The Butterfly Plague (14 page)

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“No. I am not hungry.”

He wavered. He looked along the street.

I steadied him with my arm around his shoulder.

He stood against me like a child.

He stared into the sky.

He rocked a little, back and forth. He had not stood upright in weeks. He felt like so many bones in a bag.

He said, “Walk with me.”

I said, “You cannot walk.”

And he said, “Make me walk. A few steps. Please.”

We stepped out like strollers.

(They knew once another world but that has been forgotten.)

“I cannot walk,” he said. “You are right.”

“Shall we sit down?” I asked.

“No. There is not time. I shall lie down. Please. It must happen here.”

I helped him down until he was crouched on the curb. The back of his head rose like a skull above his clothes. He reached up with one of his hands and scratched it. Right at the crown. I shall never forget that.

Then he said again, “Here. It will be here.”

I knelt on the pavement beside him and helped him all the way down onto his back. He lay out flat.

His eyes reached into heaven.

It was unmistakably heaven.

That much was true.

I said, “Quickly. Tell me your name.”

He muttered words.

I laid my ear against his mouth.

He whispered his name.

It is private to me. I will never tell it.

Then he whispered something else.

Pocket.

His hands did a dance over his damp, decaying clothes. This was the rush to death.

I followed them as rapidly as they flew. I followed after, searching.

“Quickly,” he said.

Then he found it.

His star.

I had a pin in my lapel.

He thanked me. I placed his star, neatly, over his heart.

He took a short time dying.

No one came.

I stayed with him.

His eyes never left the sky.

I was sorry. I had to leave him there. I think that’s what he wanted.

A sign.

When I boarded the ship I saw the blond man.

It was the first time. He is still with me.

I went to my cabin. I had thought I wanted to see the last of Germany from the deck of my ship, the city, then the green fields in the twilight. But now I did not want that.

I am not a thief under normal circumstances, but I had stolen one thing from Bruno. It was to help me understand. At least I hoped it was. A book, autographed by the author, precious to Bruno. He would miss it, but then, God help us, he could surely secure another.

The ship moved.

People yelled.

I had heard, already, too much yelling. I closed my porthole.

I walked around for a moment checking idiotically (now that the ship was actually moving) to see that I had not forgotten anything.

I hadn’t.

So.

I opened my purse. I took out the star of Mr. Seuss and pinned it to my lapel and then I sat down on my bunk and began to read
Mein Kampf
.

It was a mirror for Bruno.

In my own mirror, when I finally looked, my hair, growing unhampered at last, came back to me white. As you see it now.

The Chronicle of
Alvarez Canyon

September 15th, 1938:

The Road to Alvarez Canyon

10:00 a.m.

The beauty of Alvarez Canyon was known around the globe. Nominally it was a state park, but the visiting public had proclaimed it “Paradise.” Birds, reptiles, fishes, and mammals roamed its precincts unharmed and free. The park was a sanctuary, and thus Paradise was governed and protected by the State of California. The laws concerning visitors were very strict.

No one was allowed past the gates unaccompanied by a warden. All visits were, of course, arranged in advance. Parties were restricted in number. No smoking was allowed. At the barrier all guns were confiscated; in fact, no weapon of any kind could be carried except by the attendant wardens, who all possessed knives which they were to use in the event of snake bite.

Alvarez Canyon Paradise lay due north of Santa Monica, in the mountains that squatted there by the sea. They were called mountains, which they were not; they were merely hills. But “mountains” sounds superb and indicates the proper respect for Paradise. So, “mountains” it was.

If seen from the air, the canyon which contained Alvarez was not very large. It was an area of approximately forty acres. The sides of the canyon were exceptionally steep and presented a formidable barrier to anything or anyone wishing to climb out. In 1928 a family of cumbers had fallen to its death attempting to do just that—to climb out—and ever since, the rules about climbing had been strictly enforced.

In order to preserve the atmosphere of Paradise in all weathers, some portions of Alvarez were quite unreal. The plants in these places were made of specially treated fabrics and of rubber. Thus when elsewhere the acacia leaves were falling they did not fall down in Alvarez. On close scrutiny, too, one out of every ten animals was dead and taxidermed. A glass stare can be disconcerting, but the thrill of coming face to face with an oryx, apparently tame, made up for it.

