The Butterfly Plague

  The seal, with a final thrust of its head, slid beneath the water and was gone.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Damarosch. “Damn.”

  She waited.

  Overhead the gulls still sat on private updrafts, insolent and supreme, apparently not even remotely interested in the spectacle of the Buddha below them on the sand, vibrant with color and splendid in the patience of her posture.

  While waiting for the seal to reappear Mrs. Damarosch thought about the number of fish it must take to feed one seal. She counted the number of seals on the rocks and then again thought about the fish in the waters before her.

  “Infinity isn’t a question of space at all,” she announced to herself, as though replying to an older and touchy point of argument. “It’s just the uncountable quantity of things that were and are and will be. That’s what it is: the immortality of numbers.”

  She watched again for the seal and was in pain.

  She thought about drowning: different ways to die.

  About infinite death, as unlimited as life itself—the infinity of life its only limitation.

  “Different ways to die.”

  Infinity.

  The infinite heat of the sun, she thought.

  The infinite movement of the waters.

  The infinite seal and the infinite fish.

  The infinite gull and his infinite victim, the crab.

  The infinite fisherman; infinite pole.

  Infinite line and tackle—infinite hook and infinite worm.

  Here, too, the infinite sand, created by infinite wind and water—infinite corrosion—infinite corruption…

  Infinite bodies, parasites and feeders…

  Infinite corpse of man in infinite sunlight, giving off his coruscations, the infinite winking of his delicate lights of life and death and pain and joy. His flashes of…

  Flash in the pan.

  Mrs. Damarosch saw herself flash on and off in the eye of God.

  “Well,” she said. “Well.”

  She settled her thin buttocks, brittle with bones where the protective flesh had once sat, deeper into the sand.

  George.

  Sometimes she wished fervently she had been given a talent for religious belief. It would be comforting to be able to imagine that she really was going to go somewhere and wait for George to repent and die. Oh, he’ll leave that Peggy, all right. Hadn’t he left them all? Corrine, Eudora, Belle, Marie, and Norma—

  She loved him. Had loved him, always. Would again. Did.

  It lingers. How can you lose it?

  Still, he was gone.

  But not dead.

  Death is the only total absence.

  “I’m going away, George,” she laughed. The memory of his having forced her out of his life seemed like a joke now.

  She tried to remember being young. But nothing consummate would come back.

  She could not assemble her youth in her mind because that was not where her youth had been.

  “I suppose it really was a gyp,” she thought, “not to tell George I was a carrier. I, this woman sitting here, old, on this sand.”

  Oh, but the weight of him would move just so upon my rib cage and over my thighs, right there, the delicate brushing aside of bones. (She smiled.) I held him by the hair at the back of his rumpled neck to keep him from toppling over into the pillows. I was afraid he’d suffocate. Both of us. It was like a battle for survival. And finally, because I made it happen so quickly, he would fall back thinking he’d done it and I would think, No, George, I’ve done it…and he never knew the real victory was my victory. Or so I thought then. Mine.

  Consummation is death. She thought of her hemophiliac son and her carrier daughter.

  “Dolly should have died long ago. So—he still has to die and Ruth and me and all of us. It just so happens I am first in line…”

  At last the seal broke the water’s surface and Mrs. Damarosch sighed with relief.

  Her arms were wet and gleaming with perspiration. She took out a handkerchief and dried them carefully. She considered her arms, like her legs (like all of her), as thin and ugly. They were covered with liver spots.

  I must really buy a dress with sleeves, she thought.

  Adjusting the parasol to the angle of the sun, she resettled herself and commenced her eye exercises.

  First of all she looked to the left, keeping her head and neck quite still. That was the Science of it. The point was to try and see over each shoulder in turn, moving only the eyes themselves.

  Faraway in the distance to the south she could see her own beach house, built halfway up the bluff. She also saw a child (probably one of those Trelford children) with a dog and a beach umbrella.

