Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

  He went to bed and cried. Then he fell in love with a lesbian.

  6

  They were now sitting in their own private compartment, chugging away from Sion into the pink snowy dusk. The lesbian sat reading a tour book beside him. Turning away as if to cough, he palmed the antipsychotic pill and swallowed it dry. Now he was safe for the night. The lesbian nodded at something that the tour book said. The bracelet seemed to be cutting into her plump arm. He wondered how she could stand it. The more he looked at the bracelet, the more gruesome it seemed. He kept expecting her fingers to start turning blue and falling off. But the lesbian did not seem to be uncomfortable. They passed a station full of red lights and funny glass windows.

  7

  They had seen Dubrovnik and they had seen Split. The lesbian closed her guidebook.

  Check our backpacks and I'll save a seat, the lesbian said.

  Save two, he said, for he was beginning to know her.

  He made certain that the packs were loaded into the luggage compartment and got onto the bus.

  I couldn't save two, she said. I think there's one in the back.

  Well, I can sit next to you. That seat's empty, isn't it?

  I want two seats to stretch out in, the lesbian explained.

  Fine, he said.

  Oh, by the way, said the lesbian with the sweetest of smiles, you'll have to pay for my ticket.

  He went to the back and took a pill.

  8

  They arrived in Titograd at five in the morning. It was so cold that the water had frozen in hanging arches from the fountain. The boy who wanted to be a journalist used his German to ask the way to the railroad. They came to what they thought was the waiting room, but when he opened the door it turned out to be the signalmen's office. The signalmen stared at the lesbian and licked their lips. The boy who wanted to be a journalist pulled out a bottle of slivovitz and they shared it around; after that they were friends. They showed him dirty cartoons (they wouldn't let her see) and stuffed them insistently with dried pork, bread drippings, and a tin of mackerel and vegetables. The two Americans amused them. When the lesbian shook hands with them like a man, they laughed so hard a glass jumped off

  the table. Curling up in the most comfortable chair, the lesbian slept, and then the signalmen asked the boy if she were his sister (they knew that English word). He said no. One man pointed at them, moved two fingers into intersecting courses, and continued the motion with the fingers attached to each other. - Ja, ja? he said. - The boy who wanted to be a journalist nodded and thumped his heart vigorously. The signalman put an imaginary ring on his finger and looked at the boy. The boy made clockwise movements with his forefinger on the face of his watch to indicate "in due time," nodded, and thumped his heart again, so that the lesbian would be protected. That satisfied them all.

  They never did much work, just made long phone calls all night, bellowing and laughing alternately, and kissed some new arrival on both cheeks. They seemed very happy. In the morning, when their uniforms came back from the cleaners, they tried each other's on, put two on at a time, pulled the sleeves up, and threw their official caps all around.

  The boy thought: I'd give anything to have what they have, and they'd probably give anything to have what I have.

  9

  In Saloniki they checked into a hotel for the night, and the clerk said: One bed or two?

  The boy who wanted to be a journalist began to hope. Maybe she wasn't really a lesbian. Maybe she loved him enough that being a lesbian didn't matter. He waited.

  The lesbian was looking at him and the clerk was looking at him and finally the lesbian said: Two beds.

  A deep flush overpowered the boy's stoic face.

  10

  The train from Saloniki to Istanbul was supposed to take two days, but sometimes it took three or four. It all depended. When the Greek soldiers heard where the boy and the lesbian were bound, they shook their heads and made fierce throat-slitting motions. Before the border the soldiers got off, giving them fresh goat cheese and shaking their heads again. The lesbian laughed.

  This time it looked like the train was going to take three days at least. It had broken down twice. They were at the Turkish border, just inside the wire. They were all starting to wear thin on each other. There were five of them in the compartment: the boy who wanted to be a journalist, the lesbian who didn't want to be anything, a sad boy from England, Ulrich and the doctor. The doctor had been expelled from Saudi Arabia for seducing a nurse. - The girls in Saudi Arabia may be clean in the sense that they're virgins, he said with a bitter wink at the lesbian, - but I don't like a virgin who stinks!

