Big Swiss(5)

Greta suspected the fur traders had owned slaves, and that the slaves had lived in the little room off the kitchen, where Sabine now grew marijuana and where Greta sometimes double-checked for ghosts. She never saw any, but perhaps Pi?on did? The black fur on his face had turned a stark and sudden white about a week after they moved in. Shock, presumably, from seeing the souls of dead slaves, or (more likely) finding himself in the Hudson Valley after living in California all his life. Many more of Greta’s hairs had turned white, as well, and Sabine had a white streak on the left side of her head, which she claimed had been given to her by the devil.

“When?” asked Greta. “Recently?”

“At birth, ding-dong,” Sabine said.

Otherwise, Sabine’s hair was the color of dry tobacco and dense enough to hide things. Such as a pair of earrings. Such as a spare key. Sabine often used her hair rather than a handbag to shoplift, and occasionally a lost or stolen item suddenly resurfaced. The other day, it had been a pair of reading glasses she’d stolen from CVS, along with a woven bracelet from god knows where. She never got caught, however, and Greta suspected it was because she had the scrubbed good looks and general air of unkemptness that people associated with old money, and in fact Sabine had grown up wealthy before her father lost everything in the stock market. She’d been something of a spiv ever since.

Personality-wise, she reminded Greta of one of those exotic vegetables she was drawn to at the farmer’s market but didn’t know how to cook. Kohlrabi, maybe, or a Jerusalem artichoke. Not very approachable. Not sweet or overly familiar. Not easily boiled down or buttered up. Not corn on the cob. Greta felt an instant kinship with Sabine, since she, too, was kohlrabi.

Bees weren’t bothered by kohlrabi, apparently. Neither of them had been stung, not even once. If a bee landed on Greta’s arm or face, she calmly brushed it off and carried on with whatever she was doing. If she happened to startle a few bees while they were performing some task, she simply ducked or walked away. They never came after her.

Now she was sweeping up the dead bees around Sabine’s feet. She swept gently, as they tended to stick to the broom.

“You want the vacuum?” said Sabine.

“Too noisy,” Greta said.

Sabine sat next to the open fireplace, which was big enough to fit a bathtub or a medium-size coffin, and the hive was directly above her head. The hive was massive, estimated to be over thirty years old, and nestled between two exposed joists in the ceiling. Roughly seven feet long and sixteen inches wide, it snaked along the length of the joists in a wavy fashion.

Sabine had discovered the hive shortly after she bought the house. She’d heard buzzing in the ceiling and so she’d knocked it down with a sledgehammer. There she discovered the hive at the height of production. Rather than remove it like a normal person and perhaps transfer it outdoors, Sabine asked a local beekeeper to build an enclosure for it. She liked having bees in the kitchen. The beekeeper, a Christian back-to-the-land type named Gideon, built a hatch, a simple screened-in wooden box with a Plexiglas bottom, which he installed in the ceiling. If you stood directly underneath the hatch and looked up, you could plainly see the hive and all its activity. You could also reach up and open the hatch to expose the hive, but they never did that. The hatch kept the bees out of their hair, as it were, but there were always about a dozen flying around Greta as she made coffee in the mornings.

“These bees seem Japanesey,” said Greta. “There’s something kamikaze about the way they’re crashing into shit. Seems like they might be committing suicide.”

“They’re deeply altruistic,” Sabine said.

“I wonder if that’s because all bees are siblings,” said Greta.

“My siblings are dicks,” Sabine said. “I’d never die for them.”

Another bee threw itself against the window, knocking itself unconscious. In a minute or so, it would start buzzing again but would remain on the floor, kicking its legs.

“It’s autumn,” Sabine said. “Leaves fall. Maybe bees fall, too.”

“Or they’re sweating to death,” Greta said, and emptied the dustpan into the huge fire. She wondered if the still-living bees could smell the burning bodies of their lost siblings.

“Or they’re just reducing their staff to a skeleton crew,” Sabine said. “For the upcoming winter. For the sake of efficiency.”

Greta listened to the fire crackle. The bees used to be louder than the fire. She used to be able to hear them buzzing in her stupid dreams, because the hive was essentially underneath her bed, one floor up.

“Do you happen to know any Swiss people?” Greta asked. “On the other side of the river?”

“Five,” Sabine said. “Two of them are artists, two of them are assholes, and the other works in the trades. They’re really boring and really intense at the same time, which is a weird combination when you think about it.”

“Is one of the assholes a gynecologist?”

Sabine tossed her cigarette into the fire. “No, why?”

“New patient,” Greta said.

“Another sex addict?”

“This one’s never had an orgasm,” Greta said.

“Wow,” said Sabine.

Greta was about to say more but changed her mind. She wanted Big Swiss all to herself. But Sabine looked wan and in need of nourishment.