Wanting to see at first hand the eruption of Vesuvius, he set out to have himself rowed towards the beach below it in a quest for knowledge, but changed course to go and save the wife of a friend. Burning pumice and searing ash fell into his boat, yet he sailed on. He went to great lengths, according to the letter his nephew wrote to describe the circumstances of his uncle’s death, to set at rest the fears of everyone he encountered. But then his luck, and his time, ran out and he was overcome by the ash-laden air and suffocated to death.
Brunetti woke with a start some time later and was surprised to find that he was sitting in semi-darkness. He pushed himself to his feet, turned on the light and, keeping his book in his hand, made his way into the kitchen. He set the platter and the bowl on the table, found a plate in the cabinet, knife and fork in a drawer. There was a loaf of bread on the counter; he cut off a few slices. He refilled his glass.
He pulled out a chair and went to get a towel; he folded it and propped it under the back of his book and opened it to find his place. He took his eyes from the page and studied the tiny creatures on the platter: shrimp, baby octopus, mussel, clam, canocchie, latticini di seppia. The day’s exercise had caught up with him, and he decided to eat from the platter, the better to soak up the olive oil with his bread. There was more salt than he was accustomed to and less parsley. Brunetti made two trips to the counter, one to cut more bread and one to fill his glass.
He continued reading after he’d finished everything on the platter and wiped it clean with the last piece of bread. Soon what he read began to grow confused: honey from isolated places, bees flying with small stones balanced on their backs to keep them from being blown off course by the wind. He took a few deep breaths and paged back to an earlier chapter, thinking it would be easier to read entirely new material. Here he discovered that hedgehogs, to prepare food for winter, rolled on apples to stick them to their spines, carrying them to a safe place in a hollow tree, to be eaten during the winter.
‘I think it’s time you went to bed,’ he said to no one in particular. And obeyed.
9
Fortunately, there was an alarm clock beside his bed, or Brunetti would have slept past his meeting with Casati. Unfortunately, the man who rose from the bed lacked the vigour and ease of limb of the man who had arrived on Sant’Erasmo the previous day. A long, hot shower, two coffees, and breakfast improved things considerably, and by the time Brunetti reached the boat, he was almost restored to his former self.
Casati was already there and lowering a soft Styrofoam container into the boat. Brunetti said good morning, stepped into the boat, and moved to stand below Casati to help with the container, which he stowed in the back.
Casati passed Brunetti the two oars and the two fórcole. The older man lowered himself into the boat. He opened the wooden box in the back, and both of them slathered on the beige goo. He put the tin back in the box and placed his oar on the gunwale, then signalled Brunetti to untie the boat. Together they pushed the boat from the sea wall and stood upright, wobbling for a moment, then gaining their balance and feeling the first heat of the day coming from in front of them.
‘I want to go out and take a look at some of the others,’ Casati said, and Brunetti assumed he meant bees. ‘They’re farther away: it’ll take us about two hours. But we can have a swim when we get there. All right with you?’
Brunetti smiled back at him and nodded: he didn’t care where they went. ‘Tell me one thing,’ Brunetti said, reluctant to call Casati by his first name but using the familiar ‘tu’, as two rowers would in their boat. ‘Why do you want to see them?’
‘Ah,’ Casati said, drawing the sound out. ‘You saw yesterday. They’re dying. My girls are dying.’
‘What from?’
‘It might be varroa,’ Casati explained.
‘What’s that?’
‘Mites. Tiny mites that suck the blood from the bees and weaken them.’ His disgust showed on his face.
‘Not kill them?’
Casati made a noise. ‘If they’re weak, then other things can kill them,’ he said. ‘Too little food, viruses, pesticides, herbicides.’ Casati picked up his oar. ‘Man’s turned against them,’ he said.
Brunetti looked around and ahead of them and saw only salt water and salt marshes. ‘All they have is salt water. Doesn’t that harm them, too?’
Casati smiled. ‘Did you have time to eat breakfast?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, thinking of the fresh bread, jam and honey he’d found on the table, the butter in the refrigerator.
‘How was the honey?’
‘Delicious.’
‘It didn’t taste strange?’
He thought of what Pliny had written about honey, the different places from which it came, and that honey made from thyme was good for the eyes and for ulcers. ‘No, it tasted fine,’ Brunetti said, knowing now what was coming.
‘It’s from here,’ Casati said, jutting his chin out to encompass the vast expanse of water that surrounded them. ‘Emilio’s family always made honey. And now I do, too.’
Deciding that it was time to row, Brunetti inserted his oar, waited for the sound from behind him, and joined Casati’s rhythm. Today he wore the same trousers as the day before and an old cotton shirt he’d had since university. And a hat he’d found in a drawer, a faded orange baseball cap he could not have worn anywhere but here, where there was no one to see it. And the gloves, still. At least, he told himself, he’d wear them for the way out to wherever they were going. His hands felt faintly bruised and roughened after yesterday’s rowing, but there was no sign of blisters.
They went the same way they had the day before. There was almost no traffic on the Canale di San Felice, broad and studded with houses on the Treporti side. Brunetti had a vague memory that this part of the laguna was completely enclosed by land and thus isolated from the Adriatic, which explained their near solitude on the water. They continued slowly ahead, soon working into a rhythm that suited them both. As had happened the day before, Casati sometimes called Brunetti’s attention to a bird rendered almost invisible by the tall grass or to a current that might cause them trouble or help them along. He seemed easily at home in what to Brunetti was an amorphous, uniform grey-green expanse. No buildings, no bright flowers, no shadow, no points of reference: Brunetti was as lost as any stranger in the streets of Venice.
A group of buildings and fields appeared on the right, a few boats, and soon after, the canal veered to the left, and they followed. It began to narrow, and they came to a fork, where they took the unmarked, even smaller, canal to the left. Brunetti had a good sense of direction, and he felt that they were not far from where they had seen the bees the day before.