Butterfly (27 page)

“And you destroyed it—you and your father.

“The worst was that he liked me. He would even have loved me, I think, if he had been able to love anybody. But he was suspicious on principle. He questioned me, as I knew he would, and my story was good. He believed it, but he sent detectives to check it nonetheless. Of course they found out everything.

“It was quite a shock for him, I believe. He was very shaken when he confronted me. But he realized that I truly loved you and used that to bargain. If I left you alone, he promised, you would know nothing. He would even play the villain who
separated us. You'd be sent for a year to someplace faraway, during which time we would be forbidden to correspond; by the time you returned, I would have disappeared, faithlessly and without a trace.

“I had no recourse but to accept. I thought of making a clean breast of it to you, but I loved you too much to bear the thought of your scorn. And even if you had continued to love me, I could never again have felt at ease with you. Besides, your father would not have let me through the door. He would have destroyed me; and you, too, had you stuck by me.

“So I knew that you were lost to me when we said good-bye, and that most likely I would never see you again. Certainly, I had to keep to the bargain. I had no choice. Yet I still hoped that you would write in secret, at least once. I waited, week after week, but nothing came. One day, oppressed beyond endurance, I sailed for Europe.

“I traveled. I visited my aunt's grave, but I did not go to see my parents. They would have clung to me and pumped me—they who had abandoned me—and I had no desire to see how much further they had sunk. I should have settled in one of the larger cities and gone about establishing myself, but I couldn't. I was too heartsick. I wandered from place to place, as if hoping each time to leave behind a piece of the love I was trying so hard to kill. Eventually I returned to New York. It was just about when you were due back. Somewhere in my heart was still a hope I dared not avow, but the most I permitted myself was a card to Lisa giving my address.

“The reply came quickly. I could hardly believe my eyes: your father had died. I almost went mad for excitement. We could be together again, nothing could separate us now! Or had he imparted my secret to someone else—your mother, for instance? I put that terrible thought out of my mind for the time being and read on. Imagine what I felt when on the next page I learned that
you had married in Japan. I could not move from the spot, and I wished a thunderbolt would really strike me there and then. All this time, my only solace had been that you loved me, and my greatest concern had been the effect my loss would have on you. And here I had been abandoned like some silly moonstruck girl! I could not believe it, even though there was no possibility of a mistake. But my disbelief faded as I read on. Lisa—together with your mother, she made it clear—wanted me to seduce you away from your wife! Her proposal astounded me, and I broke out in bitter laughter. As if I could take you back after you had so ignominiously betrayed me. Nor had you the shadow of an excuse. Remember that the bargain had been that you'd be free to marry me after a year of total separation, and for all you knew, I was still counting the days. But the proposal was a godsend, a gift from Nemesis, and a stroke of genius on the goddess's part. I would have a revenge worthy of my baffled love.

“I took the next train to Boston, where I had a meeting with your mother and sister. I consented to their plan, on two conditions: that I should have carte blanche to proceed exactly as I saw fit, with their full cooperation and no questions asked; and that I should be free to marry you if I succeeded. Your mother's manifest reluctance made me realize that she indeed knew my secret; but she had made her choice: better a whore for a daughter-in-law than a Japanese.

“My plan was already formed by the time my train arrived in Boston. If I knew your potential as no one else did, I also knew your weaknesses. I knew that what might enable you to rise higher than others could also be turned against you and make you sink lower. Given the right circumstances, any man can be dominated, but there are those who are particularly susceptible. Someone with my experience can spot them easily, and I had always known you were of that class. I was certain that you would prove as docile as one could wish; the only problem was how to
draw you under my power. I could not very well make advances, and I judged from what I had been told that you were seriously attached to Butterfly. The obvious solution was to have Marika seduce you and deliver you up bound and trussed. The details we improvised as we went along. But make no mistake, everything that happened to you was part of a careful strategy; nothing was left to chance. You will remember, for instance, that on the day you were first whipped, Marika made you get up to shut the window—well, that was the signal for me to come and surprise you in bed.

