Napoleon's Beekeeper

by José Luis de Juan

  A ventriloquist who has known Bonaparte’s secret relationship with bees ever since a chronicle fell into his hands, the one about the Marengo battle written by an anonymous dragoon captain. There it is written that Napoleon surprised his generals when he postponed an advance they’d agreed upon the night before, after he observed, in the first light of dawn, a giant swarm of bees hanging from an oak branch.

  5.

  The Corsican set foot on Elba three months ago. As soon as he disembarked, he raised the flag he’d chosen during the crossing from Marseille on the roof of his new residence. A red band divides the white surface diagonally from left to right, and three golden bees have been embroidered across it.

  The island has been awhirl since the Emperor’s arrival was announced. Its inhabitants cross themselves at the thought that the man who ruled Europe for so long has accepted sovereignty over their small lives. At first, they thought Bonaparte would hide away, ashamed, in the poorly constructed cluster of windmills, granaries and whitewashed walls. They thought that pride would make him turn his back on them, disdaining their islander simplicity; that he would leave the petty governing of Elba in the hands of a lieutenant. They imagined that the isolation would intensify his despotic character, and that, if he didn’t die of rage, he would become a furtive shadow riding around the island’s hills at sundown.

  None of these expectations has been borne out. Far from neglecting the matters affecting his new dominion, Bonaparte immediately made them his own. On Thursday, the day after landing on the fourth of May at six o’clock in the evening, as soon as he had met with the authorities and dignitaries, he rode off on his horse to tour Portoferraio’s fortifications and didn’t return to eat until sundown. On the sixth he rose early and went to inspect the forts and keeps on foot. On the seventh he crossed the harbour in a rowboat and descended into the mines. At first light on the eighth of May he was already touring the main civilian buildings and streets in the city centre. And so on, every day. Leaving everyone astounded – even his most loyal collaborators, those who accompanied him into exile hoping, perhaps, for a swift return to the high life of before. He focused on his island reign with the same devotion and diligence as when he’d had sixty million subjects.

  Now Napoleonic bureaucracy has been let loose on Elba. With twenty-seven horses and mules and sixteen carriages, the Emperor has instituted for his guardianship of seven-hundred men an office of military affairs and a war budget, which he operates with the same conscientiousness as the Great Army’s accounts. And he is no less conscientious in civil matters: in place of the gargantuan public works that he instigated previously, he coordinates efforts to repair bridges and regulate street cleaning. Now that he has no imperial castles with immense estates and sophisticated gardens, he appoints groundskeepers to put a stop to the havoc wreaked by goats on the islanders’ smallholdings. Lacking furnishings in his house – the Palazzina, as it is called by the imperial entourage – he has handpicked reasonably priced chairs and sofas for purchase in Pisa, to the amount of one thousand francs.

  One afternoon during his first week on the island, Bonaparte summons the dignitaries of Elba. The sub-prefect, the commissioner for maritime affairs, the land registrar, the war commissioner, the tax collector and additional persons are required to be present, so that they might impart useful information about how the island is currently being run, from customs to health to coastal waters.

  They take a seat around a long oval table after bowing towards the man who presides over them at one end, his gaze austere and penetrating and his back to the afternoon light that sneaks through the shuttered windows. It is a few days since the Corsican took possession of Elba, overseen by the British commissioner Nell Campbell, who escorted him to the island in his frigate.

  ‘Governor, let’s hear your report on the general state of the island.’

  A gouty, diminutive man adjusts his spectacles with a slight tremor and begins a verbose account of the humble achievements of his term of office and the tasks that, in his opinion, remain to be done.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Bonaparte interrupts when the governor gets entangled in endless fawning.

  The tax collector speaks next: ‘If Your Majesty permits, allow me to say that so far it has been an unfavourable year. One of the worst in decades. We’ve had storms, plagues and terrible accidents in the mines.’

  ‘Mines?’ Bonaparte looks at him, feigning surprise. His thoughts are elsewhere. ‘Ah, yes, the iron-ore mines. Proceed.’

