The Bee Sting

by Paul Murray

This town’s sewage system is two hundred years old. It was never meant for the kind of use it’s getting now. New estates, building on floodplains. Then add global warming to the mix? No, he says, and he starts screwing a thin rod into another thin rod. You’re saying it won’t last? Dad says. I’m saying it’s being put under enormous pressure, Victor says. Enormous pressure. The tone is doomy. But Dad’s eyes are alight. Dad likes talking to Victor. Victor is one of the few people in town who knows about the things Dad knows about – Nazis and Napoleon and the fall of the Mayans, the terrible roll call of genocides that is the Past. PJ suspects that’s why Dad doesn’t mind so much when something goes wrong with the house, because it will give him a chance to talk to Victor. I suppose people don’t realize, Dad says. How fragile these things are. People have no idea, Victor says. No idea. But simply look at history, Dad says.