though they were witches, heads bent in prayer to worlds below their feet.
The meal goes on and on-there is no other dish, and November can hear the crunching of avian bones. She does not wish to shame them; November veils herself and takes the finch by its roasted beak, pushing it into her mouth with two fingers, her remaining blessings. It is sweet, at first, the burnished skin and meat, glazed in something like brandy and something like plum wine. But as she chews-methodically for it fills her mouth to bursting-the organs rupture, bitter and bilious, a taste like despair, like the loss of love. And deeper, the bones shiver and crack and cut her-the taste of her blood flows in, salty as tears shed over a ruined body, mingling with the marrow, and it is sweet again, sweet as herself, herself remaining at the end of all trials.
And November can see why the veil is needed. No god should bear witness to a woman devouring a meal of herself.
She swallows what is left, finally and lifts the veil from her face, wiping a smear of blood from her lips. Across the city, three souls clutch their bleeding mouths in shock and agony. The hall is empty; they have all gone, and only Casimira remains at her side.
“Are you ready to go home?” she says. And November is.
The house is hiding behind a column when they arrive, dressed as beautifully as November can imagine a boy dressing, in turquoise silk with a wide white collar and pink satin slippers, his belt buckle ivory, his hair combed to brilliance. He has made himself special for them, but he is bashful now, and November kneels, holding her arms out to the boy. In her, the bees dance: Mother, oh, Mother and Wife, stay with us, this is your home!
She holds tightly to herself-she is so spread out now, there must be a list of all the things she is that are not herself. But at the bottom of her heart, she is still November, still the child of a librarian and a woman who caught a shark when she meant to catch a little fish, and she smiles at the boy encouragingly.
My dress; my sail.
He flies to her, his arms small and tight around her neck. Casimira watches them like a satisfied brood hen.
“I have another gift for you, November. A secret in a story. Not so important as the first. Yet it is my hope that in time it will become as vital that you know it.” Casimira sits down on the floor in the center of her hall, and the house climbs up into her lap, kissing her cheek with a loud smack.
“I was born as the children of St. Folquet are born, you must have guessed. It is not possible that I should be otherwise, as our family has within it more wealth than Palimpsest can imagine. We have long thrived on adoption, but my mother could not give me up. The brothers and sisters of that school are not alone in their skill.
“The story they tell of how I came to be in possession of my house is ridiculous-when I was eight years old I was blank as a page, and my mother had to lift my hand to the door knocker, as I could not even do that of my own will. I stood dumbly and mutely in this very hall for a week, neither eating nor moving, so stupid are the unmolded Brauria. Finally the house overcame his shyness and cared for me, as best he knew. He taught me all the languages a house can know, and all the calculations required for its construction, and all the dancing performed and poetry recited upon its floors. It was a good education. And though I cannot think how he came to imagine such a thing, one day he set about licking me into shape, with the smallest tongue and the greatest patience.”
>
“I talked to the other houses,” the boy says shyly hiding his face in Casimiras arm. “They knew where the rich little boys and girls went, and St. Folquet s School, the school itself, you know, the building, she knows how to wake them up.”
Casimira strokes his hair like a fond cats. “I woke up under his mouth, and we have never separated since. That is often the way of it, I understand. And so I alone of my family was able to be both born and live as Casimira, to take my place at the center of the factory and open my ears to all of the small things made in my vats and presses. I daresay I am better at it than any Casimira before me, for I was educated by a house, and this has taught me to think strange enough things to tolerate the secret dreams of the ants in my heart.”
November traces circles on the polished cedar floor. “I thank you for the secret, and for… for the bees, but I can't think why I should ever need to know this,” she said.
Casimira holds her house to her, his fingers tangled up in her long, green hair. Her voice is thick and hard when she speaks, and November understands by now that this means the great lady does not wish her to know that her words mean worlds to her.
“So that you will know, my love. So that you will know that you can be happy here with me. That you can live. That you can have a child in my house and it will not be taken from you. That I was given grace, and you may have it also. So that you will stay until you are old, and close your eyes with me, listening to all our bees and rats and starlings dream, and you will lose nothing by it.”
“Your love is a terrible thing,” November says. “It sits heavy. It stings. It cuts.”
She shrugs. “I am Casimira.”
“I don't know if I can bear it.”
“I would not have chosen you if you could not. You will get stronger. You will grow calluses.”
The house crawls over to her, his eyes bright blue and as dashing as he can make them. “I will lick your babies alive, I promise,” he says. The love of this one, this small thing inside a big thing, that she can bear. November holds him and rocks him, and she can feel in his little body, which is not exactly flesh, and not exactly plaster, that whatever comprises his heart is thundering in exultation.
“There is a man here,” he whispers finally as though he does not wish to admit it, to interrupt his time with this new and wonderful toy he has found. “He is waiting for you.”
November starts. She looks at Casimira with alarm-she has had no warning from the bee-minds that hover around hers.
“I think,” Casimira laughs, “they wanted to make you a surprise. They can be like that.”
The boy frowns. “He cannot come in, mistress. He is not allowed. The bees brought him as far as they could, but he is… stuck. In the back, on Shuttlecock Street.”
The trio make their way through the yawning lower floor of the house, and November s heart hammers against her ribs, intent on creating some new chamber for itself She closes her eyes and tries to feel him, as she has so many times, but the bees drown out his presence with their pleas that she be proud of them. She is proud, so very proud, and she calms them with her heartbeat. They buzz sleepily content. She is ready. They have done as she asked. She has earned the secret Clara longs for, and Xiaohui, and her nameless brother, and the green-coated stranger. Not from a book or from guessing, but by bearing up under venom like love. Would she tell Clara? Would she open up to that poor redheaded girl, like a friend, like a lover? To Xiaohui?
