The Beekeeper's Ball

Isabel laced a thread of honey across the cheeses. “These are my favorite honey and cheese pairings. Comté, Appenzeller and ricotta. I had my first honey harvest last summer—a small one. That’s when I realized I needed expert help with my beekeeping.”

“Sorry I wasn’t your guy,” said Mac.

“Please, sit down and let’s enjoy the morning.” Magnus gestured at the chairs.

It was all Mac could do not to wolf down the whole snack tray. But he’d been trained by the best, his redoubtable mother, who had taught her six sons diplomatic protocol and etiquette as if it were her job. He made himself a small plate, sipped his coffee and settled in, curious to find out more about Magnus, his beauteous granddaughters and the place they called home.

Magnus smoothed his weather-beaten hands over the legs of his trousers. “So. Here we all are. It is hard to conceive of, my life in a book. I don’t know where to begin.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mac said. “Whatever crosses your mind.”

“Bella Vista,” Magnus said without hesitation. “This place is always on my mind. Perhaps I even imagined it before I realized it was quite real.” He flexed his fingers, resting them on his knees, and said, “When I was a boy in Denmark, we would go to the cinema on Saturday afternoons, and naturally my favorites were the films about cowboys and Indians in the Wild West. I always envisioned America as this vast, unsettled land, a place of endless opportunity. It never looked like this in the picture show. My schoolmates and I yearned to come here, but I never thought I would. It was more like a place of dreams.”

In an odd way, Mac could relate. He, too, had grown up far from the States, and he, too, had been drawn to its larger-than-life, practically mythic aspect. His impressions had been formed by watching old VHS tapes of Nickelodeon series. Instead of the Wild West of Magnus’s imagination, he had been filled with mental pictures of schools populated by perky girls with ponytails, a row of candy-colored lockers and stern but good-hearted teachers capable of solving a spunky kid’s problems before each thirty-minute segment was up.

“Do you recall when you made the decision to come here?” Isabel asked.

The old man rested his hands atop his cane. “There was no decision. It was an act of desperation. And survival.”

Mac put his phone on the table. “I’ve got a digital recorder app. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not. That is why you’re here.”

From the corner of his eye, Mac could see Isabel stiffen, but then she settled back and waited quietly.

“It was not something my family aspired to or wanted for me. We would have been content to live out our lives in Denmark. We—my parents, my grandfather and myself—were comfortable in Copenhagen,” said Magnus. “We had all that we needed. We weren’t wealthy, though we were certainly comfortable. My father worked as a civil servant. My mother kept house, and her passion was for growing things. She prized her apple trees, and the whole neighborhood loved the Gravensteins she cultivated. Not the most beautiful fruit ever to grace the table, but surely the tastiest.”

He leaned back in the chair, his pale eyes looking into a past Mac could only imagine. “I was but a boy when the Nazis arrested them and took them away. A youngster still in his school years doesn’t get to decide anything, least of all whether or not to emigrate to America. It was all I could do to avoid getting caught myself.”

“Do you know why they were arrested?”

“For harboring a Jewish man and his daughter. My uncle Sweet and little cousin Eva. We weren’t really related, of course, but that is the story we gave out.”

“Eva...the woman you eventually married.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at Isabel. “My Eva. Although in 1940, when she first came to live with us at the house in Copenhagen, I considered her a pest. Sweet was born a Dane, same as my father, but his wife was a member of the chalutzim—that is the Hebrew term for pioneers. Thousands of them came to Denmark from eastern Europe or Germany, and they were welcomed by the Danish and by King Christian. They had come for agricultural training, the goal being to eventually move to Palestine. But Sweet’s wife had no interest in farming.” Magnus’s mouth turned briefly into a curl of disgust. “She wanted only to be rich and comfortable, and she believed Sweet would give her that. He didn’t seem to care for money, though. He was a photographer, and a good one at that. He turned the basement of our house into a darkroom.”