“I watched with malicious pleasure as your will softened and disintegrated. I wanted to crush you completely, to reduce you step-by-step to the nullity I knew you could become, just as in different circumstances I would have gone about making you into somebody special. I also enjoyed triumphing over her, the woman who had taken what was mine. Pleasure I could have granted her, and you, but you had no right to love as you did—on top of that, you were stupid enough to tell everything, to spread before me all that the two of you had stolen. I rejoiced at your stupidity; I rejoiced in making you drag your love through the mire. But it wasn't enough. My rancor carried over to her; I wanted to see her suffer in the way I had suffered, but with even greater mortification. I wanted her to see with her own eyes what had become of your love, and what had become of her lover. It was for that that I made you come back to Nagasaki.

“But I failed. She was stronger than I had imagined. She came very close to getting you back; she would have if I hadn't intervened. I hadn't bargained for that. Her performance was admirable. In fact, it took away the hatred I had felt toward her, curiously enough.

“Oh, I saw it, I saw everything, heard every word.”

In response to my puzzled expression, Kate indicated a large
painting on the wall. “Go over and take it down. It's not very heavy.

I did as I was told and to my amazement found myself looking into the parlor, only a few feet from where Butterfly and I had sat. I remembered then that on the wall of the other room a large mirror hung at the corresponding spot.

“I had that two-way mirror put in. It wasn't easy, but Goro managed to find one and persuaded the management to install it, at a price of course. He's a resourceful little man. Haven't you ever seen one before? They are a standard fixture in bordels. You should know; if not, you've seen them only from the wrong side.”

I was staggered by all that she had told me. Her words had shattered the world in which I existed. In a stupor, I put the picture back on the wall as she instructed and resumed my seat.

The lengthy account appeared to have tired Kate. For several minutes she sat gazing mistily at the picture, as if she were seeing the afternoon's scene replayed before her eyes.

“You broke my heart, Henry,” she said at last in a pensive, melancholic tone. “When I saw you about to go through that door she had opened, it was as if she were taking you from me all over again, only this time I was there to witness it. It hurt me, and it made me feel vulnerable—I had thought I no longer was. Yet at the same time I rejoiced—or part of me did, the part that wanted to see you cast off your servitude and become a man again. The part of me that still loved you, and wanted you to be someone I could love—or even hate—not a doormat or a rag. Do you understand? Although my dreams had been destroyed, there still remained a piece or two, a mere tatter, but precious nonetheless. Somewhere inside me, I desperately wanted to preserve that last little piece, even as I worked to destroy you. I hated you, and because I hated you, I wanted to destroy you. But I also loved you, and my love wanted you to resist, to live out
your betrayal of me like a man, so that I could at least hate you for it—because one can't hate a rag no matter how filthy.

“I suppose all along, at every juncture, some little part of me was hoping you'd rebel. But you never did. You never realized that each time you went down on your knees, you were crushing another piece of my dream. This afternoon it was the last, the very last.” Her mouth had tensed and a terrible expression, more despairing than angry, came over her face. “I could have killed you! If I had had a whip in my hand, you wouldn't be alive now.” She looked as if she were about to set upon me once more.

“Now you're no longer worth killing,” she remarked venomously as she let herself sink back into the pillows. “You're nothing now, nothing, nothing, nothing . . .” Her voice trailed off to a whisper. A tear was making a glistening streak.

Her words had torn into my flesh like so many barbs, but that tear ate its way straight through to my heart, which gaped open to render its woe. I lurched forward and, kneeling by the bed, took her hands to press my face into them. “Kate,” I pleaded, “couldn't we begin over? Couldn't we forget this nightmare and start again from scratch?”

Kate shook her head wearily. “Too late,” she murmured. “Too late.”

She continued to shake her head without pulling away her hands. “We had great stakes and a winning hand, Henry; we could have done some fine things. Now empty chips are all that's left. But we have to go on playing with them. We have to continue the game, together. That is the punishment we have brought upon ourselves.”

86

They had met in the garden, unexpectedly, for early morning strolls were not in the habits of either. The air was still misty; the first rays of the sun slanted through the haze.

