Butterfly (14 page)

Chance or fate had it that Marika was outside taking in the wash when I rode up. I wanted to turn around, but she had
already seen me. “You are late!” she said by way of greeting. “She wait for you.” Without giving me a chance to reply, she started up the steps. I followed indecisively, my heart aflutter.

Kate, sitting in an informal white dress, looked dazzlingly fresh and lovely, and anything but the armored virago I half-expected to find. Her youthful guileless aura transported me back in time to the bride I had once left behind. As my eyes sank into her alluring softness, all that since had come between us seemed like a dream from which I was awakening.

Looking up from her book, she charmed me with a smile. “Ah, I didn't think you were coming.”

Put off guard and reassured by the appearance of normalcy, I could almost imagine myself an old friend dropping in for an afternoon visit. “I almost didn't,” I said, falling in with her casual tone; in my agitation, I clutched at anything that momentarily provided an orientation. “I decided this morning to leave for Japan—soon, in a day or two.”

For a few seconds, Kate's brow darkened with I know not what somber emotion, but then the shadow, like that of a swift-passing cloud, lifted and her face glowed with an angelic sweetness I had never seen nor would see again. At that moment she seemed transfigured beyond beauty.

“I am very glad, Henry,” she said simply. Her sincerity was certain, and I felt no attempt whatever on her part to hold or to captivate. I can still see her sitting before me, an incarnate vision of all I had loved and dreamt of, but cast with a perfection beyond my imagining.

“Will you have some tea?” she asked, motioning me to the divan. Her loveliness dazed me; I could not think or speak. As I continued to stand in seeming hesitation, she said, “If you are pressed for time, don't feel obliged to stay. I can imagine all that you have to do.” She stood up and came toward me, and for a moment we stood face-to-face.

I was aware only of one single overpowering wish, to prolong the moment, to continue gazing at a beauty my eyes would never again behold once I left the room. To be sure, I could still have accepted tea, with a phrase, a gesture, it would have been the easiest thing in the world. But my heart was too full—not with any wayward, fantastical desire but with simple admiration and love. And it was my heart that spoke.

“Kate, I . . . don't want to leave you.” The words, unpremeditated and unbidden, jolted me; without warning, my love for her surged up vertiginously, like a giant wave; carried on its crest, I blurted out that I had not come to say good-bye.

Kate sucked in her breath slightly and, frowning, cast her eyes to the floor; then she turned and slowly took a few steps away from me. When she looked up again, she was amazingly transformed. Her eyes, cold and piercing now, glinted strangely.

“Why have you come then?”

I looked at her in bewilderment; her eyes were opaque and implacable. “Why, because . . .” I muttered in confusion. “Well, we had said that I would come today if . . . if . . .”

“Why have you come, Henry?” she asked again, brushing aside my stammerings. Her voice was edged with exasperation, and uncomprehendingly I sensed a tremor of rage in her slim but powerful body, now drawn proudly to its full height. Like petals suddenly desiccated, the softness fell away; even the fringes of her dress seemed to stiffen. A ghostly shadow flickered over her face, giving profile to the splendid features. I was entranced by the mutations of her beauty, heightened at that moment by an uncommon intensity of expression, but the woman I knew and loved had faded into another, strange and darkly enthralling.

It was her eyes that caught me; those fateful eyes, so dark it was hard to determine their color, so deep they seemed a conduit to some mysterious pristine place beyond time and measure—I had known their infinity of shades and meanings, but now I perceived
only an intense blue-black void, which so powerfully drew me in that I could not look away.

“Why have you come?” she insisted, harshly this time.

That imperious question, chiming and chiming again, was like a knell summoning back expelled demons to my beleaguered heart. I colored in confusion as the answer to her peremptory question, against reason and will, stirred and rose in a dizzying flush: that I had come to offer myself, yes, as her slave. But a sense of absurdity prevented me from uttering the words, though my throat burned with their strangled cry.

“Go on, say it,” Kate prompted, softly now, as if reading into my heart, and when I still hung fire, coaxed in her low melodious voice while her eyes tugged at my wailing soul. “Say it, Henry.”

Then I spoke the phrase that was constricting my heart like a coiled serpent; and my eyelids drooped with shame.

“Really?” I heard the frown and did not dare raise my eyes. In the silence I could almost hear something tearing inside her. With sudden, terrible vehemence she cried, “Then kneel!”

