‘Yes,’ Casati answered after a moment, and then, ‘But I know someone.’
When he realized that this was the only explanation he was going to get, Brunetti said, ‘So we could go back the other way, past Torcello?’ He tried to sound conversational and completely at home out here.
‘Yes. Good,’ answered Casati and looked at his watch. ‘Let’s go. The tide’s changed, so we have about two hours before the water will be too low.’
At the thought that they might be back at the house in two hours, Brunetti felt guilty relief. He had taken his watch off so as not to be conscious of time and calculated that they had been out for an hour and a half. So that meant they were more or less half done. Thank God.
He put his oar back in place and waited for Casati’s stroke. When it came, he dug his oar into the water and headed for l’Isola di Santa Cristina.
As the canal narrowed, they saw spoonbills ahead of them, waving their beaks from side to side in the mud as they searched for food. Instinctively the two men pulled in their oars and approached the birds silently, but one of them must have made a motion, for the two birds took wing and were gone in an instant. They continued and before long Casati hissed to Brunetti as they glided past four fledgling black-winged stilts, long-legged and fluffy, pecking into the mud at the edge of the canal. At their approach, the birds slipped under the overhanging vegetation and instantly became part of the reeds and stalks of dry grass.
Some time later, Brunetti saw what looked like a clump of low trees to their left. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Casati answered and gave a hard stroke which turned the boat in that direction. They ran along a low sea wall behind which stood a thick row of trees. About ten metres farther on, Casati stopped rowing and dug his oar into the water to slow the boat.
‘Pull in here,’ he called to Brunetti, who helped turn the prow by digging his oar into the water; they glided up to the side of the canal. Near the edge was a large cement block with a metal mooring ring. Brunetti pulled in his oar and tied the boat to the ring.
Casati stepped on to the island and moved ahead to Brunetti. ‘I’m going to see my girls,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘Would you like to come and see them?’
Without waiting for an answer, Casati extended his hand and helped Brunetti step up beside him, then turned away and walked towards and then into the small clump of trees Brunetti had seen from the water.
Brunetti saw no girls, no matter where he looked. On the other side of this small island – they could have crossed it in minutes – was a house with closed shutters. Within and under the trees, they were surely invisible. As still were the girls. He saw a flash of white to his left and took a quick step away from it. But with a flurry of wings it moved faster and farther away: a duck, perhaps, but not a girl.
In a small clearing at the centre of the small clump of trees, Brunetti saw a row of three wooden boxes similar in shape to the plastic ones he had seen from his room: red, white, green: evviva Italia. And then he heard the girls: buzzing and whizzing and filling the air with their low noise. Brunetti stood stock still, afraid of the bees.
Ahead of him, Casati reached into the pocket of his corduroy trousers and pulled out a large chip of wood and a cigarette lighter, then stopped and set the wood alight. After a moment, a small column of smoke rose from the chip. Casati waved it around them like a magician’s wand, and the bees slowed in a hovering trance. Casati turned to him. ‘Come on. They won’t bother you. Give me a hand,’ he said, his voice blurred by the sound of the bees, which intensified as they approached the hives.
Casati moved off, and Brunetti followed, certain that the other man must know what he was doing. And indeed, the bees encircled them but ignored them. Casati continued to wave the smouldering chip, creating a safe path for them as the bees flew away from the trail of smoke, leaving it to the two men to follow the cloud of smoke through the tunnel of their whirling sound. Casati handed the chip to Brunetti, who continued to wave it around them in the same drifty manner.
Slowly, the way Brunetti had seen drugged people move, each motion an arabesque, a caress of the surrounding space, Casati removed the top of the first hive and set it upright on the ground. He reached in and pulled out a wooden frame covered with bees: crawling, walking, slithering, insinuating themselves under and over one another, each touching the others in a harmony of gentleness.
Casati waved Brunetti closer. His fear in abeyance, Brunetti moved beside him and looked at the wooden frame in Casati’s hand.
‘Do you see her?’ Casati asked.
‘Who?’ Brunetti asked. Bees, he knew, were female, so these were his girls. But which could be the Girl?
‘Look for the blue dot,’ Casati said, and for a minute Brunetti feared the older man ought to have worn a hat under the sun. ‘On the back of her head. That’s the Queen.’
Brunetti, fear banished by curiosity, bowed closer to the thronging mass and hunted for a blue dot, but all he saw were hundreds of bees; he understood now what the word ‘swarm’ meant. And then he saw it, an iridescent blue dot, a bit bigger than the head of a pin. She hauled herself along in zigzag progression, nudged, pushed, caressed and cleaned by other bees, all of them unmarked and smaller than she. She dived into one of the hexagonal wax cells, pulled herself out only to move forward a bit, then back up and insert her tail part into the empty cell.
‘Is she laying an egg?’ Brunetti whispered, almost speechless with the majesty of what he was watching.
‘Yes.’
‘And the others?’
‘They clean her and feed her and smooth her passage.’
Brunetti bent closer; he’d forgotten danger. Their motion never stopped: gliding up and over one another, circling the Queen, following in her train. The movement seemed random, yet it was all perfectly synchronized.
‘What’s in those?’ he asked, pointing to rows of closed cells on the lower part of the wooden frame in Casati’s hands.
‘Eggs – as you saw – and then they’re larvae, and then pupae, and when they come out they’re bees, full grown,’ Casati explained, slipping the frame back in place and pulling out another. He studied it quickly, slipped it back inside. He pulled up another and ran a finger along the bottom, smoothing off small beige globs. He tasted it and smiled, then held the frame out to Brunetti.
‘Try it,’ he said.