The Butterfly Plague (15 page)

“I’m sure gonna try,” said the Negro.

“Then answer me this,” said Adolphus. The Negro quivered. How thrilling it was for Dolly as he stood there, all in pale-blue, with his cane, asking questions and getting answers from a man so large and black.

“Who is your master?” he posed.

“I don’t have none,” said the man.

“Nonsense,” said Dolly. “Whom do you work for?”

“Miss Virden. I works for Miss Virden.”

Ruth was on her way over to them.

“Letitia Virden?” she asked.

“Yes’m.”

“Yes,” said Ruth. “I thought so. I remember you.” She turned to Dolly. “They were on the train, Adolphus. She was behaving very strangely. Wearing veils and everything.”

“Yes’m,” the Negro asserted. “That’s Miss Virden, all right. She wears a veil all the time, now. I ain’t seen her without it since we got here.”

“And you work for her,” said Doily, furious with Ruth for having interrupted his interrogations, but hiding it because he didn’t want to stop the flow of answers.

“Yes suh. That’s what I says.”

“Is that she in there now?” Dolly asked. “In Alvarez Canyon Paradise?”

“Yes.”

Ruth drew Dolly to one side. “Why is she using our name?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Dolly. “I don’t know.”

He turned back to the Negro. “Who is with her?” he asked.

The chauffeur did a blink dance with his eyes as he tried to recall the names.

“There’s one or two mistuhs I don’t know,” he said slowly. “An’ one I do recognize but doesn’t know the name of. An’ one that I does know the name of, ‘cause it’s the name I had to give to the gateman.”

“And what is that?” said Ruth.

“Mistuh Damarosch. Used to make movies with Miss Virden in them. In th’ ol’ days.”

“That’s him,” said Dolly, as though they had not even suspected as much.

“Father,” said Ruth. “But why here in Alvarez?”

This question went unanswered, because it was just then the apelike custodian returned from the gatehouse.

“I suppose if it comes right down to it,” he said, “I could let you people pass.”

“There,” said Dolly. “Wonderful. I knew you’d see the light.”

“Just one small thing,” the gateman said.

“What’s that?” Dolly asked.

“You’ll hafta cross my palm with gold.”

“Oh—all right,” said Dolly. And gave him a hundred-dollar bill.

Then, they plunged forward into Alvarez Canyon.

12:10 p.m.

Inside the gates something was whistling.

“It’s a snake,” wailed Myra.

“A whistling snake!” said Dolly derisively. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, whatever it is, I don’t like it,” said Myra. “Anything that whistles gives me the creeps.”

“It’s just a bird,” said Naomi. “There, you see? Up in that tree.” She pointed.

“What kind of a bird?” said Myra, holding Dolly’s arm with delicate tenacity.

“A mynah bird,” said Naomi.

“That’s one of those birds that talks and everything,” said Dolly.

They advanced. Birds that talked. Miss Bonkers was impressed.

At first there was an undergrowth of fernery, asparaguslike stalks with great fans of lacy tendrils. This reached waist-high and grew in great abundance, but there was a path and it was relatively easy at this stage to make one’s way.

Above them giant eucalypti spread their graceful branches like broken umbrellas, and in between, straight as ramrods, green-and-black avocados, thirty and forty feet high, nudged and jostled for a place in the sun.

In the branches birds squalled and squawked, while imported monkeys squeaked and sprang and a million other smaller birds and climbing things spread a wide kaleidoscope of arms and wings and tails over the visitors. At first the noise was almost deafening.

The light faded. It became like evening—a brown velvet haze.

So far, all had been real.

But before them now, in the looming darkness, there were unreal trees with rubber-coated leaves and vines that were only twisted ropes and the sort of giant flowers invented by Rousseau, made here of heavy celluloid and technicolored paints. Reasonably speaking, these man-made charades were out of place in Paradise. But not in Alvarez. There was such a crowd in Alvarez; too many trees to reach the sun, too many plants for all to flower, and so the property departments of the major studios had been culled to replace what could not grow with what need not grow.

The visitors stumbled forward, feeling their way cautiously, trying to open their eyes wide in what was rapidly becoming total darkness.

“Are you sure it’s supposed to be like this?” asked Myra, looping one of her stoles back over her shoulder.

