Butterfly (19 page)

What compelled his unswerving adherence to a contract that no one could enforce? In the first place fear. Although only a negligible amount of bodily harm was actually inflicted, the threat of torture was never absent, and it was Kate's art to make him feel that nothing was beyond her imagination and power. Even in sober moments, Pinkerton would shudder at the thought that, should he break away, he might be pursued and gruesomely punished (as was provided for by the contract). Rationally, he was sure Kate would not take such extreme measures, but that did not cancel his terror.

The deeper fear, however, was of being definitively banished. If ever he should stay away, Kate had warned, he must stay away for good. This, his mutinous outbursts notwithstanding, he was never ready to do. For at no time did he entirely renounce Kate's love. Lost, her love was like a magnificent wine that had been spilled and whose dregs he now treasured almost more than the wine itself while the bottle was full.

Sometimes Pinkerton's mind boggled at his situation, it seemed so preposterous; at such moments he was tempted to tear up the contract. But the sense of absurdity, of hollow unreality, always veered back to a renewed reverence for his mistress, indeed to a quasi-religious awe, and like a penancing mystic after a bout with temptation, he would want to push back still further the limits of his surrender; had it been possible, he would have etched their covenant into skin and flesh and engraved it on his heart.

59

(The Nagasaki ms.)

As the weeks wore on, I lost myself more and more in Kate. Toward the end of the trial period, I became occasionally aware of a heightened concentration, as if the divers elements of my existence, from thoughts and feelings down to everyday odds and ends, were all converging in the person of my mistress, or at some invisible point beyond. As discipline leached my passion, that beauty which daily drew me on—and which I was forbidden to contemplate in the flesh though my life was organized to worship it—receded past its dazzling surface toward a splendor subtler than that of mortal substance lusted after by the mortal eye. From the woman I loved, Kate became the avatar of something beyond fleshly ravagements and fleshly desire. My whole life was nothing but a prayer to it—an idolater's, but prayer nonetheless. And to the extent that it laid waste my manhood, I came to know a bliss as ethereal and pure as a mystic anchoret's when he approaches oneness with the divine.

60

(The Nagasaki ms.)

After many weeks of dressage, I was gradually admitted into Kate's proximity. By the time our contract drew imperceptibly to its term, I was performing the services of a chambermaid. This new and hard-earned intimacy made it seem inconceivable that our bond should be severed, and though Kate intimated that she would be as punctilious in observing the contract's termination as
in implementing its clauses, neither she nor I evidently believed for a moment that I would reclaim or indeed accept my liberty. On several occasions, a second and permanent contract was mentioned. The terms would be terrible and utterly uncompromising, I was given to understand, and I should do well to consider before binding myself to them for life. Such warnings did little more than fan the flames that consumed me and whose heat my lips sought feverishly to convey to mistress's feet.

What was my surprise when, upon expiration of our contract, Kate not only refused to consider a new one but proscribed all slavelike behavior as well as references to slavery. I was warned in particular against calling her “mistress” and “unseemly” deportment such as falling on my knees would banish me forever. All those habits so laboriously and painfully inculcated during the four previous months were thus abrogated at a single stroke.

Abrogated, but not eradicated. After the very first day of enfranchisement, I knew to my alarm that never again could I be free; three days of it convinced me that I should go mad if I had to continue seeing Kate on this false “equal footing.” For where the “slave” had enjoyed a degree of intimacy normally denied even a husband or lover, the “gentleman” had to observe the distance required of a stranger. Sitting stiffly opposite her on the divan with a teacup in my hand, I was bitterly struck by the contrast. While a slave, I had begun to fall in with her rhythms and to sense her predilections in a thousand little things, but now all those links and feelers dropped into the gulf that had opened up between the divan and Kate's armchair, and I became awkward and tongue-tied in her presence. When I tried to speak of this, Kate silenced me with a gesture of impatience.

I did not break the habit of presenting myself every afternoon, but our interviews were stiff and formal and became drier and shorter from one visit to the next; imperceptibly I had slipped into the role of the unwanted suitor whose presence is a strain on
polite tolerance. But since nothing better came to mind, I continued my visits in the hope that something would change.

