Butterfly (21 page)

Well, that was the long and short of Dada's answer to my question, and I had to say amen to it.

Of course, Dada's real fear was that Butterfly might go back to an immoral life, even with that money Pinkerton'd left her. Well, he wasn't far wrong, because that was exactly what she intended to do. Can't say as I'd blame her; I can see myself doing the same thing in her shoes. Beats marrying some man you don't even know and probably old enough to be your father. Anyway she was quite a girl. I wish I could've met her, I'm sure we'd have taken to one another. Was your mother spirited like that too? Did she take after her mother?

Getting back to Dada, he went through the torments of hell
over that letter. It's bad enough trying to write a letter like that to someone you're actually running out on, but writing it to someone you love, and having to do it in such a way that the other feller, who you'd really like to dunk in tar, comes out looking halfway decent, because that's about the one thing you can still do to ease her pain—now that's hard, really hard. Dada spent a whole week writing it. He told me there were times when he felt he couldn't do it if somebody'd put a pistol to his head. But he just had to, for her sake.

He got it delivered to her while he sat in his office like on a pile of hot coals waiting for the three hours to go by before dashing over there himself. By the time he got to her house, he'd worked himself up into such a state that he was close to needing her to comfort him rather than the other way round. He was expecting her to be all broken up, but she was calm as could be. It wasn't that she wasn't affected, she was, he could tell. But she was one of those people who get stronger when the going gets bad. Dada told me that he felt awed by her composure; she was so dignified, he said.

She gave him tea and they chitchatted for a few minutes like nothing'd happened. Then right out of the blue, she asked him if he knew. Dada got all hot in the head and nodded uncomfortably, trying his best not to blush and not knowing what to say. Seems like they just sat there without either of them saying anything. After a while, she started talking about the plum blossoms in the garden. He had a suspicion she was saying something profound and literary, the way the Japanese sometimes do, but he couldn't figure out what.

There was a purity about her that made her seem imposing in Dada's eyes, so that he felt embarrassed about mentioning the money Pinkerton had sent, though he couldn't very well not talk
about it. But soon as he did, she declared right off that she had no need of it. This was news to Dada, and by and by it came out that she was fixing to move out of the house, which was too big for her anyways, and start working again as a geisha. Dada tried his best to argue her out of it. If she didn't want the money for herself, he told her, she ought to take it for her child's sake; and it wouldn't be charity, either, for the father to provide for his own daughter. With the ten thousand dollars—it was a tidy sum of money back then—she wouldn't need to work; they could live comfortably and she could spend her time with Etsuko, which would surely be better for the girl. Well, Butterfly sat there as polite and patient as you please, but she didn't hardly listen. Which Dada noticed, of course, though that just made him argue with twice as much passion. But he could've talked himself blue in the face and it wouldn't even have begun to make a dent. However, Dada could be mulish too when he put his mind to it, and he wouldn't stop till he'd had his say in every blessed way he could think up at least three times round. Well, when at last he stopped, she thanked him and said quietly without batting an eyelash, “Please tell him we do not need money.”

That left even Dada flat, but he didn't want to let the discussion end on such a definite note. “For heaven's sake take the money,” he pleaded in a last burst of exasperation. “Take it even if you don't need it or use it or want it. Think of Etsuko—she's going to need a dowry someday.”

“Not Etsuko, Itako,” Butterfly said, as if the name were the only thing her ears had heard. “I have changed her name,” she told Dada. “She is now called Itako.” She said this in a “thin tone of finality that sealed off further discussion,” to use Dada's own words. She didn't get up, but she made a little movement that told Dada he was being asked to leave. She saw him to the door
no differently than usual, but he somehow had a sneaking feeling he wasn't being asked to come back. And here he'd been hoping that her misfortune might bring the two of them closer together. Instead she's shutting him out along with her faithless beau, as if their friendship was just an extension of her relationship with Pinkerton and didn't count at all in its own right. This was real hard on Dada, feeling the way he did about Butterfly. He even stopped writing his diary for a spell.

You do know that Itako means “child of pain.” Well of course, since your mother kept that name. . . .

67

(The Nagasaki ms.)

