We woke up early and drove to the Danish camp. On Sundays the mess served brunch. There were waffles, pancakes and other food you could not find easily in Kosovo.

 

We handed over our passports at the gate. We washed our hands in the long, metal communal sink. Pickled herring seemed exotic and delicious to me. They flew it in, along with salmon and shrimp. They made their own pastries. Every month: planes loaded with pickled herring, flying to Kosovo. Danish women are not my type. I told my wife, “She’s not my type.” But I could not help staring at the statuesque blondes in camouflage, the definition of Nordic. Maybe they were my type. I think my wife stared at them too. Maybe they were everyone’s type. We all enjoyed Danish brunch.

She went to the office for a couple of hours. I walked to the plant store. The lime tree was still in the window. It was hardly a branch, bent nearly double by two improbably large green fruits. I bought the tree for my wife, who loves mojitos. We grow the mint for mojitos from sprigs we dug out of the ground in Zvecan i Vogel. The mint grows quickly, but limes are hard to find in Kosovo. My wife was making mojitos in a friend’s garden when the landlady approached in her alarm. “Don’t use those lemons,” she warned, pointing to the pile of cut lime crescents. “They’re bad!” It was hard to find limes in Kosovo.

I carried the tree home. I was crossing the corzo when I glanced at the fruits, bobbing over my shoulder like fish on a line. Their skins were less green in the bright sunshine. It was not a lime tree after all.

We picked my friends up outside of the school. My friend and her father. We drove a few meters to the west bridge, which is only wide enough for one car. The KPS did not stop us for our ID. We drove north through Sohudoll. My friend’s father pointed out the abandoned ditch by the side of the road. Work on the water pipes had stopped. Maybe the water would come from the Danes now. We drove further north, to a small village whose name I do not know.

He didn’t know exactly which house. We stopped in the road where some children were playing. He asked them which house. They pointed across the road. The women got out of the car while I swung it up the hill into the gravel driveway. The children speculated out loud about which nationality we might be.

The beekeeper led us up the hill to the hives. He showed us three that he would sell. He opened the lids and pulled slats from the hive. Bees dripped from the slats onto his thick bare fingers. He told the girls to stay away if they were wearing perfume. The girls stood apart and pulled apples and plums from the trees. I looked to my friend’s father for advice. He shrugged his shoulders, which meant that the most expensive hive was the best. I paid the beekeeper half the money. I told him I would pay him the other half tomorrow. My friend’s father was a respected man. The beekeeper knew I was good for the money. He invited us to sit on his porch and drink coffee with him. We walked down the hill to his house.

They used smoke to stun the bees. Smoke warns the bees of a coming forest fire. They gorge themselves on honey to prepare for evacuation. The sudden feast makes them docile and heavy. It didn’t take long. The beekeeper’s assistant blocked the hive exits with newspaper and tape. He put the hive in the trunk of my car.

We drove south again to my friend’s father’s house.

We watched while he built a small table behind the cherry tree near the greenhouse. The table faced the morning sun, but the cherry tree gave shade in the afternoon. The table looked weak, but I figured that he knew what he was doing. Before the war he had bees at their home in Leposavic. He was one of the few in his neighborhood with a car then. A neighbor had asked him to transport some of his hives once, and this is when he became interested in bees himself. He bought his own hive, but this was destroyed when his house was occupied. After they war they returned and bought another colony of bees, but Norwegian KFOR sprayed the area for mosquitoes and those bees died too. He didn’t ask for compensation. He bought another house in the south and moved his family there.

I told him I would pay for the bees if he would teach me everything he knew about them, and he agreed. So we put the hive in his yard, where the morning sun would warm the hive to life, but the cherry tree would give it shade in the afternoon heat. The hive would be his when I left Kosovo. He told me how to feed them sugar water so that they would produce surplus honey for the winter. Boil one part sugar and one part water, and pour the mixture into the top. Winter was coming, but everyone said that this hive seemed large and strong. For now they would feed on his garden flowers and the sugar water. In the winter we would have to feed them more while they stayed inside the hive. He told me to come to visit and work with the bees anytime I wanted to. He invited us into his sitting room for tea. We sat on couches while his wife served us. I thought that bees were metaphors for nearly anything, but my wife was mostly interested in the honey. She was interested in the results. And really, bees are not metaphors.

She fell asleep early. It had been a long Sunday. I stood on the balcony next to the lemon tree and smoked. The family across the street was returning from a party. Their son stepped out of the car, pulling the crotch of his pants away from his body with his right hand. He had been circumcised earlier in the week, and the wound was still raw. He pigeon-stepped carefully from the car to the gate, pulling himself along with his right hand. I put out my cigarette and went inside. Our landlord had returned from a two-month vacation in Montenegro and brought us a gift. A model ship with sails. It sat on the coffee table. I was looking at it when the power went out.

 

Blackbird is an American blogger living in Mitrovica.