The Beekeeper's Ball

He gritted his teeth, enduring the grooming in order to get the picture taking over with quicker.

“Goodness,” Mama said, “you’re taller than me all of a sudden. When did that happen?”

“He’s going to be taller than all of us,” said Farfar, his grandfather, reaching out to straighten Magnus’s tie. Even though it wasn’t a Sunday, they were all wearing their Sunday best. The starched and creased collar cut into his neck.

Uncle Sweet had set up a big cube-shaped black camera on a tripod, its accordion-fold lens aimed at the apple tree in the backyard, where they were gathering for the family portrait. Sweet wasn’t really Magnus’s uncle, and Sweet’s daughter, Eva, wasn’t really Magnus’s cousin. Yet Magnus had long known him as Uncle Sweet. His real name was Sigur, but everyone called him Sweet. Papa said they’d come up through school together as boyhood friends, the way Magnus was with Kiki Rasmussen, his best mate.

Sweet was a photographer, making his living by taking pictures of people and buildings. He used to have a studio and picture laboratory in Strøget, but he closed up shop soon after the Germans invaded Denmark and overran the city. Papa said this was because Uncle Sweet was Jewish.

“All together, now,” he said, motioning Magnus and his parents and Farfar to their places under the tree. “You, too, Eva. How pretty you look, with those ribbons in your hair.”

Unlike Magnus, Eva seemed to like getting all dressed up. She preened as she stood next to him. Then Uncle Sweet got into the picture, and fired the shutter with a button on a cable attached to the camera. He repeated this several times until he was satisfied.

“Good work, everyone,” he declared, clapping his hands. He had a funny grin and dark hair that stuck out over his ears. Magnus had always thought he looked like a tall, skinny clown. “I’ll go to the basement and process the plates. Eva, hang up your good clothes and finish putting your things away in your new room.”

“Yes, Poppy.” Flipping back her fat, dark pigtails, she followed him into the house.

Papa had explained to Magnus that Uncle Sweet and Eva had been put out of their house, and were coming to live with them. For safety’s sake, they had to pretend they truly were family. The photograph was meant to promote the illusion. It would be displayed on Mama’s pianoforte, along with the other family pictures.

“How long will they stay with us?” Magnus asked his mother.

“For as long as they need to, I would imagine.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “That poor little girl. I don’t know what her mother can be thinking, abandoning her family.”

Sweet had a beautiful wife named Katya, but Magnus had always thought her a bit strange. She rarely joined in the picnics and parties with Magnus’s family, and she was always complaining that Sweet didn’t make enough money. She loved pretty things and said he never bought her enough of them.

“Does that mean Eva’s mother won’t be coming to live with us?”

Mama looked as if she’d tasted something sour. “No, she will not. She ran off with a German officer.”

“Why do you say she ran off?” he asked his mother. “Last week, Kiki and I saw her through the window of the Crown Prince tea room, and she wasn’t running.”

“It’s just an expression,” Mama said. “It means she no longer chooses to be with her family.” Her mouth turned even harder and more disapproving.

“Because the German officer can give her fancy things so she would rather be with him,” Magnus concluded, repeating a snippet of gossip he’d heard.

“As I said, I don’t know what she must be thinking. Just don’t speak of it in front of Uncle Sweet and Eva. It makes Eva very sad.”

“I would never say anything,” Magnus promised. He tried to imagine what it would be like, seeing his mother with some stranger, and a German at that. The very idea made his skin crawl.

* * *

Uncle Sweet had turned the basement into his workshop and laboratory. Magnus was fascinated by his collection of cameras, big and small, and by the workings of the darkroom. Sometimes Sweet would let him watch as he created a print, the image appearing onto the paper in the chemical bath, like a ghost emerging from another world. Most of the pictures commemorated life’s events—marriages and birthdays, new babies and commencements. Some of his clients had their pictures made with horses or dogs, or surrounded by gardens.

As far as Magnus knew, that was the extent of his work.

He found out Sweet’s secret one day not long before Christmas. The first good freeze had arrived in Golden Prince Park, and Magnus wanted to go skating with his schoolmates. His skates still fit, but the blades were dull. He clumped down to the basement to find the whetstone, bringing a lighted candle with him. They had an electric torch, but thanks to the war, batteries were hard to come by.

He shut the door behind him so his mother wouldn’t complain about the draft. The smell of damp stone mingled with the sharp reek of Uncle Sweet’s chemicals. Magnus set the candle on a shelf and looked around for the stone to sharpen his skate blades.

There were tools stored in a wooden chest under the stairs. He dropped to his knees to begin the search. At the same moment, the basement door swished open and then quickly shut, the movement blowing out Magnus’s candle.

Three shadowy figures came down the stairs, lighting their way with an oil lantern. Magnus froze. He didn’t dare breathe.

“Were you seen?” asked Magnus’s father. Speaking English.

“Doubtful,” said an unfamiliar voice. “And would it matter, when I’m dressed like your dotty old grandmother?”

“Can’t be too careful,” said Sweet, also speaking English. “The Germans are like watchdogs. They never sleep.”

Magnus had been studying English in school since he’d been begun losing his milk teeth, and he understood it perfectly. Each night, they listened to broadcasts in English on Farfar’s shortwave radio. But what was an Englishman doing in the basement?

Magnus should have made his presence known. But it all happened so fast, and he was so startled that he simply froze, riveted to the spot under the stairs.

“If they never sleep,” the stranger said, “then won’t they catch on?”

“Not with the travel permit we’re going to create for you,” said Uncle Sweet. “You’ll be able to go anywhere without being questioned.”

Magnus poked his head up between the risers of the stairs in time to see the stranger take off his head scarf and shawl. He was a dark-haired man, his features in shadow. “How long have you gentlemen been with the Princes?”

Magnus pressed his lips together to stifle a gasp. The Princes were a shadowy organization of intelligence officers from the Danish army. Although nothing could be proven, rumor had it that the Princes regularly channeled reports to London, at great risk to themselves. The idea that his father and Sweet secretly worked for the group gave Magnus a thrill of fear.

“We have no knowledge of this group,” his father murmured. “If we don’t know the answer, then it can’t be tortured out of us.”

Magnus pressed his lips together even harder.

“Please, take a seat on this crate for the portrait.” Uncle Sweet got his camera ready on a tripod and held the flash bar high up in the air.

“Hold still. Neutral face. Don’t smile,” said Magnus’s father.

The flash fired, its glare shining on the man’s face. He needed a shave. He wore a plain broadcloth shirt and dark colored pants. Sweet closed the black curtains around the darkroom and quickly went to work.

The stranger set a long flat wooden box on a pair of sawhorses and lifted out what appeared to be a firearm made of pipes. Magnus clamped his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Here it is,” the Englishman said. “The STEN gun, as promised. British made, very simple and powerful. It will fire ten rounds per second. I’m told you can take it apart and make a draft of each individual piece.”

Magnus’s father nodded. He picked up a piece of the disassembled gun. “You see how this looks? It could be anything. A part for a clock. A mechanism for a tire pump. Taken bit by bit, a gun is unrecognizable. Even a trained eye would not know this is the trigger of a lethal weapon. On the sketches, each element will be measured and labeled as a sewing machine part.”

“Sewing machine?”

Papa shrugged. “As I explained, piece by piece, the production drawings will look innocent enough.”

“And you have a manufactory in place?”

Another nod. “Assuming the materials have been rounded up, we will have the resources to manufacture thousands of these.”

“Good, then—”

“I would not call it good. But necessary in these times.”