Beehive Read online

  When the buzzing dipped to a hum, the keeper pried the frames from the super and shook the dozing bees out of combs and into the hive. A few of the more energetic ones jerked their way to us and tried to find a place to attack. Brian tried batting them away, but they gave up on their own and went back to the smoky hive.

  “Tell him to put empty frames back in the middle.” I wanted the hive to lose their brood; nothing excites a hive more. The beekeeper argued with Brian that it would destroy the hive, at least that’s what his gestures seemed to mean. So I walked in and started handling the frames myself. All the frames with brood I held between my gloved hands and pushed against the comb with my thumbs until the comb shattered. The keeper saw that I wasn’t afraid, that I knew what I was doing. He relaxed his objections, directing the boy with the smoker here and there, just as I needed. After a while he smiled. He had no teeth.

  We returned the harvested frames to the edges of the hives and put the ones I had broken in the center. We hunted down the queen and put her and a dozen of the youngest looking bees with her in a cage. The queen cage fits in neatly at the top of the hive, where the queens like to stay most of the time anyway. Then we closed off the entry. The gathering bees, the ones who came back later laden with nectar and pollen and who arrived at the landing board expecting a welcoming committee, got a peculiar reception: human hands sweeping them into another cage. They disgorged their harvest as soon as they realized they were trapped, gathered together and waited where we put them, near the queen as possible, but outside the hive.

  It took most of the morning to prepare six hives and load them on the old red Ford with wooden slat sides. I felt sorry for the beekeeper as he watched us drive away with his Control Towers, his prizes, his babies.

  67.

  After a failed attempt at a midday nap, we met again at Brian’s house, Brian, me and Amir too.

  “This man is crazy,” Amir said to Brian when he surveyed the truckload of bees. “I am truly sorry he is a friend of yours.”

  “All great leaders are crazy. That’s why we follow them. So, Premier Ron, what’s the plan?”

  We drove to Dahya in a tiny caravan, Amir in the front seat of his cab and me in the back, Brian staying twenty yards behind in the rattletrap pickup brimming with agitated bees. I had a honey-crate from the apiary on the seat beside me with the six queen-and-attendant cages in it. All the ride over I watched the attendants groom the queen, picking invisible dust out of the hairs on her back. Bees are fascinating, brilliant. There are dozens of species of bees of varying levels of social sophistication, from the ones who lay an egg and food in a hole in the ground and fly away, never to see their young, to ones like these Italian bees, organizing sixty thousand of their mates into a single goal. You never see a hive divide against itself.

  Saturday, outside of East Beirut, is like Sunday in America’s black ghettos. You ever walk around a poor neighborhood on a Sunday? Maybe it’s because the ministers’ sermons still echo in people’s heads, or that the ones who never hear the sermons stay in bed late after a wild Saturday night, I don’t know. But those places where even the buildings seem to threaten you feel full of odd goodwill on a Sunday afternoon, somehow cleaner, friendlier, more open.

  Most of Beirut was like that Saturday afternoon. It took a manageable amount of imagination to see it as a paradise. The boys at the checkpoints were lazy-lidded, uninterested in my passport, kindly even to my bees. They looked, don’t get me wrong; and they had their guns. But they didn’t shove the muzzles all the way into the car, just rested them on the sill of the open windows; they didn’t pretend they might confiscate my passport, just compared my photo and my face. They didn’t haul the bees out of the car, break down the crate, smash the cages. They just looked in and smiled and joked. One checkpoint waved us through without a glance; another stood unmanned. The buildings which had appeared on my earlier drives to be inert rubble showed sign of life. Men gathered in doorways and children buzzed in and out of invisible crevices.

  As we pulled up to the checkpoint in Dahya, I looked out the back window. Brian found the turnoff behind the gas station and timed it perfectly. I don’t even think the gatekeepers noticed his truck. They just watched Amir coast to a stop beside their guns. I glanced at my watch: ten minutes to four. Perfect.

