Butterfly (16 page)

November 24th
. No word from Pinkerton for the past several weeks. I suppose he is in the middle of the Pacific. I went to see B., who was bearing up courageously. She has stopped writing since learning that he was sailing, and she misses it; writing, at least, brought her a certain relief. It is strange that he should be so silent over the birth of his daughter. Since he knew when she was expecting, I should think he'd at least have written, even if her letter had gotten lost or delayed. I sensed B. was worried, but she would not let on.

December 1st.
Still nothing from P.; I guess we'll just have to wait for him to show up in person—his ship should be coming in soon. Even though I was quite busy, I went myself to give B. her money. This time she could not refrain from expressing her concern. Is he sick? Could something have happened? I tried to comfort her by saying that he had no doubt been swamped during the weeks before his departure; the explanation was perfectly reasonable, yet somehow I felt uneasy about his silence myself.

December 5th.
Pinkerton's letter—I am amazed and do not know what to think or say.

46

(Pinkerton's letter to Sharpless, dated November 4, 1897)

My dear Sharpless,

I am at a loss to formulate what I am about to ask of you. After all that has happened, you are sure to find my behavior strange, the more so as I cannot explain in detail. Circumstances unforeseen have forced me to acknowledge
what I have so long refused to see, namely that my union with Butterfly is without future. I have thus resolved to sever my relationship with her without delay, for any prolongation of it can in the end only create more pain both for her and for myself. If you would with your inimitable tact convey this to Butterfly, I should be forever in your debt—as indeed I am already. In view of the circumstances, I prefer to abstain from direct correspondence with her; it would be pointless to open a discussion that cannot but be futile.

I am sending a draft of ten thousand dollars for Butterfly, plus five hundred for expenses. Please do all that propriety and decency call for and if possible a little more. I leave everything to your discretion and put my trust entirely in your good judgment.

Yours in friendship and gratitude,

H
ENRY
P
INKERTON

47

(The Nagasaki ms.)

I cannot find words to describe the four months covered by the fateful contract. During the entire period I lived as in a trance. My strange role fitted me with surprising ease, as if the part had been learnt long ago and needed only a little prompting to be revived. Wide-eyed and impassive in the manner of a dreamer who wonders at all and nothing, I followed my mistress in her vagaries, and though they took us far, the landscape never seemed altogether alien. Indeed I was like a somnabulist obeying some unknown call from the soul's abyss.

Stretched between ravages of the flesh and ravishments of the
soul, my life insensibly drifted away from everyday reason and became so insensate, so truly insane, that in clearer moments I felt I would, by closing my eyes and giving myself a good shake, awaken from what seemed a rapturous nightmare. And in retrospect, the events, for all their vivid detail, tend to merge in a dreamlike tangle that resists contemplation. For what I lived from day to day was beyond the mind's imagining—not beyond what imagination can produce, but what imagination can square with reality, with reality soberly distilled and reconstituted to the familiar formula. It is fine to contemplate Jerome Bosch's grotesque creatures on a canvas, but will our imagination consent to jostle one in the street? Are such imaginary beings imaginable in the flesh?

The peculiar quality of this period eludes my pen. What I have set down makes its extravagance seem caricatural and dissuades me from extensive description of what I suffered—the indignities of Marika, who “trained” me; the derision of the two women; the violence they did to my body, mind and soul. Perhaps it is as well to pass over them quickly, for seen from this distance, the details, though lurid, tend monotonously to merge.

But there is one thing that I cannot gloss over, and though remembrance is painful, I must speak of it, as it was the moral pivot around which my life would turn.

My titular mistress's first command was to sever all ties with Butterfly. Communication was to terminate forthwith. At Kate's behest, I wrote to the vice-consul whom I had charged to look after Butterfly, asking him to convey to her my decision to break off relations. The absence of explanation—none was permitted—made me a cad twice over, but in any case I should have been hard put to explain.

