A Slight Trick of the Mind Read online

  Slender branches scraped against the windowpanes, almost noiselessly.

  “I don't know,” he uttered incomprehensibly, there on Roger's bed. “I don't know,” he said again, lowering himself to the boy's pillow and shutting his eyes, the scrapbook pressed against his chest. “I haven't a clue.”

  He drifted away after that, though not into the sort of sleep that came from total exhaustion, or even a restless slumber in which dreams and reality were interlaced, but, rather, a torpid state submerging him into a vast stillness. Presently, that expansive, down-reaching sleep delivered him elsewhere, tugging him from the bedroom where his body rested. For more than six hours, he was gone—his breathing steady and low, his limbs neither altering positions or flinching. The midday thunder cracks were inaudible to his ears, and he didn't perceive the storm blowing across his land, the tall grass bending wildly toward the ground, the stinging, hard drops of rain wetting the soil; with the storm's passing, he didn't sense the front door swinging back, sending a gust of cool rain-fresh air through the main room, along the corridor, into Roger's bedroom.

  But Holmes felt the chill touch his face and neck, urging him awake like cold palms pushing gently upon his skin. “Who's there?” he mumbled when stirring. Cracking his eyelids, he stared at the nightstand (scissors, rubber cement). His gaze shifted minutely, fixing on the corridor beyond: that murky passage between the brightness of the boy's bedroom and the open front door, where, after several ascertaining seconds, he realized someone now waited in its shadows, motionless and facing him, silhouetted by the light coming from behind. The rushing air faintly ruffled clothing, flapping the hem of a dress. “Who is it?” he asked, not yet capable of sitting up. And only when the figure receded—gliding backwards, it seemed, stepping to the entryway—did she become visible. He watched while she brought a suitcase inside before closing the front door—once again steeping the cottage with darkness, vanishing as quickly as she had appeared. “Mrs. Munro—”

  She materialized, gravitating toward the boy's bedroom, her head floating like a formless white sphere amid a pitch background; yet the darkness itself was not of one shade, and looked as if it were fluctuating and swaying beneath her: the fabric of her dress, Holmes suspected, the attire of mourning. Indeed, it was a black dress she wore, fringed with lace and austere in design; her skin was pallid, and bluish circles were visible under her eyes (the grief had diminished her youthfulness—her face was haggard, her movements sluggish). Stepping across the threshold, she nodded without expression when approaching him, showing none of the agony he'd heard the day Roger died or the festering anger she'd displayed at the beeyard. Instead, it was something benign he sensed about her, something yielding and likely tranquilized. You cannot blame me anymore, he thought, or my bees—you've judged us wrongly, my child, and you've realized your mistake. Her pale hands reached down to him, gingerly extracting the scrapbook from his fingers. She avoided his stare, but he glimpsed her wide pupils at an angle, recognizing in them the same vacuous quality he had seen on Roger's corpse. Saying nothing, she returned the scrapbook to the nightstand, positioning it uniformly as the boy might have done.

  “Why are you here?” asked Holmes after lowering his feet to the floor, pushing himself upright on the mattress, and sitting there. The moment he spoke, his face flushed with embarrassment, for she had found him resting inside her quarters, embracing her dead son's scrapbook; if anything, he knew the question should have been hers. Even so, Mrs. Munro didn't seem terribly disturbed by his presence, a factor that made him more uncomfortable. He glanced around, spotting his canes propped against the nightstand. “Wasn't expecting you home this soon,” he heard himself say, absently fumbling to grasp the cane handles. “I trust your trip wasn't too taxing.” Shamed with the superficiality of his own words, his face turned redder.

  Mrs. Munro now stood in front of the writing desk, keeping her back to him (just as he sat on the bed, his back to her). She'd decided it was better for her at the cottage, she explained, and once Holmes heard the calm voice in which she addressed him, his uneasiness waned. “I've plenty here that needs dealing with,” she said. “I've affairs that need settling—Roger's and mine.”

  “You must be famished,” he said, readying his canes. “I will have the girl bring you something—or perhaps you would rather dine at my table?”