The command stunned me, and though my will might have complied, my body, balking at the exotic act, hovered irresolutely. Uncertain, I looked up and was instantly caught again in her mesmerizing gaze. I knew at once that everything hung on this moment, that my entire existence was balanced on a razor's edge. In a flash of heightened awareness, I saw my love in its entirety crystallized into a jewel perched high, high overhead, precariously—more than precariously, for it quivered and was already tipping—over a chasm of such darkness that if it fell, the fall would never end. With all my heart I wanted to reach it, to steady it; my life was nothing in comparison, I should not have hesitated an instant to throw it down if only I could have saved the jewel. But it was so far, too far. Simultaneously, I had become conscious of being still on my feet and able to walk away, and my
mind rehearsed with astonishing vividness every movement it would take to turn and reach the door.

But I did not move. Her eyes held me like lacquered pools of quicksand. I knew I must not be caught in them, but it was too late. Yet I struggled, I know not for how long. I only remember the eerie sensation of my will seeping away, as it were, drop by drop, while her eyes’ terrible hypnotic beauty invaded and filled my soul until I was but an empty vessel for her greater volition.

Our eyes still locked, we sank downward in a slow and weirdly graceful synchrony, she into her armchair and I to my knees.

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“Always, Kate, for as long as I live!” Pinkerton protested. “I won't leave you, I can't, not next week, not ever, not even if you drive me away! I'd die first!” In his passion, he shuffled over to where she sat and covered her hand with kisses.

Inertly, her hand accepted the homage; then, suddenly, it slipped away and slapped him with resounding violence. Dazed, he crouched, immobilized by incomprehension and spontaneous rage. The next instant, however, a surreptitious pleasure began to tingle until his cheek, still stinging from the blow, burned with voluptuous shame. He felt a satisfaction deep and mysterious, like an inhalation of opium, for was not her gratuitous abuse the surest acknowledgment of his servitude, the most concrete affirmation of her authority? He lowered his head almost to her feet but without daring to touch them. Mimicking Marika, he crooned in a parched unnatural voice, “Thank you for your gracious correction.”

A little grunt of approval mixed with scorn rewarded the effort it had cost him to bring out such a ridiculous-sounding phrase.

“A slave must show respect at all times. He is not to slobber over his mistress or to touch her without permission. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

Her foot came up sharply, the heel catching his lower lip. His head jerked back; a taste of blood filled his mouth. “Yes what?” she snapped. “Mind your manners, slave!”

“Yes . . . Mistress!”

The words had a sweetness on his tongue unlike any he had known. He flushed, but his embarrassment quickly turned into pleasure, and abandoning himself to it he added loud and clear and with savage relish, “Thank you, Mistress, for graciously correcting your humble slave.” Already the quaint locution was sitting better on his tongue. As with wallowing in mud, one soon got used to it and more easily let oneself go.

In acknowledgment, Kate held out her foot. Pinkerton kissed it, and when it was not withdrawn, kissed it again with more ardor. Kate let the foot linger against his cheek. Emboldened by her indulgence, he removed the slipper. A faintly vinegary odor of perspiration mounted to his head; drunken with eagerness, his lips closed over her toes.

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(The Nagasaki ms.)

My indenture was ratified in the following contract:

We the undersigned Henry Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and Kathleen Hamilton hereby engage ourselves, for a period of four months, to a strict observance of the terms stated below.

1 · Mr. Pinkerton will present himself at Miss Hamilton's home every day at four o'clock
P.M.
and will remain for ninety minutes, during which time he will be at Miss Hamilton's entire disposition and will obey her orders without discussion or modification.

2 · Failure to carry out instructions will be punished at Miss Hamilton's discretion, without possibility of appeal.

3 · Mr. Pinkerton will forswear conjugal ties as well as all engagements of a like nature.

4 · Mr. Pinkerton will abstain from engaging in any form of sexual gratification.

5 · Mr. Pinkerton will renounce autonomy over all mental, moral, and physical faculties; hence he will at all times be subject, mentally no less than physically, to Miss Hamilton's direction.

6 ·
Unless expressly ordered to do so, Mr. Pinkerton will refrain from touching or asking to touch Miss Hamilton's person. Exception is made of Miss Hamilton's feet and those parts of her leg below the knee; to these he is permitted to render spontaneous homage.

7 · Mr. Pinkerton will never in his lifetime divulge the nature of the relationship defined by the present contract, nor will he disclose anything he may learn about Miss Hamilton in his capacity of personal slave.

