The Beekeeper's Ball

by Susan Wiggs

  Magnus froze, then slowly turned. “Yes?” he asked, feigning boredom.

  “What are you doing?” a soldier asked.

  “Bringing supplies aboard.”

  “Under whose orders?”

  He shrugged. “Just doing what I’m told.”

  “I’m telling you to make yourself scarce,” the guard said. “Be off with you, now.”

  Magnus set down the hand truck. He clenched his hands into fists. He thought about the dagger he always kept concealed in his ankle holster. His fingers twitched. Cries of distress from the prisoners filled the air. An explosion detonated inside him, made of fury and impotence and raw despair.

  Leaning down, he reached for the knife. Annelise grabbed his hand. “Come,” she said. “We must be going.”

  * * *

  Magnus had been looking for Eva for a year, ever since the roundup of the Jews. After being shipped from Copenhagen, the captured Jews had been driven like cattle into cars and locked in for transport. With no water and little ventilation, they were sent to Danzig and ultimately to a work camp. The Danish people had done their best to persuade the Germans to accept packages of food and medicine for the prisoners. The Danish Red Cross monitored conditions at the camp and tried to minimize the casualties.

  The Allies applauded the action, but Magnus feared Eva had been among those seized. She had disappeared along with dozens of others.

  After the Normandy invasion, the atmosphere in Copenhagen changed. Everyone noticed; it was like an ill wind sweeping down the city’s narrow alleyways and through its harbors and docks. The Germans seemed to be on edge and even more suspicious than usual. The least little thing could set them off, and ordinary citizens were liable to be detained and questioned.

  The Danish government had long since resigned in protest. Some of the largest ships in the harbor were scuttled to keep the Germans from using them.

  In retaliation, several buildings in Tivoli Gardens, the city’s one hundred year old amusement park, were burned down. Many blamed the Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. Resolute citizens rebuilt the place and even erected a Ferris wheel, determined to carry on.

  Magnus was staked out one September day, garbed in a shapeless gray workman’s overall and swirling a twig broom lazily across the walkways around city hall square, listening to snippets of conversation from passing government officials. For the most part, their conversations were mundane and dull—the unseasonably hot weather, the difficulties of managing their department workers, the latest office gossip, the need to find more electric fans for government offices.

  On that September day, Magnus got lucky. He was rolling his two-wheeled waste cart past the side of the massive, steepled city hall when voices drifted to him through an open window.

  Magnus stopped the cart and took hold of the broom, busying himself near the window. “...arrest or deportation,” someone said in German. “It makes no difference to me.”

  “Now that the HIPO are in place, we have no further need to delay action.”

  Magnus felt a cold sting of suspicion. “HIPO” was code for Hilfspolizei, a corps of Danish collaborators who had thrown in their lot with the Germans. Rumor had it that they would take the place of the proper Danish police. Ordinary citizens held them in contempt. Members of the resistance were dedicated to defying them at every turn.

  “The Danish police have been of no use at all,” said the German. “Write the order, effective next Monday.”

  “That’s too much time,” the first speaker said. “You know these Danes. They take each other in, help each other to hide. They’ll slip through our fingers.”

  “Just write the order and be done with it.” The man sounded exasperated. “In the meantime, the HIPO will keep order around here.”

  Magnus brought this bit of intelligence to a meeting of his group. Another agent corroborated the story, saying he had seen correspondence from the German in charge of civilian affairs. The Danish police force was slated to be arrested en masse.

  Most of them went into hiding or escaped to Sweden. Without a functioning police force, crime skyrocketed, but this was nothing new to Magnus. He had been living outside the law for years. He welcomed the lawlessness, because it distracted the Germans from their hunt for rebels.

  Secret telegrams crackled through the city. Acts of resistance grew more fierce and audacious. Ramon and Magnus went out one night to place detonators along a railway track to derail a German transport train. It was an act of sabotage that had been done many times, and guards patrolled the rail lines at two hundred meter intervals.

  The night was gloomy, the air heavy with fog. They waited in a wooded area near the tracks, straining to see through the dark mist. Running along with their heads low, they placed the first three detonators, affixing them under the lip of the rail so the guards wouldn’t see. As they were installing the fourth one, Magnus heard the sound of boots on gravel. “Shit,” he whispered, “someone’s coming.”

  “I’m nearly done,” said Ramon.

  “We can’t risk it.” He raced back for cover, but Ramon didn’t follow. Magnus didn’t dare call out for him. He saw Ramon stand up and start running. A voice barked out a command, but Ramon kept going. Magnus saw their two silhouettes clash, heard their grunts as they struggled. The guard, wearing a helmet and wielding a bayoneted firearm, stood up and stabbed downward repeatedly.

  Magnus didn’t stop to think. Yanking out his dagger, he rushed forward and jumped on the Nazi’s back. The burley soldier let out a roar and swung around. Magnus brought the dagger down in a wild stab. It felt strange and terrible, penetrating the man’s clothing and then his flesh. The soldier let out a howl and reeled back. Magnus raised the dagger again and brought it down, sobbing with the motion. The soldier staggered, and swore and then he prayed, but his words dissolved into a gurgle.

