by Donna Leon
Brunetti, fear banished by curiosity, bowed closer to the thronging mass and hunted for a blue dot, but all he saw were hundreds of bees; he understood now what the word ‘swarm’ meant. And then he saw it, an iridescent blue dot, a bit bigger than the head of a pin. She hauled herself along in zigzag progression, nudged, pushed, caressed and cleaned by other bees, all of them unmarked and smaller than she. She dived into one of the hexagonal wax cells, pulled herself out only to move forward a bit, then back up and insert her tail part into the empty cell.
‘Is she laying an egg?’ Brunetti whispered, almost speechless with the majesty of what he was watching.
‘Yes.’
‘And the others?’
‘They clean her and feed her and smooth her passage.’
Brunetti bent closer; he’d forgotten danger. Their motion never stopped: gliding up and over one another, circling the Queen, following in her train. The movement seemed random, yet it was all perfectly synchronized.
‘What’s in those?’ he asked, pointing to rows of closed cells on the lower part of the wooden frame in Casati’s hands.
‘Eggs – as you saw – and then they’re larvae, and then pupae, and when they come out they’re bees, full grown,’ Casati explained, slipping the frame back in place and pulling out another. He studied it quickly, slipped it back inside. He pulled up another and ran a finger along the bottom, smoothing off small beige globs. He tasted it and smiled, then held the frame out to Brunetti.
‘Try it,’ he said.
Brunetti switched the still-burning chip to his left hand and ran his right forefinger along the bottom of the frame, detaching some of the globs. He put his finger in his mouth and prodded the honey free with his tongue. Sweet, faintly grainy, sweet again, chewy, more sweet, more bliss.
Casati took the frame back and inserted it in the hive. When Casati opened the second hive, Brunetti saw more bees, more motion, almost all of the cells full and covered, and always the same buzzing rush that was no longer menacing, though it had grown even louder.
Brunetti, fascinated, waved the smouldering chip, which refused to burst into flame and produced only a steady stream of smoke. The noise had become an incantation. His thoughts flew to Aristotle, who had written – he no longer remembered where – about having once experienced ‘one glimpse of celestial is-ness’. It was a phrase Brunetti had never understood. Until now.
The sound diminished as they approached the last hive. ‘One more,’ Casati said and took the top off the green hive. When he pulled out the first frame, Brunetti saw that there were almost no bees on it, and the few left crawled slowly and apparently without purpose. He saw no Queen.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
Casati shook his head in answer and balanced the frame on the hive. He stooped down and pulled out a drawer at the bottom of the hive. Brunetti saw the bodies of bees lying there, too thick to count. Casati pulled in his breath when he saw them. He removed a plastic ziplock bag from his back pocket, opened it to remove a slim leather case and took from this a plastic vial and a pair of tweezers.
‘They shouldn’t die in the hive,’ Casati whispered. Brunetti had no difficulty hearing the other man because the buzzing noise had grown much softer near this hive.
‘When they’re sick, they’re supposed to fly away so they won’t infect the others,’ Casati said, sounding puzzled.
Carefully, he used the tweezers to pick up a few of the dead bees; he dropped them into the vial, capped it, and slipped it and the tweezers into the case, which he returned to the ziplock bag and put back in his pocket. Then he closed the drawer, took the top of the hive and put it back in place. ‘This isn’t supposed to happen,’ he said in a voice Brunetti associated with the stunned victims of violent crimes.
‘What’s wrong?’ Brunetti asked again.
‘The test will tell,’ Casati answered, then almost consciously shook himself loose from his shock. Looking at his watch, he said, ‘Come on. We’ve only got about twenty minutes.’
Casati hurried back the way they had come and clambered down into the back of the puparìn, leaving Brunetti to step down to his own place. He untied the rope and they were off.
‘We turn around,’ Casati said, and did it quickly, effortlessly, in four strokes of his oar. The sun was now pounding on Brunetti’s right shoulder, so they were heading south. He glanced to the side and saw how the embankments had grown higher, and then he understood Casati’s need for haste: natural embankments were emerging from the water on both sides of them as the tide went out, leaving them rowing in ever-shallower water.
