The Sound of Language Read online

  Layla snorted again. “You are here,” she said. “Live here, not in the past in a country that you can't go back to.”

  The language school was small and was housed in the VUC, Voksen Udannelses Center, Adult Education Center. It was on the second floor and had six rooms dedicated to it. Four were classrooms, one a large computer room, and one an office with an adjoining copy room. Downstairs were the teachers’ lounges, one smoking and one non-smoking, and a small kitchen. Students were not allowed to use the kitchen. In the basement there was a large dining area and a vending machine, which Layla told Raihana not to use. It was cheaper to bring cola or water from home than to buy it from the vending machine.

  The woman who ran the language center was tall and white. She wore her blond hair tied in a tight bun and dressed in a pair of black pants and a black jacket. She had silver-framed glasses perched on her nose and she looked very stern.

  “Layla says that you understand English,” Sylvia Hoffmann said in heavily accented English.

  Unsure of herself and everything around her, Raihana nodded and looked at Layla. She had gone to English school in Pakistan at the refugee camp for almost a year and Aamir had tried to teach her English as well. She knew how to say “how are you” and “thank you” and understood some of what was said when people spoke in English, especially in movies, but regular conversations? She felt her palms go cold with fear.

  Sylvia smiled. “Maybe we can talk in English then?”

  Raihana shook her head violently.

  “I not English well,” she managed to say without stammering.

  Sylvia said something to Layla in that bee-buzz language.

  “She says that I can translate for you, okay,” Layla told her in Dari and Raihana sighed with relief.

  “You live with Layla and Kabir, and they have come a long way in the past three years they have been with us,” Sylvia said in Danish. “You will pick up Danish better if you speak it at home with Layla.”

  After that Sylvia tested Raihana's Danish abilities. She showed her pictures and asked what they were. Some Raihana knew in Danish, most she didn't. But she knew the Danish words for the everyday things, like butter, milk, oil, and flour. She had seen them often enough on television and in the supermarket when she went shopping with Layla.

  Sylvia Hoffmann didn't indulge in any small talk and Raihana wondered if it was even possible to chitchat when you had to talk through a person. Layla was merrily translating from Dari to Danish and Danish to Dari without stumbling on her words.

  Layla was so competent, Raihana thought and panicked some more. She would never be as proficient as Layla, she thought, never be able to speak Danish like this. She would never finish her education and she would never find a job and then … then what? Would they send her back to Afghanistan? She felt fear race through her and she had to force herself to pay attention to Sylvia Hoffmann, calm her breathing, and quiet her racing heart.

  “You can come to class tomorrow,” Sylvia Hoffman said.

  Raihana nodded. “Tak,” she said.

  “Velbekomme,” Sylvia said.

  “That means welcome,” Layla whispered to Raihana in Dari.

  Raihana said velbekomme under her breath and decided to use it the next time someone said thank you to her in Danish.

  “Hvad hedder du?” Layla began Raihana's private Danish class as Kabir drove them back home. “That means, what is your name. Hvad hedder du, Raihana?”

  “Are you starting the Danish lesson already?” Kabir asked.

  “Sylvia said that if we speak Danish at home Layla will learn faster,” Layla said. “It is hard in Denmark without Danish. You can't go to the supermarket, get a job, go anywhere, do anything.”

  “She will do fine,” Kabir said. “Stop scaring her, Layla.”

  Raihana wasn't sure what to believe. On the one hand she understood that she had to learn Danish so that she could earn a living, on the other hand the Danish government did give her some money to survive on every month. It wasn't much but she didn't have many expenses. She gave money to Kabir and Layla for food, lodging, and other necessities, but she still managed to have some money left in the bank every month.

  If only Aamir could find his way here. What if he showed up at Layla and Kabir's doorstep? Could that happen?

  It was a sweet dream, like the fantasy of a child who wished to meet dinosaurs or fly to the moon. It was a futile hope. Aamir was probably dead as so many people had told her, but she was not ready to believe that.