“So he took these pictures?” Mac opened a file folder to four fading snapshots, turning them so Magnus and the two sisters could see.

Magnus nodded. “Yes, I brought one large case along when I came to America after the war, and those photographs were tucked into the lining.”

“Talk about life in Copenhagen at the start of the occupoation. What was it like, having another family living with you?”

“At first, life still seemed...normal. Routine. From my perspective as an only child, it was good fun having a playmate. Yes, it was routine, until Sweet and Eva disappeared into the night.”

“Were they warned that there was going to be a roundup of the Jews?” asked Mac.

“You’ve done some reading, then,” said Magnus. “But in fact, some years later, in the autumn of 1943. No, the reason Eva and her father had to leave was that the Germans found out my father’s greatest secret.”

Secrets seemed to run in this family, Mac thought, looking from one sister to the other, two beautiful but very different women who hadn’t known each other while growing up.

“What precipitated their leaving, then?” Mac asked Magnus.

“An agent affiliated with the Danish underground was caught and tortured. We had to assume the operation was compromised. Eva and her father had to leave in secret well in advance of the official action. They were sent up to a small coastal town called Helsingør—you would know it as Elsinore, from the Shakespeare play. Shortly after that, the soldiers came to search the house, but by that time, there was nothing to find. The Nazis were furious that the tip-off failed to yield any results, and they took my parents in for questioning.”

Now Magnus closed his eyes and held himself very still, so still that Mac thought he might’ve drifted off to sleep. He exchanged a glance with Isabel. She sat unmoving, her fingers braided together, tense.

Then Magnus opened his eyes. “I never saw them again. From that night onward, I was on my own. Which is my long-winded way of explaining what I meant when I said I didn’t make a decision of any sort about my own future. I simply reacted, determined to survive, as any wild animal might do. I lived by my wits—or lack thereof—from day to day. So in that sense, it wasn’t a decision that brought me to America. It was happenstance—and sheer blind luck, although I do not recall feeling at all lucky that day.”

He shook his head, paused to sample the honeyed cheese with some bread. “From today’s perspective, it is easy to look back and deride ourselves for not seeing the storm coming. But you understand, we were simply Danes, living our lives and going about our business. It was quite some time before I even grasped that there was a division between Jews and Gentiles. We were all Danes first. Denmark did not force Jews to register their property, or to identify themselves, and God knows, they were never made to give up their homes and businesses.”

“That came later, didn’t it?” said Tess, regarding him with soft-eyed sympathy. She reached up and took the feather thing out of her hair and set it aside.

“It all came about gradually as the Germans tightened their control. They broke their promises one by one, replacing each edict with another. The Germans even claimed the Jews of Scandinavia would not be included in their Final Solution. But by that time, everyone knew that was a lie.”

PART TWO (#u8093f237-77c0-5447-bdcc-638412f7f45a)

“For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world’s real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance.”

—William Longgood, The Queen Must Die

Summer Fruit with Honey Dressing (#u8093f237-77c0-5447-bdcc-638412f7f45a)

If possible, get the ingredients at your local farmer’s market. Food tastes better when you know where it comes from.

⅓ cup honey

⅓ cup lemon or lime juice

6 fresh mint leaves, finely snipped

2 cups melon cubes

2 cups green seedless grapes

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 cup fresh pineapple chunks

Use a whisk or hand mixer to whip the honey until it turns thick and opaque. Add the lemon or lime, then stir in the mint leaves. Combine the fruit in a large glass or pottery bowl. Pour the honey mixture over and stir gently to coat. Serve immediately with a clear flute of sparkling water or Prosecco.

[Source: Original]

Chapter Six (#u8093f237-77c0-5447-bdcc-638412f7f45a)

Copenhagen, 1940

“Here, let me fix your hair again.” Magnus’s mother licked the palm of her hand and smoothed it over his head. “This cowlick will not be tamed.”