He felt the sudden increase in Casati’s rhythm and met it. They’d be stuck there overnight or until the tide changed again. He thought of the mosquitoes arriving at dusk, shoe polish or not, and he rowed.
This was not open water. ‘Left,’ Casati called from behind him, and Brunetti did as ordered. After about twenty strokes, Casati called out ‘Right,’ and an obedient Brunetti joined him in turning the boat, following a path that he could not discern. Plants grew towards them from both sides as the retreating tide exposed the grass that had been hidden under water when they came. Something slid roughly along the bottom of the boat, and both men froze. Casati cried out, ‘Forza!’ and quickened his pace. Again the scraping sound came. Brunetti’s oar hit something hard.
And then the waterway in front of them broadened with no warning and they emerged into a large patch of open water. Casati slowed his rhythm, and Brunetti was happy to match it. ‘This is the Canale di Sant’Antonio,’ Casati said, a fact which conveyed no meaning to Brunetti. But the slower rhythm did. ‘We can take it easy now.’
Ahead of them Brunetti saw buildings and rooftops and the telltale bell tower. ‘Is that Burano?’ he called back to Casati.
‘Yes. Would you like to stop for a coffee?’
Brunetti would have liked to stop and have other rowers take him home. But he called out, ‘Good idea.’ Real men.
8
The coffee was followed by two glasses of water, and then another, and after that Brunetti felt as though he might be able to make it from Burano to Sant’Erasmo. Two men came into the bar and said hello to Casati, who introduced Brunetti, explaining he was a friend who had come out to visit. That led the two men to offer them a drink, but Casati refused, saying they had rowed too much and needed to get home before even thinking about a glass of anything other than water.
He and Brunetti walked back to the boat, and the men came along, one of them saying the puparìn was the most beautiful he’d ever seen, and if Casati ever decided he wanted to sell …
Casati laughed and sat on the riva – so much had the water gone down – to lower himself into the boat. Brunetti did the same, untied the boat, called up farewells to the two men, and bent again to his oar, wondering if this was what it was like to be a galley slave. But slaves had no leather gloves and certainly did not stop for coffee in the afternoon.
Casati told him that there was a shortcut but that he didn’t trust it at low tide, so they went out to the Canale di Burano, where the depth was certain, and rowed to the Canale di Crevan and to where they had started. They silently pulled into their docking place, and Brunetti tied the boat to the metal ring. Casati untied the grating and lifted it on to the riva. ‘My great-grandfather made it,’ he said proudly. ‘I use it as an anchor, but I never leave it in the boat.’
It was only then that Brunetti noticed the forged swirls and arabesques that still survived among the pieces that had been broken off over the years. As so often happened with Brunetti, knowledge of the object’s age added to its beauty.
Casati was quickly up the three steps, holding his oar and fórcola, and asked Brunetti to hand him up his. Casati set them all down and leaned over to offer Brunetti a hand, which he was not at all ashamed to accept. Once on land, Brunetti took both oars and put them over his shoulder.
They walked side by side, Brunetti with the oars and Casati with the two fórcole lying on the grating. They turned right
on to a dirt path at the far end of which stood a small stone house, the tiles on the roof and the new window frames speaking of a recent restoration. Before Brunetti could ask, Casati said, ‘The Contessa restored the house for us. But then …’ His voice trailed off, and Brunetti saw the life go out of his face for an instant. ‘I live here with my daughter and her family now.’
Casati turned into an even smaller path that led to a narrow wooden shed at the back. He led the way inside, placed the grating against the wall, and helped Brunetti set the oars and fórcole on pegs on the wall.
‘Thank you for the lesson,’ Brunetti said. He pulled the gloves from his pockets and held them out to Casati. ‘And thanks for these.’
‘Keep them for tomorrow, why don’t you?’ Casati suggested.
‘What time?’ Brunetti asked casually, trying not to show signs of his delight.
