The Death of a Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson

First published:En biodlares dod, 1978 (English translation, 1981)

Type of work: Fictional diary

Time of work: The 1970’s

Locale: The countryside in Vastmanland, a Swedish province

Principal Character:

• Lars Lennart Westin, the narrator, a retired public-school teacher

The Novel

The Death of a Beekeeper opens with what Lars Gustafsson calls a “prelude” in which he says good-bye to the readers of this, the last part of his five-volume novel sequence, Sprickorna i muren (1971-1978; the cracks in the wall). He presents himself as merely the editor of notes left behind on Lars Lennart Westin’s death, telling the reader that the speaker to whom he now hands over the narrative suffers from cancer of the spleen. As the narrative proper begins, the reader knows more than the protagonist.

The documents used for the narrative are a yellow notebook, the source of most of the entries in the novel, a blue notebook which contains stories (some of them science fiction) that Westin has written, and a torn notebook in which the progress of Westin’s illness is recorded. They cover a period from 1970 to 1975 and have supposedly been found in Westin’s home by his literary executor, Lars Gustafsson.

When the school where he was teaching was consolidated with a bigger school, Westin opted for early retirement. He has decided to settle in the country and keep bees. In an early entry, he worries about the well-being of his bees—he has not winterized the hives properly because he has not been feeling well all fall.

Another early indication of Westin’s illness is the fact that his dog does not seem to recognize him any longer. Westin speculates that perhaps the old dog is losing his sense of smell, or that Westin’s own smell has changed radically. In another entry, Westin relates his reactions on receiving a letter from the hospital where he has gone for tests: He decides not to open the letter, reasoning that if his illness is not life-threatening, it will simply pass, and if the news is about a fatal illness, he does not want to know it. He burns the letter unread.

The second part of Westin’s narrative tells of his marriage, which was based on a tacit agreement with his wife that they would not get too close to each other, not invade the other person’s private sphere. The spouses acknowledge the emptiness of their marriage after Westin meets a woman doctor, Ann, on a train. They have a brief affair but, more important, they keep in close touch by phone and by letter. Westin tells his wife about Ann and, to his surprise, she is delighted and tells him to ask Ann over for a visit. The two women become friends and, gradually, Westin is the one left alone.

Westin recalls his childhood and tells anecdotes of his relatives. He also has a visit from two twelve-year-old boys, Uffe and Jonny. The boys have a fascination with horror and adventure comics, and Westin begins writing a science-fiction story for them. A feature in the first story is an immense pipe organ which produces intolerable pain. The pain replicates the pain Westin himself feels—a pain which becomes more pronounced as the narrative continues. For a few weeks, however, there is a cessation of pain. Westin decides that the episode of terrible pain he endured meant he had passed some kidney stones and that now his illness is over; he defines paradise as the absence of pain.

Paradise is also defined by Westin as a place where there are no lies. In another science-fiction story, he describes a society in which it is impossible to tell lies since communication is by object and action rather than by words.

The fifth section of the novel consists of a more developed science-fiction story, entitled “When God Awoke.” In this version, God is female. She has been asleep for millions of years, but now She wakes up and starts hearing, and answering, human prayers. When an archbishop prays for peace in the world, She responds by turning all fissionable matter and all weapons into gold. Eventually, since all wishes are immediately fulfilled, language disappears. Humanity, the reader is told, realizes that it has labored under a misapprehension in imagining a punishing paternal god: The truth is that there is a boundlessly indulgent maternal deity. The section ends: “IF GOD LIVES, EVERYTHING IS ALLOWED.”

In the final section of the novel, Westin experiences a return of pain. He finally feels real, but also feels that this new reality is terrible. The novel ends with Westin waiting for an ambulance and hoping that it will not have an accident on the slippery roads.

The Characters

The only main character in the novel is Lars Lennart Westin; his wife, Margareth, and his onetime lover, Ann, are characters about whom he writes but who do not actually appear in the novel. Westin and his wife have had an agreement “not to see” each other. For both of them, Ann is a possibility of liberation from a sterile relationship. Margareth is as repressed as her husband; Ann is described as warm and maternal. She is someone who is able to “see” Westin, but when she forges a bond with his wife, he loses her and the possibility of her liberating influence, which he considers his last chance to understand and define himself.

The two boys who come visiting appear within the time frame of the novel, but they are minor characters, an occasion for Westin to write science-fiction fantasies. The book is Westin’s, and the people in his life, past or present, are interesting to the reader only in their relationship to the narrator. Some visiting relatives are never even individualized by names; others, who are named and characterized, are people in Westin’s stories. The narrator is someone who has avoided personal relationships as much as possible. He believes that his one chance, Ann, was taken away from him by Margareth. It is in character for him to keep his illness to himself, to retreat to the solitary existence of a beekeeper, to decide not to let society get hold of him in his weakened condition. Westin’s remark that he has wanted too little all of his life, especially wanted too little from, and too little to do with, other people, shows his increasing self-awareness. Now, when the events of his last few months make him feel real, he cannot accept the change and considers it terrible.

Critical Context

The Death of a Beekeeper is the last in a sequence of five novels with the overall title Sprickorna i muren. The structure is based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The first three novels, Herr Gustafsson sjalv (1971; Mr. Gustafsson himself), Yllet (1973; wool), and Familjefesten (1975; the family party), describe the Inferno, while the fourth, Sigismund (1976; English translation, 1985), takes the reader through Purgatory.

The Death of a Beekeeper is the ironically conceived Paradise section. It is actually a story of death. In it, many characters and themes from the earlier novels recur. The science-fiction elements present in The Death of a Beekeeper, for example, have appeared in earlier novels, in particular Yllet and Sigismund. Also characteristic of Gustafsson is the way in which Westin’s thoughts return to the idyllic landscape of his childhood—the section devoted to childhood memories is entitled “Memoirs of Paradise.” The autobiographical elements—so prominent in the first two parts of the novel sequence—are absent here, except for the “prelude.” Many of the ideas presented in the earlier novels are made clear and brought to a conclusion in The Death of a Beekeeper. The five novels have a common theme: lies and hypocrisy in public and private life. In the last novel, Westin confronts the problem of lies in his science-fiction story about objects replacing language.

Gustafsson explores other ideas present in the earlier novels: the limits of the self, the relation of the individual to society (Westin retreats from society so completely that he elects to face death in solitude) and—more important in this last novel—to the uncontrollable forces of illness and death. Westin’s contact with reality has been brought about not by love or by immersion in nature but by pain. The Death of a Beekeeper, as Gustafsson himself has said, paraphrases Rene Descartes in proclaiming, “I suffer. Therefore I am.”

Critics consider The Death of a Beekeeper as Gustafsson’s best novel before the equally acclaimed Bernard Foys tredje rockad (1986; Bernard Foy’s third castling).

Bibliography

Antioch Review. Review. XL (Summer, 1982), p. 374.

Best Sellers. Review. XLI (February, 1982), p. 409.

Mortensson, J. “Gustafsson’s The Bee Keeper,” in Swedish Books. II (1979), pp. 6-7.

Updike, John. “The Death of a Beekeeper,” in The New Yorker. LVII (January 11, 1982), p. 92.