  He wondered if Anderson's daughter had already finished the grocery shopping in town, and as he stood, Mrs. Munro answered from behind him: “I'm not hungry.”

  Holmes turned toward her, meeting her sidelong glare (those reluctant, empty eyes never quite focusing on him, allocating him to the periphery). “Is there anything you might want?” was all he could think to ask. “Can I do anything?”

  “I'll take care of myself, thank you,” she said, averting her eyes completely.

  Then Holmes understood her true reason for returning so soon, and—as she began considering the objects on the desk, her arms unfolding beneath her breasts—he observed the profile of a woman who was debating how best to conclude another chapter of her life. “You will be leaving me, won't you?” he said abruptly, the words escaping his mouth in midthought.

  Her fingertips roamed the desktop, brushing over drawing pens, touching the blank paper, pausing for a while on the polished wood-grain surface (the spot where Roger had completed homework, fashioned his elaborate drawings for the walls, and surely pondered his magazines and books). Even in death, she saw the boy sitting there, while she cooked and cleaned and busied herself off in the main house. And Holmes, too, had conceived of Roger at the desk—slumped forward, like himself, as the day shifted into night, the night into dawn. He wanted to share the vision with Mrs. Munro, telling her what he believed they'd both imagined, but instead he remained silent, anticipating the answer that finally passed confidently between her lips: “Yes, sir—I'll be going from you.”

  Of course you will, thought Holmes, as if sympathetic with her decision. Yet he felt so wounded by the assuredness of her answer that he stammered like someone pleading for a second chance: “Please, you needn't make such a rash choice—really—especially at this time.”

  “But it wasn't rash, you see. I've spent hours thinking about it—and it's impossible seeing it differently. There's little here of value anymore—just these things and nothing else.” She picked up a red drawing pen, rolling it thoughtfully with her fingers and thumb. “No, it wasn't rash.”

  A breeze suddenly hummed at the window above Roger's desk, scraping branches on the glass. The breeze increased momentarily, rustling the tree outside, tapping the branches harder against the panes. Dejected by Mrs. Munro's response, Holmes sighed with resignation, then asked, “And where will you go, to London? What will become of you?”

  “I honestly don't know. I don't feel my life matters one way or the other.”

  Her son was dead. Her husband was dead. She was speaking as one who had buried those she cherished the most, and, in doing so, had placed herself within their graves. Holmes recalled a poem he'd read during his youth, that single line which had haunted his childhood: I shall go beyond alone, so you may seek me there. Overwhelmed by her complacent desperation, he stepped toward her, saying, “Of course it matters. To relinquish all hope is to relinquish everything—and you mustn't do that, my dear. In any case, you have an obligation to persevere, if you don't, your love for the boy won't endure.”

  Love: It was a word Mrs. Munro had never heard him utter. She gave him a sidelong glance, stopping him with the coldness of her stare. Then, as if to avoid the issue, she gazed again at the desktop, saying, “I've learned quite a lot about these.”

  Holmes saw that she was reaching for the vial of honeybees. “Have you indeed?” he remarked.

  “These are Japanese—gentle and shy insects, right? Not like them ones of yours, ain't that so?” She set the vial in the palm of her hand.

  “You are correct. You have done your research.” He was surprised by the small amount of knowledge Mrs. Munro p
ossessed, but he frowned when she had nothing further to say (her eyes remaining on the vial, fixed on the dead bees inside). Unable to bear the silence, he continued: “They are rather remarkable creatures—timid, as you say—although industrious in killing off a foe.” He told her that the Japanese giant hornet hunted various species of bees and wasps. Once a hornet had discovered a nest, it left a secretion to mark the location; the secretion then signaled other hornets in the area to congregate and attack the colony. Japanese honeybees, however, could detect the hornet's secretion, allowing them to prepare for the imminent assault. As the hornets entered the nest, the honeybees would surround each attacker, enveloping it with their bodies and subjecting it to a temperature of forty-seven degrees Celsius (too hot for a hornet, perfect for a honeybee). “They really are fascinating, aren't they?” he concluded. “I chanced upon an apiary in Tokyo, you know—was fortunate enough to witness the creatures firsthand.”

  Sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the curtains. Just then, Holmes felt wretched for having launched into a speech at such an inappropriate moment (Mrs. Munro's son was in a grave, but all he could offer her was a lecture on Japanese honeybees). Burdened by helplessness, he shook his head at his own stupidity. And as he contemplated an apology, she placed the vial on the desktop, her voice trembling with emotion. “It's meaningless—it ain't human, the way you talk—none of it is human, just science and books—things stuck in bottles and boxes. What have you ever known about loving anyone?”

  Holmes bristled at the caustic, hateful tone—the pointed, contemptuous emphasis in her hushed voice—and struggled to compose himself before replying. Then he realized his hands were clutching the canes, and that his knuckles had become white: You have no idea, he thought. Releasing an exasperated sigh, he loosened his grip on the canes and shuffled back to Roger's mattress. “I am surely not as rigid as that,” he said, taking a seat at the bed's foot. “At least I don't wish to think I am—but how could I convince you otherwise? And what if I told you my passion for the bees didn't evolve from any branch of science or from the pages of books—would you find me less inhuman?”

  Keeping her stare on the vial, she didn't respond, nor did she move.

  “Mrs. Munro, I fear my advanced age has produced some diminishment of retention, as you are, no doubt, completely aware. I often misplace things—my cigars, my canes, sometimes my own shoes—and I find things in my pockets that mystify me; it's rather amusing and horrifying at the same instant. There are also periods when I cannot remember why I have gone from one room into another—or even fathom the sentences I have just written at my desk. Yet many other things are indelibly etched within my paradoxical mind. For example, I can recall being eighteen with the utmost clarity—very tall, lonely, an unhandsome Oxford undergraduate—spending evenings in the company of the don who lectured on mathematics and logic—a prim, fussy, disagreeable man, a resident of Christ Church like myself—someone you might know well as Lewis Carroll—but whom I knew as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, an inventor of fantastic mathematical and word puzzles—and ciphers, to my infinite interest—his sleight-of-hand and paper-folding tricks are as vivid to me now as they were then. As well, I can see the pony I kept as a boy—and myself riding it on the Yorkshire moorland, getting gladly lost in an ocean of heather-covered waves. There are many such scenes in my head, and all are easily accessible. Why they remain and others flit away, I cannot say.

  “But let me share something further about myself, for I feel it is relevant. When you look upon me, I believe you find a man incapable of feeling. I am more at fault for that perception than you are, my child. You have only known me in my declining years, sequestered out here and within my apiary. If I choose to speak at any length, I usually talk of the creatures. So I won't blame you for thinking too ill of me. In any case, until the age of forty-eight, I had scarcely a passing interest for bees and the world of the hive; however, by my forty-ninth year, I could think of nothing else. How do I explain it?” He inhaled, shutting his eyes for a second, then he continued: “You see, there was a woman under my investigation—she was younger, rather strange to me, but alluring—and I found myself preoccupied with her—it is not something I have ever fully understood. Our time together was fleeting—less than an hour, really—and she knew nothing about me—and I knew very little about her, except that she enjoyed reading books, and strolling and loitering around flowers—so I strolled with her, you see, among flowers. The details of the case are unimportant, aside from the fact that eventually she was gone from my life—and, as inexplicable as it was, I felt something essential had been lost, creating a void inside me. And yet—and yet—she began manifesting in my thoughts—existing in a lucid moment, which was as insignificant as when it had originally occurred, but which, soon thereafter, presented itself once again to me and hasn't left me.” He fell silent, his eyes squinting, as if he were conjuring the past.

  Mrs. Munro glanced back at him, grimacing slightly. “Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with anything?” When she spoke, her unblemished face showed creases on her forehead, the deep-set lines being the most expressive thing about her. But Holmes wasn't looking toward her; his gaze had drifted to the floor, transfixed by something only he could envision.