  Your brain stinks, said Ulrich. Your heart stinks. Your soul stinks.

  Ulrich was the son of an SS officer. He was an alcoholic tramp. He and the boy who wanted to be a journalist got on quite well. - Oh, you poor little American, he'd chuckle every now and then. The boy smiled back grimly . . .

  11

  The sad boy from England liked to read aloud from the lesbian's guidebook. She was becoming fond of him, as it seemed. He read the same passages over and over, and she leaned back against his shoulder smiling with closed eyes. Sometimes the boy who wanted to be a journalist got so jealous and miserable at the sight of them that he went out and stood in the corridor, or got off the train to trudge back and forth in the snow beside the dark-shawled Turkish women who squatted round a fire. Ulrich never went with him for these walks, but sometimes the boy felt an eerie feeling in the back of his neck and would turn to see the German watching him from behind the half-dark window, waving ironically.

  12

  I know a man in France . . . began the sad English boy.

  Oh, good, said Ulrich sarcastically, having another slug of brandy.

  The train sat in the sunny snow.

  It snows pretty good in Frankfurt, doesn't it? said the doctor, trying to be friendly.

  No, said Ulrich.

  He and the doctor had already had a fistfight.

  Brigitte, Brigitte, Brigitte . . . droned the English boy.

  No, my name is Bridget, said the lesbian. Brigitte is French.

  The boy who wanted to be a journalist got up and went into the corridor so that he could take his pill where no one would see. Just after he had unscrewed the top from the vial, a giant grimy palm shot silently down onto his wrist and the grey scarred fingers wrapped instantaneously around his wrist, and then the other grey hand reached and took the vial away.

  What is this? said the grey hands' owner. Why?

  Antipsychotics, said the boy who wanted to be a journalist. They said I have to take these. They said if I don't take these maybe I'll kill myself.

  Kill? said the German in astonishment. Why not kill?

  He gave back the vial. The boy who wanted to be a journalist took his pill, and then they both went back into the compartment.

  Not only Germans kill, said Ulrich presently, but they do it more thorough. Only Germans are the peak, you know.

  Crazy bastard, said the doctor, opening a black portmanteau to get at his very own bottle of Scotch.

  13

  So I cracked that little nurse's legs open, and what do you think I saw? said the doctor.

  No one else was much interested, but the boy who wanted to be a journalist was fascinated. - What? he said. What did you see?

  Maggots, said the doctor. That little pink tomato of hers was white with crawlers. Now when I say maggots I'm using the vernacular, you understand; I can't vouch for their being the larvae of dipterous insects -

  Without warning, Ulrich punched the doctor in the face, cracking his head smartly against the wall. The doctor's mouth fell open, and his nose began to bleed. No one said anything, and for a moment the doctor just sat there breathing heavily. Then he lunged at Ulrich, who grinned and flung up a grey bar of a forearm with automatic precision to slam against the doctor's chest and throw him back.

  The doctor sat down moaning. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and stare
d at the blood. He touched his nose again. His hand came away crimson as if he were a murderer. He pinched his nostrils shut. Then he stood up. He looked piercingly into everyone's eyes. Then he got his portmanteau and went out of the compartment. The boy who wanted to be a journalist heard him going up the corridor sliding open the doors of all the compartments to look for a vacant seat. After awhile he heard him come back and go down the other way. When he ducked outside to take his pill, he saw splashes of blood in the hall. Presently the doctor came back again. There were no compartments free. The doctor stood in the corridor with his nose pressed angrily against the window all that day and into the night when the train began to move again and into the next morning when they got to Istanbul. Then he stomped off to the airport. He was flying around the world, he'd said. It was his fifth time.