  TWO

  ENTRY FROM ANNA'S DIARY

  A Year of Keeping Bees

  3 APRIL 1980

  Is anything sweeter than the sound of bees buzzing? I don't think so. The buzzing of bees announces the start of spring and bees are the harbingers of renewal. Maybe I romanticize bees because our relationship with them is still new, still fresh. We haven't dealt with the challenges of beekeeping, season after season; maybe once we do we'll change our minds and be more realistic about bees and beekeeping.

  When Gunnar and I first started to talk about becoming beekeepers, we only thought about the honey. But after a year with bees, we think about the honey less and the bees more. Our lives have been enriched, remarkably, by the bees. I wait to see the waggle dance, I wait to hear the buzzing, I wait eagerly for spring to come and see how my bees did in the winter. Our lives have divided as the bee season does—we welcome spring with gusto, enjoy the bees and honey-making through summer and fall, and then in the winter we hibernate like the bees.

  With the bees we have found the peace we have always looked for. Beekeeping is more than a hobby more than livelihood: it is a way of life.

  Gunnar loved his wife, his children, and his bees and not always in that order. But the past year had been difficult and he had yet to start preparing for the bee season.

  He knew everyone was worried about him: his children, his grandchildren, his friends. If his parents were alive, they would have worried as well. He could see it on everyone's faces when they talked to him, slowly and patiently, patting his hand or nodding in sympathy. He was sick and tired of looking at their pitying faces. And because he was sick of their constant sympathy he had stopped looking at them. He had even stopped opening the door when someone knocked. A man had a right to mourn, had a right to smoke pipe after pipe and drink coffee all day and whiskey all night, if that was what he wanted. A man had that right and to hell with those who thought he needed to move on and start living again. He was living, wasn't he? He smoked his pipe, drank his coffee and his whiskey, and watched television. It wasn't the life he had lived a year ago but life had changed and he with it.

  Anna had gotten satellite television despite him being against it because she wanted to watch the DR2 channel and their damn theme nights. It had all begun when the Danish television channel was broadcasting an Elvis theme night and she had managed to get the satellite connection within a week. The expense had been the biggest problem for Gunnar, but it was hard to argue with Anna when she set her mouth in that way. She would purse her lips, with her nose jutting out—she looked ridiculous, but he gave her what she wanted. In any case, she didn't need his permission to do anything. Anna was a modern woman, and she did things her way—and he'd had no choice but to let her.

  Now he was glad for all the channels on the television because the images filled the emptiness at two in the morning, when the two Danish channels were quiet. There was a sense of peace in letting the pictures run in front of him. Sometimes he even muted the sound and read the subtitles.

  The movie they were showing on the TV2 channel was an old one; they had shown it several times in the past few months. He watched it anyway and let the night slip away as the familiar images flashed on the screen.

  His doctor, whom he had known for the past twenty years, had told him that he would sleep a lot. Sleep helped people deal with grief. But Gunnar wasn't that lucky.

  He had always had trouble sleeping; even before Anna died, he couldn't sleep. He
used to take advantage of his insomnia by reading books on bees they bought or borrowed from the library.

  He had been dedicated to his bees. Now he wondered if his dedication came from wanting to please Anna. She was the true bee lover, he had just tagged along. Hadn't he?

  “Your bees are dying,” Peter had said when he barged in the previous day. He hadn't even knocked on the door, just came in.

  “You're living like a pig,” Peter added. “Anna would be ashamed of you.”

  “She must be turning in her grave,” Gunnar said. “I live like this now. This is my life,” he added petulantly.

  Peter sighed and studied the mess around him. The coffee table was covered with dirty glasses and a few plates with unidentifiable food. Newspapers were strewn around the living room, along with clothing and balled-up used paper towels.

  Peter rolled up his sleeves and started collecting the newspapers in one pile.

