The Butterfly Plague (8 page)

“How is Dolly?”

“I…”

“George?”

“Oh.”

“It’s all right, Maureen. Go away.”

“Yes’m.”

“Help yourself to sherry, George.”

“My God. I…”

“Go on. Help yourself to sherry. Have you got a heart condition? I didn’t know that. What’s the matter? By God, George, if you die here, I’ll…”

“Oh. Oh. Oh, my God. You shot at me.”

“Come on. Pull yourself together. That’s right. Here.” A hand appeared through the curtain, holding out an emptied sherry glass—silk and rings and red-lacquered nails. “I’ll have some, too.”

“My dear, I…”

“Sit down, George. Sit down. Relax. Drink your sherry.”

The figure in the chair was ludicrous. Its crumpled blue suit with the ash on the lapels—its dusty black shoes—its frayed collar and its twice-turned cuffs—its badly tied cravat and its lustreless stick-pin were all the signs and symbols of a fallen Titan. But the man inside the clothes behaved as if there had been no fall; as if, like Cooper Carter, he still trailed clouds of lackeys to do his bidding and bank accounts to pay them with. He behaved as if a Rolls-Royce waited at the door and a dozen appointments were being ignored as he railed at Letitia. He behaved, in short, as if he was still the same George Damarosch who once had a right to enter this room unannounced—who could come here just because he wanted to: because he was George Damarosch. But now, as he began to speak again, it was the new George who spoke: the one in the crumpled suit and the dusty shoes.

“I have loved you since I first set eyes on those hands, Titty. How well—how easily I remember. That hand that lifted back your hair on a summer’s day. You were the Little Virgin then, in earnest. How we all loved you, Titty. Every one of us. The whole of America sat at your feet, those lovely little Virginal feet. That day at Falconridge, and you, dressed in blue—always in blue—dancing across the lawn with Bully. Damn! Damn Bully Moxon! Laughing. Laughing. Oh—such laughter. You were every dream I ever dreamed come true.”

“Yes. I remember. It was so.”

“Carving your name on the steps…”

“One down from Wally Reid, one up from Marie Dressier.”

“Not a fitting place, between those two, but how was I to know? Oh, Titty, how was I to know? Nobody knew how great and powerful you would become.”

“George?”

“Yes?”

“The Little Virgin needs your help.”

“Anything. Anything.”

“I need a million dollars.”

George dropped his sherry glass on the floor. It was empty.

“I haven’t got a million dollars,” he said. “I haven’t got any. You know that. I’m broke—forgotten.”

“Will you get it for me?”

“No.”

“Then, good-bye.”

“Good-bye? You’re mad.”

“Good-bye, George.”

“No!”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

George went to the center of the room. The window behind him, cruel, showed his roundness and the shortness of his stature.

“May I have—one—last look?”

“No, George. No more looking.”

“Oh, please. Just one…last look, Letitia.”

“No.”

“Your hand. Not even your hand? Your foot?”

“Good-bye.”

George went to the door. “Why do you want a million dollars, Titty?”

There was a pause. She would dissemble, just a little.

He didn’t know it, but she smiled.

“To save America, George,” she said. “That is my mission.”

To save America?

“I hope you get it, then.”

“I will.”

“Yes. I suppose you will, being you.”

“So?”

“Good-bye, Little Bitch.”

“Good-bye, George.”

He was gone. The door clicked.

From the bed, a sigh. Longer than before. Quite final.

The Little Virgin’s appointments were over.

The Chronicle of
the First Butterfly

August 8th to September 16th, 1938:

Western North America

The journey covered a distance of roughly fifteen hundred miles. It began on an island off the coast of British Columbia and ended just south of Santa Monica, California.

The traveler was a butterfly—a monarch (Danaüs plexippus), a male. It had spent the past few months on the edges of a pine forest near a quiet inlet on the southeast coast of its island. The prevailing winds blew from the northwest.

On the eighth day of August, a Monday, it was sufficiently cool (sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit) and there was enough of the scent of flowers lying to the south to prompt the butterfly to commence its journey.