As always, the touch of her arm thrilled him. They ambled aimlessly, talking of this and that. Once again Pinkerton wondered at the depth of her mind and her knowledge of life; at times he felt a mere adolescent at her side. Had it not been for her beauty and the grace of her every motion and phrase, he would no doubt have been a little put off.

A rose of a magnificent pink stopped them and they stooped over it in silent admiration. Wet with dew and resplendent in the early morning sunlight, it seemed the crown and quintessence of nature.

“It is like you,” he said, somewhat to his own surprise. “So youthful in its vigor and yet so mature, so mature and yet so fresh. Its color unites the deepest red and the purest white and transcends both. Such passion and worldliness; such high purpose and refinement of mind. How proudly it opens, as if the whole sky belonged to it! And it has only just begun to spread its petals.” He paused and added in a murmur, “I hardly dare look upon such beauty.”

She made no reply, but when moments later he offered to cut the rose for her, she protested. “No, don't. It is more beautiful here in its natural state.” Then, laughingly, “Besides, it'll prick you if you try.”

Not knowing what to say, he bent over and kissed the glistening petals. The perfume intoxicated him; his lips lingered, as if they had touched something divine. The gesture was entirely spontaneous,
but afterward he became self-conscious and dared not look at her.

That evening he found the rose at his bedside, freshly cut and exquisite in a crystal vase.

87

(The Nagasaki ms.)

I wept into her hands; I kissed their palms, their wrists, their fingers. They were gentle with me, but they did not hold out what I was reaching for in a flare of belated hope.

“I am hungry,” Kate said after a time. “Have them bring some
dinner—for you, too.”

In her melancholy, Kate was softer and mellower than I had ever seen her. She continued to reminisce, but in a desultory fashion, sometimes engaging me in conversation, sometimes talking almost to herself. Her revelations had shaken me; mortified by what I had inadvertently wrought, I was at a loss to speak of all that pressed upon my heart. Besides, it had been a long time since our last civilized conversation and I was reluctant to break the mood or cut short her loquacity. I waited for an opportune moment, an appropriate opening or a lull, but none came.

After our brandy, I helped her prepare for bed and gave her her nightly massage. All was as usual, all but the mood—and the difference it made! My heart ached to think that it could always have been so, and that it would never be so again. All I could do now was to savor each poignant moment like manna that would melt before the dawn.

Had I hoped to render more intimate services that night? I do not know; certainly I was under her charm and would have been
glad to see the evening prolonged or its intimacy advanced. No request came, however; she was tired, she would sleep. Tucked in under the covers, she looked up at me as I lingered still beside the bed. Her eyes in their melancholy were like the ocean in the dark of night, in which one can divine but not quite see the glimmering reflection of distant stars.

It would be the last time I looked into them. Too choked with emotion to speak, I bent and touched my lips to her brow.

88

(The following account is based upon the testimony of Itako, Butterfly's daughter; it consists essentially of what Sachiko told Itako in 1920.)

Sachiko pleaded with Butterfly not to see Pinkerton, but she would not listen. On her return from his hotel, she appeared absorbed and troubled, though no more so than might have been expected. The rest of the afternoon she spent alone with her child. When Sachiko served her dinner, she seemed self-possessed, even serene. After dinner, Sachiko saw her take out her writing implements. At one point she went to the kitchen and burned some papers. Later, perhaps around eleven, she summoned Sachiko, who was surprised because it was not her mistress's habit to call her in the evening, even when Pinkerton had lived in the house. She instructed Sachiko to have the bath prepared at dawn the following morning, and to fetch Pinkerton from his hotel; Sachiko should make sure that he came personally whatever happened and that he be there by eight o'clock. Sachiko's surprise grew when her mistress then presented her with two kimonos, a hairpin, and what seemed to Sachiko an enormous amount of money. Butterfly explained that she was
going away soon and would not be able to take Sachiko with her. At first Sachiko was merely puzzled. Then, in a flash of intuition, she understood that her mistress was going to die. Horrified, she cried out in protest and ended up weeping in Butterfly's arms. “You must be brave and help me, not make it more difficult,” Butterfly, herself moved to tears, admonished.