The History of Bees

Chapter 46 WILLIAM

It was morning. The leaves filtered the light. Everything moved above me, the trees in the wind, the clouds that slid across the sky, nothing stood still. I grew dizzy and closed my eyes. Just lay there and let the yellowness enshroud me, on my back without moving, against raw, damp soil. Because there was nothing else, there was no longer anything that could keep me away. Not the research—my passion. Not Edmund, he was lost, he’d been lost all along. Not even desire. It had disappeared. I no longer wanted to pound against the earth, euphoric, towards a climax. I wanted to let it swallow me, until I became soil myself.

I hadn’t eaten, but it made no difference. The pie continued to turn over in my stomach, stuck in my throat, dried out my mouth.

The village, the work in and around it, my own home, it could have been a thousand miles away, I had walked in the darkness until my feet ached, until no sounds slipped through any longer. The forest was trampled down in some places, I followed a path but strayed off it, wanted to get away from everything that reminded me of human beings. In the end I just collapsed on the grass.

Did they miss me? Were they looking for me? Perhaps I would hear something soon, hear their cries, all the little girls’ voices at different pitches, from Georgiana’s thin, squeaky voice, the highest on the scale, to the deepest of them, Thilda herself, whose voice jarred rudely.

Or perhaps none of them had missed me. Perhaps they were accustomed to my leaving, disappearing, perhaps they didn’t even notice I was missing.

Or were they busy with Edmund? He was ill today, he had to be, today like so many other days. He slept, presumably, until the sun had passed its zenith, was as pale as a ghost from never showing his face outdoors. But it was not illness. All the things I hadn’t understood. And no, they weren’t concerned about his illness. The day was like all others, because it was absolutely not the first time he stayed in bed like that. All the days he had dawdled away, sleeping in his bedroom, while the alcohol slowly left his body. No hereditary melancholy, only self-inflicted lethargy and damage. He was no better than the vulgar manual workers who let life slip away into pints of ale. A drunkard.

I followed the sun’s progress in the sky. Soon it was directly above me, dried out every single remnant of fluid inside me. The perspiration settled onto my skin. I breathed with my mouth open. My tongue was like dried moss. I wanted to lift my hand, wipe away the drops of sweat, but my arm was far too heavy.

The day passed. The sun disappeared behind the trees again, the shadows grew longer, everything colder. My body temperature became the same as that of the earth beneath me. Behind my eyelids darkness awaited. Had I already been swallowed up?

“Father?”

Another shout. A clear pitch. At the middle of the scale.

“Father?”

The voice was louder now and soon I heard solid footsteps on heather and moss.

I opened my eyes and looked straight into Charlotte’s clear eyes.

“Good afternoon,” she said. There wasn’t a trace of surprise in her. She just stood there and looked at me, studied me, as if I were an insect, as I lay there completely stretched out. Suddenly I felt the blood flowing to my cheeks.

“Yes. Here I am.”

I sat up quickly, brushed the dirt off of my shirt, pulled my hand through my hair and shook off leaves and pine needles.

“Was it difficult to find me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been searching a long time?”

“No, not very long. The path is there.” She pointed behind her, and then I discovered it, the path towards the house, and then I couldn’t help but notice some very familiar trees. I had in no way disappeared far into the depths of the forest. In my delusion I hadn’t made it very far at all. I was right nearby my own home.

She sat down beside me, and it was only then I noticed that she had something in her hand. The notebook, the one she always had with her, where she eagerly filled up the pages with her pen.

“I’d like to show you something. May I?”

She opened it without waiting for an answer.

“It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time.”

I tried to focus, but the ink marks crawled like worms on the paper.

“Wait.” She took off my glasses, polished them quickly with the fabric of her dress and put them back on my nose. They were cleaner, but that wasn’t the main reason why I straightened up my back and tried to take in what she wanted to show me. The small gesture had given me a lump in my throat. I was so grateful that it had been she who had come, that she in particular had found me, seen me like this, and nobody else. I swallowed and directed my attention towards what she wanted to show me.

A drawing. A hive. But completely different from mine.

“I thought that if we turn it upside down, it will all be completely different,” she said. “If we insert the boards downwards from above, instead of hanging them from the ceiling, we’ll have much better control.”

I stared at the drawings she showed me. They slowly came into focus on the page.

“No,” I said and cleared my throat. “No. It won’t work.” I searched for the words. “They will get stuck on the sides of the box.” I straightened up. I was, after all, an authority. “The bees will attach them with propolis and wax, it will be impossible to get them out.”

Then she smiled.

“If they’re too close together, yes. Five millimeters or less.”

“And if they are too far apart, the bees will build brace comb,” I said. “Regardless, it doesn’t work from above. I’ve already considered the possibility.” I spoke the last words with an indulgent smile.

“I know, but you haven’t tried different alternatives. It’s just a matter of finding the right dimensions.”

“I don’t understand.”

She pointed at the drawings again. “There must be an inbetween point, Father. A point where they will stop producing wax and propolis, and start producing brace comb. What if we find the inbetween point? If we determine exactly the right distance between the outer edge on the molding and the inner wall, they will produce neither wax nor brace comb.”

I just had to look at her. Look at her properly. She sat with complete calm, but her eyes were shining, revealing her enthusiasm. What was it she said? Wax. Brace comb. Was there something in between?

My energy returned, I got on my feet.

The inbetween point!