The beekeeper comes to us with bare arms, sturdy arms. His eyes follow the bees that buzz against our walls and windows, not bashing themselves, but establishing their domain. No net over his sun-browned face. Not even a hat. Such is his regard for the bees, that he will not veil himself when he approaches them. And they know. Their buzzing escalates to welcome him.
“They’ve made your wagon their hive,” he tells us.
“We live in a hive,” Heike sings. “We live—”
“What can you do?” I ask him.
“Get the entire hive out, or it will lure other bees.”
“—in a hive. We live in a hive. We—” Her eyes glisten. “I saw you.”
He looks at her with such kindness that I can no longer smell my fear for Heike.
“I have eyes in my head.” She points two fingers at her eyes.
He smiles, this tall man, points two fingers at his eyes. “I have to be careful so I don’t poke my eyes out.”
“Careful!” She drops her hand. Pulls his hand away from his face.
“Thank you,” he says.
“I saw you. On the bad day. When Hannelore drowned.”
“Yes. That bad day. We were all there.”
And then I know—that early. Because I’ve learned from Herr Ludwig about kindness in men. Not men like The Sensational Sebastian, all flicker and excitement. But men like the beekeeper. With him my daughter will be safe in the world. Because he’ll protect her once I’m dead. Because she’ll be a child forever, excitable, as close to laughter as she is to tears. Because he is the one I choose for her.
The day he returns for the bees in a horse-drawn buggy with high side panels, I invite him to eat with us in our wagon. When I praise my daughter’s Rouladen—pounded slices of beef rolled around pickles and bacon—her eyes flicker with tears, and I worry she’ll blurt out that Cook has prepared our meal.
Cook likes to tease her about her tears: “Du hast zu nah am Wasser gebaut.” You’ve built too close to water. She’ll kiss Heike’s forehead. “I’ll make you Pfannekuchen.”
Cook takes pride in her cooking. Tripling a rabbit stew into soup by adding water and vegetables. Making cabbage rolls or, when we are flush, goulash with much paprika. Most food Cook cannot chew with her little teeth, soft like a child’s milk-teeth. Still, she enjoys making them for us: Reibekuchen (potato pancakes), Gebratene Würstchen (fried sausages).
To distract Heike, I tell the beekeeper, “Your patience with bees is amazing.”
“Ideally I remove them and keep them alive.”
“Live dowry,” I blurt.
Heike claps her hands.
He laughs, startled.
When he detaches the huge hive, he doesn’t get stung. The bees come with him, willingly, and he carries them to his buggy. To insulate our wagon, Heike and Silvio cut tall bulrush stems from a pond.
“Moses was in a basket made from bulrush,” she informs him, “and he almost drowned.”
“I wonder where you got that story.”
“From your father, Silvio.”
“Are you sure?”
“You know…”
Silvio chuckles. “He told me that same story at least a hundred times.”
“See? You know.” Heike raises a long stem toward his face, tickles him.
They whack the velvet-brown heads against a tree till they burst and collect the white fibers in a sack. Together we seal every crack in the Annunciation wagon.
We eat dinner at The Last Supper, and when we leave, Hans-Jürgen calls after Silvio, “What are you limping for?”
“I’m not limping.”
“You’re doing a great impersonation of a limping man.”
“Just a grown-in toenail.”
“Let me take a look.”
Silvio shakes his head.
“Big toe?”
“Ja.”
“Which one?”
Silvio kicks an imaginary ball with his right foot.
“You need to relieve the pressure before—”
“It’ll heal by itself.”
“It’ll grow into your flesh. Pus and blood and infection and—”
“Blood poisoning,” Herr Ludwig teases.
Silvio grimaces.
“Amputation for sure.” Herr Ludwig clicks his tongue.
“You’re in a good mood,” says Silvio.
“Let the man look at it, Silvio.”
“He can tell me what to do and I’ll do it myself.”
“You’ll need a sharp knife,” Hans-Jürgen says. “Small enough to cut—”
“I’m not letting you near me with a knife.”
“I said let the man look at it,” Herr Ludwig booms and slides aside on the bench. “Sit here.”
Silvio sits.
“Stretch out your leg,” says Hans-Jürgen.
Silvio crosses his arms.
His father rolls his eyes. “Leg. Not arm. Stretch out your damn leg.”
Silvio stretches out his leg.
Fingers light and fast around his toes. Hans-Jürgen. “Hold still.”
A flicker. Touching in public. Silvio does his best to appear bored. “Just do it.”
Hans-Jürgen is talking with Silvio’s father. Stringy arms, both of them. “If I cut a V shape into the top edge of the toenail, it’ll grow toward that V and—”
“Good,” says Silvio’s father.