I was unaware of it then, but the weeks preceding our departure were among the happiest I would know. The source of my worst anxieties—uncertainties in my relationship to Kate and the underlying fear of being banished—had been removed. Everything seemed to have been settled or disposed in a manner I believed to be enduring—as if things of this world could endure! But such is the vision of the newly betrothed, who see years and decades unfurled before them like long leisurely avenues in an open park.

Our engagement had been sealed by a macabre ritual as far removed from the usual exchange of rings as Kate and I were from the ordinary couple. Heated white-hot, a miniature branding iron wrought in the form of Kate's initial was applied to my thigh. It was a token of my full surrender, and I had been only too willing to espouse an idea that Kate had no more than
breathed, though my alacrity would have been considerably tempered by a knowledge of how inhumanly painful would be its execution. But when the pain subsided, a deep sense of peace came over me and I had no regret. I felt that I at last belonged to the woman I loved, that I had been accepted as hers, entirely and permanently. And in the certainty of this unbreakable covenant, my servitude became a pure expression of the unconditional and limitless love I bore her; to which her tyranny was but the obverse, sharing its substance if inverting its form. To a heart that could imagine itself above contingency and beyond doubt, even violence and humiliation were as caresses and balsam.

68

The pain was so bad that Pinkerton, though determined to be stoic, screamed like a pig. Every cell in his body revolted against the glowing iron's inconceivable violation; he thought he would be sick. Quite possibly he lost consciousness for a few seconds.

One moment he was so hot that his entrails seemed ready to squeeze out through his pores; then it was ice cold inside him and he felt too frozen to ask for help. For the few seconds of eternity during which the branding iron tore, so it seemed, into his very marrow—afterward it perplexed him that pain inflicted on the skin could so deeply penetrate the rest of the body—he would have sent Kate to hell. He felt only hatred for her, for himself, for the thongs restraining his wrists and ankles, for the diabolical instrument of his torture: such a hatred that he could have annihilated all with his bare hands and fists. He lay drenched in sweat, and tears and mucus came out in irrepressible gushes. He was aware that the iron had been removed, yet the pain
maddeningly persisted in the body's berserk alarm. It felt as if it would continue forever, and he gasped aloud for despair.

But the pain eventually became less intense, and his mind returned, and so did his senses, and his love for the woman who had laid this pain upon him; but he was still unable to move, though he could now picture his body as it lay, a crucified carcass frozen in pain. He sensed Kate's presence, and when with an effort he looked, he saw her petrified eyes fixed upon him with a strange and unholy passion, a chaos of hatred and triumph, love and lust. Instinctively Pinkerton feared for his life.

His fear lasted but a brief instant. He was convinced of her readiness to kill him for pleasure, but the thought, as it dawned in his mind, brought a profound relief, an indescribable joy. Though he had no wish to die, he realized that he did not care whether or not he lived, so long as his life or death was claimed by her whom he loved.

He was now hers, nothing, not even death, could cancel the mark that proclaimed it. A great peace came over him, and he let his eyes close. The pain, still present, no longer tormented him; he felt as if his whole body were breaking into a smile.

69

(The Nagasaki ms.)

Only the voyage to Japan, like rumbling storm clouds that spoil a sunlit afternoon, perturbed those weeks of grace. The prospect was troubling, but even more, it exasperated me. For what could Kate hope to gain that she did not already hold in the palm of her hand? What sign of devotion could she further want from one who already bore it indelibly in his flesh? To me her insistence was senseless and morbid; a wilful, gratuitious tempting of fate.

As our ship drew on toward its destination, my irritation turned into foreboding, and foreboding into dread—dread of confronting Butterfly, yes, but more, of something undefined and preternaturally ominous that, I felt, loomed beyond the horizon. I cannot name the hour, but it was at sea that the memory of that phantasmagoric butterfly came back to me; came with such startling vividness, and remained so obsessively present, that I hardly dared raise my eyes to the sky for fear of meeting it anew.