  14

  Ulrich, the lesbian, the English boy and the boy who wanted to be a journalist were sharing a room in the Hotel Gungor. The lesbian had read about it in her guidebook. They didn't have a map of the Sultanhamet district, so the boy who wanted to be a journalist went with the lesbian for directions to the office of police. A thug in a black uniform directed them to the inspector, who got up and offered the lesbian his armchair. He kissed her wrist and shook the boy's hand warmly. When all was understood, the thug showed them out to where Ulrich and the English boy were waiting. The English boy looked scared. Ulrich kept making punching motions and shouting: I am fighting machine!

  Is anybody hungry? asked the lesbian, who had taken charge.

  They all were, so after they'd checked into the hotel they went and found the Pudding Shop, an enclave of the sixties whose jukebox played "Revolution," "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" over and over. Ulrich, who was not used to being with people who could stand him, was so delighted with them all that he bought the dinner. All the journalist wanted was vanilla pudding.

  You want hashish sir I excuse me? said a Turkish boy.

  Get out now or I kill you, said Ulrich.

  His life is probably very difficult, said the lesbian.

  I kill him! shouted Ulrich.

  Don't you think that life is inherently difficult? the lesbian persisted.

  I don't think it's inherently difficult, said the boy who wanted to be a journalist. I only think some people make it difficult for themselves.

  What are you talking about? said the lesbian scornfully. You take pills to keep alive!

  You do what? said the English boy.

  The boy who wanted to be a journalist didn't say anything. Ulrich laughed and had another shot of brandy. - You - you poor little American, he said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  15

  The lesbian wore tall white socks up over her nylons. She had very big breasts, and the nipples usually showed through the purple or black blouses she wore over her skirt. The English boy was wild about her. As for the boy who wanted to be a journalist, he could no longer care less. Maybe that was why he suddenly seemed to be less thanatophilic. His unhappiness (which was probably biochemical, since he could find no reason for it) seemed irrelevant. One of his best friends, a boy who wanted to be a revolutionary, had written him:

  I've stopped taking suicide seriously in recent years as a possibility for myself, because there's a perspective that radically transcends the neutrality that forms the basis of most of my criticism of living. The perspective is in fact entirely mundane in its operation, which consists of a commonsensical and humble interpretation of the pain one experiences in living - an unwillingness to generalize to extremes on the basis of one's failures, an assumption regardless of particular experiences that pain is transitory. Obviously I can't plead with you on the basis of a perspective which you may not share. I mention this simply from the hope that it may come as a bit of a reminder to you because (after all) you do live and may have done so on a basis similar to this. I use the past tense because I imagine that considering suicide as seriously as you are there's already quite a distance between you and such a perspective.

  Was this what he'd felt? The snow had almost melted, and the sky was pale blue. They went sightseeing at the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. After lunch they went to the Royal Treasury. The lesbian loved the Chamber of Emerald Objects. By the time they got to the Chamber of Jade Objects, she was bored, but the English boy read every caption aloud just the same. When they got to the Chamber of Weapons, Ulrich tried to take a mace down from the wall, but the attendant smiled and shook a finger.

  The lesbian wanted a snack. The boy who wanted to be a journalist got baklava and mineral water. The English boy read the menu aloud. - Shut up, said Ulrich.

  Ulrich sat buttering a big piece of bread and the lesbian was eating her soup but the English boy wasn't eating anything. Suddenly his face twitched and he started to stutter.

  Ulrich leaped up, slapped his cheek with a noise like a gunshot, and walked out. When the others returned to the hotel that night his pack was gone.

  16

  The next day the lesbian and the English boy and the boy who wanted to be a journalist went to the underground bazaar. The English boy's jaw was still numb where Ulrich's hand had struck him, but he hadn't lost any teeth. In fact the incident had significantly benefited him, since Ulrich was gone and the lesbian had been very sympathetic. The boy who wanted to be a journalist permitted his jealousy to construct a proof of almost geometric rigor that the English boy had planned it. It was true that the English boy's thoughts, at least as he had expressed them, seemed to possess little shape or divisibility, but that might well be simply a manifestation of the English boy's cunning. In short, the lesbian and the English boy were now holding hands. Maybe the lesbian wasn't a lesbian after all.