Part of this journey would be over water, but the monarch would avoid this whenever possible.

For a week it moved steadily southward, roosting between twilight and dawn—more because of the cooling air than the darkness. Its roosting sites were near water if possible, and the trees it chose were maples and pines. Occasionally it found a willow tree, but these were rare.

It fed on its way from the abundant fields of nectar-filled flowers that were scattered in its path. Prize feasts were provided by late-blooming milkweed. It had first spread its wings earlier that summer on the leaf of a milkweed plant.

This butterfly was a lonely traveler. It journeyed without companions. Others would follow after (some had gone before it) and perhaps it sensed this. Every night, having selected its sleeping place, it would spread its wings out wide as a signal that it was there. Clutching a leaf with sickle-shaped claws, it would wait in this display until darkness fell and the dropping temperature prompted it to fold its wings again. But it remained alone.

From time to time the butterfly encountered cities and towers in its flight. Whenever this happened it rose to a great height above them, riding the gentle breezes and allowing itself to be taken by them on its way.

On five occasions there was rain. Once there was thunder and lightning and the wind rose to such a great force that it seemed the butterfly would be torn apart. During the rain squalls it clambered far away from the piercing drops into crevices on the faces of rocks. But when this wind rose and the rain was driven from the sky like so many pellets of lead, and when there seemed to be darkness everywhere and the temperature dropped and it could barely move across the ground because of the cold, it seemed that the butterfly must perish.

At last it found a leaf-thatched burrow at the foot of a giant fir tree and it waited. It became numb. Its muscles would not respond. But it could see, and it lay inertly watching a mouse, itself searching for a hiding place. The mouse approached, nosing its way nearer and nearer, creeping noisily through weeds and grass. The mouse’s eyes were very large and its whiskers were long.

Perhaps the fact of the terrible rain saved the butterfly; the mouse seemed more concerned with shelter than with food. It rested only inches from the butterfly’s hiding place and apparently did not even catch its scent.

There was rain all night, and by 4:00 a.m. the temperature had dropped to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit on the ground. The butterfly was immobilized. It lost awareness.

At 5:35 a.m. there was light.

At 6:00 the sun appeared. At 7:00 it broke through the trees and the air began to steam. By 8:00 it was warm. By 9:00, hot.

The butterfly responded.

It crept from its place beneath the leaves.

The mouse was gone. But there were other enemies, equally dangerous. On the ground, unable to fly, the butterfly was totally defenseless against such creatures as common ants, ground beetles, moles, and shrews. It must find the sun. It must spread and dry its wings. Flight was imperative.

At last it achieved a measure of safety on the static fronds of a fern. It lay there, groggy and hardly alive, until 11:30 a.m., when the sun struck straight down through the trees and found it.

Testing its wings, the butterfly discovered by trial and error that the rain had done some damage: a few of its scales were missing; there was a shredded irregular serration at the outer rim of its left front wing. But it could fly.

Now there were the mountains.

The butterfly selected southward-leading valleys and surmounted in dazzling arcs of flight the lower and lesser peaks. It rose on September 9th to a height of eleven thousand two hundred and fifty-one feet.

It encountered little of importance. A bird attacked it, but the bird was blind in one eye and soon gave up its attempts. (This occurred during flight.) One day, the monarch passed over such a highly populated area it found no food and midday on the 13th of September, having achieved a distance approximately one hundred and eighty-two miles north of the city of Los Angeles, it was blown out to sea.

This proved, however, somewhat providential, for the butterfly discovered, low over the water, a sea-breeze of twenty miles per hour. Riding this with easy grace, it soon found itself over land again, at a point much farther south than would have been achieved on the previous course. It traveled farther that day than on any other.

On the night of the 13th, somewhat exhausted by this excursion, it rested longer than was normal. Now the butterfly was in the area of a town called Pacific Grove, and in midmorning of the 14th, one Edwina Shackleton, a zealous amateur biologist and professional spinster, discovered it on the leaf of a milkweed plant in her garden.

Miss Shackleton ran up to the screen door of her house.

