Ovidio burned eighty orchards and saved eighty seeds

Previously: Elsa Trigo inherited 96 hives from her uncle Ovidio; eleven have no honey and hold seeds burned in 1994. In box 7 were her own initials.

She had 37 hives left to check and five days until the truck when Elsa Trigo, a beekeeper in Sorbeda for the last nine years, climbed up to the barn loft on Saturday with a shoebox she'd found the night before in the attic of her uncle's house. Inside was a green-covered notebook with 96 pages, the same model used by the county agents in the nineties, and a cloth bag with a note in Ovidio's tight handwriting: "don't open it here." Elsa took it to the house of Amaro Cid, county veterinarian since 1978, retired since March.

"Three hundred and seventy-four pages written back and front," said Amaro, running his thumb along the edge. "That's your uncle's hand, not mine. I kept the transport slips; he kept this."

Amaro set the notebook on the dining table, switched on the lamp and pushed a glass of water across to Elsa. Outside a fine rain was starting, the first of the month.

"Start on the first page," he said. "Let's see if it's what I think."

The first page had no title. It had a table with four columns: owner's name, plot, fruit variety, number of trees marked. Below, a date: 14 March 1994. In the right-hand margin, very small, a number: 12.

"Twelve," said Elsa. "Hive twelve is the first one I opened with no honey."

"Keep going."

Page two: another table, another plot, another date, another number in the margin. Three, four, five. On page six Elsa read her own father's name: Julián Trigo, orchard of Valdegallinas, winter pear of Sorbeda, eighteen trees marked. Date: 22 March 1994. Margin: 34.

"Hive thirty-four," said Elsa. "I haven't opened it yet."

"It'll be empty inside. Or it'll hold a sealed box with eighteen seeds."

"Amaro."

"Yes."

"Why did he sign the order?"

Amaro leaned back in his chair. He had clear eyes and hands mottled by the rash of the last few months. He took his time.

"Because it was the only way in," he said. "Listen properly, Elsa, because this isn't written in the notebook and no one else is going to say it. In March '94 the Zaragoza lab confirmed fire blight in the pear trees of the county. Erwinia amylovora, they called it. When that happens, plant health orders felling and burning within forty-eight hours. The order gets signed by the county agent, which was him. If he didn't sign it, someone from the provincial office would, and they'd come with the Civil Guard and chainsaws at six in the morning. And they wouldn't let the owners in."

"And by signing it…"

"By signing it he had the keys. He could go in the three days before with the excuse of marking the trees, counting them, doing the inventory. And he could ask for an assistant. His assistant was me, two nights in a row."

"Two nights."

"The twenty-first and the twenty-second. We went into your father's orchard at eleven, we came out at four. We cut green seed from every tree he'd marked with blue tape. We dried it in Ovidio's garage on newspaper for nine days. We put it in the boxes the first week of April, sealed with wax and burned with the owner's initials. We took the boxes down to the hives at night, one at a time, without telling anyone. Not even the owners. Least of all the owners."

"Why not the owners?"

"Because an owner who knows where his seed is will go looking for it. And hives get opened twice a year. Any odd movement in a comb in June, and the vet inspector writes it down. I was the one who went to those places, Elsa. I was the inspector. No one else was going to open those boxes until Ovidio or I said so."

"And you never said."

"He died last year saying nothing. I wasn't going to say it either. And I wouldn't have said it if you hadn't ended up inheriting the ninety-six, and if you hadn't opened the twelfth with the wax scissors."

Elsa kept turning pages. Eighty rows with name, plot, variety, number of trees, date and hive. On some pages Ovidio had drawn a pencil map of the orchard with an X for each tree he had cut seed from. On others he had taped a scrap of label with the name of the nursery of origin, when there was one. At the end of the notebook, a shorter list in a different hand: Amaro's. Forty more varieties, saved later, when the ministry allowed the boxes to come back down.

"Signing was the price," said Amaro. "No signature, no keys. With the signature we had the keys to everything. That's the why. There's no other."

Elsa closed the notebook. The stamp of the delegation was on the last page, next to Ovidio's signature and a date: 12 April 1994. In the margin, in the same tight hand, a line Elsa read twice before she understood: "for whoever opens this without asking permission."

Ovidio's notebook pairs every burned orchard with the hive where he hid its seed: eighty orchards, eighty hives, eighty varieties the county had given up as lost.