I threw myself into the streets of the world with a bee in my hair. A bee that buzzed among my tresses, beat its wings convulsively, and buzzed, buzzed, buzzed. I didn’t brush it away, I let it build its hive in my head, and everyone who met me said, “You’ve got hair like honey,” and didn’t know that there was a bee in my head, rolling around playfully among my thoughts with its soft, bicolored body. And it kept me company, my bee did; it became an indispensable if not very trustworthy companion: sometimes it gave me little bites on the back of my neck that should have hurt. But my bee was too small to hurt me; it left honey in me but never poison.

One day the bee whispered something in my ear, but it was too faint a murmur for me to hear. I never asked what it had tried to say to me and now it’s too late. My bee flew away from my hair, all of a sudden, and a passerby killed it. It was squashed. On the white marble I can see a liquid gleaming, a substance: I pick it up with a little spatula and take it to an analytic laboratory.

“Poison,” the biologist tells me.

“Poison …,” I repeat.

My bee died of poisoning; it wasn’t squashed. A few hours before, it had bitten me.

Who’s going to keep my silences company? I miss the bee’s buzzing; I need its soft whisper. When the morning sun shines, I find my teeth clenched and a sound coming from my mouth: zzzzzzzzzzzzz …

TWO

Were you OK yesterday? When you got home and lit yourself a cigarette from the gas ring in the kitchen, when our cat rubbed against your neck, breath quivering, when you shut your eyes and folded your legs like a fetus, what did you think about? Were you OK?

My torments began when I said good-bye to you at the airport, when I came over and said, “So, did you get all that? You check in, go up those escalators and then through the metal detector,” and I pointed to it with a finger, “after which you go toward the gate marked on your boarding card, and you’re there. Call me when you get home.”

That’s what I said to you, and then I moved away, came back, and repeated it all word for word. I even repeated my gesture, pointing to the metal detector.

Finally I kissed you softly, our bodies apart, and whispered in your ear: “Thank you.”

You, in a voice less harsh than mine, replied, “Thank you, darling, thank you.”

That same evening I made love with Thomas. “Let’s do it as though it’s the last time,” I said to him, looking him straight in the eyes.

He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “What do you mean?”