Butterfly (2 page)

Finally, a word concerning the text. The manuscripts were written over a period of many years. The first version probably dates from ca. 1914, when Pinkerton settled in Nagasaki. Parts were rewritten or added at different times after that. Finally— probably between 1934 and 1937—there was an attempt to put together a version for publication; this comprises the most legible and coherent pages of the manuscripts, but leaves out a very substantial portion of what the earlier pages contain. As Pinkerton became older, his vision inevitably changed, and he exhibited an increasing tendency to select and to censor. In the
beginning, one feels, he wrote with abandon and indeed a certain relish in exposing himself. By contrast, he was more self-conscious in preparing the later version and apparently wanted only to tell what was necessary to convey its “meaning” some of the more lurid details were accordingly suppressed, as well as large sections concerning his relations with Butterfly. However, this radical revision seems not to have satisfied him, and there are signs of flagging interest toward the end. The final version was half-heartedly finished up and laid aside; publication plans were evidently abandoned. It might also be noted that minor discrepancies occur in the different versions.

Memory itself being subject to spontaneous and often unconscious transformation even among those with unassailable motivations, it is hard to judge the reliability of any particular portion of the manuscript. I have tried to present the available material in as complete a fashion as possible. Pinkerton's “final version” is reproduced in its entirety and designated as “the Nagasaki ms.,” somewhat arbitrarily, since any section of the entire text can with as much right be called that. Passages from the earlier pages have been interpolated where they seem most meaningful; these I have rewritten in the third person, partly to emphasize their omission from the author's final version, partly to give them coherence, for some are no more than notes or jottings. In the interest of readability and ease of comprehension, I have distributed the supplementary documents and testimonies on the same principle. Except when permission has expressly been given to use a family name, I have changed them, using where I could those by which the historical personages are known through Puccini's opera.

—Paul Loewen

La Tranche-sur-Mer

August 30, 1987

Part One

1

(The Nagasaki ms.)

From Nagasaki, it took two days to sail

down the western coast of Kyushu and around Cape

Sata, its southern tip. During this time, Butterfly never left me; at all times something of her enveloped me like a magnetic . emanation and held me in a mildly euphoric state. As the ship coasted, so did my spirit insensibly float on, drunken and joined still to hers in a rapture of welded loins.

The third day we broke away from the shores of Japan; by the morning of the fourth, we were out on the open ocean, heading east at a clip as if already harking to the call of the continent beyond. Then Butterfly's presence began to fade. Where it had wrapped firmly as a cocoon around my soul, it now became but a strand of silk drawn ever more tenuously across the widening depths. I desperately tried to hold on to her, but the queasiness of a separation I had been dreading for months was already upon me like the first upsurge of anticipated seasickness. My mind clouded; thoughts beginning and ending nowhere tangled in nameless anguish; and those toward whom I was cruising—my father, my mother, my sister Lisa, and Kate, above all Kate—rose unbidden in my mind's eye, their importunate images rudely eclipsing the Butterfly in my heart.

At noon the sky became strange; without being altogether overcast, it hung low like a huge worn canopy sagging under accumulations of moisture and dirt. By midafternoon, great gusts filled the heavens and swept the sea, swelling and heaving and lashing the clouds. Many were ripped to shreds, others blown this way and that; billows and tatters hurtled together and as quickly came apart.

High still above the western horizon, the midsummer sun, refusing to cede, blazed a spectacular iridescence into the volatile clouds. The sky became a kaleidoscope of swirling colors; the tones were strange, their intensity preternatural. It was uncanny, almost frightening. Crew members told me later that they had never seen anything like it in all their years at sea.

But there was to be more. From the starboard quarterdeck where I stood, I saw, at a point directly under the sun, a powerful vortex suddenly form. An unimaginable force seemed to be sucking in everything in sight, including—such was my impression—our ship. Within minutes, the sun had vanished behind a massive concentration of clouds dark and dense as a mountainous clump of black earth; to either side, shifting arrays of unearthly hues were being pulled together. Yet amidst the violent movement, a pattern became discernible.

