In my garden, doing a flower-watch, I was fascinated to see
the daisies grow. An industrious bee was moving from blossom to
blossom, presumably under orders from headquarters. One understands
that bees are enormously good at
communication.
This it was which
prompted me to catch the bee and try to educate it still further. I
used great kindness. Patience was also needed. I was aware all the
while that I was entering realms where no one had been before.
Although the bee worked hard, strong empathy developed between us:
so much so that the bee, whom I christened Bea, would eat honey from
my hand.
Once Bea had mastered the
alphabet, she showed she was ready to tackle the masterpieces of
English literature. She suggested we start with Leo Tolstoi's "War
and Peace". I had to inform her - I trust without too much
condescension - that this novel was in fact Russian, in origin if
not in translation. She so immediately went off the idea that I
suspected racial prejudice, rarely found in a bee, although she
claimed never to have heard of
Russia.
We finally settled on an
English classic. Bea would read nothing less than Jane Austen's
"Pride and Prejudice".
We settled
down comfortably, one lovely summer evening, with the open book. I
had chosen a paperback edition with good print. With the
scrupulousness that was one of my trade marks, I had placed grains
of sugar between each word, by way of
encouragement.
Bea settled on the
first page. She began a slow crawl over the first sentence. Rather
to my disappointment, she insisted on working from right to left,
Hebraic fashion. I wondered what she would make of it. "...in man
single a that,
acknowledged..."
These words were
travelled in the first hour.
In the
second hour, after a rest, we got only as far as "...universally
truth a..."
Bea then rested. I felt
that 'universally' had exhausted her. I could not help wondering how
she would manage with 'possession' in the second
line.
She indicated to me that she
was extremely disappointed with the literary quality of the piece. I
sympathised. We spent the rest of that evening watching television,
although there was little enough about apiary to hold our
attention.
It is a tribute to the
tenacity of Bea that, come the next evening, she was eager to start
reading Jane Austen again. She set off along the page at a fair
pace, this time choosing to read the second line of text, although
once again - perversely, to my mind - choosing to travel from right
to left. In the first half-hour we had reached "...wife a of want in
be..."
Here she came to a halt. I
could tell by the flutter of her wings that she was annoyed. Finally
she explained: 'bee' was misspelled. I attempted to tell her that
this word, 'be' with one 'e', had no reference to her kind, but was
merely a part of the verb 'to be', as in Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be
or not to be".
This proved an
unfortunate example to have chosen. She could not understand what
Hamlet meant; her argument - perfectly logical in its way - was that
either one was or was not a bee, and that there could be no
confusion about the matter. Even a wasp was clearly not a bee;
though she admitted that there may have been some period in past
pre-history when bees and wasps shared a common ancestry. How was
it, Bea asked, that this rubbish from Hamlet could be so highly
prized? I found it hard to
answer.
We came as near to
quarrelling as we had ever done, Bea and I. However, after a while
she kindly announced I was an honorary bee, albeit wingless, and she
was prepared to go on with her reading of Jane Austen. So on the
third day, Bea triumphantly reached "...truth a is it..." and
pronounced it good.
A simple
physiological fact stood in Bea's path to full enjoyment of Jane
Austen's work. Her memory always died at sunset. It lasted only one
day. It was renewed on the succeeding sunrise, completely fresh and
blank. All traces of her yesterdays, of her experiences good or bad,
had vanished. This discovery touched me deeply. How pleasant, I
thought, to awaken every morning to an entirely new world! - No
horrid memories of childhood, no memories of bills to be paid, no
memories of work to be done: just a total blank, full of childlike
expectation, on which a new sun shone. Even if it ruined one's
appreciation of Jane Austen.
Many
explanations passed between us. Finally, Bea curled up in my ear
exhausted. It became clear to me that what was needed was a short
prose piece through all of which Bea could travel in one day, thus
receiving it whole. A prose piece or... a
poem!
So I turned to my favourite
verse form, the limerick.
Bea was
immediately enthusiastic about the new
project.
It was on a Sunday morning
when we set to work on the limerick book. I opened it at random, and
flattened out the page. Almost at once, Bea began to make steady
progress through the first line of the first limerick we came
across, this time without grains of sugar between each
word.
"...Tralee of man young a was
there..."
Only then did I realise
that the second line was "Who had an affair with a -
"
No, no, I could not let my
innocent friend read that filth! How could I ever explain its
implications to the virgin Bea?
She
was resting after her exertions, but was about to approach the
second line, of which, from her point of view, was inevitably... -
but I could not let it
happen!
"Bea, my dear", I said, "it
has come time for us to part,
alas!"
I let her go. She flew away
with many a backward look. I waved until she disappeared into a
distant flower bed. Tears stood in my
eyes.
That dear little winged being
remains for ever in my heart. Never again can I open a novel by Jane
Austen without thinking of her. Or a book of limericks.
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