The Butterfly Plague (10 page)

“You are, madame, I understand, a famous ballerina,” he said. I said nothing. I let him believe it. I needed something to hide behind in the event that the interview became unpleasant. “And thus it is that I bring my appeal to you,” he continued. “I do not bring it to everyone. I am not in the habit of stopping people in the street with my hat. I cannot hope that everyone will help me. No. I must depend on people like you. Persons of quality…” And here he paused. His Egyptianesque eyes slid their glance down to his hands, resting on his cane. “…Persons of wealth.”

I was stunned. He was asking me for money. A common beggar. I could not believe my ears.

“Do not,” he said, “misunderstand me. I am not a common beggar.” (A mind reader to boot!) “My request is for a special assistance, and only the wealthy can give it. I need,” he said, “the help of someone who believes.”

I stared. His knuckles turned white. He began to enunciate each word meticulously. He seemed to be holding his voice in check. The words emanated from him in wrenchings and withheld shouts, but the tone of his voice was low and it remained sibilant like menacing steam. Listening to him, I became agitated, disturbed…afraid, and then appalled. He went on.

“You are an American ballerina. You are
persona grata. Someone
.”

Each time he said this word it took on new and stronger meanings.

“I need the assistance of Someone like yourself. I have come a great distance. I have come—alone. I am not married, madame. I have no wife. I have, alas, but praise God, no children. I have…” He paused, “all I have is my father and my mother. And all they have is me. I have my father and I have my mother.” He paused again. He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the backs of his hands, one by one. “I have come a great distance but not from far away. The road to Paris is short. My road is long. I have come alone.” He looked right into my eyes. I was riveted. He looked away and put his handkerchief back in his pocket, replacing his dried hands carefully, one on top of the other, on the head of his cane.

“I have come alone,” he repeated. “Do you understand me?”

I did not understand.

“Only I was able to come because there was foreign capital of only four thousand Swiss francs. That is one thousand American dollars. Three of us could not come. It was decided to be me. My father and my mother…” Pause. “I have been now in Switzerland a year. So I have come to Paris. I have been now in Paris one month, two weeks, and one day. I am living in the men’s lavatory of the Gare du Nord. I have my suitcase there. I eat with the pigeons in the park, there at Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Do you see it there across the road?” I nodded. Yes. “I have tried. But I am not able to make a living. I am, alas, able only to be alive. It is my foot. People are superstitious of a foot.”

I tried not to look at it, stretched before him where he sat. But I saw it and it was badly twisted and the false heel was much taller and more sloped than it had appeared to be when he approached. People are afraid of deformity. I am afraid.

“Do you know what I am saying?”

I did not know.

“Lives can be bought and sold,” he said, “but life is not cheap. I had to come alone. I have been paid for. Four thousand Swiss francs.”

I began to understand. To fathom it. To guess.

“I have still my father and I have still my mother. Eight thousand Swiss francs.”

I understood.

“I shall not bore you to tell you that I have been to the banks. That I have been to Swiss industrialists and to French auto makers. That I have been to the Baroness de Friedlander, a great lady and a great philanthropist, to Emmanuel Koch, the artist, to the Due de Chartres, the Duchess of Trent, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Vandergelder of New York City, to Prince Lopakhim of the Imperial Family. That I have been to moneylenders, wealthy prostitutes, and criminals. I shall not bother to say that I have been to the Bishop of Provence and to Rabbi Guszt. Others had been before me; others were early; others will come after; others will be late. But my father and my mother…my father and my mother!…”

He could go no further. The message pushed at him urgently. He spoke it loudly and with defiance.

“Give me two thousand American dollars!”

“Mr. Seuss, I cannot. I am not a ballerina. I have no money.”

Mr. Seuss gave me a look that I shall never forget. I had wasted him. Wasted his precious story, his fears, and his apprehension. Wasted his short supply of time. He hated me.

He rose.

