Butterfly (5 page)

9

Already close as children, Lisa and Henry had been drawn ever deeper by their mother's aloofness into what that distant lady irately called their “conspiracy.” When Henry went to Japan, their intimacy had continued—or so Lisa thought—in the form of an assiduous and detailed correspondence. It was thus a rude shock for Lisa to learn of her brother's marriage—something of which he had never breathed a word. When her mother announced the news in her best tragic manner—her dying husband had informed her—Lisa at first broke out in laughter;
she
knew it could not be. Yet it was, and in the weeks that followed she felt she no longer knew anything at all, only that a constant pain had lodged itself in her chest. For if she did not comprehend how her beloved brother could have betrayed her lovely friend, deep down she forgave him as she forgave all his foibles; but that he should have failed to confide in her—that shook her to the core and hurt her more than the darkest infamy. Such a breach of complicity was the one thing she could not find it in her heart to forgive.

How could he have married that woman in the photograph, so like a Japanese doll? Again and again she asked herself as she perused the placid sepia image or searched her brother's face across the dining table; the question awaited her every morning when she awakened, and she pondered it in bed, all the while wishing he would come in and stretch himself beside her the way he used to and tell her the answer. Yet when, after weeks of silent sulking, she finally put it to him, she realized even as the words formed on her lips that he had no answer. “No, don't try to reply,” she went on quickly without giving him time for evasions.
“Just tell me one thing, it's all I want to know: how do you feel now, I mean about Kate? Have you forgotten her, or what?”

He did not answer. She, reading the pain that came into his eyes, pursued. “Do you still love her then?”

This time she waited. A minute or two passed before he could get the words out. Yes, he still loved Kate, he always would.

“Then marry her!” Lisa burst out passionately. “Marry her— nothing is preventing you now that Dad's gone. You wanted to so badly then. Well, she's yours now, take her!”

He looked at her, half perplexed and more in sadness than indignation. “Lisa, I'm married now, don't you understand? I have a wife, and soon I'll have a child. Please, Lisa, you must accept that, you and mother and everyone else.”

“Hen, oh Hen,” she pleaded with a desperate fervor. “Didn't Monsignor himself say that the marriage is void? The Church doesn't recognize it; it's as if it didn't exist. You're not bound by it, not at all! And I'm sure Kate would take the child—if she doesn't, I will.”

10

(The Nagasaki ms.)

Kate's presence in the house was like a gust of fresh air that vivified its inhabitants but occasionally sent them shivering. Her conversation, which even my mother began visibly to enjoy, was the more piquant for being interlarded with provocative opinions, just as her impassioned fingers at the piano brought out dissonances and basses that jolted but captivated the ear. One incident alone was jarring. It occurred early during the visit and left me profoundly and rightly troubled, even though at the time I had only the vaguest intuition of its significance.

Kate had come to us accompanied by a striking girl of nineteen or twenty. With its angular lines and overripe lips, her face, though arresting, fell short of beauty. But she had the lithe, powerful body of a magnificent feline (I learned later that she had been trained as a circus acrobat). I instantly whiffed an odor of sensuality that must either attract powerfully or repel. Her proud carriage and an indefinable something in her face suggested some other status than a maid's; certainly I had never had a servant greet me with a stare of such brazen curiosity.

I was not the only one to wonder about this exotic girl who conversed with Kate in a mixture of French and German. The second evening we sat together, my mother asked Kate where she had found her unusual servant.

“Oh, Marika isn't a servant, really,” Kate casually replied. “She's my slave. I bought her last year in Hungary from the owner of a circus that was being disbanded.” We did not know what to make of this. Kate, sensing our incredulity, had her maid summoned. “Marika,” she called out as soon as the girl appeared at the door,
"ich erzähle gerade den Herrschaften . . .
I was just telling our hosts that you are my slave, but they won't believe me. Come here and show them.” The girl blushed—with shame or pleasure it was impossible to tell—and her naturally crimson lips curled ever so slightly in an enigmatic smile. Lowering her eyes, she went to the right side of Kate's armchair and dropped ceremoniously to her knees. In the stillness one could almost hear her fluttering heart, almost feel the suspirant syllables swell and rise from its voluptuous chambers and sibilate under her breath:
"Maitressel”
She bent her mouth devoutly to Kate's hand immobile upon the armrest in a kiss which, tender at first, intensified until her lips seemed soldered with passion to her mistress's skin. “Enough,” Kate said, but the command went unheeded. Finally she had to draw back her hand and shove the girl's head away like an importunate dog's.
"Geh!”
The girl
swayed a little on her knees and let out something between a sigh anda sob; then she darted from the room.

