The Butterfly Plague

  “Yes.”

  “And what else? What other ‘facts’? Well…I married your father. He married me. We had two children. You married Bruno, and Dolly is—whatever he is—perhaps afraid of any kind of sex—of love. O.K.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. So, my children are unhappy. My daughter married an older man whom she revered…”

  “I loved him.”

  “Yes. But as a schoolgirl loves her teacher. Admit it is true.”

  Naomi waited, but the admission did not come. So she continued.

  “You won prizes. You won them because this man you married was extraordinary and he could make you win them. The way, exactly, that your father made me make pictures. I didn’t really want to do it, but that didn’t matter. I learned to do it well and I learned, almost, to enjoy it. I had this face and I had enough talent, and above all, the world wanted to take its look at me and it was ready to pay for it. So, there is no difference between us. None. You had a good strong body. Long and lean. Extraordinary. And natural. And you had, too, an inclination not to worry about distance and drowning. You loved the water. You belonged in it. You were born that way. It had nothing to do with choice. And Bruno said, ‘You will win,’ and you won. And he said, ‘You will win again,’ and you won again. And he said, ‘Now we will go to the Olympics,’ and you went, and when you got there you married him. Here I interpret, but let me interpret…a little. He wanted you to win for him and that would be good for him. And then he said, ‘It is time to have babies…you have won…you have won everything…and now while you are still young, you must stop winning for a while and give birth to other winners—winners of mine…you are,’ he said, ‘perfect.’ And you said, ‘I love you…but I cannot have your babies,’ and he looked at you amazed and maybe he even laughed at you because, after all, you are six feet tall and strong and beautiful and you have won a million prizes including the Olympics. And so he just sits there and laughs at you and you say, ‘No…don’t laugh…because I love you but I cannot have your babies.’ And he says (let me interpret), he says, ‘You are only afraid…so I will make you have my babies.’ Right?”

  Ruth did not speak.

  Naomi’s eyes were round as marbles, black and hard, seeing nothing in the darkness but the story she told and knew was true. Enough.

  “And you,” she said, “didn’t tell him why you couldn’t have his babies. This is what you were really afraid of. Telling him you weren’t perfect. That you possessed and were possessed by flaws. And you let him make love to you.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “But you didn’t have the baby.”

  “No. I didn’t. There was none to have.”

  “So. Whose fault was that?”

  “Mine,” said Ruth automatically, and then, “I don’t know.” She didn’t. She had merely blessed the fact.

  “Come into bed with me, Ruth. Come on. Lie here and let me put my arm around you. There.”

  They lay still. Side by side.

  “Do you remember this—the way we used to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so glad I had you. Yes, I’m glad I said yes. But that is my gladness. I cannot answer for yours. I wish you could understand. My gladness, my life, my facts have nothing to do with you. Just with life.”

  Ruth did not answer this. Or try to.

  Naomi went on.

  “I had an abortion once. Twice, in fact. No. That’s a lie. I had so many abortions, I don’t remember. I did it all without your father’s knowledge. Miscarriages, we called them. I’ve even wondered if that’s why I suffer this cancer. I did so many dreadful things to my body. I don’t know. No one knows these things. But it could be. I had the help of a doctor. He told me what to do and he did things and I did things. I aborted my babies for a long time. But, finally, I gave it up and I had you. And then Adolphus. And then, after that, your father discovered about Adolphus. The day of your birthday party. I tried not to tell him. Adolphus was his son and it was unavoidable. I had to let him see the truth. It was there to see. I couldn’t avoid it forever.”

  “Would you have told him if you’d had another daughter, instead of a son?”

  “There’d have been no need; you see, I knew that telling him was tantamount to losing him. But I told him.”

  Naomi butted her cigarette in the coffee saucer.

  “Later,” she said, “I had to bring the doctor. And the doctor had to bring the lawyer, and the lawyer had to bring us to this—the life George and I have led—the separated life we’ve led—apart—and the rest you know. But…babies. Will you have babies? Should you have them? That is your life and I can only tell you that I love you.”

  Ruth lay, childlike, against her mother’s breasts. She looked at the curtains blowing across the room.

  “Is it right, then,” she said, “to say that facts are what you can’t help living? Not what you know?”

  “No. Facts are what they are and have nothing to do with you.”

  “Whom do they belong to, then?”

  “To themselves.”

  “And if the facts become militant…what do you do then?”

  “Then you watch and wait. You bide your time.”

  “Until they change?”

  “They don’t change. The combinations of factual things change. But not the facts themselves.”

  “Oh, Mother. I’m so afraid.”

  “The wish for a baby isn’t all that’s troubling you, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Alvarez Canyon is part of it.”

  “But Ruth, you were not there.”

  “I was there. My mind was there. And something—something happened.”

  Naomi thought, I’d better listen to this. And see what can be done. And call in a doctor, or one of those psychiatrist people if I need to.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “They put out their hands,” said Ruth, “and asked for our attention. They were there. Begging for their lives. But apparently we didn’t see them because you say we weren’t there. The truth is, we are looking at two different things and calling them both extraordinary. They put out their hands to us, Mother, and I was watching. But you turned away to watch something else.”