“Oh, Mr. Seuss. Please,” I said. “I would help you if I could.”

“Your watch,” he said. “Your watch and your rings.”

“Take them,” I said. “Take them, please.”

“They are worthless,” he said, regaining his composure. “They want foreign capital. They want it for munitions and guns. They will pay in good people. They want it so badly.”

“Who wants it?” I said.

He looked at me with scorn.

“Who wants it?” he said. He stared around the café at the other patrons and then back at me. His look by now was kinder.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I did not see the relevance of this. I did not answer.

“Well, you have certainly come from America,” he said, and I did not like the tone of his voice now. It was disrespectful and full of irony. “You do not know who you are. You do not look around you.”

He took a step away. I was afraid. I thought he was going to denounce me in some way simply because I was an American. But then he lowered his voice.

He said, “I will give you something.”

He reached into his pocket.

“I will not need it any more,” he said. “I will give it to you. Free.”

He fished around, unable to find what he wanted. Then he found it and kept it folded in his fist.

“You may look at it,” he said, “but do not show it. Do not wear it. In Germany it is worth one thousand American dollars. Here, it is worthless. But keep it. Keep it. It will remind you of where you are and of what you do not know. Take it and do not look at it until I have gone.”

He placed something softly pointed in my hand and closed my fingers over it.

“Forgive me my anger, Madame Ballerina,” he said. He genuinely tried to smile but failed and he saw that I had noted this failure.

“I cannot smile,” he said. “My teeth were made of gold and I have sold them.”

I closed my eyes. His anguish closed them. When I opened them he had gone.

I waited until no one was watching and then I unfolded my fingers to look at his gift.

Many things have been placed in my hands. Surprises, medals, money (worms when I was a child and Dolly teased me). I have held a multitude of gifts. But never one like this.

It was a yellow star.

Made of felt.

I wanted Bruno to marry me. I had wanted it since the day I first saw him at the beach. But he wouldn’t ask me. It seemed to take forever for it to occur to him. His mind was elsewhere, on other things. Riding trains and motorcars, in cafés and restaurants, in the water and out of it, by night and by day, I watched his contemplation but could not discover its subject.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked. I asked it a million times and a million times he turned his gaze on me, lost, and moved his lips and didn’t speak. He read books and newspapers I did not read and corresponded with people I did not know.

I held his hand; I stroked his thighs. I laid my hands in his pockets to get as near to him as possible. I let my head fall to his shoulder whenever I could, and after training, while he lectured me in the privacy of cubicles, I would put my cheek against his square, barreled chest (he was no swimmer himself) and I would listen to his insides churning over the thoughts he was really having. Irregular heart beats and stomach rumblings; disturbances deep inside him but none of them voiced. There were no words.

I worked very hard for him. I wanted to be what he wanted. I wanted every muscle to be obedient to his will, not my own. When he did the counting my body became his machine, beyond my control. I don’t know where the stamina and the rhythm came from. They didn’t come from me. Perhaps from inside him. I was his instrument. I wanted to be. I wanted to obey. I wanted to be obedient. I wanted to function without thought, to respond to his voice like a dog.

I would watch his face.

Bruno was a small, hard man. His legs were like squares, a series of cubes, and they could support the whole world if they had to. All of him seemed squared off and cubed. He was not a round man. His teeth were square. His hands were square. His mouth was square and his nose was square. Every muscle had four sides. Square.

I would watch his face.

Bruno’s parents were dead. He had wanted an education but there was no one to provide him with clothes and food, let alone schooling. So he taught himself. He read a lot. He had forceful, book-inspired ideas. Some of it was science. A lot of it had to do with some sort of biochemistry—food and things which Bruno translated into certain phases of my training. He was inclined to theories.

I would watch his face.

The cubes of his eyes would float on the secret inside of him. Possibly it was something he had read in the paper, in a book, in one of his letters. He seemed to be looking at something, definitely watching something, but when I turned to look, to see what it was (it always seemed to be very close, on my shoulder, or just beyond it), there would be nothing, and I would turn quickly back to see if it was gone from his face but it wouldn’t be. It would still be there.

