Now I know that my father hasn’t learned anything about war.
He hasn’t learned anything about bees, either.
At the beginning of the Second World War
he put on a uniform and went to fight against Fascism
leaving his family home and his beehives.
When the bees went wild and started attacking children,
the locals suffocated them with smoke.
After two years of the new war,
he went to the old family house
and started raising bees again.
He stopped reading newspapers,
he swears at the authorities less and less
and disappears when someone starts talking
about politics.
He sent me a jar of honey. I haven’t opened it yet.
I’ve heard that some 10 kilometres from the old family house
4,000 people were killed and buried.
I’ve heard that the stench of rotting corpses
buried at the soccer field overpowers the smell of linden.
They say that nobody can sleep at night
from the detonations of the empty stomachs of the dead
that explode in the summer heat.
My father doesn’t know that.
He only raises bees and sends jars of honey.
I skim through the encyclopaedias to find out
How far bees fly and do they run away from stench.
Then I start crying.
And I can’t explain to my children why I forbid them
to open the jar of honey that my father sent them.
The warrior and beekeeper
Who has never learned anything about the war
Or about the bees.
-Goran Simić