  “You have to check on the colonies or your bees will die and the colonies that have become big will swarm. Do you want to lose your bees?”

  It was a stupid question to ask a man who had just lost his Queen, his wife. Gunnar had done none of the things that had marked the start of spring with Anna and the bees. He had not wired frames; he had not set the foundation wax on the frames and had not waited impatiently to check on the bee colonies to see how they had grown, what had been lost over the winter. He had not checked his bees and he had not checked Anna's bees—if he had cared about his bees, he would've checked on them, maybe even fed them some sugar by now.

  They had twenty-six colonies between them. All the even-numbered ones had been Anna's, and Gunnar and Anna had competed with each other every spring to see whose bees were doing better, whose colonies had grown and whose had died. They had mourned the loss of any colonies together.

  It had been Anna's idea to make different kinds of honey so they could harvest from June through September. At first Gunnar had scoffed, saying it would be too difficult to transport the colonies. But Anna set her mouth and made Gunnar read pamphlets about heather honey.

  Gunnar did more than read the pamphlets. He called and spoke to the consultant hired by the Danish Beekeepers Association about leaving their bees in the west coast where the heathers grew. The consultant suggested a couple of places where Gunnar and Anna could leave their bees.

  So every July, Gunnar and Anna went to the west coast with some of their colonies, usually half Anna's and half his, so that their bees could suck the nectar of the wild heathers that grew there. They would rent a summer house, leave the colonies there, and check on them each weekend. Then after six to eight weeks, they would bring the colonies back home, laden with heather honey.

  Now that Anna was dead, her bees were his, but without her, there just didn't seem to be any point.

  “What about Anna's bees?” Peter asked as he scooped some trash into a big black bag. “Do you think this would make her happy?”

  “She's dead, Peter, beyond joy and sorrow,” Gunnar said. He was bitterly angry that she was dead and he alive, still alive, unable to just lie down in the grave with her.

  Peter looked at his friend and sighed, reading Gunnar's grief on his face. “You need to start wiring frames,” he said. “Maybe you and I should do it together. What do you think?”

  “Not now,” Gunnar said.

  “You don't care if your bees die?” Peter demanded.

  “No,” Gunnar said.

  “Have you eaten?” Peter asked.

  “Get out,” Gunnar said. “And take that trash out with you.”

  Gunnar and Peter had known each other too long for Peter to have taken him personally, but after two hours of getting nothing out of Gunnar, Peter finally left looking defeated. Friendship didn't die quickly, though, and Gunnar knew that Peter would be back, with something else under his sleeve, some other trick to drag him into the world.

  Gunnar had stopped picking up the phone because his daughter, Julie, called from London every day and his son, Lars, from Odense. Both wanted to know how he was doing and if they could help. He had told them to stop calling. He had lost his wife, he needed to mourn.

  The fact was that he was afraid. He tried not to admit it but he was afraid of living alone. He had never lived alone. He had lived with his parents and then moved in with Anna thirty-seven years ago. For thirty-seven years they lived in this house and raised their children. And for the last fifteen years their bees had lived there with them.

  Julie and Lars joked about the time before the bees and after the bees.

  “Before the bees, you spent some time with us, now …,” Julie would tease when she came to visit.

  “After the bees, they behave like a newly married couple, ignoring everyone but themselves and their little honey-makers,” Maria, Lars's wife, teased.

  His grandchildren only knew them as beekeepers. With great joy, Gunnar had taught four-year-old Brian and six-year-old Johanna how to wire frames, spot the queen bee, and uncap the top layer of wax before running the honey-filled hives through the honey extractor.

  Johanna and Brian had joined him and Anna in stirring the honey as it rested in various buckets in their windowless “honey room.”

  When Gunnar and Anna had been new to beekeeping, they had left their first harvest in the sewing room with an open window. By the next day the bees had found it and were working on sucking the honey back from the honey frames. So the honey room was constructed next to the garage with no windows that could be accidentally left open.

