The Butterfly Plague (40 page)

And George pursued him with all the vehemence and hatred at his command. A strangely malevolent torrent of words descended on Ping Sam. Scalding rain. He was castigated for disloyalty. Roared at for his virility (Ping Sam was the father of eight sons) and lashed for the providence of his bright and beautiful offspring and his handsome, silent wife. He was even decried for the rape of America’s Little Virgin. And murdered for his part in the destruction of George’s hopes and plans—his exploded future—his exploded dream.

George reached out with both his hands.

Ping Sam reached out with his.

The canyon beyond Falconridge is deep. Now, it was haunted.

George returned to the birthday party his hands behind his back. This was to become a characteristic stance for the remainder of his life.

He looked at his daughter, Ruth.

Her hair had not yet turned to its shade of premature white. It was long and brown, done up with ribbons.

George thought, “The perfect image of a girl. A murderess.”

Like her mother, she carried the blood.

The infamous, killing blood.

Damn her.

Ruth blushed, as though she had known what was in his mind.

George turned and walked away.

All his dreams had faded and gone out in one blinding afternoon.

Now, in the park, he opened his eyes and stared hopelessly into the dark sky and the faraway stars.

“Oh, God,” he prayed, “if there is one, kill me now.”

He waited.

Nothing happened.

“Kill me now,” he pleaded. “Now.”

Still nothing happened.

“This is a sign,” George thought. “A sign that there is something still to do.”

He wondered what it was.

“Kill me now,” he had prayed. “Kill me now.”

Then he knew what it was—the thing he had to do. The meaning of the sign.

He had killed before.

The second time is nothing.

And as he bided, he wondered.

When?

It was the day after Christmas, and the lights were still ablaze as George rose, and with a jaunty air, hands neatly, firmly and calmly folded behind his back, walked out of Sherman Square and down along the boulevard toward the nearest shining bar which beckoned him with electric messages of hope. And cunning.

To kill is to destroy. He hadn’t thought of that.

Till now.

Sunday, January 1st, 1939:

Topanga Beach

New Year’s Day 1939 fell on a Sunday. There was nothing extraordinary about it. Those who had had too much to drink woke up with headaches. Those who went to bed with problems still had them in the morning. Those who had rashly proposed marriage under the midnight mistletoe awoke to the question of how to tactfully break the vow. The happy were still happy, the sad still sad. The doers did and the nondoers didn’t. It would be a year like any other.

Ruth had spent the night on the beach.

First of all she had sat on the balcony, watching Noah and B.J.‘s bonfire, and later, when everyone had gone to bed, she had walked along the sand and paused beside its embers.

This fire was going out. But others still burned. For Ruth, it had been a year of fires. Real fires, imaginary fires, symbolic fires. All burning—all eating—most of them conjuring death.

She slipped her hand under the loose blouse of her beach pajamas. There it was—whatever it was—whatever it would be. It should be born in June 1939. That sounded grand.

A blue-eyed baby, with blond hair and fine, long limbs, a straight mind and a health-infested system. She would will it. She was convinced of this.

What would Bruno think—if Bruno should ever find out? Had it been done at his instigation? Certainly the blond man had followed her all the way from Germany, as though by plan, as though obeying orders, proceeding by rote.

In that case, Bruno would know. He would doubtless rejoice. Well. Let him. This was her child. Not his. Not Germany’s. Hers.

It was a butterfly child, she thought. Conceived and born in the butterfly year—an era of plagues and ruin. But that didn’t matter. What he grew toward—the years in which he would flourish and mature—they would be different years, not years of anguish, as these were.

She thought of what he would miss. He would never know his father. But she would tell him, somehow, some persuasive story. She would make him believe in her belief, in the children of determined hope.

He would never know Dolly, and that was a greater loss than the loss of his father. Not to have known Adolphus—that was a desperate thing. But then, it could not be so desperate to those who only heard his name or read about him, or were told how odd and strange he was.