“Butterfly!” I cried under my breath. Spread overhead like a stupendous goddess's mantle was the figure of a butterfly whose wings spanned half the sky.

An indescribable blend of anguish and esctasy wrung my heart while my eyes stared disbelievingly on. Already the sun was boring from behind into the dark body; at the center a needle of light had penetrated and was making a fissure. At first no more than a jagged silver line, it deepened as a supernal force pried apart that black substance too compact to be cloud; deepened and widened and stretched until the cleft opened into a gaping oval, a luminous monstrance of liquid gold set within that terrific mound suspended in midair. The mammoth butterfly hovered closer, as if about to sweep down upon us. And the gold, quivering with energy, grew brighter and brighter; near the center it glowed to incandescence, to a sizzling white that intensified, intensified still until at last the sun in blinding glory burst through the butterfly's body.

The effulgence struck me full in the face. Inwardly reeling, I
crumbled to my knees; it was as if I had, in the split second before my eyes gave way, seen the face of God.

When I recovered my senses, I was almost surprised to find I had not been plucked off the deck. Instead, the giant butterfly had receded, its presence seemed less immediate, less overwhelming; its form was looser, and the opening in its body had grown considerably. The great solid chunk had transformed itself into a dusky tumid ring, almond-shaped like a Byzantine mandorla; through it the sun shone in a golden haze, sovereign and serene. The air felt freer, the winds had calmed. I picked myself up and stood leaning against the side of the ship, shaken and entranced.

For a moment I thought with a pang that the butterfly was taking its leave: it was diminishing, its wings were slowly losing their contours and would soon dissolve imperceptibly into the approaching sunset. But I was wrong. It lingered on, drifting slowly and desultorily into the distance like a fantastic kite, yet continuing as if magnetized to frame the setting sun. And stretching toward me from the sublime apparition on the horizon was a path of light that beckoned and pointed like a shimmering phallus. As if in response to its pull, a longing as I had never known rose to swell my breast and loins; I felt my soul being irresistibly drawn to the waiting butterfly. Oh, Butterfly, if only I had let my life spill forth then! And I would have, the very next instant, for you already possessed my senses, and my soul was about to jettison its body and fly to you, and there was no hesitation, Butterfly, only the glimmer of a joy greater than any I would ever know. But already the voice had sounded—the devil's own, I've often thought—inviting me to dine at the captain's table.

2

Her hands were small and soft and as white as pear blossoms. With the wide sleeves of the festive kimono trailing, they glided about like creatures of living grace. No other part of her was exposed—even the face was entirely covered by a masklike layer of powder and paint. Sometimes when they strayed close to his face, Pinkerton perceived a faint but distinctive fragrance. Surely the sleeves had been perfumed, but Pinkerton, intoxicated, scented in it the enticing nubility hidden deep within their folds.

When Goro explained in his jocose, ingratiating manner that the dance represented the transformation of a chrysalis into a butterfly, Pinkerton had to restrain an impulse to shush him into silence. The dancer's gestures rendered all explanation superfluous. Pinkerton marveled at their clarity and suggestiveness. How eloquent those hands were, how wonderfully alive! They lured his senses like the first ritual offerings of a precious fruit. Restrained by the measured steps and the delicate rhythms of plucked strings, her sensuality seeped ineffably through. He seemed to see her passionate soul beckoning in the curving of a finger, in the sweep of a hand; yet the eyes, when he sought them out, were wholly without expression: two dark drops coolly glistening in a powdery mask.

As the performance went on, even Goro became too entranced to offer insipid comments. Using a pair of huge folding fans brightly painted to resemble butterfly wings, the dancer made her audience partake of the miraculous transformation. She captured to perfection the butterfly's awakening, its emergence from the cocoon, the first instant of hesitation and the tentative flutter of wings before it soars into open space and sunlit air. Long afterward, whenever Pinkerton told of the performance, the
magic of this moment would flicker in his face and flit across like an electric spark to his interlocutor.