So it was that on this Thursday, when work had temporarily come to a halt on the film
Hell’s Babies
, Dolly persuaded Myra, Ruth, and his mother to venture to Alvarez. “A little Paradise,” he had said, “will do us good.”

Naomi concurred with pleasant surprise, Myra did a small dance and had to be quieted, Ruth (greatly upset by the death of the red-haired nude) merely said, “Very well,” and fell silent—and Miss Bonkers, who had not been invited, insisted on accompanying her patient and efficiently packed a bag of drugs and got out her motorcycle. Because of the fifteen-mile-an-hour speed limit set by Adolphus, it was Miss Bonkers on her motorcycle who arrived first.

Ruth drove while Naomi sat silently beside her. Dolly and Myra, like toys, were wrapped in a tissue of pillows, veils, and sun hats. They sat in the rumble seat. Boxed.

They languished along the highway, going north. Soon Miss Bonkers, approaching ninety miles an hour, whizzed by with a wave of both hands. On a motorcycle the death-nurse was transformed. She was dressed in her uniform, of course, but over it she now wore an aviator’s leather jacket and helmet, goggles, gauntleted gloves, and high black boots. She had a passion for World War flying films and doubtless, had it been practical, an airplane would have replaced the motorcycle. But as Miss Bonkers herself admitted, “At Topanga Canyon Beach there was no damn place to park a car let alone a biplane.” So the motorcycle became her substitute.

As the journey progressed, the company fell increasingly silent. Even Myra.

Naomi fell asleep.

Myra calculated how many days it would be before she would eat a decent meal. Her pretty, round face could not be seen, so deeply had she swathed herself in protection from the sun. All that was visible in a sort of mold of gauze and stoles was her pursed but ever-sensuous curlicue of a mouth and her heart-shaped celluloid glasses. The rest was all hat and blond curls and round, plump arms hidden in pink-and-green beach pajamas and swaddle. She secretly pinched her breasts, one by one. They were delicious to touch. The mouth unpursed. She smiled. She’d show them a thing or two. Fat! My hat! I’m gorgeous! She recited this to herself, pinching and patting away. Then she went so far as to smirk, which was a mistake, because Dolly turned and saw her.

“What are you smirking at?” he said somewhat testily, because he could not endure so much quiet.

“Smirking?” said Myra, wide-eyed behind the hearts of celluloid. “Smirking? I don’t even know what smirking is, so how can I be it?” She drew closer to Dolly. She whispered, “Do you wanna put your fingers inside my veils?” and leered delightfully as she spoke.

“Myra! Please!” said Dolly. “For heaven’s sake remember that my mother is sitting in the front seat.”

11:55 a.m.

Arriving at the barrier, they discovered that they had been preceded not only by Miss Bonkers’s motorcycle but also by a large Rolls-Royce, beside which a Negro chauffeur languished in a drooping stance. His mouth was open and he snored, but very gently, adding his voice to the distant cacophony of sanctuaried birds and insects.

Ruth said, “I thought only one party was allowed in at a time.”

“Maybe,” said Naomi, “it’s someone just about to leave.”

“Or a High Mucky-Muck,” said Dolly.

Myra stared and giggled.

They clambered down, Naomi handing Dolly down by the arm to Myra, and then stepping down herself.

Ruth said, “I’m going to have one last cigarette before we go in,” and lit up.

Dolly, on his long, knock-kneed legs, pigeon-toed his way to the gatehouse.

“Damarosch,” he said, poking his head through the little window.

“You’re sure as hell right,” said a sleepy voice.

“I beg your pardon?” said Dolly.

“I said you’re sure as hell right. It’s damn hot.”

“Oh,” said Dolly. “Yes, of course.”

He withdrew in confusion.

“What do y’want?” asked the guard, pursuing Dolly’s head with his own, sticking it out the window.

“We’re arrived,” said Dolly.

“I can see that,” said the guard, who had been asleep. “But what do you want?”

“Entrance,” said Dolly, quite annoyed. He hated any sort of personal foul-up in front of his mother and Ruth. He enjoyed, rather, the immediate response of respect that his name and person usually drew in public places. This sort of shilly-shallying simply flustered him.

