“It was Mother who asked me to go see you,” he said finally. “She thought it would help.”
Thilda. He was still hers, now and forever.
Chapter 53
GEORGE
We kept building hives for the rest of the day. Until it got dark. He worked hard. But not with the same reluctance as before. He wanted to work now. He asked questions, probing away, learned quickly, was accurate and quick.
The sound of the hammer against nails, rhythmic. The whining saw, music. And at times, silence. The wind, the birds out there.
The sun beat down on the barn roof, the sweat poured off us. He held his head under the faucet to cool off, shook it like a dog and laughed. Thousands of cold drops of water hit me, cooled me off, and I was somehow unable to keep from laughing back at him.
Sunday went the same way. We worked, talked about little but beehives. It seemed as if he was enjoying himself. I hadn’t seen him like this since he was a little boy. He ate well, too. Even had a piece of ham for lunch.
I looked at my watch. We were sitting outdoors, having a cup of coffee. It was almost two. The bus would be leaving soon. I didn’t say anything. Maybe he’d forgotten about it. Maybe he’d changed his mind.
He looked at his watch as well.
Then he took it off. And put it in his pocket.
“Dad. What was it like, the first time?”
He looked at me; suddenly that profound gravity of his was back.
“What do you mean?”
“The first hive you opened?”
“What do you think? Completely awful.”
“But what was different? How is this different?”
I took a sip of my coffee, and sloshed it around in my mouth, found it difficult to swallow.
“Oh, I don’t know. They were just gone. Only a handful left at the very bottom. Just the queen and larvae. All alone.”
I turned away, didn’t want him to see my eyes tearing up. “And it happens so quickly, one day they’re healthy, the next they’re just gone.”
“Not like winter death,” he said.
I nodded. “Nothing like it. Winter death is the weather, it’s food shortage, or both.”
He remained silent, held the cup with both hands, thinking.
“But you’re going to experience winter death again,” he said finally.
I nodded. “Of course. There are hard winters from time to time.”
“And they’ll get even harder,” he continued. “There will be storms, bad weather.”
I should say something, contribute, but didn’t know what.
“And summer death,” he continued. “You’ll have more summer death, too. Because the summers are getting more rainy, more unstable.”
“Sure,” I said. “But we don’t really know.”
He didn’t look at me, just continued, his voice growing louder. “You’ll have collapse again, too. It’ll happen again.” He was speaking loudly now. “The bees are dying, Dad. We’re the only ones who can do anything about it.”
I turned to face him. I’d never heard him talk like this before, and tried to smile, but it just turned into a lopsided grimace.
“We? You and I.”
He didn’t smile, but didn’t seem angry, either. Just dead serious.
“Human beings. We have to implement changes. That’s what I was talking about when we were in Maine, right? We mustn’t be part of the system. We have to change operations before it’s too late.”
I swallowed. Where was this coming from? His enthusiasm? He’d never been like this before. I was suddenly so proud, just had to look at him. But he was suddenly preoccupied with his coffee cup.
“Want to get back to work?” he asked softly.
I nodded.
Evening came. Night fell.
We sat on the porch, all three of us. The sky was clear.
“Do you remember the snake?” I asked.
“And the bees,” Tom said.
“The snake?” Emma asked.
Tom and I looked at each other and smiled.
I slept in the next day. And I woke up with a grin on my face. Ready for new hives. Emma was sitting at the table when I came into the kitchen. She had started reading that thick book.
There was a single plate in front of her. I looked around.
“Where is he?”
She put the book down. Turned down the corners of her mouth in a pout.
“Oh, George.”
“Yes?”
“Tom left early. Before breakfast.”
“Without saying good-bye?”
“He didn’t want to wake you, he said.”
“But I thought…”
“Yes. I know.” She picked up the book again, sort of clung to it, but didn’t say anything more.
I didn’t have the strength to say anything, either. I had to turn away.
It felt as if God had been teasing me. Hung a ladder down from the sky and let me climb up to take a peek, let me see angels on candy floss wings before He suddenly pushed me off a cloud and let me fall back to earth. The earth on a rainy day. Gray. Slushy. Horrible.
Except the sun was shining just as doggedly. Scorching the planet to death.
I had lost the bees.
And I’d apparently lost Tom, too. A long time ago. I’d just been too thick in the head to realize it.
Chapter 54
TAO
“Ma’am? We’re closing.”
The guard stood over me holding a heavy bunch of keys in her hand, which she rattled. “You are welcome to come back tomorrow. Or to borrow something.”
I stood up. “Thank you.”
In front of me was a long article about the death of bumblebees. The bumblebees and the wild bees disappeared at the same time as the honeybees, but their death wasn’t as evident or ominous, the species were depleted without anyone actually sounding the alarm. Wild bees were responsible for two-thirds of the pollination in the world. In the US the honeybee did most of the work, but on the other continents wild bee species were the most important. Here, however, the continuous species decline made it more difficult to gauge population numbers. But mites, viruses and unstable weather also affected the wild bees. And pesticides. They were in the soil, enough to poison future generations, both bees and humans.
Intensive research was carried out on other insects that could be suitable for effective pollination. The first ones they tried were the wild bees, but it was useless. The farming of different types of pollinating flies was subsequently attempted for this purpose, Ceriana conopsoides, Chrysotoxum octomaculatum and Cheilosia reniformis, but without success. Simultaneously the climate changes made the world a more inhospitable place to be. The rising sea levels and extreme weather led to the emigration of human population groups and the food shortage became acute. Whereas previously people had started wars for reasons of power, wars were now being fought over food.
This article stopped at the year 2045. One hundred years after the end of the Second World War, the earth, as modern human beings had known it, was no longer a place that could be populated by billions. In 2045 there were no bees left on the planet.
I went over to the bookshelves where I’d found many of the most recent books about The Collapse, wanting to put some of them back. I was about to shove a book into the shelf when I noticed a green spine a little further down. It wasn’t particularly thick or tall, not a big book, but my eyes were drawn to the green color all the same. And the yellow letters with the title: The History of Bees.
I grabbed it and tried to pull it out. But the book resisted; the plastic on the bookbinding was stuck to the books next to it and emitted a small sigh when I pulled them apart. I opened it; the covers were stiff, but the pages fell easily to the side, welcoming me in. The last time I had read this book was at my school’s simple library, and at that time it had been a shabby printout, a copy. This time I was holding a pristine edition between my hands. I looked at the title page: 2037. A first edition.