And Naomi.

Probably George.

They would all be gone then.

Certainly this world he was being born into would be gone.

It would all change. Be changed. Would vanish.

Ruth did not know how sick her heart really was in the midst of this world, until she thought of that word—the word “vanish.”

It will be over, she thought, before he grows to be a man. When I am old and he is my age, what a wonderful thing it will be to look back and to say, it never happened. The dreamers did not die; Bruno did not exist; the butterflies were beautiful—whole treefuls of them—loved and applauded by everyone who saw them; Hitler is dead. No more wars. No more threat of wars. No torment. No apprehension. And a cure for every disease…

She smiled. She even laughed out loud.

She was dreaming everyone’s dream.

A strange, unnerving thought crept into her mind, taking her by complete surprise while she was laughing, throwing out the romance of her generalized Eldorado. It crept in and sat, hugging its knees, waiting for her attention.

It was a picture. At least, it seemed to be. There were no words connected with it. The thought did not speak to her. It just sat there, watchful and cruel.

The picture was of her womb.

Empty.

She didn’t know what this might mean.

It could mean the child had been born.

It could mean she was remembering herself as she was before its conception.

It could mean it was never there.

The thought blinked a little and smiled and waggled its fingers and shifted on its haunches.

Not there. The child. Not there.

How could it not be there? Everything was happening, progressing, functioning exactly as it should.

But she hadn’t been to a doctor. She had no verification beyond her own instinctive sense of pregnancy, her own knowledgeable (but hardly professional) appraisal of the facts.

Not there.

It was there.

She walked around the embers, making a nervous, uncertain circle.

It was there.

It had happened.

Why, in a matter of months, just a few short months, the baby would be kicking her and then it would be born.

What baby?

This baby inside of me.

1939. The year of the Butterfly Plague.

It’s there.

It isn’t there.

The thought began to rise and, having risen, to walk around her mind, exploring the crowded rooms, calculating where it would rearrange things, reschedule tables of habit, refashion beliefs, relieve reason.

Ruth watched it, literally felt as though she could watch it, as it studied the situation inside her and laid the groundwork for takeover.

It wore boots. It was beginning to wear a long leather coat. It put on a helmet. It crashed about on studded heels. It carried a baton, a neat little baton, and it was counting, but not out loud.

I’m pregnant.

The thought paused, shook its head and beat a few messages into the palm of its hand with the stick.

Ruth closed her eyes.

She placed her fingers against her left temple, then her right. She massaged very gently.

The thought assumed a stance. It stuck its chin out.

Ruth fought to reclaim the image of the blond man. Of the moment in the hills. Of the incident at Alvarez.

She would say, “You were born in the year of the Butterfly Plague. What better designation could there be?”

Not there.

She placed her hands on her stomach.

Her panic increased.

She looked around her, as if someone might help her. But there was no one there.

And then there was.

A woman was walking down by the sea. A woman in a long dress, with elaborate hair and with what appeared to be a veil.

The moon was out. The sea reflected light. There was even phosphorous at the water’s edge. Not enough light to see color by, but ample to see features—to judge expression.

The woman was about fifty yards distant, walking very slowly.

She was becomingly small, with the same stature that had made Naomi a successful image for her times. The sort of stature known as petite, which is not the stature of a midget, but a normal stature, finely modeled and proportioned.

This was no woman that Ruth had ever seen. At least, sitting by the embers of Noah’s fire, she thought not. She was more elegant than anyone Ruth could think of, offhand. This elegance was studied and exact. Almost performed, certainly not inherent. But nevertheless, beautifully done. The carriage was astounding. The figure floated. The head was erect and could not have been more perfect, for every nuance of the profile could be studied at a precise and unwavering angle. The arms moved, just so. The legs stepped with just enough assurance not to be accused of mincing, but with such exact precision that the knees did not disturb the fall of the dress. There was not a single awkward angle in the whole appearance. It was perfect.