“Entrance to what?” said the man, who was one of those basically cantankerous persons so often employed as custodians and gatekeepers.

“Alvarez Canyon!” Dolly raised his voice and grew red.

The head withdrew and presently reappeared at the top of a giant uniformed body whose baggy gut pendulated dangerously over a slackened belt.

“Someone’s in there,” said this parade of swarth and swagger, and jammed its thumbs into its pockets, letting its hairy hands hang down.

“Our visit has been arranged since yesterday,” said Dolly precisely, hiding behind his cane. “If you’re able to read, you’ll doubtless find us in your book. The name is Damarosch.”

The opposing eyes squinted between the hairs of massive eyebrows and searched over Dolly’s figure and the figures of Naomi, Ruth, Miss Bonkers, and Myra. It had to be admitted that the view was somewhat odd, for it contained this man dressed entirely in blue, caved in on the support of a rapier-thin cane—plus a madwoman with a flat, youthful face and pure white hair, and a frail, reedy woman in a blue dress, green hat, and purple shoes, who was carrying an orange parasol. Next there was a simpering of veils, sunglasses, nail varnish, bosom, and bright lipstick that the guard could hardly help but guess was someone in pictures, since she rather mechanically responded to his stare with a nod and a smile and a heaving of breasts. Finally, concluding the group, there was a short stocky man in an aviation leather helmet, goggles, gauntlets, riding boots to the knee, and what appeared to be a nurse’s uniform.

Beyond these, of course, lounged that dozing black of gigantic proportions, sensuously rubbing his buttocks against the metal sides of the parked Rolls-Royce. But he belonged to the “others.”

From inside the canyon came the distant echo of laughter.

The Negro stirred and looked around him hungrily.

Dolly could not resist giving him a smile.

“Here I go again,” he thought. He was enchanted with Negroes. One of his fantasies…

“Dam-rosch, eh?” snarled the gatekeeper.

“With an a,” said Dolly. “With two fir’s. Yes.”

The gatekeeper retired to his cave.

They could hear things being rearranged on a table top to the steady accompaniment of a low monologue filled with sexual references.

Dolly gave the chauffeur a sly glance. He did a few elegant things with his cane, moving it about near his feet in the dust, then leaning on it casually with one hand. He had learned his cane vocabulary from Mr. Chaplin and it was a good imitation. The Negro did not respond. Perhaps he was not interested in canes. Or did not care for Mr. Chaplin. You could not tell.

The gatekeeper reappeared. He had several pieces of paper in his paws. He looked at Dolly suspiciously.

“You’re already in there,” he said, rattling several pieces of paper in Dolly’s face. “Go away.”

“What do you mean, we’re already in there?” said Dolly. “We’ve just arrived. We’re here.”

The gatekeeper turned and read from his fistful of documents.

“Dam’rosch,” he read. “Six of them, in there.”

“But that’s us,” said Dolly.

“I don’t care,” said the gatekeeper. “There are six of them and only five of you.”

“But they have used our name and they have taken our tour of Paradise! You can’t send us away just because somebody else is a liar and a cheat and there are six of them!”

“You’ll have to wait your turn,” said the gatekeeper and disappeared.

Dolly turned back to the others, who were clustered like mannequins around the purple Franklin.

“This is insane,” he remarked. “Stark raving insane.”

“He’ll let us in,” said Ruth. “There’s probably only one tourmaster and when the others come back we can get him to take us.”

“I want to go now,” said Myra.

“Oh, shut up!” said Dolly. He assumed his full height. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

He walked over to the Rolls-Royce.

He gave the Negro a tap with his cane.

“Wake up,” he insisted.

The Negro came to, stood at attention, flicked at his cap with his long black fingers, and broke the world record for dazzling white smiles.

“Yes sun!” he said.

“Heavens,” said Dolly. He couldn’t help it. He had to swallow three times before he could speak again.

“What is it, suh? You feelin’ faint?” asked the black man.

“No,” said Dolly. “No. In fact, I’m really quite angry.”

“I ain’t did it,” said the chauffeur. “I didn’t, I swear. I was asleep,” he said. His eyes bulged.

“Nothing has been done,” said Dolly, feeling a little thrill at the response he had drawn from the man. “I simply want to ask you something. Do you understand?”