  “What else?”

  “What you call real life,” said Ruth.

  “It is real.”

  Ruth stiffened. An angry cry began to swim up inside her, but it did not surface. All her cries, it seemed, fell back before they broke free of her; they drowned, or were drowned, she did not know which. All her life she had tried to bring them out, but her fear reabsorbed them. These cries were about the things she saw and experienced, and when she produced her evidences of them, people just said, “There she goes again…Ruthie dreaming.” In childhood, Dolly had never believed her, and Naomi had only listened attentively as a kind of precaution against laughter. Ruth’s “dreams” had been the cause of much amusement. Ultimately she had fallen silent. She rarely included her opinion in what she said.

  Now. She watched the ceiling above her. It wavered. An arm of shadow billowed and beckoned. Her attention focused on something else. Desire.

  “I’m being followed,” she said.

  Naomi shivered. “Are you certain of that, dear?”

  “Absolutely,” said Ruth. She spoke through barely parted lips. “I have been followed for weeks. All the way from Germany.”

  Naomi relaxed a little. She apparently considered this story quite plausible. With a touch of almost gauche realism, she produced the fact that “Your father’s mother was Jewish. They might follow you for that. Especially since Bruno has remained in Berlin.”

  “No. That isn’t why. I’m sure that isn’t why.”

  “Why then? Or do you know?”

  “No. I don’t. But I see him everywhere. Even in my dreams and nightmares, Mother.” (This was the way to tell it: tell the truth as a Nightmare.) “And in my nightmares, Mother, this man who follows me i
s…Race.”

  “His name is Race?”

  “No. No. I mean—he represents Race.”

  “And have you really seen him?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “And what is this about Race?”

  “Well. Just that.” The words are now stones and Ruth drops them, careful not to throw.

  “Germany, you see. The Olympics.”

  “Yes.”

  “My medals. My superiority.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bruno.”

  “Yes.”

  “And, as you said, I was a winner.”

  “Yes.”

  “A breeder of winners.”

  “Yes.”

  “In Bruno’s mind.”

  “Yes.”

  “And…”

  “Yes?”

  “I couldn’t. Because I didn’t want to be a breeder of winners. Not Bruno’s winners. But now…”

  “Yes?”

  “Now I need to.”

  “Oh.”

  “And must.”

  “And this man?”

  “Wants me.”

  That is my message.

  “So…”

  The Nightmare no one understands is more real than this reality.

  “I want him, too, Mother.”

  “I understand.”

  “No. You don’t understand.”

  “Explain it, then.”

  “In Germany, I read books. I heard speeches.”

  “Yes.”

  “I watched people. I saw things. I listened to things. Unspeakable things.”

  “And…?”

  “And yet, in spite of reading and listening and watching; in spite of overhearing and secretly seeing; in spite of knowing…”

  “Yes.”

  “I still want.”

  “Want?”

  “Race.”

  “Yes. Dear God.”

  They sighed, both of them. They lay there, sea-blown. The tango down on the beach described the jutting lines of human desire—the arc of male erections—the fall of female contours: the geometric certitudes of nature, driven and Darwinesque. The fittest.

  Race.

  “I only want a baby.”

  “But the fact is, that cannot be, Ruth.”

  “Please! How can you say that cannot be, when it was. In you. You having me. Allowing me life. I should kill you.”

  “And your child? Wouldn’t it kill you?”

  “I don’t know. Not if he was perfect,” said Ruth, desperately. “I don’t know. I’m asking you to tell me what I really want.”

  Naomi closed her eyes and saw the swaying shadow of something unborn.

  “You want what you are,” she said, watching the shadow diminish and grow, “in your mind.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The myth of perfection, my darling. Which is only what we all want. The cause of all human pain…”

  “Perfection doesn’t have to be a myth, does it?”

  Naomi wondered about that. “Perhaps not,” she said, “but the truth about you is that you are flawed.”

  The shadow in her brain twisted.

  “You say,” she said, “that you were there when those animals died at Alvarez. You say this man who follows you is real. Then you say he is only a dream. This is one of your flaws, Ruth. Not to cope with truth…”

  Ruth wanted to interject, but Naomi said, “You listen to me. Just listen. There is a flaw you will accept. Your blood. So let that be the flaw I speak of. Each human being is Race. Potentially a whole Race. But each human being is flawed. Great intellects are held prisoner in the bodies of impotents. Physical beauty is trapped in the bodies of lesbians and homosexuals. Poets are consumptive. Artists are bound in by insanity. Saints are clubfooted. Scientific genius is accident prone. Why, God Himself was celibate by nature. And we, like royalty, are overbred. But the greatest flaw of all, the very worst, the most destructive and the seat of all our woes and pain, is this dream—this damnable quest for perfection. When I think,” she said, the shadow looming larger in her brain, “when I think of the misery and despair caused by people like you who will not accept—and who will not cope with reality as it is, I find it small wonder that humanity is condemned to suffering?”

  “But I do accept reality,” said Ruth. “It’s only different from yours.”