On the sixth afternoon, I was informed at the door that Kate was out. I was mortified at what I took to be my dismissal, which I had not expected to come so soon. I must have turned very pale, because Marika asked whether I was ill and wished to sit down. Then Kate really was absent! This assuaged my fears and I straightaway felt better, but I was grateful for the chance to talk with Marika, who, taking her cue from her mistress, was treating me with a distant, amnesiac politeness; I had once again become
Monsieur Henri.

“She is out all afternoon,” Marika told me. “So you must not wait for her. But I make you tea if you like.”

I accepted a cup and, when she brought it, asked her to sit with me. “As
Monsieur
wish,” she said and placed herself primly on the edge of an armchair.

“We're alone here, I presume, so why don't we drop the
’Monsieur?
I don't see any reason for this ridiculous game of pretending that nothing's happened. Marika, surely we can speak openly, you and I?” I was at the end of my tether and spoke with a heated urgency.

Marika folded her arms and let herself fall back in the armchair. “As you wish. You want to say something particular to me?”

I was suddenly at a loss for words. “Well, you know . . .” I began, and immediately felt myself redden with emotion. “You know how I feel about . . . her. I would do anything for her, you know that, but she is making things so complicated. Why, Marika? Can you tell me? Because I don't understand it at all.”

Marika stared at me as if she could not imagine of what I spoke. “Oh, you know very well what I mean,” I burst out in exasperation. “This little game of politeness—this farce! If it's to get rid of me—certainly there are easier ways! But I'm not even
convinced that she wants to get rid of me. We were, well . . . she seemed satisfied with me, toward the end—she was, wasn't she? Pretty much? So why stop? Why insist on making everything different again? Is it just to play with me? I simply cannot figure it out. What is it that she wants? Do you know?”

Marika fixed me with her large catlike eyes. “What do
you
want?”

Once again I felt myself redden. “I? Oh, I ... I just want to stay with her. That's all I want ... to be near her.” The last words trickled out tonelessly.

“As her slave?”

Surprised to hear the banned word pronounced that I had been careful to avoid, I momentarily floundered. Part of me wanted to object, but at bottom I knew the truth, even if a reluctance to avouch it still lingered. “Yes,” I murmured at last with lowered eyes. “As her slave.”

Marika was silent for a few seconds. “Why do you not ask for her hand?”

“Her hand?”

“Yes, in marriage.”

The idea seemed so incongruous that I simultaneously felt a twinge of irritation and an impulse to laugh. “Please don't make fun of me, Marika,” I remonstrated dryly. “For me it is very serious.”

“I am serious too,” Marika protested, but her eyes were bright with mockery. “You are hopeless, you American men, you undertand nothing. You come and you sit planted there stiff and silent like a tree, and you expect a woman to give you what you want. You do not make yourself agreeable, you do not bring gifts—not even flowers! You do not give the smallest sign of your sincerity, and then you say, ‘I want to be slave, that's all I want!’ As if it is
rien du tout!"

I stared at her dumbfounded.

“You think it is nothing to take a slave? You think it is easy to be a mistress? A mistress take responsibility for her slave, and it is for all the life. Only a husband is for all the life, but a husband, one is not responsible for him. You think marriage is a big affair, but taking a slave is bigger, much bigger! So one do not take a slave until he show himself really sincere.”

“If anyone has shown himself to be sincere, it would be me,” I protested heatedly. “How could she possibly doubt my sincerity? That's really absurd!”

“Then marry her.”

Again I stared at Marika. “You talk as if all I had to do was ask! What about her? What possible reason would she have to marry me, if she is reluctant even to keep me as her . . . slave?”

“You are very innocent.” Marika smiled. “You are from an excellent family, you are rich, you are
sortable,
you are docile. What reason more can there be? You make a suitable husband—and a woman always need a husband.”

I had not thought of it this way and could not immediately adjust to the new perspective. “Do you think she would have me for a husband after . . . what we've had?”