8 · Mr. Pinkerton will neither resent nor seek compensation for any eventual loss or damage to his person or property incurred directly or indirectly by the terms of his indenture.

9 · Mr. Pinkerton will of his own accord confess any breach, mental or physical, of Miss Hamilton's instructions; he pledges his honor to maintain absolute veracity in his relations with Miss Hamilton.

10 · Miss Hamilton will acknowledge Mr. Pinkerton as her slave and will treat him as inalienable chattel. Beyond this, she is
bound by no obligation of any nature toward him. With the sole exceptions of alienation and dismissal, she will enjoy absolute rights over his body and mind, including the rights of mutilation and destruction.

44

“What you tasted of the whip the other day is nothing,” Kate warned him, “compared to what may be in store. It would be a grave mistake to imagine that you'll be playing children's games. Once you put your signature to that paper, you'll be bound body and soul. In my eyes you will cease to be a man, and I shan't hesitate to do to you what I wouldn't do to any man or woman. The contract is a temporary one, but the consequences for you will have nothing temporary about them. In fact, there is no guarantee you'll survive to make a retrospective evaluation. Be very clear on this point, Henry. Although I have no plans to take your life, I cannot answer for what happens to a slave—it's in the nature of my role as mistress that I shall have no one to answer to, and a slave's life is worth as much as his mistress's pleasure and not a whit more.”

While she spoke, her hands toyed with a small porcelain cup that had been on the teapoy beside her. All of a sudden, she cracked it crisply, like an egg, against the table's edge; the paper-thin porcelain split instantly in two. Kate gazed at the pieces in her hand with detached curiosity.

“It was a fine piece,” she mused. “Louis Quinze Sèvres. I've had it for a long time.” Her eyes fixed on Pinkerton as she tossed the pieces carelessly onto the table. “So think well on it: unless you truly feel you cannot live away from me—and let me tell you that you'd be a fool to feel so—I advise you to tear up that paper and walk out of this room once and for all.”

Pinkerton himself would surely have come to that very conclusion, for the document was so outrageous, indeed so absurd, that it was hard to take seriously. But Kate's menaces and her violent, insensate gesture had lent it an intoxicating if sinister reality; her advice, so incongruously sensible, only exacerbated his passion. He shuddered at her words, and threw himself into his folly.

“Take my life!” he cried. “Tomorrow, today, when you will. Away from you, my life will be nothing to me, less than nothing!”

Snatching up the pen, Pinkerton scratched his name at the bottom of both copies and flung himself at her feet. The violent movement hurt his wound so that he nearly cried out, but he was heedless in his exaltation. On his knees, as if initiating the rite that was to become his entire existence, he handed her the document in which he had signed away his life.

Part Two

45

(From Sharpless's journal of 1897)

[Editor's note: The diary of George C.

Sharpless, vice-consul at Nagasaki during Pinkerton's first two sojourns in that city, unfortunately has not survived intact (see note p. 157). The entries reproduced below are from the year 1897.]

May 14th.
Pinkerton shipping out in a hurry because his father has taken ill. Asked me to look after Butterfly in his absence, give her monthly household money, see to it she has all she needs. I asked if he really thought he was going to return. He indignantly countered by asking whether I was considering leaving Japan without Charlotte? Piqued, I told him straight that, while we took in stride his setting up house with a Japanese girl, his compatriots and I did not take it for granted that he considered her his legitimate wife; nor did he himself a year ago, if he would take the trouble to remember. He backed down and admitted as much, but explained that he had since changed in his sentiments and now considered himself married in good faith. Moreover, he thought he had made this evident, though apparently not to all. There I couldn't fault him, for he had expressed his change of attitude on a number of occasions, only neither I nor Charlotte nor any other American here took him very seriously. Someone in his position could be expected to have his fling and do it in a lavish way, but for that very reason, one would expect him eventually to return to the life to which he had been born. And how would Butterfly fit into that life, I asked? Would he take her home with him? Surely he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life in Japan? I could see that he wasn't comfortable with the
question and didn't press for an answer. In fact, I felt a little sorry for him, because he's going to have people pressing him—hard, too—once he gets home. I don't imagine his family will sit by and let him bring home a Japanese bride; but who knows? The rich are a race apart. A Pinkerton can permit himself things the rest of us wouldn't dream of.