  As his opponent sank to the ground, Magnus grabbed Ramon. “Are you hurt?”

  Ramon climbed to his feet. Blood poured down the front of him in a ghastly river. Magnus went light in the head, but he tore off his shirt and pressed it against the wound. “Tell me it’s a flesh wound,” he said.

  “Let’s hope so. You don’t want to have to carry me.” His breath came in short, sharp bursts. “I think he broke my ribs with a kick. Gracias al cielo, you saved my life.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Magnus made it as far as the woods before he had to lean over and vomit. He didn’t know if he had killed the soldier or not. He’d never killed anyone before. It felt terrible, as if something vital had been sucked out of him.

  * * *

  In March of 1945, a glimmer of information came through the Red Cross. “They’re bringing people back from the camps,” Ramon informed Magnus and Annelise, rushing into the chilly abandoned apartment where they’d taken up residence in the city. A group of vagabonds and resistance workers lived together there, trying to stay out of the Germans’ way. “A transfer has been negotiated. The buses of the Swedish Red Cross are bringing them home.” Magnus grabbed the news sheet Ramon had brought.

  “How can we help?” asked Annelise. These days, she looked haggard all the time, thin and exhausted, but her eyes burned with hope now.

  “The evacuation is already underway,” said Ramon. “The ferry from Malmo is bringing them back by the busload. Two thousand souls.”

  Ramon looked different since the night at the train tracks. Although he’d recovered from the broken rib, he had a scar from his jaw to his ear where the bayonet had sliced into him during the fight. He and Magnus never spoke of that night, except for once. He’d said, “There’s no way I can ever repay you. Just know that you have a friend for life.”

  “How can we find out if Eva is among the people brought home?” Magnus asked now. His heart was beating fast.

  “When the ferries land, then we’ll know,” said Ramon
.

  The three of them haunted the dock, watching and waiting. And finally, on a spring morning, when daffodils colored the roadside verges and all the trees were budding, the buses arrived. No one said a word as they watched the operation. The ambulance buses had been painted white to distinguish them from military vehicles, and they were accompanied by a platoon of supply trucks, personnel vehicles, motorcycles, even kitchen trailers.

  “I heard the Allies strafed the roads and some of the transports were hit,” Ramon whispered.

  Magnus nudged his shoulder. “That’s not helpful.”

  “Hush,” Annelise said to both of them. “We must watch for Eva.”

  It was disconcerting to see SS and Gestapo officers supervising every move of the platoon, but it was necessary. No matter what was happening elsewhere, this was still a police state, and nothing could happen without the cooperation of the Germans.

  “At least they’re keeping things orderly, I’ll say that for them,” whispered Ramon.

  The processing was a slow agony, but Magnus reminded himself that others had suffered far worse agonies. The survivors were like ghosts, bony and draped in drab prison garb and tattered blankets. Many of them had to be carried off the buses in litters and loaded onto gurneys, too weak to walk on their own.

  They studied every survivor who bore even the vaguest resemblance to Eva. Magnus’s heart skipped a beat every time he glimpsed a head of brown hair. But she was not among them. They inquired of everyone they could find—medical personnel, military volunteers, even the Germans. Her name was not on any roster, nor was she among the shuffling tide of humanity exiting the buses. It was all Magnus could do to keep from sinking to his knees in despair.

  The afternoon sun made a mockery of his mood. He was determined to go through every vehicle in the platoon in search of her.

  And then he spied Eva, and his breath stopped in his throat. It was Eva, but she was not the girl he’d once entertained in his mother’s garden. This was a woman with Eva’s face, her dark eyebrows and thick wavy hair. She was parading around on the arm of a decorated German official, her red-lipsticked mouth smiling at nothing.

  “That’s her mother,” he said when the realization hit him. “That’s Katya.” Apparently she still lived in luxury with her German lover.

  The sight of her made Magnus’s blood boil. He watched the woman say something to the German. Then she grabbed her handbag and rushed over to a small group of litters headed to a flatbed truck labeled “morgue.” She dropped to her knees beside one and let out terrible wail that sliced through the air like a knife, cleaving Magnus’s heart in two.

  He ran to her, Annelise at his heels. Up close, the woman did not look so fancy. Her face was puffy, her red mouth twisted in a wordless cry, her eyes blackened by the tears running through her makeup. “Stay away from her,” Katya snarled at them. “Leave her in peace.”

  “She is already at peace,” Annelise said, and she stroked the face of the girl on the litter, a face bruised almost beyond recognition. Then she looked up at Magnus. “Oh, my God. She’s still warm.”

  * * *

  Katya Solomon suddenly discovered a conscience. She had Eva brought to a clean, bright apartment that served as the maid’s quarters to a Nazi official. Day by day, she sat beside her daughter, spooning soup and tea and plain water into the girl’s mouth.

  Magnus and Annelise visited her every day. He could tell this made Katya uncomfortable, but she didn’t dare speak up. Because whenever he and Annelise were present, a light came on inside Eva and she ate better. Before long, she was walking in the gardens of Golden Prince Park, holding on to both of her friends. Magnus noticed that Eva was the only person Annelise allowed to touch her.