  ‘A hailstorm pounded the harvests in March, wreaking havoc at the worst possible time for the crops, as well as pulverising the fruit trees’ young shoots. Then came six days of flooding, which gave way to a drought without precedent that has continued for the past month and a half; if it doesn’t break before summer, there will be barely any legumes or potatoes, and we will have to bring vegetables and fruit from Naples and wheat from Caltanissetta.’

  A murmur of discontent ripples around the table. ‘And honey? Will there be honey?’

  Bonaparte looks upset. The tax collector hesitates. He glances at the sub-prefect, but it is the land registrar who takes the floor.

  ‘I am afraid, Your Majesty, that Elba’s beekeeping industry will suffer significant setbacks this year. It’s quite enough to see, at this stage of spring, that the fields are barren…’

  ‘And the carob trees haven’t flowered yet,’ adds a small voice from somewhere.

  ‘It depends,’ a large man with a thick moustache and seagoing gear interjects authoritatively, as if no one had heard the small voice.

  ‘On what exactly does it depend, Commissioner for Maritime Affairs?’

  ‘On the winds, Your Majesty. If the Sirocco stops blowing over the island in the next two months, moist wind from the Alps and the Venetian Lagoon will bring cooler temperatures and new pollens. In that case the flowering will be late, but it will be enough.’

  Bonaparte gets up and walks alongside the shelves, looking at the floor, as if suddenly finding himself alone.

  He thinks about the bees. What will happen if, come June, legions of worker bees leave their hives, eager to fulfil their purpose, only to find that the flowers into which they might insert their long tongues are withered? There will be a rebellion with grave consequences. Larvae, pupa, drones, workers and queens will die by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. Decimated like his troops between Smolensk and the Moskva. How could he not have foreseen that it was too early in the season for the grass of the Russian steppes to sustain the Silesian horses, and that there weren’t enough mills in Kaunas to grind the grain for the troops?

  ‘Civil disorder is rare in Elba. Every now and then some minor thieving occurs. Chickens, farm tools, almonds.’

  The police commissioner has taken one of the Emperor’s gestures to mean he is handing over to him. Everyone else sighs in relief, the silence was making them uncomfortable.

  ‘A few drunk sailors, most of them English, were looking for a fight down at Portoferraio’s wharf, but my officers were able to maintain order.’

  Bonaparte, who is standing by the window, looking out, turns around abruptly and takes three strides towards his chair. He rests his palms on the oval chestnut table. His severe gaze passes over the faces of the intimidated gathering, as if taking an inventory.

  ‘Make sure we have honey in abundance this year.’

  6.

  Pasolini is at war with himself. He longs for and at the same time fears Bonaparte’s visit. He knows that in the three months since his arrival the sovereign has exhausted his administrative fervour. Now he has time enough to ponder higher-minded questions, such as analysing the news that arrives from Paris, Saint Petersburg or Vienna; assessing his situation in relation to it; mapping strategies; devising plans; writing and responding to letters. Though he doesn’t know it, the Corsican won’t leave Elba for another six months. If there has ever been a time in his life when Bonaparte has had the opportunity to relax, to squander a few hours of
the day on activities far removed from his astonishing vocation as a man of the state, it is now, during Elba’s summer. But is this visit to the beehives truly so far removed from his calling as a strategist? Andrea Pasolini remembers the Marengo swarm. He imagines those thousands of soldiers, eager for a fight, awaiting the signal to launch a final assault, and Bonaparte astride his horse, unconcerned by the bated breath of his army, absorbed in the comings and goings of the bees, in the restless beating of their wings, as the swarm gathered around the queen who was soon to lead the way.

