9

No surprise. Alois decided to go back to Der Alte after all. Why not? He was a realist, he told himself, and so was used to bad odors. After all, one had to deal now and again with the Devil. (My devils snickered as they told me this.)

Alois paid his visit on the next Sunday and, once again, took Adi with him. This time the boy paid attention to the route. It was but a mile away, and so he knew he would be able to find the hut again by remembering the forks of the path. All the while, he was filled with uneasy excitement. A woe as large as a loaf of bread had settled in his stomach, yet perched above such heaviness, his heart felt most alive. He knew he would not tell his father that he planned to visit Der Alte on another day and very much on his own.

“Yes,” he kept saying to himself, “I will not be afraid to walk there. But not in the night, maybe not. There are too many spirits in the woods then.”

For Adi, the second meeting between Der Alte and his father turned out to be even better than the first. If, at the start, they spoke about the marketing of honey and Adi could hardly follow, the conversation grew interesting once business was done. That was because the old man could not stop talking about the mysteries within the mysteries of bees. “Yes,” said Der Alte in a most resonant voice, “I never weary of contemplating these tiny creatures, with their immortal honey and their near-to-immortal sting. There are such subtleties to their keeping.”

A rich discourse ensued. If Alois was hardly able to speak, he was nonetheless not too displeased, for he would use it tomorrow night at Fischlham. A gift for the dolts! Adi, in turn, listened with care. The words he could not understand lived in his mind by way of their sounds.

“Can we,” asked Der Alte, “ever pay enough attention to this work of Creation? It is so full of genius. These little devils come to us from the Good Lord’s divine and curious aesthetic—nature’s wisdom expressing itself in this most bizarre form.”

Der Alte went on. He could go on! References to God’s ballet, God’s gymnastics, God’s investiture in wonder and awe. Der Alte was like many of our clients. We encourage them to praise God. In the highest. Always.

For that matter, he went on for so long that Alois was, once more, repelled. Too much time had elapsed without exercise of his own voice. Moreover, he did not like the look in his son’s eye. Those blue eyes, so similar to Klara’s, large and alive. There was reverence in them now.

Alois managed finally to interject a word.

“Why don’t you take us into the kitchen, and show the boy your viewing box?”

It was obvious that Der Alte would prefer not to—even as Alois had expected—but Adi spoke up. “Oh, please, sir,” he cried out, “I have never seen the inside of a bees’ home. They have been with us back at the house for so long”—he tried to count quickly—“for seven, no, I think it is eight weeks, and I have not seen even one of them. Must I wait until summer? Please.”

“Spring,” said Der Alte. “It is necessary to wait until spring.” Then, given the disappointment on the boy’s face, he shrugged. “All right,” he said, “but you must be prepared. It is winter. Bees are sluggish during these months.”

Indeed, they were. In the kitchen, bare but for a small stove, a sink, a hand pump above the sink, and a pail beneath for the runoff, was also a table. At one end had been placed a narrow glass box, perhaps two feet long and one foot high, its interior concealed on both sides by black curtains. When the curtains were pulled back, two glass walls were revealed, not three inches apart, and a vertical frame stood in the space between, filled with small wax cells, an uncountable number of them.

Adi was disappointed. A cluster of pullulating things, no larger than dark pills in a bottle, kept climbing over each other, startled by the light, a poor gang, crammed, jam-packed, an assembly of what looked to be squashy little creatures about as ugly as roaches. (Their wings were folded.) Adi had not been so disappointed since he had first seen Edmund’s homuncular face squeezed up on Klara’s breast.

Now these bees could just as well have been beans bumping around in a heated pot, except, no, beans did not look so nervous. What an awful way to live! They miss the sun, the boy thought. Now they were just shoved up against each other. He sighed in preference to bursting into tears.

“At this moment,” said Der Alte, “they are the poorest of the poor, no better than sodden creatures in a slime of their own making. Yet their lives will span the extremities of existence. Now they do nothing, but in summer, you will see them dance in the air, as wonderful as drops of dew in early morning light. So fearless. How they will strut as they enter into the golden petals of the flower-blooms that are waiting for them.”

“Hear, hear,” said Alois. No matter the drear aspects, Der Alte did have a manner. Give that much to the stinkpot.

And Adi was thinking, “These bees can sting you and then you are dead.” He shivered in the old man’s kitchen before the incomprehensibility of dying. Yet, right in the midst of this chill, he felt as close to the old man as to his father, for he could listen all day and all night to the wonderful words that came forth.

“Come and visit me,” the old man managed to whisper before Alois gave the signal to leave.