Inside, lying on a day bed and listening to the radio, Edwina’s mother, Mrs. C. Clarke Shackleton, heard her daughter’s urgent footsteps and turned down the volume of “Pepper Young’s Family.”

“Mother! Mother!” Edwina called. “You’ll never believe what’s happened!!”

“What is it, dear? What is it?” cried Mrs. Shackleton, torn between the adventures of Pepper Young and those of her daughter.

“They’re here! They’re here!” Edwina cried.

“Who’s here?” said Mrs. Shackleton. “Calm down, Edwina. Is it the Japanese?”

“No, no, Mother,” said Edwina, huffing and puffing and already lifting her mother from her pillows. “The monarchs! The monarchs!”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Shackleton.

She went through this every year.

“Come and look,” said Edwina. “He really is lovely. He’s large. He must have come a long, long way, Mama. There’s a hole in his wing. But he’s beautiful.”

Mrs. Shackleton, a self-proclaimed invalid (asthma and diabetes, a heart condition and stones), wobbled to her feet and shook her head.

“Are you going to kill it?” she said.

“Oh, no, Mama. No. You know they’re always being killed around here. I hate it.”

“Kill ‘em all,” said Mrs. Shackleton. “They give me hay fever.”

“Now, Mother. You know that’s a lie. Come and see him, please. It’s the very first one. An occasion.”

Mrs. Shackleton grumbled and swayed. “Then I don’t have to look at any more?” she said.

“No, Mama. No. Just this one. The first.”

“All right, then. Very well.”

They got down into the garden. They approached Edwina’s cultivated milkweed plot. (She grew these plants especially for the arrival of the butterflies every year.)

“He’s so big, Mama. You won’t believe him.”

“Where is he?” said Mrs. Shackleton.

“Oh, dear,” said Edwina. “He’s gone.”

“Maybe someone else will kill him,” said her mother, wheezing dramatically and shedding nose tears. “He’s left wing dust everywhere.”

“Oh, Mama. Butterflies don’t have wing dust. That’s scales.”

“And I’ve missed the end of ‘Pepper Young’s Family,’” said Mrs. Shackleton, making her way alone toward the house. She banged the door and turned up the volume of the radio until it was deafening.

Edwina stared off into the sky.

“Good-bye,” she said. “
Vaya con Dios
.”

She stood quite still for a long time, with her hand up to her forehead. Then she went back to the cultivation of the milkweed.

On the afternoon of the 15th of September the butterfly was flying southward twenty-three miles northeast of Los Angeles. In the distance there rose a mighty pillar of smoke.

The butterfly broke to the west, seaward, driven away by the smell of fire.

At dusk it made for land.

On the 16th of September, noon, it reached its destination—a grove of pine trees south of Santa Monica, where the other butterflies would soon begin to join it by ones, twos, and finally by hundreds in the following days and weeks.

For the time being it rested alone.

Et in Arcadia ego
.

With everyone.

The Chronicle of
the Nightmare

It is always night.

I am always alone.

And so are they.

They.

They live in their own world.

It is not like any other world. No other world is real. They knew once another world but that has been forgotten. They think they remember. But it’s forgotten. They remember that it was joyful and it wasn’t. They remember that there were feast days and there weren’t. They remember babies and there were no babies; children and there were none; mothers and fathers and there were only men and women. They remember houses and there were only hiding places; street greetings but no one spoke. Carelessness but there was always care; freedom to come and go but where you came from you hurried back to and that was the only place to go. They thought of words but the words were silence. And they thought of the One Who would come Who never came. It was the Others who came. Always the Others.

They dreamed in long rows. Lined up dreaming.

I saw them.

The world was lovely if you closed your eyes.

And there was always a band playing somewhere.

The sun shone.

The flags were up.

The streets rang in chorus.

There were geraniums on the balconies.

People wore their hearts on their sleeves. Stars and crosses. One or the other.

This was the world to belong to. The one they had never lived in, but thought they had.

This was the world they wanted to remember. It belongs to someone else. It always did.

The Nightmare is always present and timeless. It is formless. I have gathered it all the while I’ve been away.

America is not the Nightmare. It will be.