Butterfly (6 page)

Suddenly all that I had imagined buried for good was there again before me. Oh, to lay my head upon that lap, to surrender to those eyes—that such sweetness could be so close to hand and yet denied! A world so rich and bright, forever forfeited, because of an irresponsible caprice! To be sure, I had been amply recompensed for its loss, but what about Kate, who had an equal claim?

Remorse made me crave doubly for Kate's attention. I could no longer enter her presence without hoping for some sign of forgiveness or continued affection—a touch of the hand, a word, a look. But such was not forthcoming. Unable to speak openly of what lay so heavily upon my mind, I beseeched her with looks and oblique words, all in vain. Nor was my desire for a tete-a-tete acknowledged. Lavish with amenities and smiles, Kate refused to see or hear. Her friendliness was a curtain drawn between her heart and mine; I tugged at it but could not, or dared not, tear it away.

One day, stranded in the drawing room after Kate had adroitly parried a bid for attention, I sank heavily into an armchair, the same from which I had witnessed Marika's odd exhibition of
fealty. Overcome by frustration, I felt a sharp envy for the girl. If only I too could clarify and redefine my turbid relationship with Kate through some such extravagance. Indeed, was not Marika's gesture an apt expression for my own turmoil of remorse, guilt, admiration and passion? Idly I began to recreate the scene, but with myself in Marika's stead. I conjured up Kate where she had sat that evening, imperious and distant; never had she seemed more beautiful. I envisioned myself crossing the room, approaching, standing before her, and squirmed as imagination bent my knees. Her splendor towering over me, her eyes bearing down ... I trembled, yet the anguish was ineffably sweet. I felt a pang of terror and shame; it was as if something monstrous and sublime had stirred in the caverns of my soul.

This moment of weakness, did not last. I soon berated myself for my absurd imaginings and even laughed aloud; but from that day forth I was to regard Marika's strange homage with different eyes.

14

Henry and Lisa invented a game called Procrustes in which they took turns playing the bandit and the victim he stretches or truncates to fit his infamous bed. Each role had its attractions. Procrustes could lord it over the other in a fierce and fiendish manner, while the victim might indulge in the most amusing grimaces and screams. All of which provoked endless peals of laughter and childish excitement.

One day Lisa as Procrustes decreed that the captive be tied down and flattened with a roller; she had seen workmen use one to press a macadam road. The rope she found being a long one, Henry presently found himself completely immobilized; this
provoked a certain anxiety in him, and whether because of that or because Lisa was particularly absorbed in her role that day, she seemed truly menacing. Meanwhile, spurred by her success with the rope, Lisa decided to gag him as well on the pretext that Procrustes had an earache that day and could not revel in his victim's cries. The idea did not appeal to Henry, but his protests only made her keener. All he could do was to shout and agitate his head, but this resistance was taken, perhaps a bit disingenuously, to be part of the game; in any event, it proved as effectual as any offered in Procrustes's own day. Lisa, who knotted a handkerchief no less adroitly than a cord, then proceeded to roll an empty beer keg over her captive. Caught up in her own giggles, she paid no attention to Henry's distress, and when she did take notice, that too was interpreted as due contribution to the game.

Fear and anger gripped Henry when he found himself helplessly trussed and gagged, and it took a great effort to refrain from crying—less because of any real pain than out of frustration and outrage—as the barrel passed over him uncomfortably and in his opinion for far too long. Yet there also came a strange feeling of voluptuousness, which grew more pronounced when Lisa in cruel triumph palpated the victim with her foot to count the “broken” bones. Towering over him, she seemed bigger and no longer a child. Her face was barely recognizable; it had become that of a strange and beautiful woman.

Freed at last by their nanny—Lisa having proved more adept at tying than undoing—Henry gave vent to his displeasure; then Lisa was very sweet and contrite, but when she tried to kiss him, he shrank in consternation and made a show of temper to hide the queer new feelings he could neither express nor comprehend.