My mother tittered uncomfortably. Lisa, her face decomposed, cast about like a mystified theater-goer who did not know whether to walk out or applaud. “Isn't slavery against the law?” she ended by asking in a small voice.

“Does it look as if I'm keeping Marika locked and chained?” Kate laughed. “She's perfectly free to leave whenever she wants. In the eyes of the law, I merely delivered her from certain contractual obligations. She's the one who wishes to stay on and ‘play’ at being my slave, if it makes you happier to think of it as playing.”

Playing what twisted game? I had half a mind to ask. But I could not find my voice, so lost was I in the strange new vista that had opened. More than once in the past, I had been surprised and delighted to come upon some hitherto unseen facet of Kate's cornucopian personality, but this time it left me uneasy and estranged. Her words and the scene I had witnessed shocked me, for they would not square with what I imagined to have intimately known. Whatever comprised her game with Marika, I darkly sensed, lay not only outside the charted precincts of our love but beyond any possible annexation. I scented something sinister, something terrifying and feral, and suddenly wondered what she was whom I had once so trustingly held in my arms.

“Is it very amusing to play at being a slave?” Lisa asked a little shrilly.

Kate did not immediately reply.

“Amusing, no, I shouldn't think so. Though some do have a taste for it. For them it's more than amusing; it is most serious.”

She suddenly looked at me. I met her eyes, and for the first time since our separation, I found myself plunging once again into their fathomless depths. Partly to resist the magic, I fumbled for something to say.

“But the taste is surely not a natural one!” My little laugh sounded silly and false to my own ears.

“Are all your tastes natural ones, Henry?” There was banter in her voice, but her eyes drank me in. “If so, you don't know what you're missing. An unnatural one might widen your horizons. Try it sometime.”

“I suppose playing mistress is also an acquired taste?” I retorted.

Kate smiled a faint, mysterious smile. “Acquiring a taste is not hard,” she said with a strange look. “Nor is it very rare.” With that her eyes left my face and she abruptly changed the subject.

11

(Editor's note: this early page, though not part of the Nagasaki ms., has been left in its orignal form because of its personal tone.)

It had become a habit of mine to take Butterfly mentally through the day's events, explaining one thing and reflecting on another as I was wont to do aloud in her presence; and I tried in turn to imagine her responses and comments. The spurious sense of Butterfly's participation in my life helped bridge the distance between us. These imaginary exchanges were as spontaneous and free as our intercourse had in time become. The scene I had witnessed, however, left an aftertaste of ignominy which I preferred to spare her, and for the first time I felt inhibited.

Did the sale of Marika so disturb me, I wondered, I who had bought Butterfly without compunction? Or was I merely unhappy to be reminded? But surely I was not alone to indulge in this sordid commerce. Did not men the world over traffic in beautiful
women? What pretty woman did not sell herself, if not for cash, then for shares in power and status and property? Or was it the acknowledgment rather than the fact that shocked?

And if my action was ignoble, had Butterfly not redeemed it by bestowing love for the pleasure purchased? If such love could come of it—and her love, as I already suspected then, was the best thing I would know or see—could the act be wholly bad? Who can say what ultimately is good and what bad? Is the good or bad in the act itself, or rather in the way we live out its consequences? As the soul winds along its labyrinthian path, what mortal eye can see beyond the bends?