  17

  Nonetheless, he felt a very strange sense of well-being. The lesbian and the English boy were away at the Turkish baths. He went to visit the hotel clerk, a dark-skinned boy who always smiled. Since the trip was almost over, and the boy who wanted to be a journalist could not possibly use up all his Swiss cereal, he gave the clerk some. The clerk didn't know what it was at first, but when the boy who wanted to be a journalist ate a handful as a demonstration of its gustatory powers, the clerk also tried a taste. His eyes widened. Then he got out his flute and played a song for glee. He beckoned the other boy to the counter and pointed to his lips to show that he had something he wanted to say. He patted his cheek. Then he got out his Turkish-English dictionary. He searched for the words for a long time. Finally he frowned, mouthed something to himself as though he were rehearsing it, and then his forehead smoothed and he patted the boy who wanted to be a journalist's shoulder and smiled delightedly and said: I - love - you . . .

  18

  He went outside to take his pill, and Ulrich found him. Ulrich's palms were lacerated and gritty with fragments of glass. Ulrich said: Because I kill my father, you know. In 1972. That doctor you cry for, he was just a little bastard. But my father was SS. He was the peak. He was good enough to die at my hands . . .

  Do you love your father? said the boy who wanted to be a journalist. I need to know what love means.

  Love? said Ulrich. Why not love? You tell me this now, you want to know what love means. Who do you love?

  Nobody.

  Ah, then no more pills for you, my poor American. You love no one? No one? Good! You are the peak. You and I, we know what love means . . .

  And he began to applaud, slamming his great grey hands together until the blood and glass shivered out —

  One obvious question concerning the ultimate reproductive success of males is whether it is better for a male to invest all of his sperm in a single female or else to copulate with several females.

  Bert Hölldobler and Edward O.Wilson, The Ants (1990)

  1

  Once upon a time a journalist and a photographer set out to whore their way across Asia. They got a New York magazine to pay for it. They each armed themselves with a tube of cool soft K-Y jelly and a box of Trojans. The photographer, who knew such
essential Thai phrases as: very beautiful!, how much?, thank you and I'm gonna knock you around! (topsa-lopsa-lei), preferred the extra-strength lubricated, while the journalist selected the non-lubricated with special receptacle end. The journalist never tried the photographer's condoms because he didn't even use his own as much as (to be honest) he should have; but the photographer, who tried both, decided that the journalist had really made the right decision from a standpoint of friction and hence sensation; so that is the real moral of this story, and those who don't want anything but morals need read no further. - Now that we've gotten good and evil out of the way, let's spirit ourselves down (shall we?) to the two rakes' room at the Hotel Metro, Bangkok, where the photographer always put on sandals before walking on the sodden blue carpet to avoid fungus. As for the journalist, he filtered the tap water (the photographer drank bottled water; they both got sick). There was a giant beetle on the dresser. The journalist asked the bellboy if beetles made good pets. - Yes, he grinned. It was his answer to every question. - Good thing for him he doesn't have a pussy, said the photographer, untying his black combat boots with a sigh, putting foot powder on; and the journalist stretched out on his squeaking bed, waiting for the first bedbug. The room reminded him of the snow-filled abandoned weather station where he'd once eked out a miserable couple of weeks at the North Magnetic Pole; everything had a more or less normal appearance, but was deadly dangerous, the danger here being not cold but disease; that was how he thought, at least, on that first sweaty super-cautious night when he still expected to use rubbers. The photographer had already bought a young lady from Soy Cowboy. In the morning she lay on the bed with parted purple-painted lips; she put her legs up restlessly.