  One day, Eva rolled up the frayed sleeve of her sweater and showed them a crude row of numbers inked on her forearm. “A group of us were sent to Auschwitz, even though all the Danish Jews were supposed to be detained at Theresienstadt. They marked us and we probably would have been herded to the gas chamber if not for a man named Knud Christiansen.”

  Magnus recalled Mr. Christiansen from meetings of the underground. “What did he do?”

  “He made a terrible ruckus and convinced the Nazis that if we came to harm, it would create an international incident. After that, everyone from Denmark was moved to Theresienstadt. Conditions were not much better there, but at least I was among my own people.”

  Ramon and Eva had not met until recently, but he seemed devoted to her, the way one would be to a stray kitten. He spent hours describing California to her in vivid detail.

  “I love the springtime,” she said, admiring an apple tree that was bursting with pink and white blossoms. “I love the summer even more. I wish it could be summer all the time.”

  “It is where I come from,” Ramon said.

  “I should like to see that,” Eva said.

  “Then you should come to California with me,” he told her. He smiled when he said it, but Magnus could tell he wasn’t teasing.

  The park was in sad shape, as the German administration spent no resources on things such as public gardens and playgrounds. But the springtime still managed to coax flowers from the beds, and children played on the seesaws and swings.

  Annelise pointed out an area of the playground. “My mother and I used to come here together all the time,” she said. “I loved the swings.”

  “I once set a pipe bomb there,” Ramon said. “Don’t worry, it was at night, and the only ones around were Nazis.”

  “It was the last place I saw her,” Annelise said dreamily. “It hurts now to look at it.”

  “Come, let’s go play away the hurt.” Eva led the way to the swings. She sat on one, her feet brushing through the overgrown grass. As she pumped her legs and flew higher, her sleeves fluttered back.

  Magnus could see the ugly dark numbers that had been gouged into her forearm, and his stomach churned. She didn’t speak of what she’d suffered in the concentration camp, but he had watched her sleep. He had seen her in the throes of a nightmare. He wished he could take all those nightmares out of her and just erase them.

  Annelise took the swing next to her. “This is what my mother and I did on the last day we were together.”

  “On my last day with my mother,” Eva said, “she took my Red Cross money.”

  “What do you mean she took it?”

  “Just helped herself when she thought I was asleep this morning. So I decided it’s my last day with her.”

  Magnus caught her swing in midair and stopped it, leaning down to make sure she wasn’t feverish. “What do you mean, your last day?”

  She smiled softly, making eye contact with Ramon, who stood behind him. “We have a plan.”

  “We’re all going to California together,” said Ramon.

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Magnus demanded. “We can’t go to California.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  Magnus turned to Annelise, who was twirling idly on the swing. “Are you in on this crazy plan?”

  “I am now,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll tell you what’s crazy,” Ramon said. “Staying here in this dying city, waiting for the Allies to swoop in and...do what? They’re busy in Germany, in Poland. Rebuilding Denmark is not a priority for them.”

  Magnus strode away, seething. He didn’t like the way they had sprung this idea on him, as if his opinion didn’t matter. Standing next to the wrought iron fence, with its peeling paint and its view of the neglected boulevards of the city, he thought about his homeland. It was the only home he’d ever known. He had grown up here, in the long, dark, wet winters and the short, brilliant golden summers. The dreams he’d had as a boy were long forgotten.

  He didn’t let himself dream anymore, but when Ramon mentioned California, Magnus’s imagination took
flight. Over the years, he’d heard plenty from Ramon about California, where the sun never stopped shining, where vineyards and orchards abounded, where people were far from the fighting, and free of the past.

  Ramon stepped up beside him. “I didn’t mean to force this idea on you. It’s your decision entirely, of course.”

  “What would I do? I have no education. I’m a good enough mechanic, though I have no certification in the trade. I doubt there is a dire need in America for guys who know how to set explosives and commit arson.”

  “You know how to grow things. I’ve heard you talk about your mother’s garden, her orchards and beehives. You used to torture me with descriptions of it when we were starving. You can grow anything in California. And that’s not an exaggeration.”

  “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “It sounds like a good plan. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy for you, but I do know you’ll thrive there. We all will. My father’s holdings are bigger than some of the countries I’ve been to over here. He’s a generous man. I know he’d be honored to meet you. Come to California, Magnus. Leave all this behind. Make a new life for yourself.”

  Magnus tipped back his head and watched a seabird soar against the clouds. The sunshine warmed his face, and the breeze stirred his hair. Behind him, he heard Eva and Annelise talking, and the sound of children laughing as they played in the park. It was a beautiful day.

  PART EIGHT

  The term honeymoon was coined to refer to the sweetness of a new marriage. But according to Norse legend, a man abducted his bride from a neighboring village. He was then required to take her into hiding until the bride’s family abandoned their search. His whereabouts were known only to his best man. While in seclusion, the couple drank mead, a honeyed wine.

  1 ½ oz. good quality bourbon

  1 oz. apple cider