The Butterfly Artist
Forrest Aguirre
Copyright 2012 Forrest Aguirre
Now, 200 years after The Crash, the world began to cobble itself back together. Man had taken to the air a second time (or third if those eons old parchments of Atlantis and Mu can be verified as authentic) but the crystalline sphere surrounding the planet, protecting its surface from the poison ether of space, was closed to penetration and exploration. Connections, however, had been made and the words inter- and multi-national were again entering common parlance, as the words nuclear conflagration, genetic warfare and imperial capitalism had done immediately following the apocalypse known as The Crash. And, as has been typical of this world’s history – for time has proven the cyclical nature of human endeavor and failure – the Dark Continent lagged far behind the other lands across the seas. Only the cities of Jannsburg, Kampala, Cairo and Ngome housed any appreciable technology, and most of it, as one must suppose from the battle-scarring of that immense continent’s central and western regions, was military technology left over from countless campaigns and battles, thrusts and counter-thrusts, a bloodbath of deluvian scale. Culture – in the Northern Countries’ sense – was also lacking, except in these sprawling metropoli. Proximity to key trade routes had, through geographical fiat, destined growth and the accretion of civilization, though in its rudest permutations, in these areas once again, as it was time and time again.
The sun set over Ngome.
Clouds, still laden with the toxins of the last wars, billowed across the sky from the southern sea.
The Ballroom
The girl in the smooth leather butterfly mask was his perfect counterpoint: Long red curls to his straight, shoulder-length black locks; confident, upright spine to his sagging shoulders; bright, full smile to his thin, unemotive mouth. Beneath the sparkling wings he could make out her finely-chiseled features, no doubt an inheritance from Roman invaders a hundred generations ago.
A sullied half-skull mask shortened his long face, hid his high cheekbones, darkened his green eyes to her blue. In all respects they appeared a morphologically suitable couple: The butterfly and the skull; fire and ice; she, he; life, death.
A dance together, introduced by the man’s friend, Neville Whitaker, confirmed his suspicions. She danced like the monsoon – winsome, but with authority. And like the tropical storms that brushed the coast that night, there was a hint in the atmosphere of a far off whirlwind whipping the sea into a froth, electricity in the air, though only a gentle rain fell on the mansion’s rooftop. He felt that she led the dance, though his thin-fingered hands pressed against her firm ribcage, against her warm palm.
It was she who spoke first over the awkward, mistake-infested strings of the quartet. Good musicians, good artists of any trade, were difficult to procure in these parts, so far from the cooler, more affluent and educated north countries. Her voice seemed to smooth the squawks and rakes of decidedly amateur bow to string.
“And so, my Saint Vitus, might I ask what breeze brought you to Ngome? I gather you are a traveler. At least in my twenty-two years I have not known of your presence – and I know all the whites of Ngome by association or reputation, masked or unmasked.” Her words, taken from the context of her inflections, implied aristocratic aloofness, but her voice belied honesty, forthrightness. He felt that the naked chandelier might betray any attempt to hedge or embellish, so he spoke openly.
“I am indeed a traveler. I recently returned from across the river with Doctor George Chelsea.”
“Chelsea,” it was a statement, not a question – a statement tinted with animosity. “Chelsea. And how might you have served an old, fat entomologist in the jungle?”
“Doctor Chelsea hired me on to draw and paint illustrations of his specimens in their natural habitat before collecting them for his display boards.”
“How noble of him,” she stated flatly, “to show his appreciation for beauty before administering death. He is a true colonial: ‘tame the beautiful savage, kill him if you can, then build your empire on his bones’.”
She shook her head from a daze, her voice betraying a certain lingering animosity that betrayed disdain for the noted doctor. “Most artists are driven away from this land because of the climate. It seems that dandies and mosquitoes don’t mingle. You may well be the first to venture past the Yamazi River without crawling back shaking with ague and angst. Perhaps. Or not.”
He was unsure whether to feel flattered or insulted. Her words fenced with his fluttering emotions. Guarded now, hopeful then, parry, feint, riposte. She spoke of the nobility of the artist while castigating the stupidity of starving for art’s sake; spoke in elated tones about the beauty of another’s dress, then slipped in thinly-veiled attacks on the unsuitability of such fabric for the tropical clime. She seemed a velvety sea urchin, a diamond among spiny shards of glass – still the man in the leering death mask listened to her more intensely as the night and their conversation wore on.
Emile Beckwith – the voluntary revelation of her name went contrary to all decorum at such anonymous events as this masquerade – was born in Ngome, the only child of Charles Beckwith, ambassador to the local “Big Men,” as the tribal chief’s were known. She had been enmeshed in the local color, accompanying her father on his diplomatic forays into the country around the fortress, playing with the blacks’ children as often as they would permit, sometimes drawing down the ire of village elders who deemed such interactions inappropriate. “The strength of a culture,” she surmised “may be shown by the hedges it plants around its taboos. Though a culture with too many taboos must, of course, be stifled, blind to the beauty of change.”
The music ended for the evening (mercifully, the young man thought to himself) and, as tradition dictates, all present teasingly revealed their faces. Surprised gasps and giggles erupted through the candlelit ballroom before the hostess announced the end of festivities and wished her guests good night. The skull wearer, enamored of the complex Miss Beckwith, presented his card: Chadwick Giles – illustrationist and artist. She placed the card to her lips, smelling the scented cardstock: Cinnamon and rose, the East and the North come south.
“My thanks, Mister Giles. Are you staying here in Ngome?”
“For a time, yes. I am to help Doctor Chelsea catalog his newly-acquired specimens. I suppose it shall take some weeks before the work is complete.”
“Excellent. Then may I be so bold as to invite you horseback riding? This Thursday, perhaps?”
“But, Miss Beckwith, your father.”
“Mister Giles, my mother is a widow. You need not seek my father’s permission. Thursday?”
“Thursday, though it has been some time since I have held a crop.”
“Thursday,” she smiled. “Our farm is located two miles west of the river, north of the road leading to Anjema.”
“Toward Anjema. I look forward to the excursion, Miss Beckwith.”
Neville Whitaker woke to find his roommate up before dawn, staring through the mosquito netting that protected their room from trypanosome-infected bugs.
“Chad. What are you doing up? There’s a good hour of sleep left in the night.”
“I cannot sleep, Nev, and it’s your fault,” Giles responded without blinking. He stared off at the bare moon, lost in thought. A deep involuntary sigh gave him reprieve long enough for him to turn to his friend. “Neville, I must thank you.”
“Do it after dawn,” Whitaker muffled from his pillow.
“Stop joking, Nev. I’m serious. That girl you introduced me to last night . . .”
“Hnnn?”
“Emile Beckwith. Intriguing.”
Neville flipped over. “I’ll say.
She’s a strange one.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Oh, touche. She is that. Only she has weird ideas.”
“Such as?”
“The notion that your squatters ought to be allowed to sleep in your living room, for instance. Or her insistence on the free nature of men – all men. It just goes against all notion of proper order. As if we don’t need stable hierarchy for civilization to succeed. We know what happened last time men lost sight of that. She’s a strange one, all right. Intriguing, as you say.”
“I gave her my card.”
“You’re bold, Giles, I’ll give you that. Did she throw it back in your face? She tends to do that to the local boys.”
“No. She accepted. We are to go horseback riding anon.”
“Anon when, Sir