  Even the Dahya guards lost their edge on the Sabbath. They expected us, of course, checked our passports and papers, even asked us out of the cab so they could pat us down. Amir showed them his gun, under his hat on the front seat, and they laughed and teased Amir. He translated, “They think this gun will not shoot. They may be right. It never has.”

  Then they wanted a look at the bees. For people who eat so much honey, they seemed ignorant and fascinated. You would think a dozen bees in a small cage would be commonplace to them. I was afraid they would shrug their shoulders, rattle the cages, agitate them, but they didn’t. These were boys, like boys anywhere, absorbed easily by the mechanics of something so small. I couldn’t have intrigued them more with a miniature tank or a pile of gold.

  It took nothing but Amir’s help in translation to make them a gift of one of the cages.

  I caught sight of the first of the hunter bees as we got back into the old Mercedes. I needed heroics from them. They were my best hope.

  “I wish you would explain to me just how I am going to lose my life,” Amir said. “First you make me drive to Dahya with a car full of bees, and then you give the bees to the people who will kill us.”

  “You don’t need to worry about it.”

  “I was worrying for my father, who would hate to lose his son.”

  “You remember what we planned?”

  He drove along the same main street we’d driven along before. He slowed near the place we’d parked the car before. “Of course. I park by that arch,” he said, pointing across the way, near where I’d seen the boy disappear before. “I leave the car running, but go under the hood as though it needs repair.”

  “And if the guards come?”

  “Of course they will come. They will come and beat me senseless with their guns.”

  “Amir!” The nervousness, the pain, made me jumpy.

  “All right, all right. I ask them to help. They won’t; it’s Saturday. You will come back in forty-five minutes minutes, we drive away.”

  “I will come back, go away ten more minutes, maybe more. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, you leave.”

  “Without you?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to think he might, or that he might have to. Amir stopped the car and looked back at me. I ignored his gaze and stepped out into the dusty street. I cradled the crate against my chest, warmed by the hum of the workers in service to their queens.

  68.

  The moment I entered the square I was surrounded by Avai’s guard. His gun-toters were men always, not boys. They had survived the petty skirmishes at the checkpoints, raids and kidnappings. Crazy eyes look the same in any land, and these men had them.

  They wanted my crate. An American walking through Dahya with a crate will excite anxiety, Sabbath or no. The oldest of the lot said something I took to mean they would carry the crate for me. We walked in a cadre to Sheik Abdul’s, the man with the crate beside me, men with guns in front and behind. If they had wanted to kidnap me they could not have contained me better. I was their man, but I seemed the only one who knew it. They were an honor guard, and I had the momentary thought that the people who stopped to watch our procession would break into a cheer. Of course they didn’t. They were as silent, as unsure, as I was.

  Avai was at the same table we had occupied two days before, but the cafe was empty except for him. He stood as I approached and welcomed me by indicating a seat. He had no interest in shaking my hand.

  “Good Sabbath, Mr. Stutzer. It is a good day for peace.”

  “Yes, Mr. Avai.”

  “Sit, sit. I mu
st have a look at your honeybees.”

  I sat. Avai peered into the box in his guard’s hands and examined each cage carefully with a thick prodding finger. His nails were barely stubs, ragged and discolored. The bees satisfied him and he waved his guard across the narrow alley. The group retreated to the far wall and took turns studying the cages.

  “As you said, honeybees. I have told your friend that there was perhaps some progress toward her release. She seems quite knowledgeable of honeybees.”

  “Yes. I told you they were a hobby of hers.”

  “True, but the words of a man with something to gain must always be suspect. Surely you have learned this, even in a land as free from strife as America.”

  “America is not so peaceful as you might imagine.”

  “We do not imagine America is peaceful, Mr. Stutzer. Too many of our compatriots have died for our believing. But still, life in America compares with favor to life in a land fought over.”