“And how, may I ask,” said Dolly, “is it supposed to be any different? It can only be what it is, after all.”

“But it’s so dark!”

“It’s heavenly,” said Naomi.

“Come on!” called Miss Bonkers. “We go this way, now!”

“That’s a help,” Dolly muttered. “By heaven, that’s a help. She’s completely disappeared and there’s an echo.”

They trudged on for another yard or two.

“Where are you?” Ruth called to Miss Bonkers.

“Who?” said a voice, quite distant and repeating, “who…who…who…”

“Are there owls in the jungle?” said Myra.

“Shut up,” Dolly hissed.

They waited.

“Hallo there!” Ruth called. “Hal—ooo!”

“Who is it you want?” the voice asked. “You-want-you-want-you-want-you?”

“Miss Bonkers,” Ruth called back.

There was a slight pause.

“Miss who?”

“…who-who-who-who?”

“Oh, really!” said Ruth. “This is ridiculous.”

“Miss who?” said an entire stranger, stepping before them onto the path. She was tall and she wore a knapsack and a pith helmet.

Putting up with it, Ruth said, “Miss Bonkers. Please. We’re trying to locate a Miss Bonkers.”

The stranger blinked, thought about it, and said, “No. I can’t help you. There’s a Miss Box in here somewhere, but no Miss Bonkers. I’m sorry.”

She stepped away into the foliage and was gone.

“Who was that?” Myra asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ruth, without pausing to think why she should know in the first place.

They stood there. They had begun to see quite successfully by this time. What had seemed to be darkness was now just a sort of viridescent half-light, entirely pleasant, cool and soothing.

“Well, we’ve lost Miss Bonkers,” said Dolly. “What now?”

“Surely Miss Bonkers wouldn’t have left the path.”

“That other person did,” said Myra.

“Yes. But she seemed to know what she was doing,” said Dolly.

Holding hands, they headed on.

12:40 p.m.

“Where are you?” This was Dolly.

“Here I am,” said Myra.

“What’s that in your hand?”

“Some kind of vine, I think, with flowers.”

Myra stood quite near the path. Dolly had stepped into the greenery in order to relieve himself.

“Isn’t it beautiful!” said Myra.

She put her face right down into the bell of a giant flower.

“Oh, smell!” she whooped. “It’s gorgeous!”

“Don’t you get it near me,” said Dolly. “It’s probably one of those man-eating things and is just waiting to smell blood.”

Myra coiled it around her neck, next to her skin, loosening her scarves and stoles and making it one of them. There was no sunlight here, so she needn’t worry about an unwanted burn.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” she said. “It’s like a lovely nest of birds.”

“Very poetic,” said Dolly. “Just keep it away from me.”

“It has such a lovely smell. Like something smoky. Incense.”

“Lovely,” said Dolly. “Lovely. It will probably set you on fire. Now. Where are the rest of them?”

“Rest of who?”

“Us,” said Dolly. “For God’s sake, Myra! Mother and Ruth!”

“Oh, well. They went off somewhere…”

“Went off somewhere!” snapped Dolly.

“Yes,” said Myra, fondling her blossoms.

“When?” Dolly demanded.

“While you were peeing.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

“Well, I can’t help it. Maybe they had to pee, too. I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Well, Dolly. Then I’d be lost, too!”

A fit of wailing, to which Myra seemed more and more prone these last weeks, appeared to be imminent.

“If you start weeping and whining,” said Dolly, “I swear to heaven I’ll leave you here in the jungle.”

Myra fell silent. She pinched herself for reassurance and pouted.

Adolphus called out, “Mother? Ruth?”

No one answered. Not even an echo.

“You see,” he said. “You’ve let them disappear.”

“It could be us,” said Myra.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I mean, it could be us that’s disappeared and they’re just standing around somewhere waiting for us.”

The logic of this burned a hole in Dolly’s brain.

“So far as I am concerned,” he said, “they have disappeared. And we,” he added with a kind of desperate certainty, “are right here.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t move,” said Myra.

“No. We must keep going,” said Dolly. “If only we could see the sun or get a bearing on some recognizable object.”

“Should we drop something?”

“That’s an excellent idea. Hansel and Gretel. Very clever.”

“Oh, this is fun!” said Myra.

“What’ll we drop?” said Dolly.