How had this stupendous vision slipped away for so long from my mind? Once back home, I had thought little more of it, though until then it had preoccupied me intensely; and it was the one thing I never mentioned in “confessing” to Kate the minutiae of my Japanese romance. But now it was back with a vengeance. With amazing clarity, I recalled that occult event in all its glory and strangeness. But if then it had seemed a wonder of heaven, I now descried in it something daemonic and menacing. I did not wish to remember, but it stuck with me obsessively, dogging me all day in corridors and up and down stairs; and at night I dreamt obscure dreams that left me wasted and anguished. Persuaded of an imminent reapparition, I lived in mounting terror as the days and hours crawled nervously on toward Nagasaki. All of Kate's efforts to suppress or soothe my rebel nerves were to no avail, nor did peace come at the sight of the port, or even of the dock. Only when my feet stepped from the gangplank onto solid earth did I accept, with as much incredulity as relief, that I was safe.

70

(From the interview with Mrs. Milly Davenport)

Then came that letter saying they were coming, he and his new lady—all the way from Boston, and no reason given. No explanation, just a request to reserve the best suite of rooms in town. Dada was flabbergasted—I mean, of all places for them to go for a honeymoon! It was outrageous, positively indecent. Dada wasn't ever much good at figuring out what went on in that Pinkerton's head, but this time he was completely stymied. Couldn't for the life of him think of a reason, good or bad. All he knew was, he didn't like it, and he'd just as soon see them on the North Pole. Nothing he could do about it, of course. He got them their accommodations and had a man meet them at the wharf—damned if he was going to go himself!

But that was just a gesture, a protest of his outraged heart. The fellow could go to hell, he writes in his diary—he'd taken to calling him “fellow” or “that fellow,” as if Pinkerton no longer deserved a name or even an initial. He might've liked to, I mean send Pinkerton to hell, but he couldn't, he had too much courtesy in his soul, and it wasn't as if Pinkerton had done anything against him personally. So the next day he called at the hotel. He couldn't have kept away anyhow, he was too curious—about why they'd shown up, about how Pinkerton felt about Butterfly. He was curious about the lady, too, the way men always are, though you won't admit it. Dada, well, he did when I put it to him, but that was years later and by then he'd reached the age when people become honest—some people anyway; but he didn't at the time, not in his diary.

Anyhow he got himself an eyeful. He was fascinated by that woman—though I did feel more embarrassed than fascinated
reading what he wrote in his first flush of enthusiasm, embarrassed for Dada, that is. But it would've interested you more, I'm sure. It's a shame you can't read it—and that's one page I'm afraid I'm not much good at retelling.

So Dada got there and first there was Pinkerton all alone to receive him. Well, he didn't lose any time getting to the point, but as soon as he mentioned Butterfly—maybe even before—Pinkerton started looking sick. I reckon he could've stuck to his guns and grilled him right then and there, but Pinkerton looked so harried, he had such a hangdog air about him, that Dada didn't have the heart. Something had happened to Pinkerton, Dada had seen that first off; he wasn't the same man who'd left the year before. In fact, Dada was shocked. Because Pinkerton used to cut a fine figure—Dada said people felt he was somebody, whether you liked him or not. Seems they used to call him the “prince” in fun, and according to Dada, he had something the rest of them didn't, and it wasn't just money, either. Well, the looks were still there—it kind of made Dada's blood boil just seeing him so dapper—but leastways when they got talking, Dada got this queer sense that something inside him had dried up or run down or gotten broke. He somehow even seemed smaller than before. Now, Dada wasn't exactly bursting with kindly feelings for the man, but pretty soon he got to feeling sorry for him, for no reason besides him being so, well, diminished. Which was even more surprising considering the fact that Pinkerton's daddy had died and he being the only son and heir to all that wealth and prestige, and those aren't things known for cutting people down to size.

Dada was still puzzling over it when the lady entered, the future lady, I should maybe say; the intended. Then he understood. Not right away, and not all at once, but as he wrote, the spark of intuition came long before the flash of insight.

She was a beauty, if Dada'd got an eye in his head, and it'd
seem she got everything else matching as well. ‘Least Dada thought so. Not having laid eyes on her myself, I can't tell if she really was all he made her out to be, or just half, which'd be quite as much as a body would want. Maybe . . . well, I reckon women just don't take too kindly to hearing about one of their own being made out to be so high above their common lot, and they'd be dead right not to take a man's word for it—not even Dada's. But anyhow, this being his story, I'd better try to tell it the way things appeared to him.