Later in life, Pinkerton was struck more than once by the beauty of a woman's face viewed from below, even when that face
normally held little appeal for him. He became aroused on these occasions and wished for the woman to “continue,” though he did not know precisely how. Nor could his desire be told, for however she might proceed, it had to be on her initiative, not his. The longed-for “continuation” never once took place; the woman would kiss him or in some other way deflect rather than give substance to what remained a tantalizing foretaste of desire. On this point Butterfly fared no better than others. In the early days of their marriage, it often excited him to see her masklike face hovering and swaying over him. For a brief moment, she would seem indeed to embody the erotic mysteries he so eagerly pursued. Light enough for him to lift with aplomb, she would stay on top for long periods, delighting him with her stamina and supple grace. But unaware of his mute, hidden desire, she like the others failed to draw it out, though unlike them, she had the artto make him forget it was ever there.

15

(The Nagasaki ms.)

One day I went down to breakfast a little earlier than usual and found Marika alone in her preparations. There was little for her to do in our well-staffed house, and as she had a room adjoining Kate's in a wing I seldom visited, I rarely saw her except in the morning, when she prepared freshly ground coffee on an alcohol burner, and little enough even then, for she was very discreet and—after looking me over so boldly the first day—hardly ever glanced in my direction. This suited me despite my curiosity, for I felt strongly her allure and clearly it would not do to flirt with Kate's maid.

On this morning, however, she smiled prettily when I entered,
but left it to me to utter a greeting. I amused myself with the thought that slaves were perhaps not subject to the same rules of politeness as servants. Smiling back, I asked her in halting French where she was from and how long she had been in the country. She answered in English, in a mixed accent whose charm was enhanced by her low, purring voice.

Did she like America?

“Some things I like,” she replied in her decided manner. “I like the trees. The leaves are beautiful.” I waited, but nothing more came. She started to measure out the coffee beans.

Anything else?

She thought for a moment. “Peanut butter,” she said and lapsed back into silence.

And what didn't she like?

“Coffee,” came the instant reply. “No taste, no bouquet.” She sat down on a chair next to the sideboard with the coffee mill between her thighs. “And men,” she continued as she looked across into my eyes. “They are
frustres
,
like the trees. They don't know how to . . .” The rest got lost in a noisy burst of energetic cranking, but her eyes, still fixed on my face, glinted suggestively. After a minute or so of furious grinding, she left off and gave her hand a little shake.

“Hard work,” I sympathized.

"Ah oui!”
she agreed, breathing deeply. “You want to grind for me?”

I had seated myself at the table a little distance away and now expected her to pass me the grinder, but she leaned back on the chair with arms dangling and did not move. When I rose and went to her, she looked up at me with laughter in her eyes. “You are nice,” she said softly. As I reached down for the grinder, she caught my hand and pressed it to the crank; with both hands over mine, she guided it slowly into motion.

I was bent over her uncomfortably, but there was little I could
do to change my position short of crouching down or disengaging my arm. Her face was lifted toward mine; our eyes met and held for what seemed an eternity while the aroma of fresh-ground coffee wafted up from under our awkwardly moving hands. At last the crank turned without further resistance, but our hands continued absently for a few empty turns before slowing to a halt. In that instant our lips touched. When they parted, her eyes were wide with excitement; taking my hand from the handle, she plunged it deep where her legs met.

Somewhere a door opened and jolted me to my senses. It took a moment to withdraw my hand from the grip of her thighs. Approaching footsteps propelled me back into my seat. While I tried to calm my pounding heart and assume a natural expression, Marika proceeded with perfect composure to light the alcohol stove, after casting me a half-amused, half-contemptuous look. I remembered that I had not rung for service; just as I reached for the chord, Kate appeared at the door.

16

Discomposed by the incident with Marika, Pinkerton wandered listlessly from the library and eventually strayed into his bathroom, constructed like most things in the house on a grandiose scale. Without thinking, he locked the door and started to undo his trousers. A sweet, stale feeling of familiarity drew him up short; his gestures and surroundings transported him back to an earlier period when, aroused from wrestling with Lisa, he would shut himself in to relieve the tension in his loins, purposeless as yet but already imperious. Later, this solitary pleasure had been largely relegated to the morning or evening hours; since his return from Japan, he had rarely sought it and then only in bed.