  From that day forward, after he learned of the connection between Bonaparte and bees, Pasolini’s routine as a beekeeper found a new release. He started foraging in the backrooms of booksellers located in Pisa, Luca and Florence, getting hold of the tiniest booklets with some special titbit about the First Consul, the most intimate detail, the most secret. The general details, the political feats and the war exploits, were in the official gazettes and were known inside out. Pasolini sounded out Napoleonic specialists, wearied his eyes reading dull memoirs and court chatter, wrote to beekeepers from Versailles and Paris. A few had heard of N.’s interest in bees but couldn’t contribute anything more than a tale or two of dubious authenticity.

  One day he was bold enough to write to Napoleon, who at the time was in Vienna. He received no reply, naturally. Yet months later a package arrived bearing the wax seal of the Emperor. Inside was a jar from Bohemia made of fine crystal and containing an amber, liquid honey. A label read Ajaccio, 1800.

  Might Bonaparte remember that gesture, made more than fourteen years ago, among all the favours and perks that he dealt out swiftly every gruelling day?

  7.

  At some stage, it is unclear when, the First Consul understood that one day he would visit Elba on a secondary mission or perhaps by ordering an unexpected stopover on his way to Corsica, Sicily or the coasts of Egypt. One day he would step ashore on Elba and visit the enlightened beekeeper who wanted to know about his penchant for bees. Perhaps that hunch, or that certainty, has delayed their encounter until the month of August. Might that be why he has seen to the island’s affairs with such devotion, when really to him they mean so little?

  Some of his premonitions have arisen from his dreams. Like many insomniacs, when he manages to sleep his dream activity is intense. In the maelstrom of the Russian campaign he dreamed for weeks that he was a beekeeper surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bees that he hated and crushed furiously beneath his boots, burning the hives where they laboured over their obscene honey to the exclusion of all else.

  The dream recurred with many variations. He would see himself slip his hands into the hives, letting his fingers run with the slimy, scented cells of wax and become completely covered in the insects, which weren’t game to sting him even after he demolished several dozen by closing his hand in a fist, just when they seemed to trust him most. At other times he was naked, swathed in a thick blanket of thousands of bees, and these were not bees of gold like the ones on the velvet and ermine mantle that he wore the day he was crowned Emperor. Cloaked in that blanket, he hurtled at a gallop down the muddy tracks of an island lashed by rain. This last dream produced in him a great ardour. He awoke with limitless energy, capable of the greatest sexual escapades and the most daring decisions, intoxicated by a battlefield elation that lasted several days and infected his generals and officials.

  There were also nights, like that white night – the Kremlin enveloped in flames – when he dreamed he was paralysed and beehives were arranged about him in a semicircle, like a firing squad. He opened his mouth and millions of furious worker bees rushed into his body, infiltrating its nooks and crannies, peppering his organs. On other nights he was violated by giant bees, succubi that sodomised him with their venomous stingers. Or he was the queen of a thick swarm, as large as a citadel, that was about to be mercilessly dismembered by legions of aroused drones.

  When did these dreams of bees begin? Undoubtedly before the Elban beekeeper’s bold letter. The letter had arrived to reaffirm those dreams, really, and if he hadn’t carried it with him in the imperial chest wherever he went he would have thought he’d dreamt it too.

  The suspicion that those dreams contained an ominous message would torture the First Consul in the months after he received Pasolini’s missive. That would be when he decided to send his dreams a truce signal. He sent two loyal members of his guard to Ajaccio, tasked with the mission of returning to the Tuileries Palace with the most transparent honey sourced from his birthplace. When he had it in his hands, he ordered that one jar be delivered to the Elban beekeeper.

  After the retreat from Russia, the nightmares were so exhausting and frightening that he would call meetings with his general staff at midnight and prolong them until the sun came up, when the magnificent plans he had devised in front of his marshals, dazed by exhaustion and stupor, could be put into practice. Those days were pervaded by a fervour for war without match. Bonaparte would sleep astride his horse and watch the battle play out in fragments.

  8.

  The beekeeper tosses and turns in bed. His wife is sleeping with her back to him. Around the mosquito net the beekeeper senses the whine of the mosquitoes. He gets up and, making his way very slowly, goes out to the porch. The full moon is ploughed through with blue shadows. He must write to Napoleon. He goes to the cellar.

