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.”
Chapter 49
WILLIAM
Hertfordshire, 4 August 1852
Honorable Dzierzon,
I write to you as my peer, although quite possibly you do not know my name. All the same, the two of us have a great deal in common and therefore I viewed it as an absolute necessity to establish contact. I, the undersigned, have been following your work for some time and in particular your development of a new standard for beehives has attracted my attention. I cannot but express my boundless admiration for your eminent work, the evaluations you have made and finally, the hive in itself, as it is presented in Eichstädt Bienen-Zeitung.
I, the undersigned, have also developed a hive, in part based on the same principles as yours, which I now, in all modesty, would like to share with you, in hopes that you will perhaps be able to devote some of your valuable time to sharing your thoughts about my work with me.
Huber’s hive convinced me at an early stage that it should be possible to develop a hive that made the removal of boards possible, without having to kill the bees, yes, without even causing them distress. After reading his notes I also realized that we are capable of taming these fabulous creatures to a much greater extent than was previously believed. This understanding was quite essential for the continuation of my work.
First I developed a hive that resembled your own, with an entrance from the side and removable top-bars. However, this design did not give me the solution to all of the challenges I perceived. As you have certainly experienced yourself, removal of the boards is not a simple operation on this model, but rather both time-consuming and cumbersome, and furthermore, it must be done, most regrettably, at the cost of both the bees and their offspring.
But once in a great while one is struck by an epiphany that changes everything. For me, it occurred on a late-summer afternoon, while lying on the floor of the forest, in intellectual contemplation. I had at all times envisioned the hive as a house, with windows and doors, such as your hive. A home. But why not consider it completely differently? Because the bees are not to become like us, like humans—they are to be tamed by us, become our subjects. The way the sky now looked down upon me, and perhaps also God the Father, yes, I believe in truth He must have had a hand in this, on that summer afternoon, because this is how we shall look down upon the bees. Our contact with them shall of course take place from above.