‘Seven-thirty,’ Casati said straight-faced. ‘That way we can get where we’re going and back before the real heat begins.’
‘I’ll be there.’ Brunetti shook Casati’s hand, and started back towards the larger house. From behind him, Casati called, ‘Federica will bring you fresh bread,’ and Brunetti raised a hand in the air to acknowledge that he had heard.
He looked at his watch as he entered and was surprised to see that it was almost six. They must have spent more time in the bar than he thought or gone farther than he was aware of. He went up the stairs to his room to get his telefonino, and on the third step felt reports begin to arrive from various parts of his body. Calves tight, back sore, neck shooting pain up into his skull, hands bruised, thumb flaring, feet chafed raw on the soles. He couldn’t wait to tell Paola about it.
She, as it turned out, was sympathetic but not impressed. She expressed Zerlina-like concern for his various injured and exhausted parts, but not having been out on the laguna with him, she could not feel the immense relief of being free of the city, of people and the noise and demands they made.
How to explain to her, Brunetti wondered, how to make her feel the triumph of exhaustion? Instead, he told her that Casati’s daughter – he’d already told her how warm his welcome from Casati had been – had left dinner in the fridge for him.
‘Surely you’re not going to eat now,’ she exclaimed.
‘No, I’ll read for a while and then eat. I’m too tired to do anything else.’
‘Good,’ Paola answered promptly. ‘That’s why you’re there, after all. Loaf around, eat, go to bed, and I hope tomorrow is even better than today. Did he say where he’d take you?’
‘No. But it doesn’t matter where it is or where we go. It’s wonderful: you don’t have to think about anything except putting the oar in the water. And the bees, Paola; you can’t believe how wonderful they are. And the honey. I wish you could have tasted it, and you should have seen the Queen, crawling around and laying eggs.’ Brunetti knew that, no matter how much he babbled, he was incapable of conveying the magic of the scene. ‘If you come out …’
‘Maybe next week, Guido. You said you needed to be away from everything. And I’m a thing. We can talk about it in a few days.’
‘You’re spending all your time reading, aren’t you?’ he asked, pretending to sound like a jealous husband and succeeding only in sounding like a real one.
‘I’ve decided it’s time to reread Jane Austen, and I’ve spent the day with Emma. Laughing out loud.’
‘It’s unlikely that Pliny will have the same effect on me,’ Brunetti said. They exchanged wishes for a pleasant evening, then he hung up and went to find Pliny.
Brunetti walked around the lower rooms of the house, a bit like Baby Bear, testing all of the chairs in the large sitting room until he found the one that was kindest to his aching body: a sway-backed easy chair low enough to allow him to cross his legs comfortably with a view through the garden to the sky. Beside it hung the portrait of a man with a strong nose and wide-set eyes who might have been a member of the Falier family. He wasn’t much in the way of company, Brunetti thought, but then he recalled that he had wanted solitude, and this was what solitude felt like.
He opened the Natural History to the eleventh book, curious to learn what the ancient world had thought about bees. He learned that they worked assiduously and, if caught too far from the hive by the fall of night, promptly lay down on their backs so as best to preserve their wings from being dampened by the dew, the better to jump up for work at the first sign of dawn. Brunetti had spent much of his reading life amidst the minds and convictions of people who had lived thousands of years ago, and he had learned not to laugh at their ideas but to try to understand why they thought the way they did. After all, his own world lived in constant discovery of its own ignorance.
Brunetti had read about people who believed the universe had been created on Sunday 23 October, about 6,000 years ago. He always forgot the year, but he found the precision of the date so charming that he had no difficulty in recalling it. What are bees sleeping on their backs when compared to that?
Pliny also believed that bees have the gift of foreknowing the wind and rain, and if the day is fine the swarm issues forth and immediately applies itself to its work, some bees managing to load their legs from the flowers while others fill their mouths with water.
This suggested to Brunetti that he might want to fill his mouth with something other than water. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Ah, Pinot Grigio. Perhaps he could fill his mouth with that?
