Fátima Reyes, Grade 11
UWC Costa Rica
“Huele a lavanda, a ropa hervida con jabón blanco, a naranjas y miel.”
“It smells like lavender, like boiled clothes with white soap, like oranges and honey.”
I have always considered myself a bibliophile. I learned to read just before my sixth birthday and have been devouring book after book ever since. I read my first Jules Verne at 10 years old and, by the time I was 12, I was already writing my first attempt and failure at a novel. I have read the classics, mystery, autobiographies, historical fiction, horror, and even a couple of books on economics and politics I do not understand. And yet, despite all the times I’ve held a book in my hands, all the times I have fallen in love with stories and characters and worlds I will never meet, there is one, and only one book I have read more than once. And it smells like lavender, like boiled clothes with white soap, like oranges and honey.
The Murmur of Bees is the second novel by Mexican author Sofía Segovia. It is set in the Mexico of the early 20th century, with the Mexican Revolution unfolding in the background of a story impregnated with all the scents I can’t get tired of imagining. It was published in 2015, the same year a naive 13-year-old me transitioned into high school. Unbeknownst to Segovia, the timing of her publication and the story she chose to tell were both ideal for me. The Murmur of Bees built the foundations of the woman I am today, back when I was just a teenage girl wandering through the halls of the mall’s library, dreaming of the day I would possess all the wonders they contained.
Everyone has a love at first sight story. Mine begins at the Best-sellers section, as I glanced at the Top-10 shelf. If life has taught me anything about books, it is that I can always trust my favorite book store to make the best picks. I was reading the titles and analyzing the covers when I laid eyes on it. I can’t explain what exactly, but something inside me, something instinctual, told me it was the one. So, obeying my insisting inner voice, I grabbed the book and ran to my equal bibliophile father, begging him to make the purchase. Glad that for the first in almost a year I was interested in something other than dystopian teenage romances, he readily accepted. I went back home that afternoon with a treasure my young mind couldn’t yet grasp.
A week and 477 pages later, I was not the same. From Simonopio, our protagonist, and through Francisco’s eyes, I learned to “walk in the shade. To listen with [my] eyes, see with [my] skin, and to feel with [my] ears, because life speaks to us all and we just need to know to and wait to listen to it, to see it, to feel it.” (Adapted from page 476).
But let’s get back to the plot. The year, 1910. The place, Linares, a small agricultural town in northern Mexico. Simonopio is born bitten by the Devil or, as modern science calls it, a cleft lip. At the time, this was considered more than enough reason to abandon a baby to die under a bridge. Nana Reja, who hasn’t left her wooden chair in far too many years, disappears only to be found carrying two packages: an alive newborn covered in bees, and their beehive. Unable to abandon such a defenseless creature, the Morales take in baby Simonopio as their godson and raise him in the farm as one more. He grows up unable to master speech, careful to eat, and with the constant fear that, one day, Espiricueta would finally make up his mind and kill him. Yet, he understands the world beyond what any of us could ever dream of. He explores it through his bees’ eyes, in all its round glory. He could communicate with them, and they would reveal things only they knew, like the future -he knew what would happen before it did and, whenever possible, prevented it. If filling a hole avoided a horse’s fatal fall, or getting a little bit sick saved the entire Hacienda, Simonopio did it without hesitation. And if he saw that someday (distant, but that would come) he would have to face the coyote that was Anselmo Espiricueta, he prepared for it.
Simonopio’s life went between awkward stares and ruthless jokes, but he never cared. He knew, or perhaps, intuited that his life was beyond that. Rather, he lived for his bees, his godparents, for the child that was yet to come and yes, for the coyote too. Nothing ever distracted Simonopio from his ultimate goal. He was patient. He waited for his bees to take him to what they were so persistent in showing him: the destiny Simonopio was born to fulfill. To what would become his oranges, his godfather’s and someday, too, little Francisco’s.
And as the 13-year-old me laid on my bed getting lost in the scents of oranges and honey and lavender, trying to decipher the world and my role in it, that was all I needed to hear. Submerging myself into a world filled with magic and mystery and that yet felt as grounded as my own, watching a young man grow as he too strived to understand his reality, I was led to believe everything was possible. I felt like there was something more profound in Simonopio’s life, something I could maybe, with some luck, attain as well. He knew exactly how to live: he had the resilience to face adversity, the patience to make discoveries, and the courage to love unconditionally. Simonopio became my role model, who guided me through my teenage years and to whom I keep coming back to every time I feel lost.
That thing I felt, that love at first sight sort of moment, I still have no explanation for it. My best guess, it was the murmurs of the bees.