  Mr Bonaparte:

  As you can see, I do not call you Emperor, for you no longer govern an empire. Nor do I address you with the highest military rank, as I do not know it (is it captain-general, marshal, or perhaps admiral?).

  You will think me a liar, but the truth is I do not envy you. Granted, I would like to be in your skin for a few days. I mean to say here, in Elba. None of this going to battle or the dazzle of court. Blood and dust make me woozy and so do wigs covered in powder, strong perfume and fawning. For instance, tomorrow and the day after.

  Tomorrow I would like to be you when you encounter the beekeeper to whom you announced your visit as if you were signing off on an execution. I am that beekeeper. The day after, because I would reflect on the previous day, arriving at some conclusion and thus decision. Being you, I could see myself as you see me, that is, as a beekeeper from Elba who in appearance (no: without the slightest doubt) is a fervent Bonapartist, since, if he were not, why would he have written to the Emperor expressing an interest in his bees? It is true that I wrote to you fifteen years ago and that since then certain things have happened in our lives, perhaps nothing truly crucial, we know that islanders are conservative. Being you, I could know traces of me that go by unnoticed but that undoubtedly shape my being. At the same time, I would understand aspects of you that no one has ever understood. But that is of lesser interest to me.

  Being you on the visit you pay me, I would no longer be the beekeeper you were going to visit to quell the tedium of an August day, piqued perhaps by a mild curiosity. That is, I would be another beekeeper, perhaps a real one, proud of his trade, reasonably satisfied with his life, ignorant and primitive. For, as far as I see it, being you would mean someone else would have to play me. No, it was never going to be you, not a chance. How arrogant.

  Asking you to be a modest apiculturist on the island of Elba for two days! Pass the beekeeper a sharpened blade!

  And yet, what would become of Bonaparte for forty-eight hours? You could be sleeping. I mean to say, your spirit could go to sleep, relishing the rest it deserved. Without question, another beekeeper would play me. He would have to be a beekeeper and understand honey production, the ins and outs of the trade, of the nature of the hive, of the rituals of the worker bees and everything else. If it were otherwise, how would I answer your questions and respond to your perceptive observations, yours despite being mine?

  Who would take my place, who would play Pasolini so I could be Bonaparte while your spirit slept in a tranquillity reminiscent of an abandoned hive, far from the delusions of a never-ending war? Perhaps the beekeeper who works as if possessed and aspires t
o putting his seal on all of Elba’s honey? That self-important man who looks down on me like he thinks he knows me and before whom I swallow my pride in order that he leave me in peace? No. Fabrizio no. I would go mad on coming back to myself after being Fabrizio for two days.

  On the other hand, getting up tomorrow as you, and at half-past six going to visit the beekeeper – me, Bonaparte’s beekeeper – who sent you that letter several lustra ago, only to encounter, instead, Fabrizio speaking through his mouth, dribbling tributes of subservience and rural calculation, bowing down at a perfect right angle repeatedly rehearsed: that would make me beat a hasty retreat.

  Although, thinking it through, I don’t see any other solution right now. And what complicates the matter is that, with Fabrizio busy playing Pasolini, one would have to import a new apiarist from the continent, since I am afraid it would be difficult to find another person deserving of the title on Elba. That newly arrived beekeeper, undoubtedly from Liguria, would play Fabrizio when you – a public official – visited him at midday, when we visited Fabrizio (for as I understand it you want me by your side all morning, a morning you plan to dedicate to Elba’s bees), who would not be him, but the beekeeper from Liguria.

  Pasolini dries the last page, dampens his fingers with saliva to clean the quill, and plugs the inkwell with a ball of wax from his virgins. On passing by the vegetable patch, he feels the tension that writing the letter has produced in the joints of his elbows, in his shoulders, in his neck. The eggplants shine purple, the green tomatoes give off a smell he has never known how to define.