He took an exploratory look farther in and saw an enormous cellophane-covered platter of frutti di mare and, beside it, what looked like a bowl of salad, in which he saw slices of avocado and pear.
Taking the bottle and a glass with him, Brunetti returned to his chair, his book, and his bees.
And learned from Pliny the Elder that ‘honey comes from the air; during its fall from a great height it is dirtied and is stained with the vapour of the earth; when the bees collect it, it is fermented and purified in the hive.’ Brunetti looked up from the book and studied the sky: cloudless and growing dim with the passing of the day. No doubt the honey would soon begin to fall.
What a strange, optimistic, single-minded man Pliny must have been, impassioned to collect and record all aspects of nature, ceaselessly investigating everything, and ultimately a victim of his own scientific curiosity.
Wanting to see at first hand the eruption of Vesuvius, he set out to have himself rowed towards the beach below it in a quest for knowledge, but changed course to go and save the wife of a friend. Burning pumice and searing ash fell into his boat, yet he sailed on. He went to great lengths, according to the letter his nephew wrote to describe the circumstances of his uncle’s death, to set at rest the fears of everyone he encountered. But then his luck, and his time, ran out and he was overcome by the ash-laden air and suffocated to death.
Brunetti woke with a start some time later and was surprised to find that he was sitting in semi-darkness. He pushed himself to his feet, turned on the light and, keeping his book in his hand, made his way into the kitchen. He set the platter and the bowl on the table, found a plate in the cabinet, knife and fork in a drawer. There was a loaf of bread on the counter; he cut off a few slices. He refilled his glass.
He pulled out a chair and went to get a towel; he folded it and propped it under the back of his book and opened it to find his place. He took his eyes from the page and studied the tiny creatures on the platter: shrimp, baby octopus, mussel, clam, canocchie, latticini di seppia. The day’s exercise had caught up with him, and he decided to eat from the platter, the better to soak up the olive oil with his bread. There was more salt than he was accustomed to and less parsley. Brunetti made two trips to the counter, one to cut more bread and one to fill his glass.
He continued reading after he’d finished everything on the platter and wiped it clean with the last piece of bread. Soon what he read began to grow confused: honey from isolated places, bees flying with small stones balanced on their backs to keep them from being b
lown off course by the wind. He took a few deep breaths and paged back to an earlier chapter, thinking it would be easier to read entirely new material. Here he discovered that hedgehogs, to prepare food for winter, rolled on apples to stick them to their spines, carrying them to a safe place in a hollow tree, to be eaten during the winter.
‘I think it’s time you went to bed,’ he said to no one in particular. And obeyed.
9
Fortunately, there was an alarm clock beside his bed, or Brunetti would have slept past his meeting with Casati. Unfortunately, the man who rose from the bed lacked the vigour and ease of limb of the man who had arrived on Sant’Erasmo the previous day. A long, hot shower, two coffees, and breakfast improved things considerably, and by the time Brunetti reached the boat, he was almost restored to his former self.
Casati was already there and lowering a soft Styrofoam container into the boat. Brunetti said good morning, stepped into the boat, and moved to stand below Casati to help with the container, which he stowed in the back.
Casati passed Brunetti the two oars and the two fórcole. The older man lowered himself into the boat. He opened the wooden box in the back, and both of them slathered on the beige goo. He put the tin back in the box and placed his oar on the gunwale, then signalled Brunetti to untie the boat. Together they pushed the boat from the sea wall and stood upright, wobbling for a moment, then gaining their balance and feeling the first heat of the day coming from in front of them.
‘I want to go out and take a look at some of the others,’ Casati said, and Brunetti assumed he meant bees. ‘They’re farther away: it’ll take us about two hours. But we can have a swim when we get there. All right with you?’
Brunetti smiled back at him and nodded: he didn’t care where they went. ‘Tell me one thing,’ Brunetti said, reluctant to call Casati by his first name but using the familiar ‘tu’, as two rowers would in their boat. ‘Why do you want to see them?’
‘Ah,’ Casati said, drawing the sound out. ‘You saw yesterday. They’re dying. My girls are dying.’