  Across the way, guards broke into laughter. One was holding his finger and jumping around, as if he’d been poking his finger into a cage and a bee stung him. Which they might have.

  “Mr. Avai, I am told that bees suffer in extreme heat. Could they be delivered to my friend now? I’m sure she’ll take it wrong if the bees arrive weak and sick.”

  “Yes, certainly. These men are clowns.” He waved over a guard and explained what he wanted done. I hope he told his guard to bring the bees to Elizabeth, but I had no way of knowing what he told him — destroy the bees, hold them aside so there is no trick, set them free. How could I know? And what choice did I have, but to go on as I had planned, hoping Avai took his honor seriously? Two guards walked off to the square with the crate and the remainder splayed out in protective formation around Abdul’s.

  “You will have a coffee and specialty?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Avai gestured to Abdul but said nothing. His gesture meant enough. I wondered then, thinking back to the café on the corniche, why a man of such importance would tail me himself, contact me, meet me outside Dahya. What sort of power did he have, or confidence in the people below him, or faith in the importance of my presence?

  The coffee and cake arrived at once. “I asked Abdul to prepare this today specially, despite the Sabbath. Koran teaches that you may work on the Sabbath only if your labor serves the higher goal of peace.”

  “I’m not much of a man for religion.”

  Avai’s eyes showed compassionate condolence. “So much a loss for you. Faith gives a man strength.”

  “Does it have to be faith in God?”

  “God maintains the faith you give him. When you give your faith to yourself, or your beliefs, or another, you must give and give and give. It is like throwing water in a well.”

  “You speak like a clergyman.”

  He bowed his head. “It is an honor to receive a compliment from an honest man.”

  Honest? I said only, “Thank you.”

  “We see you have convinced your people to forward the money you need.”

  “It is very difficult to bargain with you when you know how much I have to spend.”

  “It will prevent our wasting needless time on small matters. We have set a price on your friend’s freedom, and you will pay it.”

  “I have already spent much of the money available to me. Will you accept a quarter of a million dollars less than five?”

  “Only because I have accepted your goodwill, Mr. Stutzer. It is what you have. You cannot pay more.”

  I put my hands on the table and glanced down. I didn’t want Avai to know I was looking at my watch. Four-thirteen. I needed time. “How will we make the exchange?”

  “As long as you trust me, it will be simple. But you have gotten ahead of yourself. You do not yet have the required money.”

  “I made the request. I’m told I can’t be sure I’ll get it before Wednesday.”

  Avai sighed. “We do not like to keep women captive, Mr. Stutzer. It offends us. This is why we have been so willing to negotiate with you. We know your friend is a woman of enormous wealth and great intelligence and beauty. In most Arab households, it would be an honor if she accepted hospitality. But to keep her a prisoner? This we do not do easily. If it must be so many more days, so it will be. You are quite right, you cannot be certain of receiving the money before that day.”

  “So what shall we do?”

  “We will keep it simple. At ten Wednesday night, you will drive to the same checkpoint in Dahya. We will stop you twenty meters from the checkpoint, where an unarmed man will see to the money; please bring it in a simple sack. We will assure the road will be quiet while the money is examined. That done, I will walk with your friend and you will walk with the money. We will make our exchange and go our own ways.”

  “May I bring a guard?”

  “Do you fear you will need one?” Avai looked hurt. “With so many weapons around, it will be difficult to keep the exchange so simple.”

  “Can I have some time to think about it now?”

  “Of course. Yours is a cautious response. Bravery requires caution. This is how we know no fool can be brave.”

  I didn’t care for bravery, I cared for time. I rubbed my brow with the heels of my hands and nicked an occasional eye to my watch. Avai sat, eyes closed, a hint of a hum settling in under his breath. Minutes crawled. My sweat bubbled from every pore with the slow patience of dew forming on morning grass. I wished I had a pot to boil water; the time would have gone faster. Four twenty-seven. I watched a bee buzz at my plate, but I couldn’t know if she belonged to one of the queens I’d brought for Elizabeth. I hoped not: I didn’t want the hive distracted by honey.