Marika looked at me with a mixture of wonder and disdain. “But you do not imagine you will sleep in her bed because you marry her!
Ah non!”
She seemed tickled by that preposterous eventuality. “To the world you will be her husband, but at night you will lie at her feet, or outside the door.” Her lips curled derisively and she added, “Like a dog.”

61

“So you think I should propose marriage,” mused Pinkerton. Even though he had done it once before and with success, all that had happened since made it hard to imagine how he should go about it now. “And you think she'll listen to me.”

“She will listen to you,” Marika said, “if you show you are sincere.”

Pinkerton threw up his hands. “What more can I do? If she still isn't persuaded of my sincerity, I really don't see how I can change it!”

“A little imagination,
Monsieur Henri.”

But his imagination, when he drew upon it, produced nothing that Marika approved.

“Well, what would you do in my place?” he queried peevishly when for the third time she scoffed.

“Write a pleasing letter,” Marika threw out breezily. From the tone of her voice, Pinkerton could not be sure whether she was serious. “Ask for her hand, and say that you send her already the wedding present. Attach your letter to a dog collar, put the collar around your neck, and tie it to the porch.” He looked at her in wonder, so that after a moment she felt the need to expatiate. “Then you ring the bell and wait, on your knees—in the snow is even better. When she come to look,
remuer
your
queue
and lick her feet.” She looked at him fixedly while she spoke, but her gaze was alive with little ripples of mirth.

“And forget not to bark!”

Laughter bubbled in her terrific eyes, and he could hear it pealing long afterward even though he was not sure of having heard it at the time.

62

(The Nagasaki ms.)

Our engagement was announced in the middle of March. My mother, though less than overjoyed, gave us her blessing; I had feared her opposition because my father's will stipulated that she be given control of the entire estate in the event I should marry Kate. Lisa, on the other hand, was not as effusive as one might have expected. Since November, she had largely abstained from asking me about my relations with Kate, and this restraint had been too welcome at the time for me to question it; nor had she been seeing much of her friend. Only once, at Christmas, had the three of us been together, and then the festivities had helped mask the unnaturalness I felt; Kate as usual had been in complete mastery of herself. Sometime later Lisa did express concern over my air of preoccupation and on that occasion enquired about my courtship, for it was no secret that I was seeing a great deal of Kate; but she did not insist when I answered evasively. The reaction of my other relations went from grudging resignation to vociferous relief: whatever their estimate of Kate—and many had been influenced by my father's violent prejudice—they were all gratified that I had come to my senses in regard to Butterfly.

Two contracts defined my future with Kate. The first, the marriage contract, was nothing short of a travesty in its one-sided attribution of rights and obligations. While assuring her of a large fortune in every eventuality as well as unlimited freedom, it divested me in advance of any rights I should customarily and legally have enjoyed as her husband. Submissive though I had become, I could not but inwardly revolt against this outrage; but like yet another stone flung, it sank to the bottom of my heart's abyss and soon caused no more stir.

The other contract specified the conditions of my slavery. Drafted along the lines of the temporary one but tauter and without a single escape clause, the implacable document roused in me a certain malaise. So far I had been dauntless in pushing back the limits of my bondage because, deadly earnest though it was, it had remained a game that would have its end; but now I became troubled by a murky presentiment of grave and sinister consequences beyond prevision or recall. This on the other hand only excited me further in my temptation and, like a novice trembling before the tonsure, I both dreaded and longed to contract that awful finality.

The contract of slavery was to be signed only at our wedding, whose date was not yet fixed. Kate had consented to a public engagement on the condition that she be assured of my freedom before marrying me. It was not enough to renounce seeing Butterfly again, however: I had to repudiate her in person, definitively and before Kate's eyes. This demand seemed highly perverse to me, but my opposition counted for nothing and an early date was fixed to avoid the hot summer weather. The prospect oppressed me considerably, for my heart still contracted each time I remembered the woman whom I had already so deeply wronged, and the thought of hurting her again was all but unbearable. But I knew that Kate would not be dissuaded and so tried instead to steel myself to the coming ordeal.