With a feeling of vexation, he left off and decided to draw a bath instead. He was glad his father had had the latest plumbing put in, which permitted bathing at all times, for in Japan he had gotten used to soaking daily in a hot
furo.
The warm water made him feel better, but the image of Marika was not long in reappearing and once more his desire rose up. He gave it a few half-hearted strokes, and when that made it only more exigent, he indulged it in a torpor, pulling the skin back from the head and pushing it over again, off and on and off. Shutting his eyes, he imagined himself back in the breakfast room: once again he is bent over Marika; this time he removes the coffee mill and slides the hem of her skirt up toward her waist, while she, sensually odorous, impatient, fumbles at his crotch; and he, fingers in the dense tuft, exploring, desire brandished, ushered in; her jouncing rasping desire, her moans rising, urging him on. . . And Kate, suddenly . . . Her piercing eyes, suddenly there, bearing down, boring into him, penetrating his gasping loins to the teeming semen rallied to charge. Her beautiful eyes. Watching.

He let his head tilt limply to the side as his lust dispersed in the quiescent water and floated off in languid milky wisps.

At the moment of bursting forth, with the abruptness of pictures changing in a magic lantern, Butterfly had suddenly been there to engulf him, mind and member and all, as she was each time when his loins opened, whether in company or alone: present herself or absent, it was always to her womb that his desire strove and in her flesh that it ebbed.

Sinking back in the warm water as into her arms, he could almost feel them folding him to her breast. Thus comforted, he lay thinking of Butterfly.

17

That summer they copulated spectacularly, almost in the manner of a performance, as if to prove how well they could in spite of what each lacked from the other. Pinkerton marveled anew at Butterfly's skill, marveled too at her lack of inhibition. Nothing shocked or repelled her; she did everything with a heedless innocence. Was the lubricity he desired impossible, he wondered, because she was innocent of sinful ideas, or because she was untainted by ideas of sin?

After the first frenzied week their amatory activity had fallen off, and for a time it had taken on a moribund cast; but a revival had come with the warmer weather that reduced everyday clothing to a light cotton
yukata
worn against the skin. The flimsy ankle-length robe revealed all too readily any anatomical modification, and it took only a slight effort to get past the single sash that fastened it; with the coming of summer heat, even the
yukata
was often dispensed with. Yet his eyes, if not his other senses, found her more appealing clothed, more elegant; her body, soft and smooth and lithesome, was pleasurable to the touch, but to one brought up on Grecian ideals, its proportions seemed less than perfect, and the rather short and stocky bowlegs in particular went against the esthetic grain. Her features, on the other hand, he supposed to be beautiful, and they did often appear so; but he could also see them at times as ugly, for her face was above all foreign—implacably, invincibly foreign—a fascinating mask even when cleared of powder and paint.

As the summer wore on, his body became more able to relax, his mind to relinquish its overwrought erotic obsessions. Her face, imprinting itself day after day upon his retina, began to appear as lovely as it had once—was it just a few weeks ago?—
seemed alien. Had love changed his vision? Or was love only the awareness of vision's subtle changes? He took endless pleasure at her sight and delighted in gazing until she, more pleased than embarrassed, sent him on his way; to touch her then seemed a bounty too great to conceive. Everything about her took on a fascination for him—her clothing, her combs, her powder; he delighted in them like a child. In time their love-making lost its acrobatic flavor; its rhythms broadened, its modulations became more subtle. More and more he allowed himself to sink into her softness, to abandon himself to the gentleness of her ministrations. Where he had dipped into her body with the ambitions of an angler casting for fish, he now went in like a diver enamored of the sea and underwater life. And Butterfly, now as always, showed herself to be wonderfully pliant to his newly awakened love; she would receive him and hold him and listen to his passionate murmurs without seeking to understand, and rock softly to his more urgent rhythms, and press him to her when he injected into her the distillate of his love, and cradle his spent body with words of soothing endearment.