John Barth - Lost in the Funhouse

“First-degree murder!” Rosa shrieked, the urgentest alarum she could muster. Organ ceased, minister also; all eyes turned; ushers and back-pew parishioners hurried to investigate, but could not achieve a more lucid account of what ailed us. The names Poppa Tom and Willy Erdmann, however, came through clearly enough to suggest the location of the emergency. Mrs. Mayne, the preacher’s wife, led us from the vestibule toward shelter in the parsonage; a delegation of lay-leaders hastened to our house, and the Reverend Dr. Mayne, having given instructions that he be summoned if needed, bade his distracted flock pray.

Grandfather’s victims had not been long discovering their fresh affliction, for the bees’ docility was spent. Where the cluster fell, none knew for certain, but on impact it had resolved into separate angry bees. There was a howling and a flurrying of limbs. Konrad and Willy Erdmann scrambled apart to flail like epileptics in the grass. Grandfather rushed in batting his hands and shouting “ Nein, lieber Gott , sting Willy just!” Only Mother made no defense; having swooned from one fright and wakened to another, she now lay weeping where she’d been dumped: up-ended, dazed, and sore exposed.

But whom neither pain nor the fear of it can move, shame still may. The bees were already dispersing when the Methodists reached our fence; at sight of them the principals fell to accusation.

“Stole my swarm and sicked ‘em on me!” Erdmann hollered from the grass.

“Bah, it was my bees anyhow,” Grandfather insisted. He pointed to Andrea. “You see what he done. And busted the hammock yet!”

My mother’s plight had not escaped their notice, nor did their notice now escape hers: she sprang up at once, snatched together the kimono, sprinted a-bawl for the summerkitchen. Her departure was regarded by all except Erdmann, who moved to answer Grandfather’s last insinuation with a fresh assault, and Uncle Konrad, who this time checked him effectively until others came over the fence to help.

“Thieves and whores!” Erdmann cried trembling. “Now he steals my bees!”

“It’s all a great shame,” Konrad said to the company, who as yet had no clear notion what had occurred. His explanation was cut off by Erdmann, not yet done accusing Grandfather.

“Thinks he’s God Almighty!”

Joe Voegler the blacksmith said, “Nah, Willy, whoa down now.”

Mr. Erdmann wept. “Nobody’s safe! Takes what he pleases!”

Grandfather was examining his hands with interest. “Too quick they turned him loose, he ain’t cured yet.”

“Would you see him home, Joe?” Uncle Konrad asked. “We’ll get it straightened out. I’m awful sorry, Willy.”

“You talk!” Erdmann shrieked at him. “You been in on it too!”

Grandfather clucked his tongue.

“Come on, Willy,” Voegler said. A squat-muscled, gentle man with great arms and lower lip, he led Erdmann respectfully toward the alley.

“What you think drove Hector nuts?” Erdmann appealed. “He knows what’s what!”

“So does Willy,” Grandfather remarked aside. “That’s why the opera glasses.”

The onlookers smiled uncertainly. Uncle Konrad shook his head. “I’m sorry, everybody.”

Our neighbor’s final denunciation was delivered from his back steps as Voegler ushered him to the door. “Brat’s got no more father’n a drone bee! Don’t let them tell you I done it!”

Grandfather snorted. “What a man won’t say. Excuse me, I go wash the bee-stings.”

He had, it seems, been stung on the hands and fingers a number of times — all, he maintained, in those last seconds when he flung the cluster. Konrad, himself unstung, remained behind to explain what had happened and apologize once more. The group then dispersed to spread the story, long to be recounted in East Dorset. Aunt Rosa, Peter, and I were retrieved from the parsonage; Uncle Konrad expressed the family’s regrets to Dr. Mayne, a friend of his and not devoid of wit.

“ The Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in Egypt, ” the minister quoted, “ and for the bee that is in Assyria, and they shall come and rest all of them in the desolate valleys. There’s an omen here someplace.”

At Konrad’s suggestion the two went that afternoon on embassies of peace to both houses. There was no question of litigation, but Dr. Mayne was concerned for the tranquillity of future worship-services, and disturbed by the tenor of Erdmann’s charge.

“So. Tell Willy I forgive him his craziness,” Grandfather instructed them. “I send him a gallon of mead when it’s ready.”

“You don’t send him a drop,” Dr. Mayne said firmly. “Not when we just got him cured. And Willy’s not the first to say things about you-all. I’m not sure you don’t want some forgiving yourself.”

Grandfather shrugged. “I could tell things on people, but I don’t hold grutches. Tell Willy I forgive him his trespasses, he should forgive mine too.”

Dr. Mayne sighed.

Of the interview with Erdmann I can give no details; my uncle, who rehearsed these happenings until the year of his death, never dwelt on it. This much is common knowledge in East Dorset: that Willy never got his bees back, and in fact disposed of his own hives not long after; that if he never withdrew his sundry vague accusations, he never repeated them either, so that the little scandal presently subsided; finally, that he was cured for good and all of any interest he might have had in my mother, whom he never spoke to again, but not, alas, of his dipsomania, which revisited him at intervals during my youth, impaired his business, made him reclusive, and one day killed him.

The extraordinary swarming was variously interpreted. Among our neighbors it was regarded as a punishment of Andrea in particular for her wantonness, of our family in general for its backsliding and eccentricity. Even Aunt Rosa maintained there was more to it than mere chance, and could not be induced to taste the product of our hive. Grandfather on the contrary was convinced that a change in our fortunes was imminent — so striking an occurrence could not but be significant — and on the grounds that things were as bad as they could get, confidently expected there to be an improvement.

Portentous or not, the events of that morning had two notable consequences for me, the point and end of their chronicling here: First, it was discovered that my mother’s bawling as she fled from the scene had not been solely the effect of shame: in her haste to cover herself, she had trapped beneath the kimono one bee, which single-handedly, so to speak, had done what the thousands of his kindred had refrained from: his only charge he had fired roundly into their swarming-place, fount of my sustenance. It was enflamed with venom and grotesquely swollen; Mother was prostrate with pain. Aunt Rosa fetched cold compresses, aspirins, and the family doctor, who after examining the wound prescribed aspirins and cold compresses.

“And do your nursing on the porch,” he recommended. “Goodness gracious.”

But Andrea had no further use for that aspect of motherhood. Though the doctor assured her that the swelling would not last more than a few days, during which she could empty the injured breast by hand and nurse with the other, she refused to suckle me again; a diet free of butterfat was prescribed to end her lactation. As of that Sunday I was weaned not only from her milk but from her care; thenceforth it was Rosa who bathed and changed, soothed and burped me, after feeding me from a bottle on her aproned lap.

As she went about this the very next morning, while Mother slept late, she exclaimed to her husband, “It’s a bee!”

Uncle Konrad sprang from his eggs and rushed around the table to our aid, assuming that another fugitive had been turned up. But it was my birthmark Rosa pointed out: the notion had taken her that its three lobes resembled the wings and abdomen of a bee in flight.