We raised and knocked the three cups together. Soft plastic hit soft plastic, almost without a sound. We each took a sip.
Then came the moment when we were supposed to praise the coffee, say something intelligent. It was a part of the routine. For appearances’ sake I squinted, while I swirled the coffee around in my mouth, like some wine expert.
“. . . rich… full.”
“Mm,” Rick said. “I can taste the roast, yes.”
Jimmy looked at us expectantly, like a child on the Fourth of July. Waiting for more.
“Yes, sir, nothing like instant,” I said.
“Best coffee this year,” Rick said.
Again Jimmy nodded. “Just buy yourself a grinder and be sure to get good beans. Even you two can manage it at home.”
He always said that and knew perfectly well that we would never drag a coffee grinder over our doorsteps. At home it was Emma who made the coffee. And she went for freeze-dried. Lately she had tried out some dull-as-dishwater stuff with powdered milk and sugar added, but I stuck to black.
“Did you know that the earliest reference to coffee is from a fifteen-hundred-year-old story from Ethiopia?” Rick said.
“No kidding, you don’t say,” Jimmy said.
“That’s right. Kaldi the shepherd. He discovered that the goats behaved oddly after having eaten some red berries. They couldn’t sleep. He told a monk about it.”
“Were there monks in Ethiopia fifteen hundred years ago?” I said.
“Yes?” He looked at me in confusion, his gaze wavering slightly.
Jimmy waved his hands from the sidelines. “Of course there were monks.”
“They weren’t exactly Christians? I mean, Ethiopia, isn’t that in Africa, at that time?”
“Regardless. The monk became interested. He was struggling to stay awake during his prayers, so now he poured hot water over the berries and drank it. Voilà! Coffee.”
Jimmy nodded in satisfaction. Rick had done research, it was in honor of his coffee.
We drank up. The coffee quickly turned cold in the spring wind. The last sip was sour and lukewarm. Then we each walked towards our own cars and set out in the direction of the hives.
It was when I rested my hands against the steering wheel that I noticed how much I was sweating. They stuck to the leather, I had to dry them off on my work pants to get a good grip, in the same way that my shirt was sticking to my back. I didn’t know what was coming. Was dreading it.
It was just a few hundred yards down a bumpy dirt road. The car shook along with my hands, then we arrived at the meadow by Alabast River.
I climbed out, putting my hands behind my back to hide the trembling.
Rick was already standing there. Jumping a little. Wanted to get started.
Jimmy got out of his car. Pointed his nose at the sun, sniffing.
“How warm is it?” He closed his eyes, looked like he wasn’t planning to move one inch and especially not get started on the task at hand.
“Warm enough.” I walked quickly towards the hives. It was important to set an example. “May as well get started.”
I checked the flight board, the entrance to the first, a pistachio-colored hive. The color clashed garishly with the grass sprouting from the ground below it. It was full of bees, the way it was supposed to be. I lifted the cover. Took off the cloth on top. I expected the worst, but everything was fine down there. I didn’t see the queen, but there were plenty of eggs and larvae in all stages. Six full frames. The hive could remain as it was, there was enough life and there was no need to combine it with another one.
I turned to face Jimmy. He nodded towards the hive he had opened “All’s well here.”
“Here, too,” Rick said.
We moved on.
As the sun beat down and hive after hive was opened and checked, I could feel how my body began to loosen up. My hands became dry and warm, my clothing detached itself from my back. In some places there were problems, of course. Some bee colonies had to be combined, some places we found no queen. But nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed as if the winter had been kind to them. As if the stench from the widespread annihilation further south hadn’t reached us up here. And it was only fitting. They were well taken care of. They hadn’t wanted for a thing.
We gathered for lunch. We perched on our creaky lawn chairs and ate sweaty sandwiches in the sun. All three of us were, for some reason or other, as silent as the grave. Until Rick could no longer contain himself.
“Have you heard about Cupid and the bees?”
Neither of us answered. Yet another story.
“Have you?” he asked again.
“No,” I said. “You know perfectly well that we haven’t heard about Cupid and the bees.”
Jimmy snickered.
“Cupid was a kind of love god,” Rick said. “According to the ancient Romans.”
“The guy with the arrows,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s him. Son of Venus. He looked like a big baby and went around with a bow and arrow. When the arrows hit people, passion was awakened.”
“Yuck, isn’t a love god who looks like a baby a little perverse?” Jimmy said.
I laughed, but Rick gave me a dirty look.
“Did you know that he dipped the arrows in honey?”
“Can’t say that I did, no.”
“I haven’t even heard of Cupid,” Jimmy said. “Before now.”
“Yes indeed, he dipped them in honey, which he stole,” Rick said and stretched his body so the chair suddenly shrieked.
We had to chuckle about the loud noise. But not Rick. He wanted to continue.
“So this baby went around stealing honey from the bees. He took entire hives. Until one day…” He paused dramatically. “Until one day the bees had had enough and attacked him.” He let the words hang in the air. “And Cupid was stark naked, of course, the gods usually were in those days. He was stung everywhere. And I mean everywhere.”
“He sort of deserved it,” I said.
“Maybe so, but remember that he was just a little boy. He ran to his mother, Venus, for consolation. He screamed and was surprised that something as tiny as a bee could cause him so much pain. But do you think his mother consoled him? No. She just laughed.”
“Laughed?” I said.
“Yup. ‘You’re little, too,’ she said. ‘But your arrows can cause even more pain than a bee sting.’ ”
“Wow,” I said. “And then what? What happened?”
“That’s it. Nothing more,” Rick said.
Jimmy and I stared at him.
“That was the whole story?” Jimmy said.
Rick shrugged his shoulders. “Yes. But lots of paintings were done of it. Venus just stands there. She’s beautiful, right, porcelain skin and lovely curves. And she’s naked, too. Her baby is standing beside her and crying, with wax plates in his hands, while the bees are stinging him.”
I shuddered.
“Some mother,” Jimmy said.
“You can say that again,” Rick said.
Finally it was silent again. I blinked, tried to get the image of the howling baby, swollen from bee stings, out of my head.
The sun warmed my neck. It was what Emma called a lovely day. I tried to feel exactly how lovely it was. And how great it was, that the sun was shining like this. Because sun meant honey. It looked like it would be a good year. A good year meant some money in the bank. And money in the bank could be invested in the farm. That’s how it should be. Who needed Florida anyway? I’d tell her so this evening.
Chapter 14