The History of Bees

Chapter 48 TAO

A couple of kilometers away from the flat where I’d spent the night, I finally found a subway station that was open. I’d been close the night before, already headed towards the populated part of the city, but without being aware of it. Two other people waited with me, a shaky old woman, skinny, virtually emaciated, who dragged herself over to a bench, and a man in his fifties, with vigilant eyes, carrying a heavy, lumpy string bag. Perhaps he’d robbed abandoned houses.

We had to wait for half an hour before a subway finally lurched into the station. It took too long. I had to get back now, had to find a library, find answers. I snuck on without a ticket, scarcely noticing that the old woman was struggling to board. When it was almost too late I saw her eyes and hurried over to help. She said thank you many times and clearly wanted to start a conversation, but I didn’t have the strength.

Inside the car I sat by myself. I would have preferred to stand, couldn’t sit still, but the train shook so much that I didn’t dare. It had been neither upgraded nor cleaned in a long time, perhaps decades. The smell was putrid, the windows covered with a thick layer of grease, the accumulation of thousands of fingers that had opened them when the hot sun beat down or closed them on cold days. On the outside they were discolored by dust and dirt. The deafening din when the train shuddered through the urban landscape made it almost impossible to think. All the same I felt like an animal on the trail of something—dogged, full of purpose. The same two faces revolved through my head. Wei-Wen and Daiyu. The same pallor. The same rasping breathing.

I had to change trains. First once. Then twice more. The timetable had been torn down, the electronic system had stopped working long ago. I just had to wait, the first time for exactly twenty-three minutes, then fourteen and then twenty-six. I timed it each time.

After three changes I finally arrived. It felt almost like coming home, at long last the surroundings felt familiar, as if I had been gone for much longer than twenty-four hours. My entire body clamored with hunger, but I didn’t have time to sit down and eat, just shoved down a package of biscuits I had left—yet another package of biscuits—and asked the receptionist where I could find the closest library.

There was only one. One single open library left in all of Beijing. It was located in Xicheng, near a direct train line from the hotel. I passed the old zoo on my way. The decorations on the entryway were almost eroded away by the wind and weather. The plant life inside was threatening to take over, to burst through the fence. What had happened to all the animals? The species on the verge of extinction? The last koala bear? Perhaps they were walking around loose in the streets now, had found homes in vacated houses. It was a comforting thought, that they could still continue their life here on earth, even though there were so few people left.

The square in front of the library was deserted. I hurried across it, didn’t have time to be frightened. The entrance door was so heavy I feared it was locked, but when I used all of my strength, I managed to open it.

The room was enormous, divided into levels, like a stairway. The walls were covered with books, thousands of them. On the floor, lined up in straight rows, were more tables and chairs than I could count. The room was in semidarkness, there was only light from the windows in the ceiling, all of the lights were out, and there wasn’t a soul here, as if the library were actually closed.

I took a few steps inside.

“Hello?”

Nobody answered.

I raised my voice. “Hello!”

Finally steps could be heard from the other end of the premises. A young security guard stepped into view. “Hello?”

She was wearing a uniform that once upon a time must have been black, but was now a faded gray from laundering and wear. She looked at me in astonishment. Perhaps I was the first person to stop by in a long time.

Then she pulled herself together and held out her hand, indicating the sea of books. “I assume you want to take out books? Just help yourself.”

“Don’t I need to register? Don’t you want my name?”

She looked at me in surprise, as if that was something she hadn’t considered. Then she smiled. “It will be fine.”

After that I was left in peace.

For the first time in many years I allowed myself to be absorbed by books, by words. I could have spent my whole life here. Tao with the red scarf. The one who stood out. But that was another lifetime.

I started in the section for the natural sciences. Something Wei-Wen had no tolerance for had made him ill, he’d gone into an allergic shock out there in the fields. Maybe a snakebite? I found an old book about snakes in China. It was big and heavy. I put it on the table in front of me and searched randomly through the text. I knew there had been cobras in the area previously, but they no longer existed, at least that was what we’d been told. They’d eaten frogs, which in turn had eaten insects—and when many of the insects were wiped out, the cobra’s basis for survival also disappeared. I turned the pages until I found a picture—a dark snake with flesh around its neck that opened up like a hood, with it’s characteristic chalky-colored pattern, alert, ready to attack. Could there still be some of them left out there after all?

I read about the snakebite, about the symptoms. Numbness, blisters, pains, discomfort in the chest, fever, a sore throat, problems breathing. Not unlike Wei-Wen’s reactions.

Necrosis, I read, an attack by a Chinese cobra will always lead to necrosis, the death of cells, not unlike gangrene, around the area of the bite.

We hadn’t seen a bite. Wouldn’t we have noticed it?

And even if we hadn’t noticed it, even if it was a snake, a cobra, that had attacked Wei-Wen, that didn’t explain the secrecy, the tent and the fence, his being taken away from us.

I kept searching. If it wasn’t a bite, what could it be? As I turned the pages of medical encyclopedias and doctors’ manuals, the realization surfaced. Perhaps I had known it all along, but couldn’t bear to take it in, because it was too big, too important.

It rang just once, and suddenly he was there.

“Tao, what happened? We were cut off. Where were you?”

I’d asked the guard if I might borrow the telephone; it was located in a separate office deep inside the library. The receiver was dusty, hadn’t been used in months.

“It was nothing,” I said. I’d almost forgotten our conversation in the flat the night before. “It all turned out fine.”

“But what had happened? You seemed so…” In his voice there was a nurturing tone he usually reserved for Wei-Wen.

“I got lost. But I found my way again,” I said quickly. I had to give him an explanation so I could move on.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

His worrying. I couldn’t bear it. That wasn’t why I was calling. Yesterday I would have embraced it, now it was just in the way.

“Forget about it,” I said. “I think I’ve found out what happened to Wei-Wen.”

“What?”

“Anaphylactic shock.”

“Anaph…”

“It means allergic reaction,” I said, and heard how slow and pedantic it sounded. I tried changing my tone of voice, not wanting to lecture him. “Wei-Wen went into an allergic shock. A reaction to something out there.”

“Why… what makes you think so?” he asked.

“Listen,” I said. Then I quickly read a text about symptoms and treatment. Rattled off terms like respiratory distress, a drop in blood pressure, coma, adrenaline.

“It all fits.” I said. “That was exactly how he reacted.”

“Did they give him adrenaline?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When they came, was he given adrenaline? You said that one is supposed to administer adrenaline if it’s life-threatening.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see them give him anything.”

“Me neither.”

“But they may have done it in the ambulance.”

He was silent, all I could hear was the soft sound of his breathing.

“That sounds right,” he said finally.

“It is right. It has to be,” I said.

He didn’t answer. Thinking. I knew about what. The same thing that I’d been thinking since I woke up in the abandoned flat. Finally he came out with it.

“But what? What was he allergic to?”

“It could have been something he ate,” I said.

“Yes… But what, then? The plums? Or something he found in the woods?”

“I think it was something he found in the woods, but not something he ate.”

He was quiet, perhaps he didn’t understand.

“I don’t think it was food,” I continued. “I think it came from something outside.”

“Yes?”

“At first I thought it was a snakebite. But that doesn’t fit, not with the symptom.”

He didn’t answer; the sound of his breathing from the receiver was more rapid now.

“I don’t think it was a bite, but a sting.”