  They were like figures and objects in an old silent film—noisy, you were certain, but their voices were somehow censored. The dog barked in pantomime and the child called its name with a mute bawl. Mrs. Damarosch regarded the child unsentimentally. Childhood was a misery as she had known it—made up of unaccountable frustrations. Perhaps she was not sentimental about children for the simple reason that she did not envy them, as most people did. Besides which, this child seemed to be entirely satisfied with its existence since it was watering the sand in a wide, male arc.

  Children.

  Her children. Ruth. Adolphus.

  And soon, my death, before I know their fate.

  Oh, beach and seals and little boy peeing in the sand, forgive me for bringing my death to your life.

  7:30 p.m.

  Fragile, delicate, built like a woman with long slender legs, a slimness of bone and a round, firm breast that would have been the envy of a twenties flapper, Octavius Rivi lived in the house behind the boards at the end of the beach.

  Naomi Damarosch did not know his identity. To her he was just a figure glimpsed occasionally in a garden through a space between the boards. The one point of interest in these occasional glimpses was that the figure Naomi saw was always nude. At least, she suspected so. She saw the glisten of an arm—a length of leg viewed sideways, and once, she was certain, the gentle curve and whiteness of buttocks, stooping.

  Octavius Rivi lived alone and people did not come to visit him. He rarely went out and when he did, it was always at night to the movies.

  In his bedroom there were twenty bottles of cologne, and in the bathroom large boxes of imported dusting and talcum powder, scent for his hair and various perfumes, oils, and other aromatic concoctions with which he seasoned his bath water. He even set perfume in the toilet bowl after it was flushed and he sprinkled cologne all over his towels, his linen, and his clothing. He also burned incense and set out glass decanters filled with flowers of any kind that give off a heady aroma—freesia, narcissus, orange blossoms.

  His house was made entirely of different kinds of wood and glass and paper: modeled after Japanese designs. In the garden there were porous rocks and sandstone figures surrounded by miniature trees and shrubs. This, too, tended to give the enclosure an Oriental flavor.

  On the evening of August 28th, Octavius Rivi was dressing to go out. It is of no consequence which film he was going to see because he did not get there.

  He stood—bathed and scented, still naked—in front of the mirror. He put on one of his favorite records and poured himself a drink. Tequila. He was not of age, but that did not matter. No one watched over him. He did as he pleased.

  He put on his pink cotton underwear, his black wool hose, a pink shirt with black buttons, a black silk tie, black cuff links, and, at last, black trousers and pink shoes. He brushed his hair forward and touched his slim, long eyebrows. Black. He put astringent scent on his handkerchief and placed it in his cuff. When he was about to don his black tight jacket a bell rang in the garden.

  Octavius froze.

  The bell rang again.

  He did not know what to do. Whether to run or stand there, to call out or slam his hand over his mouth.

  The bell rang one last time.

  Octavius went to the door. He crossed thro
ugh the garden, past the yew trees and under the bamboo harps, and at last he reached the gate.

  Through the slats he could see that someone in uniform was standing there. The mailman? A telegram boy? A policeman? No. It was none of these. It was someone entirely black, with a shiny cap.

  Intrigued, Octavius hoarsely advanced the words, “Who are you?” out through the grille.

  A Negro voice responded, “I belongs to your mother.”

  Octavius was stunned.

  He stood extremely straight and his hands shot out like arrows toward the bolts.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. One moment.”

  His fingers fluttered like stupid bugs, skittering ineffectually over the private parts of the lock. Bolts, keys, chains—my God, why had he put so many restrictions in the way of haste?

  At last the gate was ready to open. He swung it wide.

  “Where is she?” he cried, and the words were so loud the Negro in the uniform fell back.

  Then the dark hulk shuffled gracefully forward on its toes. Somewhere under the brim of its cap, it smiled. At last Octavius could see the eyes. They were hungry.

  “Hello.”

  “Where is she? Tell me.”

