The Trouble with the Truth

"Bahktur!" Nanda shouted over the noise. I realized it was the second or third time he had called for me. "You go lower. Put basket under hive. Hold steady."

I looked down into that shifting, angry cloud of black and shook my head adamantly.

"Hive too far under cliff," he explained. "I have to pull ladder toward rock, get Sri Mani closer. You hold basket for honey."

"No. I'm not going down there."

"Pholo blessed this. Sri Mani ask bees not to sting."

"And they'll just listen to him? No thank you."

He shook his head as if to show I was a disappointment. Then he took the basket and rappelled down into the swarm. I was left hanging there, waiting. The cloud below became so thick, I could barely see the two honey hunters. The droning sound went on and on, insinuating itself into my brain, one long monotonous song whose meaning and origin had been lost a million years ago with my ancestors. The sound was hypnotizing. Before I knew it, I'd been hanging there ten or fifteen minutes. My hands were tired of bracing my weight against the rope. I began to think about climbing up. Easier to wait on the escarpment above. Besides, I felt the need to escape the sound of all those bees.

It was then I discovered that I wasn't strong enough to pull my weight up the rope.

Below me, the bees were an impenetrable cloud, a near solid, shifting mass of bodies and noise. Through the swarm, I'd occasionally get brief glimpses of Sri Mani, trying to swing his ladder in toward the cliff face so he could reach the hive. Bees had become a black mantle on his shoulders, flowing down his back like a cape, covering his head like a hood.

I didn't know how much longer I could hang there, holding my weight against that great fall and certain death. If I waited too long, would I have the strength to lower myself? Could I count on Sri Mani or his assistant for help?

I had no choice.

I slowly lowered myself toward the swarm. They landed on my boots first. Then the legs of my trousers. Anxious, the bees flew up to meet me, their wings fanning my face. They were nearly the size of humming birds. The noise of the swarm had become tactile now, a thrumming vibration in the air. There was no escaping it. I couldn't cover my ears and, even if I could, I had a feeling it wouldn't work. I was certain that the droning song of the bees was a sound to penetrate any barrier. I closed my eyes and bit my lip and backed my way down the cliff face, fighting the urge to scream as they pelted my body.

But they didn't sting me. Soon, I was through the worst of it.

Looking up from beneath the swarm, the hive was clearly visible. It hung suspended from the overhang, as large as a minivan, millions of bees crawling across its surface. It consisted of two parts: the honeycomb, which was attached to the cliff, and the brood comb, a lower crescent burgeoning with pupae, eggs, and larvae. It was frightening in its immensity. The noise was terrifying and loud. I seemed to recall reading about them once. Apis laboriosa, the world's largest honeybee, found only in Nepal. Reading about them and encountering them were two different things - worlds apart. There weren't words to describe the black, motile mass of all those bees or the revulsion and fear that shifted prehistorically within my gut. The truth embodied in actual contact could not be told.

Nanda had rigged the basket to catch the honey. Then he'd gone below to pull the ladder in under the overhang. Sri Mani assaulted the honeycomb, carving into its side, using the poles like giant chopsticks. He scraped great slabs of the honeycomb into the goatskin-lined basket. By the time the basket was full, it must have contained some fifteen gallons of honey. From the brood comb, he scoured great slabs of beeswax. As I slipped past Sri Mani and dropped below, warm sticky drops of honey dotted my arms and face. I took a dab of it on my finger and put it to my mouth. I hadn't tasted anything sweet since leaving the States. The honey's nectar was overpowering, like a drug. I reached for more as it dripped past.

"No!" Nanda yelled.

When I looked down at him, he shook his head. Evidently, I wasn't supposed to eat the honey. Terrified, I looked up, expecting to see the swarm regrouping for an assault, angered that I'd dared consume the gift in their presence. But nothing about their behavior had changed. Their song remained the same. Later, Sri Mani would examine the honey closely and hold it cupped in the palm of his hand to see if it tingled. Often, Nanda said, the bees visit poisonous plants, and those who eat the honey can become sick and even die. Supposedly, Sri Mani, who has hunted honey all his life, as did his father and his grandfather before him, can tell by sight and touch if the honey is bad. After everything I had witnessed that first time harvesting the honey, this was but one more small miracle that I was willing to believe.

I continued down the cliff face past Nanda, discarding and rigging safety lines as I went. At some point the bees left me, all at once, as if by some silent agreement they'd decided I wasn't really a part of the proceedings anymore. Why I wasn't stung, I can't say. The only explanation Nanda offered was that Sri Mani had asked them not to.

When my feet touched the ground, I collapsed in exhaustion, gasping on the much too thin air, while dollops of honey spotted the rocks around me. Sometime later I heard Nanda calling my name. He threw down all the safety lines that I'd left hanging on the cliff face. Through gestures, he indicated that I was to follow the ravine toward a crumbled gap in the rocks where he thought I could probably climb up to meet them. I gathered my wits about me, collected the ropes, and followed the ravine ...

... and it was then that I found the first bone.

Bleached white. Long and supple. Delicately curved. It looked like the rib of some small animal. I saw it in an oddly utilitarian light, something I could fashion into a tool - as if I had survived by making such things all my life. Bahktur, the Neanderthal. Fashioned into something useful, it might make a gift for Nanda or one of the Gurung women who often fed me. I slipped it under my shirt and ... for a while ... I gave it little thought.

It was but the first of many bones I'd find in the ravine.