Nor was this all. Not content to banish Butterfly from my life, Kate set about with diabolical cunning and thoroughness to demolish the Butterfly in my heart. Every relic I possessed was
confiscated and defiled in the most scurrilous fashion, then destroyed. Worse, in session after session of “confession,” my memories were ransacked, the most treasured wrenched from me and so insidiously besmirched that henceforth I could only try to avoid them in my shame.

Why did I permit it? Why did I acquiesce in sullying the woman I had loved, and loved still? What inner demon drove me to witness and even participate in acts that made me sicken with self-loathing and the desire for death? By comparison, the other torments Kate inflicted were as balsam, for the most egregious yielded their measure of perverse pleasure; whereas Butterfly's desecrated love festered like the wound of a poisoned arrow, next to which all else were but flamboyant whiplashes upon the skin.

48

He had told her all there was to tell but still the inquisition pressed on. It was as if he had swallowed a piece of poison apple and were now racked by spasms which, though the stomach had rendered all, continued to pump stinging bitterness into his throat and mouth.

“. . . so she cry ‘Forgive me’ when she come. Interesting. Tell us what names she call you when . . .”

Marika often surprised him with her knowledge of profane English; where could she have gotten it, if not from Kate? This, and the obscene testimonies Kate exacted, pointed to a familiarity with vulgar idiom hardly conceivable in a lady of her quality. But there could be no doubt about the skill with which she induced him to convert intimate moments into brutal, lewd language that disfigured them and stained them in his memory.

Nothing he could produce satisfied Kate, however. The farther
she went, the more frenziedly she pushed on; it was as if she were wrenching at something that persisted in eluding her. In his abject abandon, Pinkerton did his best to help. But what she was after, he too could not reach. Although he could feel it almost palpably—as could she, no doubt—he had no words to grasp it.

Perhaps in evading their words, that fugitive quantity so grimly pursued escaped their hell. For if Pinkerton's hell was more than words, words were the precipitants that caused it to emerge and take form. What words captured, hell retained; but what lay beyond words remained free.

One day, as if a dam had burst, a deep sadness swept over Pinkerton, so swiftly and poignantly that tears spurted from his eyes. Marika would have beaten him, but she was stopped.

While he wept and for some time afterward, Kate stared in ominous silence. Her face was livid. “Damn you,” he thought he heard her mutter. After that she no longer asked about Butterfly.

49

(From Sharpless's journal)

December 6th.
Hard to imagine what could have happened. Pressure from his family? A hitch from the political side? Perhaps now that he is settling into his father's shoes, life is presenting itself as less simple than he had imagined, with rules that even a Pinkerton cannot escape. Charlotte's feminine view is that he has fallen in love with another woman. She seems very sure, but I am not convinced.

What to say to B.? Tell her outright what is in P.’s letter? Invent something less brutal? “Use my inimitable tact"—damn him! What tact in the world could make his message acceptable?
I hadn't bargained for acting the go-between in this kind of delicate business. To my mind, if a man decides to run out on a woman, he ought to have the courage to tell her himself. It is not clear to me just why Pinkerton shouldn't, though I can understand how he might
want
to fob it off.

December 9th.
Finally wrote to P. telling him to inform B. directly of his decision. Charlotte derided my hesitation, asserting that I was blowing it up out of all proportion: if I consent to P.’s request, I should do it without such a fuss. According to her it's no big deal. I should not have expected such callousness, because she is not a callous soul. Does this intense prejudice stem from B.’s immoral past, or from the fact that she is Japanese? I can't imagine Charlotte taking such an attitude toward an American girl in similar circumstances. Yet how can it escape her that whatever B. may be, her feelings are no different from those of any other woman? C. does agree that I have no obligation to transmit such a message, for P. or anyone else.