“—detach from the sides.” Hans-Jürgen unfolds a pocket knife.
“Just do it,” Silvio growls.
As his father and Hans-Jürgen lean across his toe, shoulder to shoulder, it comes to Silvio that this is what he wants—the not-hiding.
The cut doesn’t hurt; change is instant—like a pinch released—when you’re still hurting but no longer fighting to get free.
The beekeeper asks us where the Zirkus will be next and bunks with Kalle when he travels to bring us gifts: dried chamomile and fennel; a clay jar with honey.
“Heike admires you,” I lie to him.
He says, “I love how your voice rises at the end of each sentence, and how your eyes are set so far apart.”
“Heike keeps talking about you.”
He describes my face to me as though I’d lived without mirrors. “Such space in the upper half of your face, Sabine. That wide forehead. Slope of your cheeks as if you’re forever exhaling after a long breath.”
A man I would cherish if I were Heike. But I won’t consider him for myself because I’ve chosen him for my daughter, this decent man who’ll honor his promises and his legal duties if he agrees to marry my daughter.
“So lovely and so strong.” He brings the side of his hand close to my face. Draws its outline into the air without touch.
Still, I feel the heat of his skin. I can’t allow myself to think it’s me he wants. That’ll pass once he marries Heike.
“Heike has that kind of face too,” I tell him.
A lacy bouquet of dried hydrangeas on his next visit.
“The beekeeper brought you Hortensie blossoms.” I hand them to Heike.
“Dead things.” She drops them.
He picks them up. “Preserved. A different phase of their lives. I hang them upside down from rafters to preserve them.”
“I don’t want dead things.” Heike skips away.
While he’s left with the blossoms in his arms.
“My daughter is intuitive … but not always practical.”
Gravely, the beekeeper nods.
“She has so many strengths … fearlessness and charm and generosity.”
“You have those strengths too.”
“Except for fearlessness.”
“I see you as courageous.”
“I pretend to be more courageous than I am.”
First Sunday of May he brings a crate from the toy factory that Kalle’s friend Köbi was supposed to deliver.
“I told Köbi I was coming this way anyhow.”
Inside the crate: one hundred carved lions; half as many zebras; dancing dogs in tutus; monkeys you can link arm to arm in a chain. The toymakers have also carved animals the Ludwig Zirkus doesn’t own—giraffes and seals and elephants—but will sell at the concession stand.
“I cannot see into my own future,” the beekeeper tells me, “but I can see into yours.”
“And what do you see?”
“That I am there.”
“As my son-in-law.”
He shakes his head, startled. “It’s you I want to marry, Sabine.”
“That would make Heike your stepdaughter.”
“Yes.”
“At the mercy of your new wife.”
“Wait— Who is this new wife?”
“If you and I married—”
“That’s what I want.”
“—and if I died, your new wife could throw Heike out.”
“I don’t want to marry this new wife. She’s mean.”
We both laugh, though it isn’t funny.
We could still stop, but I ambush him. “As Heike’s husband, you’ll be responsible for her.”
“I’ll be responsible for Heike as her stepfather.”
“Until the new wife—”
“Enough, Sabine. Enough now.”
But his kindness is no match for my perseverance, and I reel him in for my daughter. Bait? I don’t know. I’m not proud of that. But I’m not ashamed of keeping my daughter from harm.
When he finally gives in, he looks exhausted. And that’s when I feel compelled to be honorable. To give him a chance to walk away from Heike.
“Heike can’t have children. An abortion before she turned fifteen. Another the following year. She nearly bled to death.”
He winces.
“I didn’t go searching for the operation, but when the nurse offered it, I said yes. And whenever I question my decision I come to the same answer—that I had to keep her alive.”
“I understand.”
“But do you understand that you’ll never be a father?”
“You’ll be there too. In my house.”
“With Heike.”
He wraps his arms around his sides; his lips are pressed together, his chin is puckered. He looks smaller, this tall man, thinner, as though I’ve whittled him down.
And I’m afraid he’ll walk away. And I already miss him.
“The three of us together … best for Heike.” He looks exhausted.
“For her counting to ten is like a song she’s memorized…” I talk as fast as I can. Lay out her flaws. Rattle them off to hold him. “She doesn’t understand what numbers are and how to manage them … has no idea she is different. A cello in her arms gives her more pleasure than a child would. At least a cello won’t starve if you forget where you left it. She goes from happy to sad—you’ve seen that.” I hesitate. “Ever since the operation—”
“Tell me, Sabine.”
“—she’s no longer interested in … being affectionate with a man.”
“Then I’m relieved.”