“Well, we could drop my stoles and things.

“You need them.”

“Not now.” She pointed to the invisible sky.

Dolly nodded. “All right then. Drop your stoles and things and we’ll get them back later on.”

“Then when we find them at least we’ll know where we’ve been, eh?”

“And where we are,” said Dolly.

There wasn’t much conviction in that.

They started away, leaving a trail that spelled “Myra” to all the world.

1:30 p.m.

“Now, Mother,” said Ruth, “you sit on this log. Here’s a good hefty stick. If there’s a snake or anything, kill it. I’m going to double back and see if I can find them.”

“Very well, Ruth. All right.”

“You’re sure you’re not sick.”

“Yes, dear. I’m just tired.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“O.K., then. Sit still and rest.”

“Thank you, dear. Be careful.”

“I will,” said Ruth, and set off down the path. Just before she made her turn away into the undergrowth, she looked back over he shoulder at her mother. The brightly colored parasol made a good beacon. However, just in case, Ruth bent a branch on a tree and left it dangling downward to give herself an added sign.

The jungle was pure green here, not too difficult underfoot and filled with areas of space through which, far off above her, Ruth could see the blue fretwork of the sky and an occasional bird sitting on a branch. She took an invigorating breath of damp air. It held the odor of bottled ferns and rotting leaves. It was a lovely smell to Ruth—profound and mysterious.

Birdcalls and a melange of insect and animal noises cluttered the air. But there was not a single human noise to be heard.

Ruth made for what appeared to be a clearing, but it kept disappearing and not being there. At last she came out on what seemed to be a path. There, lying on the ground, was one of Myra’s stoles, which Ruth recognized by its bizarre patterns. She picked it up and wrapped it around her neck.

“Myra!” she called. “Myra! ‘Dolphus!”

A reply came but from an unexpected quarter. It was laughter, like a harp being struck, and it seemed to come from behind Ruth, farther down the path. She knew this laughter and now she could give it a name. Letitia Virden.

Intrigued and even alarmed by the thought that perhaps her father was after all accompanying the Little Virgin on her tour of Alvarez Canyon, and equally intrigued and alarmed by the prospect of seeing him again, Ruth fell back into the shadows of the jungle and waited for them to pass.

They came around the distant bend, one at a time—Letitia first, then George, then Cooper Carter, and then three other men in black costumes like uniforms, and finally the warden, who wore green and was extremely thin and small.

The Virgin wore a blue tailored coat, the sort that little girls wear, with a belt at the back, and there were bows all down the front of it. She also wore a sort of toque, from which spread her current trademark, a veil. Her face was not visible, and Ruth again was caught by the fact that she wore long leather gloves—kid leather and soft—but with harsh, bone buttons all the way up under the sleeves of her coat, which came only to below the elbow. She looked very elegant, and the incongruity of her appearance was dead right for the image of the world’s most famous woman wandering in the tangle of Paradise.

Having seen this figure and taken it in, Ruth next saw her father, George Damarosch.

His hands were clasped behind his back and he walked splaying his feet like a goose or a duck, with his pelvis and paunch pushed five or six inches ahead of the rest of him. He wore a long coat like a motorist’s coat (circa 1910) and he also wore that sort of hat, with goggles appended to it.

“What can he be thinking of?” Ruth thought. “Dressing like that.”

Her father. There he was. She had not seen him since before her departure for Germany in May of 1936. They were estranged. Yet they had always been estranged—since that moment of discovery long ago in the hilltop house at Falconridge. That was the day it was announced that her brother Adolphus—George’s darling—was a bleeder. It was the day that Naomi had been reviled and cast aside. It was the day when Ruth, for the first time, had heard that she was a carrier. That she carried hemophilia. That long ago. And there he was. She hated him.

The Little Virgin’s party strode on. She could see the coats of the men were made of leather. Black leather, white leather—and also that the three anonymous men wore boots.

Her father seemed very serious. Was he arguing with Letitia? Or trying to convince her of something she didn’t want to believe? Ruth could not ascertain what it was at this distance. She waited.

Letitia stopped. She turned and said something vehement to George, who seemed to pale—the pallor recognizable even from this far away—and then Letitia could be heard for an instant only, and the words were, “should kill you.” And then she walked on.