12

Pinkerton, having paid a handsome price, expected pleasures to match. In this he was disappointed. Butterfly was lovely, she was well-versed in the ways of love, she was eager to please, but she could not give Pinkerton the pleasure he had come to anticipate through his fantasies. Her clever, sensitive hands performed wonders upon his body, pressing here to relax and there to tonify, but he did not find in them the magical instruments of sensuality that had obsessed him in his longing. It was not a question of proficiency, for her nimble fingers could do anything, but one of attitude. Pinkerton found her constantly at odds with his desires. Where he wanted his senses driven to new, uncharted intensities, she would coddle and lull them
to
quietude if not to sleep; where he would be titillated and seduced, she was full of wifely solicitude and ministerings. After a week of vain attempts to coax her into becoming the seductress of his dreams, he gave up and let his longings flock back to Kate or stray to other women he had known. Not without nostalgia, he recalled the heady visits to

Madame Pons and her stunning bevy of demi-goddesses that always filled him with a secret awe; yes, the girls there had been more exciting, he reflected, thinking peevishly of Butterfly. He had bargained for an exotic courtesan, he had gotten a foreign wife.

What he missed in her was wantonness. It was clear that she had been trained to please, clear too that she very much wished to. She catered to every desire he manifested, but she contributed none; in his frustration he took her in all the ways he knew, and in each instance she was amenable, even eager. But she herself remained unmoved. His sighs and spasms washed over her like waves and tides over the smooth white boulders along the shore. Infinitely patient and docile, untiringly cooperative and painstaking, she had the qualities, Pinkerton sardonically noted, of a “perfect” whore: whereas a good one pricked one's lust with her own and shared in the pleasure or at least in its display—and here Butterfly fell sorrily short.

But as a wife she was unimpeachable. She molded herself to his habits and personality, to his likes and dislikes, and did all to make his life agreeable. Not content with what her eyes observed, she applied herself to improving her English: by year's end she spoke almost fluently, though her vocabulary was limited and her constructions often uncertain. After their first week together Pinkerton, dreading boredom, would have moved back to his bachelor's quarters had Butterfly not appeared so hurt; but his fears were unfounded. Once she had made the necessary adjustment, Butterfly became an excellent companion. She had a way of infusing her remarkable artistic sensibility into the smallest things, so that the most ordinary day would quicken with little touches of poetry and color and come aglow with gentle pleasure. There were to be no sensual extravaganzas, however much he might desire them, but their life together was permeated by a quiet, steady sense of well-being—a refreshing
breeze never absent and never too much there—and that in the long run was a far richer gain.

At first Pinkerton did not notice; he only found himself engaged always in some pleasant activity or another that seemed to be of no particular consequence. Although seldom aware of doing anything interesting enough to report at length—during his first weeks in Japan he had written pages and pages to Lisa he was never discontented or bored. His appreciation grew by imperceptible degrees, but it grew. One day, waking at dawn and feeling Butterfly's warmth beside him and his own hard urgency, he drew himself up over her. It would not have been the first time he roused her from sleep with his caresses or entered her as she still dozed, but this time he refrained and let his eyes alone grope in the semi-darkness over her sleeping form. Outside the birds had begun to chirp. For a long time he watched over her; as the half-light filtering through the translucent paper screens turned whiter, a feeling of tenderness stirred and spread through him until his entire being tingled with delight; he had never felt so happy.

He knew then that he loved her.

13

(The Nagasaki ms.)

Marika's performance was distressingly theatrical, yet it fascinated me and I could not help reviewing it again and again. Floating in my revery, the images took on a subtly different coloring and seemed less repellently bizarre; presently I discovered a peculiar appeal in the girl and her extravagant surrender.

I was more than ever intrigued, but Kate did not speak of Marika, and something restrained me from bringing up the
subject. Marika herself was seldom visible, and what glimpses I had were fleeting. Once or twice I caught the sound of her laughter mingling with Kate's, which further sharpened my curiosity.

Kate, however, presented the greater enigma. It was as if a passage of moonlight had revealed a strange nocturnal visage unsuspected and at odds with the one seen in the light of day. Fired by dark intimations, I studied Kate for signs of I know not what baleful doppelganger. But I detected nothing; my attention only reconfirmed her qualities, so that each time I came away more dazzled by her loveliness. Imperceptibly my thoughts drifted to my long relinquished claims and memory after memory came flooding back.