Pinkerton, in lavishing praise on Butterfly—she had come to be identified with the dance for which she was famous and was now known under no other name—made it clear that he wished to spend the night in her company. So he was surprised and annoyed when another woman came to him in his room. Perhaps they thought him too drunk to notice. But he was not one to be treated so lightly. Where was Butterfly? he asked, repeating the name several times like an invocation. The woman, embarrassed, tried to explain, but she spoke little English, so he could not understand. Ruffled, she left the room and returned a little later with Goro, who immediately began to bluster about the virtues of his companion. Pinkerton insisted on Butterfly. Money was no consideration, he impatiently pointed out; but apparently it was not a question of money. What was it then? Goro answered with evasions, but Pinkerton, becoming more and more heated, would not desist until the man had explained that Butterfly belonged to a class of geisha who could only be obtained through a formal arrangement. Pinkerton impulsively declared himself ready to make such an arrangement on the spot. This brought a smile of amused disdain to Goro's lips. A serious matter like that could not be settled so precipitously. The conditions had to be discussed; there were gifts and settlements to be made, formalities to be observed. It would be an elaborate transaction. Pinkerton, exasperated and suddenly tired, dismissed Goro and the girl and spent a fretful night alone.

The following morning, however, he sent again for Goro. What would an arrangement entail? That depends, the little Japanese answered cautiously, but, after some prodding: a house for the girl together with means for its upkeep, a sum settled on
mama-san,
plus gifts of various kinds—say thirty thousand yen,
all included. The figure was rather alarming, but possibly because of that, or because he felt the Japanese snickering behind his placid mien, Pinkerton did not flinch but charged Goro to do what was necessary to conclude an agreement on his behalf.

After the man had scrambled off, Pinkerton asked himself whether he was not foolhardy to enter into an arrangement that seemed inconveniently binding and cost a small fortune. His father would not be pleased; but then, his father had promised to foot all expenses if he agreed to spend a year in Japan, away from Kate and abjuring all communication with her. Surely his father had reckoned with a mistress; in fact, now that he thought about it, there had been positive encouragement in that quarter—after all, if he was to forget Kate . . . though not a hundred mistresses could make up for Kate, he thought in a belated surge of passion. Well, he had no intention of renouncing Kate; he would do as his parents demanded, he would sit out his year in Japan, and then he would go home and marry Kate—with or without their blessing, but in any case uninterfered, which was enough. In the meantime, secure in this intention, he would enjoy himself; why shouldn't he, since Kate herself had entered into the spirit of his father's game? “Suppose,” she had discomfited him by saying, “we really do live apart for a year, without writing. It might be a useful test for us. After a year of freedom, if our feelings are still the same, nothing's lost; and if we feel differently, then your father will have been right.” The logic, though it stung him, was impeccable, he had had to admit. But if that was the way she wanted it, he would make the most of the freedom she was foisting on him.

“Well?” he questioned impatiently when Goro came bouncing in late the next afternoon. His longing for the dancer had grown obsessively during the last thirty hours. The prospect of such a novel engagement excited him and lent urgency to his desire; desire in turn compelled his mind to dwell on her person and in
particular her hands. Her face, oddly, eluded him: when he tried to picture it, he saw not hers but that of the woman sent in her stead. To that would-be substitute he had paid no attention, yet her features—he had not noticed at the time how pleasant they were—now intruded again and again into his revery, so that he began to regret having refused her favors. In the end he could not have said which one he wanted more, so mingled had the two become in his simmering lust.

“Forget Butterfly,” Goro exhorted with an exaggerated bluffness. “I find girl for you, ten times beautiful.”

Pinkerton, wound up to an excruciating pitch of desire, was hardly prepared to renounce its object upon this offhanded recommendation.

“No use,” Goro finally stated after meeting Pinkerton's adjurations with a number of evasions. “Butterfly belong to Miyamura. Miyamura big merchant, very rich.”