The veils were drawn back and floated becomingly behind. The arabesque of hair was as gorgeous as something drafted by Botticelli. The whole effect was breathtaking.

Not there.

Ruth had all but dismissed the presence of the thought.

As much there, she thought, as that woman walking by the water.

The iron footsteps echoed painfully inside her head.

Not there.

Yes. It was there.

She was going to have a son.

In the year of the Butterfly Plague—portending gentleness and peace.

The woman was gone.

The beach was empty.

As empty as Ruth.

Who cried aloud.

Wednesday, February 1st, 1939

Ruth was the size of a house.

She hardly dared venture from her bed.

Miss Bonkers kept looking around the doorway and shaking her head and muttering, “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me. I don’t know why you didn’t say.”

She threatened several times a day to get a doctor, and Ruth, more terrified that a doctor would tell her she was not pregnant than that he would say there were complications, forbade it with threats of murder, suicide and abortion.

She kept saying to Miss Bonkers, ‘The pygmies in Africa go out in the jungle and have their babies amongst lions. They don’t ask for medical opinions. They don’t ask for help. I’m going to have this baby by myself, without consultation.”

“May I ask the origin, Miss Ruth?”

“You may not.”

“May I ask just when you expect it to arrive? ‘Cause looking at you now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it drop on the floor in the next minute!”

“It isn’t due till June.”

“Till June! You must be daft. Or unmathematical, or really to god you must have a terrible memory or something! That baby’ll be born within the month or else I haven’t been in my profession five minutes!”

“June.”

“You’re crazy. At the very latest, March.”

“It cannot be till June.”

“Very well, Miss Ruth. Have it your own way, but I’ll have the crib ready for it tomorrow. And in the meantime, I’ll be thinking of a doctor I know who can get here at a moment’s notice. When the time comes, you’ll want him—lions or no lions—whatever the pygmies do!”

With that she went away.

Desperately prodding her swollen, mammoth front, Ruth fought against the horrible thought that there was nothing there but gas.

Thursday, February 2nd, to

Wednesday February 15th, 1939

She developed a fever.

She could not sleep.

Her heart (or someone’s heart) began to make noises as soon as she lay back exhausted in the dark. Then she’d have to turn the light on and smoke a package of cigarettes.

Miss Bonkers brought her cold towels and cups of tea and took her pulse and took her temperature and shook her head and began to sleep in the chair at the foot of Ruth’s bed.

“You Damarosches,” Miss Bonkers said one night, “are having quite a year of it. I’m beginning to believe in curses.”

Ruth was read aloud to, again by the nurse, but every page that was read seemed to contain veiled threats and certain innuendos that Ruth could not bear. None of the books was finished. She never did find out what happened to Emma Bovary or to Anna Karenina or to Cathy. Probably just as well.

The swelling increased, and so did the temperature, and so did a certain delirium that Ruth was not aware of. And so did Miss Bonkers’s concern.

On the night of February 17th, the bag burst.

It was water—nothing more. There wasn’t even the hint of a fetus.

Ruth tried to disfigure herself with some scissors, but Miss Bonkers was there and only the sheets were damaged.

When at last she was almost asleep, and the fever had abated, Ruth was aware of an absence in her mind. The thought, wearing its Prussian boots, was gone. And there was only the hollow moan of a wind that blew with melancholy persistence through the hallways and passageways, the parlors and the studies of an empty house.

In her dreams that night, for a reason she would never know, Ruth followed down the endless beaches of her loneliness, a figure in a long dress, with arabesques of hair, with floating veils and impeccable gait, with a studied grace and a careful air. And a face she could not decipher.

For it was…

…Not there.

Monday, March 20th, 1939: Morning

Octavius was raking butterflies in the garden.

Ruth came and stood beyond the boards.

She looked in at him. They had become close the day of Dolly’s death. They sometimes (really very seldom) swam together. They often talked together like this, through the fence.