Margen
Previously: Elsa Trigo, a beekeeper, found that the eleven honey-less hives hide seeds labelled by her uncle Ovidio and the initials of neighbours who were burnt out.
29 days before the truck takes the hives up to the mountains. Amaro Cid, the district vet, reached Elsa's apiary at seven in the morning with muddy hands and a small thermos. He wore the confession on his face.
«It was me,» he said before sitting down. «I carried the boxes.»
Elsa put the smoker on the ground and looked at him from the other side of the bench.
«In 1994?»
«On July 24. Ovidio and me, in the town-hall van. Eleven boxes sealed with old wax. We picked the deepest hives on the east slope, because the forest ranger never went down there. I knew how to close the belly of a hive without breaking the frame: it was the one skill in the district that dies before you finish learning it.»
Elsa sat down slowly on the wooden bench in the shed. Her hand shook when she picked up the notebook.
«And you didn't say so in the complaint?»
«To whom?» Amaro poured himself coffee with both hands. «Your uncle signed the burning. The engineer at the delegation ordered it. The men who saved the seeds were two of us with a municipal van. If I speak up, the variety dies and I lose my job. My wife was pregnant. Your cousin.»
«My cousin has been in Germany for twenty years.»
«That's why.»
The coffee was hot. They drank in silence. Outside, the orchard was waking up with the mist just below the crowns of the winter pears, the ones Amaro had not let the fire touch.
«Amaro.» Elsa spoke slowly. «There is a box with my initials. And a year that isn't mine. And my uncle's big handwriting.»
Amaro set down the cup. He did not look at her.
«That box wasn't mine. Your father put it there.»
Elsa stood up sharply.
«My father. Julián Trigo. The one who died in 1998.»
«The same. He brought it down to the apiary two days before the fire. He told me: 'Amaro, keep this one in number seven, and don't open it even if I ask you to.' And I signed the order to burn my brother's orchard the next day, with Ovidio. Both orchards, his and mine. We knew them by heart. We were the ones with the good seeds.»
Elsa sat down again, on the ground.
«Why did my father sign his own orchard?»
«That's the knot, Elsa. I don't know why. I only know what he did: he kept the seed of the orchard he was about to sign away. He kept it under his daughter's initials, not his own. And he never spoke of it again. He died four years later without telling me. I never spoke either.» He dropped his voice. «Keeping quiet for twenty years is easy. Remembering for twenty years is not.»
Amaro pulled a blue notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, tied with hemp cord, and set it beside Elsa's own. The corners were worn and there was a label in Ovidio's slanted hand: «SORBEDA, VARIETIES, 1994 · DO NOT RETURN».
«They are all here,» he said. «Written in the hand of whoever planted them, not mine. Seventy-eight varieties: the eighty orchards minus two we didn't reach in time. Most of them belong to dead people. Yours and your father's are on the same page, page 47.»
Elsa did not open it. She ran her fingers over the cover, the way one tests a piece of fruit for ripeness without squeezing it.
Rosalía Nevado came up the path with the bar's notebook under her arm. She was carrying the coffee order and the look of a woman who had walked fast. She stopped at the gate and did not come in.
«Did you tell her?» she asked from outside.
Amaro nodded.
Rosalía looked at Elsa.
«I have another forty bags in the freezer of the bar, in Ovidio's handwriting.»
Elsa closed her eyes. Counted to three.
«Forty more?» It was hard to ask. «Another forty varieties?»
«Another forty varieties.»
«And why tell me today?»
«Because the truck comes on the 30th. And because there is one more who knows and doesn't speak.»
«Who?»
Rosalía looked at Amaro. Amaro said nothing.
Rosalía took a step inside and lowered her voice.
«The lieutenant of the Guardia Civil in Vega. Melchor Cabo Braña.»