December 10th.
Visit to B. I had gone with half a mind to tell her everything (I had come around to thinking that P. was perhaps not entirely wrong—probably I would break it more gently to her than an unkind letter). But in her presence my courage flagged. She was like a flower of love in bloom, breathing her faith as naturally as clear spring air. To utter anything against it would have been like brutally plucking petals in full blossom. Girding myself to deliver the little speech I had prepared, I had to remind myself forcibly of what necessity dictated. But at that very moment we were interrupted by the cry of the baby awakening. B. picked her up in her arms and started talking to her, asking whether she saw that I was there, the man who was her father's friend and who would be bringing him back to them any day now. (Not sure what she said, but with my poor
Japanese, that's what I managed to glean.) After that my resolve weakened and all I was able to get out was that P. had written briefly to say he had not sailed as planned, and that unforeseen complications were delaying his return: B. was not to worry, he would write to her when things let up a little. I was absolutely miserable saying this, and possibly that gave me away, because B. turned ashen. The transformation in her face was frightening to behold. The life, confidence, and joy that had so abounded drained away before my eyes and for a moment left her face void of life. Alarmed, I tried to reassure her, but she stopped me by saying very quietly, “He has another woman.” I was startled that she should instantaneously jump to the same conclusion as Charlotte, and I began to protest that this assumption was groundless. Her grave demeanor, however, cut short my expostulation. It had taken her but a second to gather herself; during that time she had apparently sized up the situation and taken her stance. I was reduced to silence by her quiet dignity and courage in the face of an adversity whose extent I knew more explicitly, if not better, than she herself. In my eyes she appeared transfigured. At that moment, I would have given anything in the world to alter Pinkerton's decision, had it but been in my power to do so.

To me she asked, “He says he will write to me?” At that point I had no choice but mendaciously to assent; but I resolved to see to it that P. does not make a liar out of me. I read in her eyes the questions “Why did he not write this to me directly?” and “Why hasn't he written all this time if he did not sail?” but she did not press the point. I wished I could somehow comfort her and took my leave with a heart aching with sorrow and impotence.

December 11th.
Wrote to P. telling him of my interview with Butterfly. With all due respect for the reasons he surely has for his decision, I urged him to reflect again, before taking any step that
is irrevocable, upon the seriousness of some things in life and the effects one's action may have on others. If he must abandon Butterfly, there is nothing for me to say, but he should, I again insisted, show at least enough consideration to write to her, and write in such a way as to cause her the least pain.

Writing the letter, however, did nothing to calm my unrest. On the contrary, I despaired at its futility. Deep down I do not believe I can influence him a whit in this matter. A change of heart, while not impossible, is all too unlikely. By refusing to act as his envoy, I force him to write her a letter, but what good ultimately is that?

December 12th.
B. has written a long letter to P., which she brought to my office in a thick envelope. It oppressed me, perhaps with a feeling of guilt, for if I had spoken as I had intended, she would not have gone to this futile effort, whose product will elicit no response and might not even be read for all one knows. While putting her letter as usual into an envelope for diplomatic mail, I noticed it had not been properly sealed; seized all at once by an impulse I cannot explain, I opened it and with beating heart perused the pages. Though written in often ungrammatical English, it is an eloquent, even beautiful composition, at once reassuring and playful; while evoking their past happiness, it affirms the present that binds them more strongly than ever in the form of little Etsuko—of whom she paints a lively and delightful picture. She chides him for his prolonged silence, but very gently, and goes on to talk with great understanding about him and his needs—his future, his career, the need for freedom that a young man has. He should, she emphasizes, feel free to do as he wishes; she has no desire to tie him down in any way, nor does she feel they must necessarily live together all year round. She would feel comfortable with the arrangement that best suits his needs, however unconventional or
strange it might seem to others, because the love that holds them together is strong enough to permit what others cannot afford. She clearly hints, though she does not explicitly state it, that she would tolerate another woman in his life—that, when it comes down to it, he is free to practice bigamy. This shocked me considerably. My first reaction was that no self-respecting woman could stoop to such a shameless proposal. I felt ashamed for Butterfly, and angry, for I felt somehow betrayed, I who had been treating her as honest when her mentality remained that of a kept woman. In thinking about it more, however, my censoriousness abated. I began to see that she had formed her own idea of how things stood and was proceeding according to a conscious strategy. This filled me with admiration, and also a certain uneasiness.