I was his object. But I did not know that then.

One day he said to me, “Take off your hat, Ruth.”

So I took off my hat.

We were riding on the train, going at last to Berlin. As Bruno himself had said, “We’re on our way.”

“How long is your braid?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t know. I knew that it reached the middle of my back, but this was a measurement I never thought of.

“Cut it off.”

I stared at him.

I waited for him to smile.

He did not smile.

We were seated in a compartment with two sleeping members of our team. Boys. I looked at them, hoping they would not wake up. I was embarrassed for Bruno’s sake, not my own. He was making a small fool of himself.

“Cut it off.”

I put my hat back on protectively. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bruno. It’s my hair. I can’t cut it off.”

“I want you to cut it off.”

I looked at him. He was serious. Dangerously serious.

“I have nothing to cut it off with,” I said, hoping that would be the end of it.

But, “Get down my bag,” he said.

I stood up and got down his bag. Remember, I was dutiful.

For a moment he sat with it resting on his lap. Then he took out his key chain and opened the bag.

I put my hands on my head.

“Why do you want my hair?” I asked him while he was fishing in the bag.

“Never mind,” he said. “Cut it off.”

He handed me his razor. It was just like one of Father’s. It had a bone handle.

“Open it.”

“But why, Bruno? Why?”

I didn’t want to cut my hair. I liked my hair. It was one of the few feminine things I had left, aside from my clothes.

He shouted. It was not in English.

The boys woke up. The shouting woke them.

Bruno grabbed at the razor. He seized and opened it. One of the boys gave a gasp.

And Bruno said, “You talk too much. You ask too many questions,” and I said, “Bruno! Bruno! Please don’t do this. What are you doing this for?”

The boys shrank back into their corners pretending they were not awake. And Bruno crossed over and threw my beautiful hat on the floor and the razor glinted and threatened and I said, “Bruno, please!” and he placed one of his knees on the seat beside me and his other foot on my hat on the floor and he held me by the braid with one hand and with the other he drew the razor through the braid at the nape of my neck, like an executioner, and I laid my head protectively down onto my knees with my hands on it and I thought, He’s crazy, he’s crazy. Why is he suddenly crazy? Something had possessed him. And the two boys lay in their corners silently, certain they were watching a murder, and then Bruno held my braid up and he waved it over his head and threw it down and took my face in both his square hands and turned it this way and that way until I was sure he was trying to break my neck and he looked at me and looked at me and looked and finally he let me go and sat back in his corner like an animal, exhausted, and he said, “I will sleep now,” and he did.

When he awoke he asked me to marry him. In Berlin.

I said, “Yes.”

And I was afraid.

I wore a white dress. I carried lilies of the valley. They did not play Mendelssohn. It was not allowed. I had to glue the veiling to my head. There was not enough hair to attach it with pins.

There were men at the wedding, men I had never seen before. New friends of Bruno’s, I assumed. We were not introduced. But they clustered around him and they looked at me like inspectors.

Mr. Seuss’s star was in my handbag.

Something old.

“Stand against the wall.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Stand still.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Put your arms out.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Svim.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Svim.”

“You said ‘
svim
.’ What’s wrong with ‘swim’?”

“Nothing is wrong mit it. Svim.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“One.”

“
Count!
”

“And-one-and…”

“COUNT!”

“…and-two-and…”

“Now.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Count.”

“…And…”

“Listen to me. Go on counting. And listen. I am going to shave your head.”

“One-and-two-and-one-and-two…”

“I am going to have your head altogether bald and I am going to…Count, God damn you…I am going to buy you some new clothes.”

“And-one-and-two-and-one-and-two.”

“I have plans for you.”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Count.”

“And-two-and…”

“We have come a long distance. Traveled a long way.”