She would not. November knew she would not. Because it is a sacred place, she thinks. I owe it, I owe it protection. I owe it my soul. And perhaps she ought to feel guilty for this less than honorable intent, but she does not.
And there is a man, at the great window behind the house. He cannot even quite get to the window, the lineaments of his permitted transience appear to be the borders of the broad avenue behind Casimiras enormous house. He tries to push toward it, but he has not known a girl named Clara with a piercing in her tongue, and the amber shadows push back. He is forty or so, his curly hair thinning lightly a long, pointed nose holding up old-fashioned spectacles. His clothes are wrinkled and plain, his eyes mild and watery.
November throws open the window.
“You can't!” the house cries. And it is true, the golden half-mist will not let her climb out, resisting gently, even apologetically, but resisting nonetheless. She closes her eyes. The bees trumpet triumph with a million horns. She makes a guess and cries out:
“Ludovico!”
He starts, stares boggle-eyed at her, at her dress, at her ruined, blistered, vaguely glowing skin, so full of poison and honey. A vague expression of recognition crosses his shy face. But November stands in her surety, and she smiles though it hurts so much, blisters stretching and tearing on her face.
“Ludovico,” she says calmly boldly the deep hum of the hive in her voice. “My name is November Aguilar I live in Benicia, which is in California. You have to find me.”
“What?” he finally sputters. “You're right here.”
“Close your eyes and remember, Ludovico. Remember me. In the frog's shop. Remember the bee sting on my face… well, yes, I suppose there is more than one sting now. But remember. I was there, with you, that first night. I held your hand.”
Ludovico covers his mouth with his hand. “I felt it… oh, God, the bees, I felt them when they did that to you …”
“I'm sorry. I felt the people in the church, too. I think… it's to make it easier to find each other. It doesn't help that much, really.”
“No.” Ludovico seems to be calculating, weighing something precious in his mind. “You said California?”
“Yes! You have to find me in the real world. You have to find me.”
“I know! I mean … I know how this works.”
November blinks-she is stung. She had thought it was her secret. “Remember this,” she says, “don't forget when you wake up, no matter what. Tell me where to meet you. Tell me where you live.”
He shakes his head, beset by her own bees, who float lazily, happily around his hair in a black-gold corona. “Italy I live in Italy Rome.”
“Okay. Tomorrow, I'm going to call you. Give me your telephone number.”
He does, stuttering, and she repeats the numbers to herself over and over until she is sure she can remember.
“There's something else, though. And it's important, please, please remember.” She cocks her head, listening to the bees’ confused report. “We have to get to them, too. The next time you come, you have to find him, the other one, Oleg Sadakov He keeps running away from the bees, but he's… by the river, he's under a black bridge with stone cockerels on either side. The bees will help you get there, it's far, and we're too new to have access to much of anything. That's why you can't come in. Unless you meet a girl with red hair called Clara. Or find Oleg. And I'll find Amaya Sei.”
Slowly as though speaking underwater, Ludovico says: “The one with blue hair?”
“Yes. She's on the train, but I knew that anyway. I smelled it.”
“Yes, I did, too!”
“Ludovico, tell me where to meet you. Tell me where to go.”
He says nothing for a long time, staring at her. She thinks for a moment that he does not want to come, that he is like Clara, and does not want more than he has.
“The bees sought you out,” he says. “I don't know what that means. But I think it means you are virtuous.”
November is laughing, her body bright, full of certainty all at once. “There is a list, Ludovico! A list of the things necessary for happiness, and the list is us! Ludovico Conti. Oleg Sadakov. Amaya Sei. November Aguilar.”
Ludovico tries to cross the street to her and is quietly repulsed by the amber air.
“Caracalla,” he says finally “Meet me at Caracalla. I'll remember.”
TWO
THE BUSINESS OF HUMAN PURITY
November woke laughing. She put her hand over her mouth, but the laughter would have none of it. Her hand ached—the
blisters were still golden and painful, but they were not so swollen. She thought that when they had healed, she would be an entirely different color. She did not pull a brown book from the cabinet, though her hand strayed to it. She breathed deeply. It would wait. It would wait. I am an ill-tempered and irascible child. The kind the Green Wind wants, she told herself.
November pulled her telephone from its cradle instead, and dialed the number still glowing in her head before it could fade, before she could forget. Her heart was her own again—the bees were gone, but she felt their absence lurch and sway in her. She missed them. Her tangled brown hair fell over her face, and her sheets were a disaster of folds and creases, and in the sheets was the disaster of her, fingerless, her face a nightmare, half-healed welts reddening her skin and sure to scar, but she could not feel them, could not care about them. She could not even risk breakfast before this, before this act she could not bear to delay, to risk losing the fire in her to speak through five thousand miles of wire to a sad-looking man with hair like fitful sunshine.
The phone rang on the other end, that strange European tone. A man's voice, bleary, tired, slurry, answered.
“Ciao?”
“Ludovico, it's me, it's me,” she cried, laughing again, unable to stop.
“Chi e questo?”
“November, Ludovico, it's November Aguilar. Do you remember?”
His voice sharpened immediately, tightening into panic. “Oh, Christo, Christo, non parlo Inglese! Sono un tal sciocco!”