  Like a pilgrim, the Negro doffed his cap and stooped in through the gate to the garden. He said, with a seemingly natural inclination to lower his voice as well as his person, “You are Mr. Octavius.” He nodded as he said it, looking at the slight figure in front of him.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Herald and I comes directly from your mother with a message.”

  “Where is she? What does she want?”

  “I dunno. I dunno. Honest, I don’t. I didn’t look, Mr. Octavius. Why should I look at a private message? I’m a good servant and I don’t disturb no letters.” He trembled and still did not tell Octavius where his mother was. The atmosphere of hunger persisted.

  Herald handed over a neat blue envelope. Octavius had seen such envelopes before. In them came his allowance and the receipts of his bills marked PAID. He scrutinized it closely in the green light of the sunset. Yes. It was the right handwriting, too. It was indeed a message from his mother. But he shook as he tore it open. No such message, borne by a human hand directly from her own presence, had ever arrived before. Always before they had come in the mail.

  Inside there was the usual stationery, blue and harsh and heavy.

  On it the script was applied in thick black strokes of India ink.

  The message read:

  My dear Octavius,

  This, as you will know by now, is to be delivered by my personal Negro whose name is Harold Herald. He is a good man and you can trust him. Tell me through him when I may come to see you. I want to come and see you. I am coming. Tell him “yes.” Tell him “soon.”

  I remain, as ever,

  your Mother.

  Octavius turned the letter over to see what was on the other side. There was nothing.

  He looked at Harold Herald and the Negro looked back and smiled. His teeth were enormous.

  “Why must you smile all the time?” Octavius asked him, irritated by the jumble of thoughts in his mind and a little put off by the size of the teeth.

  Harold Herald considered. He had never been asked this before.

  “Well,” he said, “I haven’t done nothing. So why shouldn’t I smile?”

  That was all. Octavius turned away.

  He stepped further into the garden and looked, not seeing, at the shrubs and miniature trees, the Shinto shrine and the statue of Hermes and Pan himself, crouching in stone by the pond. Then he turned and said, “You aren’t allowed to tell me where she is?”

  “No, sir,” said Harold.

  “Then wait,” said Octavius.

  He ran inside, found a pencil, and drew a few words on the back of the letter, which he then replaced in the envelope.

  On the cover of the envelope he wrote, having crossed out his own name, the words “To My Mother.” Then he ran back and handed the envelope to Harold, who accepted it with the graceful and tactful misunderstanding that the letter was being returned unanswered.

  “I have written my message inside,” Octavius said.

  “Very well,” said Harold. “Then I will take it to her to look at.”

  He stumbled, huge and misplaced, out of the tiny tranquil world and went away without saying any more; without even turning around and without remembering to smile. His hunger went with him.

  Octavius shut the gate and, one by one, closed over all the locks.

  He stood very still, remembering first what he had read and then what he had written. In the twilight, somber and green, peaceful but forever shattered, the words that he thought of were these: “My dear Octavius, This is Harold Herald. He is a good man and you can trust him. Tell me through him when I may come to see you. I want to come and see you. I am coming. I remain as ever your mother.”

  And then on the back of the paper in his own clumsy letters, drawn, not written, the words that made him shut his eyes with a sense of purpose and a memory of pride—huge black penciled letters spelling:

  TELL ME WHO YOU ARE

  with love,

  your son,

  OCTAVIUS

  Monday, August 29th, 1938:

  The Beach at Topanga

  6:30 a.m.

  Ruth awoke.

  The nightmare had been the same and just as real as always. In it she swam and swam and swam and Bruno sat in the boat and screamed at her, “Eins! Zwei! Drei!” Ruth had learned to turn this cry of numbers into a cue for waking and she came to life with a start. She was sweating.

  She turned toward the curtained windows and gazed at the filtered light. Morning. So early, the sun had only just begun to rise. She waited for someone to come and knock. But no one came, and it was only then that she realized she’d made it all the way home. Safe. At least—alive.