  I couldn’t hold out longer. My left ear throbbed. I could feel it growing deformed underneath the bandage.

  “Yes,” I said. “All right, Mr. Avai. Wednesday night at ten. No guard, a simple exchange.”

  “Good, very good. We will not have a chance to speak again, I imagine. It is never easy managing these matters, but doing it so with you has given great satisfaction.”

  “Thank you.” I wished I understood what he meant. I felt like a missionary in a boiling pot, swimming around in a hunt for the coolest corner.

  “Will you have another cup of coffee before you go?”

  I could have kissed Avai then.

  “Absolutely.”

  When I left Sheik Abdul’s, my watch said four forty-one. Avai’s guard did not follow me out into the square, and neither did Avai. He stayed behind, humming verses of scripture to himself. I swear I heard a hive buzzing over his throaty mumble.

  69.

  I strolled unwitnessed through Dahya. It’s true I didn’t walk far, but in that short measure I seemed to be taken as a prophet by the people. An aura of peace spread around me. I saw no guns, soldiers, no hostile faces or scared eyes. The big square washed with people and I was a bubble on their waves, carried intact above it, unnoticed.

  I turned left off the square, down the main street which led to the checkpoint. The hood of Amir’s cab was up and the engine coughed and hummed, but the only company he had was a squadron of small children, whom he mock-threatened every now and again. They scampered back from him when he did it, and then courageously ventured an index finger close enough to the cab to provoke him again.

  I looked at my digital. All fours. Just right. I stared up at the sky above the cab and caught sight of one, three, half a dozen, half a dozen dozen bees! It was too hot for them to fly, normally, but for the bees, the situation was anything but normal. The queen had been kidnapped!

  Brian seemed to have followed his simple instructions: Park in the lot behind the gas station. He should immediately open the six queen cages holding the gatherer-bees from each hive. They’ll look for their queen, being carried through Dahya’s streets to Elizabeth. In about twenty minutes, the fir
st of them should return, dancing with news of discovery. By then, the hives should be opened. Wearing his protective suit, out of sight, Brian should bang the hives until all the bees join the hunt. More of the first group of hunters will return with more information. More bees will fly. When they’ve all gone, then Brian can just get in the truck and drive back home.

  “Having car trouble, Amir?”

  “Nothing you didn’t tell me about before. Have you spent your five million dollars? Can we go home now?”

  I squinted down to the checkpoint. One of the guards was looking our way, but I couldn’t tell what he saw. Another guard began swatting around him. “It won’t be long,” I told him. “I’m going to sit in the back seat, for half a second.”

  And I did, in the street side door and out again the other side. The raised hood and the open door covered me as I dipped into the alley under the arch. I looked up. A phalanx of bees spiraled overhead and then dove deeper away from the main street. The alley I was on ended in another, narrower one. I jogged left and then quick right. Another wind of bees, a larger one this time, headed off to my right. Ten yards down the new alley I turned off right into another. I kept my eyes up, trying not to lose track of the bees.

  The unconcern people had shown me in the central square faded now. A clatch of old women sat in the first doorway, knitting and telling lies. The click of the needles stopped when I rounded their corner, and they fell silent. I ignored their stares as I struggled through the narrow alley. Above, the bees disappeared in drying laundry. When the little walkway ended, I was stuck at the cross of the T, following my own weak discretion. I heard shouting to the right, a pair of ten-year-old boys shouting and pointing. A voice from behind them called out from the darkness of a house, scolding them to silence. I scampered to the left, away from them. There, above, a line of brown bees aimed like a dart straight ahead, maybe a bit right. I flew like they did, eyes up, down a one-house alley. I stumbled out into another square, a small one, a little fountain, two shops, two cafés, old men everywhere.