  Ignoring this, Naomi concluded, “You come back here, and we all grant you’ve come back justifiably depressed over your divorce and so on, but you still come back here and within two days you’re telling us you found a body on the beach. You even telephone to the Santa Monica Police Force! Get them out here and what do they find? A piece of torn material in your pocket and nothing more. Then you start telling us we’ve all been to a great fire in which a lot of animals died. Granted, there was a fire. But we were not—none of us was—there. Now you tell me you want a child, and while that, in itself, is not insane, it certainly is thoughtless when you have our blood and you’re no longer married. Then you tell me about this racial figure and you say it must be his child. Ruth, Ruth. Put it together. Listen to it with my ears. Watch it with my eyes. What greater reality can there be than my death? And then ask me to accept these dreams of yours…”

  Naomi repositioned her neck and shoulders and definitely finished. “There is reality…and nothing else.”

  Ruth, lying in the bed beside her mother, reached out to take a cigarette. She lit it.

  Fire.

  Her mother was dying. That was real. But there is always death.

  “Mama?” said Ruth.

  “Yes, dear?” Naomi was drowsy now.

  “What is hope?”

  Naomi thought very briefly and smiled in the dark.

  “That’s a very good question,” she said.

  But Ruth said, “What is it?”

  Again the pause, and then, “Hope,” said Naomi, “is death in the mind.”

  Ruth broke at that.

  “Then what kept you alive?” she asked. “What kept you alive?”

  “You will discover,” said Naomi, “if you are able to die as I am—thoughtfully—that you die rationale by rationale. All your reasoned frameworks are eventually torn down by reason itself. Finally, there is nothing left but life. And that’s what dies. Or will…” she had to add, “be what dies in me. Only life and nothing more. The rest is resolved before death happens. Hope is deceptive, Ruth. It blocks reality and therefore it must die first. Hope stands in the path of grace. It’s a wall.”

  There was silence.

  Naomi said, really almost totally in sleep, “I often wonder, though, what happens to those who die with a bang. I often wonder if there can be, for them…”

  Sleep.

  Ruth still lay awake.

  Her cigarette broke the dark.

  She watched it. It was comforting. What was it like? It was like a…

  Ruth did not know.

  But Naomi would have said, “It is like…a cigarette.”

  In the dark.

  The Chronicle of

  Hell’s Babies

  Wednesday, September 28th, 1938:

  Culver City

  7:00 a.m.

  The bushes parted.

  A man stepped through. Before him lay a body of water that might have been a pond, that might have been a miniature lake. But it wasn’t either. No sailboats, and not a single carp. The man was puzzled.

  He wore a blue serge suit with the very whitest of pin stripes. He wore two-tone shoes, black and white, a rose-colored tie, a yellow shirt, and a white carnation (pinned to the wrong lapel). He carried a green suede writing case that had a black handle. He carried it badly. He was clumsy. This man was small of stature, round-faced, and extremely ugly. His nose was like the worst nightmare of noses—large, pock-marked, and hairy. His eyes were small and black and they darted about in their sockets like the swiveleyes of a chameleon. His lips were apparently nonexistent. He seemed to have swallowed them. He was able to fold
them both inside his mouth at once. His teeth slanted inward. His cheeks were oily and dark with beard, although he had shaved and powdered not an hour before. His hands, black-haired, were permanently fisted to hide the deplorable length of his fingers, which were so short as to be childlike. The man’s name was Cohn, and as he dabbed at the sweat under his chin with the back of one fist, he muttered, “Oi.”

  He stepped forward into a great deal of light and promptly stubbed his toe. Preparing to scream with pain and rage, he realized that his toe did not hurt him at all. It seemed neither stubbed nor scuffed. He looked around him furtively. Seeing that he was quite alone, he very gently stubbed his toe again. This time, it bounced back at him.

  “Rubber rocks!” he said out loud. “As I live to breathe—made of rubber!”

  Mr. Cohn found this extremely pleasing and he unfisted long enough to rub his stubby fingers over the lifelike stone.

  “I wonder…” he said, gazing inquisitively at the trees, bushes, grass, and reeds nearby. But, no. All these were quite real. Yes, Mr. Cohn decided, apart from the fact that each and every one of them was contained in some sort of pot or can, they were quite, quite real.

  Suddenly, from far above him, a voice yelled out, “You lost or something?”

  “Yes—yes,” said Mr. Cohn. “I suppose that is what I am.”

  He raised his head. A gigantic fellow in rolled sleeves stood to his right.

  “Mr. Lost, eh?”

  “Mr. Cohn,” said Mr. Cohn.

  “Well, you’d better get outa here,” said the giant, who, from Mr. Cohn’s point of view, was haloed in an arc of light.

  “I don’t know where I’m at,” said Mr. Cohn, rising. “And rubber rocks! I don’t understand. Some sort of joke?”

  He dusted himself with his fist. The giant watched him.

  “You’d better not’ve touched anything, mister,” said the giant. “Cause it’s all in place, ya know. An’ we got a union here can put ya underground if ya mess around with our rocks.”

  “No, no,” said Mr. Cohn quite meekly. “I didn’t mess a thing.”

  The ruffian walked one step nearer, which is to say, he cornered Mr. Cohn between his beloved rock, a potted palm, and himself.