“It smells like lavender, like boiled clothes with white soap, like oranges and honey.”
I have always considered myself a bibliophile. I learned to read just before my sixth birthday and have been devouring book after book ever since. I read my first Jules Verne at 10 years old and, by the time I was 12, I was already writing my first attempt and failure at a novel. I have read the classics, mystery, autobiographies, historical fiction, horror, and even a couple of books on economics and politics I do not understand. And yet, despite all the times I’ve held a book in my hands, all the times I have fallen in love with stories and characters and worlds I will never meet, there is one, and only one book I have read more than once. And it smells like lavender, like boiled clothes with white soap, like oranges and honey.
The Murmur of Bees is the second novel by Mexican author Sofía Segovia. It is set in the Mexico of the early 20th century, with the Mexican Revolution unfolding in the background of a story impregnated with all the scents I can’t get tired of imagining. It was published in 2015, the same year a naive 13-year-old me transitioned into high school. Unbeknownst to Segovia, the timing of her publication and the story she chose to tell were both ideal for me. The Murmur of Bees built the foundations of the woman I am today, back when I was just a teenage girl wandering through the halls of the mall’s library, dreaming of the day I would possess all the wonders they contained.
Everyone has a love at first sight story. Mine begins at the Best-sellers section, as I glanced at the Top-10 shelf. If life has taught me anything about books, it is that I can always trust my favorite book store to make the best picks. I was reading the titles and analyzing the covers when I laid eyes on it. I can’t explain what exactly, but something inside me, something instinctual, told me it was the one. So, obeying my insisting inner voice, I grabbed the book and ran to my equal bibliophile father, begging him to make the purchase. Glad that for the first in almost a year I was interested in something other than dystopian teenage romances, he readily accepted. I went back home that afternoon with a treasure my young mind couldn’t yet grasp.
A week and 477 pages later, I was not the same. From Simonopio, our protagonist, and through Francisco’s eyes, I learned to “walk in the shade. To listen with [my] eyes, see with [my] skin, and to feel with [my] ears, because life speaks to us all and we just need to know to and wait to listen to it, to see it, to feel it.” (Adapted from page 476).
But let’s get back to the plot. The year, 1910. The place, Linares, a small agricultural town in northern Mexico. Simonopio is born bitten by the Devil or, as modern science calls it, a cleft lip. At the time, this was considered more than enough reason to abandon a baby to die under a bridge. Nana Reja, who hasn’t left her wooden chair in far too many years, disappears only to be found carrying two packages: an alive newborn covered in bees, and their beehive. Unable to abandon such a defenseless creature, the Morales take in baby Simonopio as their godson and raise him in the farm as one more. He grows up unable to master speech, careful to eat, and with the constant fear that, one day, Espiricueta would finally make up his mind and kill him. Yet, he understands the world beyond what any of us could ever dream of. He explores it through his bees’ eyes, in all its round glory. He could communicate with them, and they would reveal things only they knew, like the future -he knew what would happen before it did and, whenever possible, prevented it. If filling a hole avoided a horse’s fatal fall, or getting a little bit sick saved the entire Hacienda, Simonopio did it without hesitation. And if he saw that someday (distant, but that would come) he would have to face the coyote that was Anselmo Espiricueta, he prepared for it.
Simonopio’s life went between awkward stares and ruthless jokes, but he never cared. He knew, or perhaps, intuited that his life was beyond that. Rather, he lived for his bees, his godparents, for the child that was yet to come and yes, for the coyote too. Nothing ever distracted Simonopio from his ultimate goal. He was patient. He waited for his bees to take him to what they were so persistent in showing him: the destiny Simonopio was born to fulfill. To what would become his oranges, his godfather’s and someday, too, little Francisco’s.
And as the 13-year-old me laid on my bed getting lost in the scents of oranges and honey and lavender, trying to decipher the world and my role in it, that was all I needed to hear. Submerging myself into a world filled with magic and mystery and that yet felt as grounded as my own, watching a young man grow as he too strived to understand his reality, I was led to believe everything was possible. I felt like there was something more profound in Simonopio’s life, something I could maybe, with some luck, attain as well. He knew exactly how to live: he had the resilience to face adversity, the patience to make discoveries, and the courage to love unconditionally. Simonopio became my role model, who guided me through my teenage years and to whom I keep coming back to every time I feel lost.
That thing I felt, that love at first sight sort of moment, I still have no explanation for it. My best guess, it was the murmurs of the bees.
Bibliography:
El murmullo de las abejas. (The murmur of the bees)
El murmullo de las abejas. (The murmur of the bees)
www.unitedworldwide.co