  It was of minor consequence, he told her—even as Mrs. Keller revealed herself to him, stretching her gloved hand outward through time. There in the Physics and Botanical Society park, she had brought her fingers to the echium and the atropa belladonna—the horsetail and the feverfew—and now she cupped an iris in her palm. Withdrawing her hand, she noticed that a worker bee had strayed onto her glove. But she didn't flinch, shaking the creature away, or crush it in her fist; instead, she pondered it closely, doing so with apparent reverence (a curious grin, affectionate whispers uttered beneath her breath). The worker bee, in turn, stayed upon her palm—not busying itself, or burying its stinger into her glove—as if regarding her the same.

  “It is impossible to give an accurate view of such an intimate communion, the likes of which I haven't witnessed since,” Holmes said, raising his head. “In all, the episode lasted perhaps ten seconds, certainly no more than that; then she saw fit to release the creature, setting it loose on the very flower from where it had come. Yet this brief and simple transaction—the woman and her hand and the creature she held without distrust—propelled me headfirst into what has become my greatest preoccupation. You see, it wasn't exacting, calculating science, my dear—it isn't as meaningless as you suggest.”

  Mrs. Munro kept her eyes on him: “But that's hardly true love, is it?”

  “I have no understanding of love,” he said miserably. “I have never made claim that I do.” And regardless of who or what had ignited the fascination, he knew his solitary life's pursuit relied completely on scientific methods, that his ideas and writings weren't intended for the sentiments of the layman. Still, there was the golden throng. The gold of flowers. The gold of pollen dust. The miracle of a culture that had sustained its way of living—century after century, age after age, aeon after aeon—proving how adept its insect commonwealth was in overcoming the problems of existence. The self-reliant community of the hive, in which not a single dispirited worker relied upon human dispensation. The partnership of man and bees, relished solely by those who tended the fringes of the bees' world and safeguarded the evolution of their complex realms. The measure of peace discovered in the harmony of the insects' murmuring, soothing the mind and providing assurance against the confusion of a changing planet. The mystery and the astonishment and the deference, and accentuating that, the late-afternoon sunlight permeating the beeyard with colors of yellow and orange: all of it experienced and valued by Roger, he had no doubt. More than once, while at the apiary together, Holmes had recognized wonder on the boy's face, the sight of it consuming him with a sensation he couldn't readily express. “Some might call it a kind of love—if they so choose.” His expression shifted to one of sorrow and dejection.
/>   Mrs. Munro realized he was weeping almost imperceptibly (the tears welling in his eyes, dripping down his cheeks and into his beard). However, the tears ended as quickly as they'd begun, and Holmes brushed the wetness from his skin, sighing. Finally, he heard himself say, “I wish you would reconsider—it would mean a great deal to me if you'd stay on,” but Mrs. Munro refused to speak and, instead, glanced around at the drawings on the wall, as if he weren't there. Holmes lowered his head again. I deserve as much, he thought. The tears started welling—then stopped.

  “Do you miss him?” she asked plainly enough, at last breaking her silence.

  “Of course I do” was his immediate answer.

  Her gaze had traveled over the drawings, pausing on a sepia-tinted photograph (Roger cradled as an infant in her arms while her young husband stood proudly beside them). “He admired you, he did. Did you know that?” Holmes raised his head, nodding with a gesture of relief as she turned toward him. “It was Roger who told me about them bees in the jar. He mentioned everything you'd told him about them; he told me everything you said.”

  The hushed, caustic tone had vanished, and Mrs. Munro's sudden need to address him directly—the softness in her melancholy voice, her stare meeting his stare—made Holmes feel that she had somehow absolved him. Yet he could only listen and nod, looking narrowly at her.

  With her anguish becoming evident, she searched his morose, withered face. “What am I supposed to do now, sir? What am I without my boy? Why'd he have to die like that?”

  But Holmes could think of nothing affirming to tell her. Yet her eyes implored him, as if they wanted one thing: to be given something of value, something resolute and beneficial. In that moment, he doubted if there could be any mental state more relentlessly cruel than the desiring of real meaning from circumstances that lacked useful or definitive answers. Moreover, he knew he couldn't fabricate an appeasing falsehood to ease her suffering, as he'd done for Mr. Umezaki; nor could he fill in the blanks and create a satisfactory conclusion, like Dr. Watson had often done when writing his stories. No, the truth itself was too clear and undeniable: Roger was dead, a victim of misfortune.