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Authors: Michael Chabon
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formidable simply by virtue of that long act of evasion. In particular he feared dying in some undignified way, on the jakes or with his face in the porridge.
Carefully he let his pipe go out and then tucked it into the wide pocket of his bee suit alongside his matches and pouch of tobacco. Benzoic aldehyde was only moderately flammable, but the prospect of setting himself on fire with his own pipe conformed to his worst ideas of the indignity that death would one day visit upon him. With the pipe out of the way, he unstoppered the brown glass bottle, and his organ of smell was overwhelmed, all but undone, by a strident blast of marzipan. He sprinkled the stuff liberally on the felt batting of the fuming board. Then he reached for the peaked roof of the hive and lifted it off. Quickly, nearly dropping it, he laid it on the ground and turned back to the comb, the beautiful comb, each cell of it sealed with a wax cap of sturdy bee manufacture. It had the strange pallor of heather honeycomb, an intense whiteness, white as death or a gardenia. He admired it. Here and there a bee surprised at its business contemplated the meaning of the disturbance, the sudden burst of daylight. One, a heroine of her people, rose at once into the air to attack him. If she stung him, he didn't remark it; he had long since grown habituated to the stings. He settled the fuming board down over the pale expanse of comb and hoisted the roof back into place over it. In a few minutes the hated stench of the aldehyde would have driven any bees still hanging about the comb down to the next level in the hive.
When the veil of his bee hat was lowered he generally could hear nothing apart from the breathing and the mumble of bees. But he had not troubled with the veil, with the bees so slow and fat, and so he chanced to hear the stifled cry behind him. It was more of a gasp than a cry, really, brief and disappointed. At first he thought it must be the Satter-lee girl but when he turned he saw the boy standing by the garden shed, sucking on the back of his hand. He was wearing the same short pants and clean, pressed shirt as on the day of their first encounter, but standing there without the parrot he struck the old man as looking glaringly bereft.
The old man grinned. "Hurts, don't it?"
The boy nodded slowly, too surprised or in too much pain to feign lack of understanding. The old man ambled over to him, shaking his head.
"What a singularly unlucky boy you are," he said. "Let's have a look."
He took hold of the boy's hand. On the back, just below the wrist, a puffy nipple of flesh, tipped with the black filament of the barb. The old man took a matchbox from the zip pocket of his bee suit, poked out the tray of matches. Cupping the tray in his left hand, with his right he flattened the outer sleeve of the matchbox. Then, using an edge of the flattened bit of cardboard, he scraped the sting out of the boy's hand. The boy wept freely during this procedure.
"Mustn't yank them out," he told the boy with a sharpness he did not entirely intend. He was aware of the existence of a vocabulary for the consolation of sorrowing children, but it was one he had never troubled to learn. Boys had served him well over the years-but that was in another century!-extending the reach of his eyes and ears, passing invisibly into dark lanes and courtyards where his own presence would have drawn undue attention, slipping over transoms, through the back doors of hostile alehouses, in and out of the stable yards of crooked horse trainers. And in his own lofty jocular way he had spoken to and even, carelessly, cared for those boys. But they were a different species of boy entirely, ragged, rude, pinched and avid, holes in their shoes, holes for eyes, boys disciplined by hunger and poverty to display the narrowest possible spectrum of human emotion. They would have sooner drunk lye than allowed themselves to be seen to shed a tear. "Only spreads the venom."
The barb tumbled free;
Carefully he let his pipe go out and then tucked it into the wide pocket of his bee suit alongside his matches and pouch of tobacco. Benzoic aldehyde was only moderately flammable, but the prospect of setting himself on fire with his own pipe conformed to his worst ideas of the indignity that death would one day visit upon him. With the pipe out of the way, he unstoppered the brown glass bottle, and his organ of smell was overwhelmed, all but undone, by a strident blast of marzipan. He sprinkled the stuff liberally on the felt batting of the fuming board. Then he reached for the peaked roof of the hive and lifted it off. Quickly, nearly dropping it, he laid it on the ground and turned back to the comb, the beautiful comb, each cell of it sealed with a wax cap of sturdy bee manufacture. It had the strange pallor of heather honeycomb, an intense whiteness, white as death or a gardenia. He admired it. Here and there a bee surprised at its business contemplated the meaning of the disturbance, the sudden burst of daylight. One, a heroine of her people, rose at once into the air to attack him. If she stung him, he didn't remark it; he had long since grown habituated to the stings. He settled the fuming board down over the pale expanse of comb and hoisted the roof back into place over it. In a few minutes the hated stench of the aldehyde would have driven any bees still hanging about the comb down to the next level in the hive.
When the veil of his bee hat was lowered he generally could hear nothing apart from the breathing and the mumble of bees. But he had not troubled with the veil, with the bees so slow and fat, and so he chanced to hear the stifled cry behind him. It was more of a gasp than a cry, really, brief and disappointed. At first he thought it must be the Satter-lee girl but when he turned he saw the boy standing by the garden shed, sucking on the back of his hand. He was wearing the same short pants and clean, pressed shirt as on the day of their first encounter, but standing there without the parrot he struck the old man as looking glaringly bereft.
The old man grinned. "Hurts, don't it?"
The boy nodded slowly, too surprised or in too much pain to feign lack of understanding. The old man ambled over to him, shaking his head.
"What a singularly unlucky boy you are," he said. "Let's have a look."
He took hold of the boy's hand. On the back, just below the wrist, a puffy nipple of flesh, tipped with the black filament of the barb. The old man took a matchbox from the zip pocket of his bee suit, poked out the tray of matches. Cupping the tray in his left hand, with his right he flattened the outer sleeve of the matchbox. Then, using an edge of the flattened bit of cardboard, he scraped the sting out of the boy's hand. The boy wept freely during this procedure.
"Mustn't yank them out," he told the boy with a sharpness he did not entirely intend. He was aware of the existence of a vocabulary for the consolation of sorrowing children, but it was one he had never troubled to learn. Boys had served him well over the years-but that was in another century!-extending the reach of his eyes and ears, passing invisibly into dark lanes and courtyards where his own presence would have drawn undue attention, slipping over transoms, through the back doors of hostile alehouses, in and out of the stable yards of crooked horse trainers. And in his own lofty jocular way he had spoken to and even, carelessly, cared for those boys. But they were a different species of boy entirely, ragged, rude, pinched and avid, holes in their shoes, holes for eyes, boys disciplined by hunger and poverty to display the narrowest possible spectrum of human emotion. They would have sooner drunk lye than allowed themselves to be seen to shed a tear. "Only spreads the venom."
The barb tumbled free;
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