  He and Anna had loved beekeeping, Gunnar thought. Sometimes he had wondered if they had loved beekeeping more than they had loved each other. He glanced at the worn copy of the Danish Beekeepers Association's manual, Leerebog i Biavi, which still sat on the end table next to Anna's favorite chair by the window. They bought that copy when they had first started talking about keeping bees and they never replaced it.

  Every winter, Anna would sit in that rocking chair and read the manual time and again. The window faced the backyard and Anna would look out once in a while and say to Gunnar, “I hope they're doing well. Do you think they'll survive the winter?”

  And Gunnar would always say, “Yes, they will.”

  There was a time when the buzzing of the bees was within him, a humming that accompanied his time with Anna, their grandchildren, their children, and friends. Now Gunnar wasn't sure he could stand the sound of the bees. He was sure it would drive him mad to hear the bees without Anna.

  Some days were harder than others for Gunnar.

  On the hard days, he woke up forgetting she was dead. During that fragile time when sleep mingled with reality and Gunnar's mind was still fuzzy, he forgot Anna was dead. And then like the quick sting of a bee, reality would sink its stinger inside his fuzzy brain. Anna was dead, he would remind himself. Then he'd lie in bed unable to get on with living through another day.

  It was on such a day that Peter arrived to try once again to get his friend out of the house.

  After much persistence, Peter managed to drag Gunnar to the apiary school that the Sailing og Fjends BF, Sailing and Surrounding Areas Beekeepers Club, rented for meeting and to hold classes about beekeeping. The school was housed in a small old farm in the outskirts of Skive. The old farm building was a large well-kept room with a bathroom and small kitchen.

  Since the weather was good, the first day of apiary class was being conducted in a shed that used to be a barn. The beekeepers had set up chairs and tables for the apiary school. Colorful flyers lay on the tables alongside coffee and dream cake, a simple white cake covered with thick gooey coconut and brown sugar icing. A whiteboard with felt pens stood in a corner next to an old honey extraction machine.

  People were milling around the cake and coffee, picking up flyers, chatting with beekeepers, discussing how the bee season was going.

  Gunnar sat in the back, away from the crowd. He wasn't interested in the people or the cake. He wanted some coffee, but didn't want to walk through the maze o
f people between him and the coffee. He knew most of the people in the room. They'd talk to him. They'd ask him how he was doing. They'd annoy the hell out of him. No, he was better off sitting here smoking his pipe.

  “Can't you get him to come here and talk to people,” Birthe, Peter's wife, asked him. “Does he have to sit there looking like all his bees died?”

  Peter looked at her in exasperation. “I got him here and it took a lot of work. I had to actually force him under the shower. And you're still not happy?”

  Birthe frowned. “I can't stand to see him this way. Over Christmas, I understood. Anna had just died. But…”

  “It's only been a few months,” Peter said. “We should give him time. Would you want me to get on with my life if you died?”

  Birthe smiled. “No, I'd want you to mourn for the rest of your life.”

  “Mourn about what?” asked Hans, another beekeeper and longtime friend of Peter's and Gunnar's.

  “Birthe wants me to mourn her for the rest of my life when she dies,” Peter said.

  “I think Bettina would say the same thing about me,” he said cheerfully and then sighed when he looked at Gunnar. “On the other hand, it'd be such a waste.”

  “It's the shock of it,” Birthe said. “One minute she was talking about how great their September harvest was and the next minute, she was dead.”

  “I always thought that was a good way to die, you know, boom and you're gone. But now I wonder if it's better to have cancer or something like that. You at least have time to plan,” Hans said.

  “How is Gunnar going to get over this?” Birthe said sadly. “In a way I do understand the way he is. If Peter died, I don't know if I'd be able to look at those bees again.”

  Gunnar watched them and he was sure they were talking about him. It was the way that Birthe kept glancing at him that made him certain. He knew they were worried about him. A part of him was relieved that someone gave a damn. Another wanted them to leave him alone.