  All the way home to California, to Naomi and Dolly. All the way home from Bruno, pain, and Germany.

  She put her arms behind her head to ease its aching, feeling her breasts pull gently at her nightie as she did so. She sighed. My body. How I hate my body.

  From beyond the open windows the breeze gave her ears the sea.

  Her mother was ill. So ill there was even a nurse in one of the distant rooms. The nurse’s name was Bonkers. Nurse Bonkers. With a face like Mussolini—all pudge and pout and no place for the eyes. Ruth said, “Hello” to Miss Bonkers, Miss Bonkers said “Hello” to Ruth, and that was that. Miss Bonkers was a professional death-watcher. Or so it seemed. She never signed on unless the patient was in the final stages of demise. This way she was able to read several novels and knit several pairs of golf gloves. This way she sometimes inherited money.

  Ruth thought, I’ve seen too many faces like that—always near the dead and dying. She tried to put it out of her mind.

  Someone died yesterday, she thought. Who was that? Bully Moxon. Yes. Bully Moxon died under the train. They say he did it on purpose. Suicide. Why? Old Bully, gay and charming? Never. It did not make sense.

  She wouldn’t think about it. She couldn’t afford to think about that, or anything like it. She had come home to live. That was to be the only reason for everything she did. She was going to lie in the sun, swim in the ocean, walk on the sand. No one would touch her. No one: no circumstances.

  I should pretend to be deaf and dumb and just stare at people, smiling, she thought. Everyone would say, “Poor Ruth—she can’t hear us, she can’t tell us what it’s all about,” and I could sit there and smile and very soon, perhaps, not having to tell, not having to listen, I could forget.

  All the way home…She rose.

  Across the room the curtains beckoned and she padded over and drew them apart.

  There was the ocean.

  A dog barked out on the sand.

  Ruth retreated, rummaged in one of her still packed suitcases and found a bathing suit. She put it on. Custom tailored. Her size precluded anything else. Everything she wo
re, even her brassieres, had to be made somewhere by hand.

  She looked in the mirror. White and going to pot. Oh well, a few sunny weeks would clear that up.

  She left the room and went out into the hall, praying Miss Bonkers was not an early riser.

  Her prayer was answered by a stillness pervading the entire house. No one, it seemed, was awake anywhere.

  She made her way along the hallway and onto the balcony, which winged out, second-story high, all around three sides of the house. There were stairs, and she went down onto the sand. It was already warm, although the sun had been up for barely half an hour.

  The beach was entirely vacant except for the dog who stood barking at the water’s edge. Ruth walked down toward it.

  It seemed a friendly dog and soon stopped barking when Ruth appeared. Then it wagged its tail—a yellow dog, some kind of retriever.

  “Pretty dog,” she said. “Pretty dog.”

  She gave it a scratch behind the ears and then began to stroll, walking in the water, toward the far end of the beach.

  She did not remember that house being there. When she went away there had only been the bluff. Curious, she strolled on.

  It might be nice to meet a stranger, she thought. But then it’s probably just some picture star, or a hideaway for someone’s lover, or something inane and private like that. I won’t even think about it.

  She stopped. The tide was still out. There was hardly any motion to the water. The dog lay down at her feet with its paws in the sea. It looked up at her and began to pant. Ruth looked back at the sun behind her. She felt its early, pleasant warmth on her shoulders. She remembered being sunburnt, being California brown, being salt all over and dry and tight and muscled for winning. She wanted to go back. Not to have married Bruno. Not to have cared about Olympic medals and championships. Just to swim and love it as she had back then, not really so long ago, only seven, eight years ago—ten (was it?), ten, eleven, twelve years ago—an incredibly long-boned girl standing on the beach. “I’m going to be a swimmer, Mama”—1922. Sixteen years ago. Theirs was then the only house on the beach. Go back. Come back. Stay.