Margen
Previously: Amaro Cid, the district vet, admitted that in 1994 he took the boxes to the hives at night with Ovidio Trigo. Elsa Trigo, beekeeper, already pairs each burnt orchard with its saved seed.
Fifteen days remain before the transhumance lorry hauls the ninety-six hives up to the sierra. Rosalía Nevado, chair of the village council, calls Elsa into the kitchen of the Astur bar, the only place open on a Monday morning in Sorbeda. At the counter two pensioners play dominoes with the bar's tiles; Rosalía lowers the inner blind before speaking.
«Elsa, climb up to the freezer chest. The ladder is behind the bar.»
Rosalía opens the bulging door of the industrial chest. Inside, among packs of prawns and boxes of frozen churros, there is a black bag folded twice. Rosalía pulls it out. Underneath there is another. And another. Elsa counts until Rosalía waves her to stop.
«Forty bags.»
«Forty-seven when we started. From '94 to '97 my father put in here seed that Ovidio had spare. I brought them over on Thursday nights, after the kitchen closed.»
«Rosalía, you were twenty-three in '94.»
«And I was the only one who went up to the chest for ice. Ovidio couldn't keep it all in the hives. He needed cold, and he needed a place no inspector would open. The plant-health inspectors came twice a year, in June and October. They never went into a freezer.»
Each bag carries Ovidio's tight-marker handwriting: variety name, year the orchard burned, owner's initials. Bag 12 reads reineta apple 1994 F.N. Bag 27, mollar sour cherry 1995 J.G. Bag 40, garrafal cherry 1996 F.T. Bag 34 reads claudia plum 1994 F.T., and bag 39 bastard quince 1996 F.T.
«Four of my father's bags.»
«Five. One split in 2011. I stuffed it with a bit of somebody else's spare and relabelled it. I didn't write it down anywhere. I did it and kept quiet.»
Elsa counts again in her head. Forty bags in the chest. Eleven boxes in the hives. Eighty burnt orchards, according to Ovidio's notebook. Eighty minus forty minus eleven is twenty-nine.
«Twenty-nine are missing.»
«Twenty-nine are missing. And I don't have them.»
Elsa looks at the bags lined up on the bar's steel table. The marker labels have blurred in the cold, and on two of them the date can barely be read. Bag 12, the reineta apple 1994, has a puncture in the corner and out of it a dark seed the size of a fat lentil has come. Elsa picks it up with two fingers, holds it up to the kitchen light and drops it back in the bag.
«Where?»
«Ovidio trusted three people. Amaro kept the hives, I kept the chest. The third was neither from public health nor from the post office.»
«Rosalía.»
«The parish priest. Don Aquilino Fresno. He kept the ones with the names of people still alive; he said it was a secret of confession.»
Rosalía closes the chest and drops the bolt with the big key from her apron.
«Don Aquilino died in 2018. And when they refurbished the parish in 2020 there weren't any seeds anywhere.»
«So somebody has twenty-nine bags and doesn't know what they are.»
«Or knows what they are and doesn't want to open them. Fifteen days, Elsa. And the lorry takes the ninety-six hives on the thirtieth.»