Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

  Last night tuk-tuk fifty bhat, she said. * Come back Soy Cowboy, thirty bhat.

  So you want some more money for the tuk-tuk ride, is that what you're trying to tell me? said the photographer in disgust. Man, I don't fucking believe it. You know she only let me do her once. And then she wanted a thousand bhat - that's why I had to get that five hundred from you.

  The woman's teeth shone. She slapped her thigh, yawned, walked around staring with bright black eyes.

  Where do you come from, sweetheart? asked the journalist, flossing his teeth.

  Me Kambuja.

  Cambodia?

  Yes. Kambuja.

  We go Kambuja, said the journalist. You come Kambuja?

  * In 1991 a US dollar was worth about 25 Thai bhat, or 1,000 Cambodian riels.

  No.

  Why?

  She grimaced in terror. - Bang, bang! she whispered.

  Outside, the tuk-tuks made puffs of smog. Men huddled over a newspaper by the Honey Hotel. - You want Thai food I wait for you, she said.

  Oh, that's all right, said the photographer. You go on back to Soy Cowboy. We'll find our way around.

  You come Soy Cowboy me tonight?

  Sure. Sure, honey. You just go back to Soy Cowboy and sit there and hold your breath.

  You like? You like me?

  Sure. Now beat it.

  You come tonight I have friend she go hotel with you, the girl said to the journalist.

  OK, he said. He smiled at her. She smiled and darted into a tuk-tuk.

  Well, I guess we go get her and her friend tonight, right? said the journalist.

  Are you crazy? said the photographer. There are thousands like her, twice as nice for half the price. She had the nerve to ask me for a thousand bhat! I've never paid more than five hundred before. You don't have to give 'em anything after you buy 'em out. I remember one time this bitch kept pestering me for money; I sent her away with nothing, man. She was crying; it was GREAT!

  So what did you pick her up for?

  Her? She really stuck out - her long hair, her shorts up the crack of her ass; I really liked that. But next time I want a big girl, man. Not one of these fucking little babies that don't know what the hell they're doing.

  But later he said: I felt sorry for her. Next time I pick up a girl, I won't screw her.

  2

  On the slightly tippy table visited by flies, there were four jars: one with salt, one with capers and vinegar and other things like aquarium plants, one with curry powder, and one with pickled peppers. The photographer and the journalist sat there having lunch, in the alley with colored striped sheets for awnings, and colored umbrellas over the tables. They had noodle soup with vegetables. Roof-water dripped slowly into pools on dirty glazed trestles. It was monsoon season. Motorcycles passed slowly between the tables. The young smooth-faced vendeuses turned and scraped the meat in their woks, looking patient behind their glass bulwarks stacked with eggs, tomatoes, bok choy, sprouts, noodles of all kinds. The vendeuse squirted new oil into the wok, then strolled to a grating, where she reached into her apron and gave someone money; then she made her easy way back, just in time for the oil to bubble. A policeman came by, took out his wallet and bought ice. Water dripped onto mossy benches.

  The journalist kept thinking of the hurt look in the Cambodian girl's eyes. What to do? Nothing to do.

  3

  At half past four in the afternoon, the sticky feeling of sweat between his fingers felt like fungus growing. There was an American detective video on: gunfire and smashing glass and roaring cars at maximum volume. He sat reading the Bangkok Post: 'Big Five' see eye-to-eye on Khmer arms cuts. Two girls were sitting at the bar where it curved, playing a game like tic-tac-toe with poker chips in a wooden frame. Their cigarette smoke ascended the darkness of the long mirror. When a man was tortured on TV the girls looked up with interested smiles. Then they clicked the chips back into the board. More girls drifted in, filling out forms, making business calls. The whirling circles of light began to go around. A girl watched a fistfight on TV, her forefingers meeting in a steeple on her nose. A girl came in to refill the journalist's beer glass so that the bottle could be taken away and then she could sell him the next; the web of skin between his fingers continued to stick more with each passing moment. Another gunfight. The girls saw him grinning and grinned back. Bored with their game, they peered through the holes in the gameboard which stood on its end like a grating between them.

  A white man came in, rubbing his mouth, checking his wallet, resting his arm on the table.

  The smokers raised their hands to their mouths like buglers. One of the girls was playing the game of plastic counters with a white boy, and she smiled much more when she won or lost now than she had when playing the other girl. The boy put a cigarette in his mouth, and two girls' hands reached to light it for him.

  Slowly, the beer receipts piled up in the journalist's ringed teakwood cup. When a girl refilled his beer, she exhibited the utmost concentration, holding it critically to eye level.

  Straight-eyebrowed faces, arch-eyebrowed faces, all gold and oval and framed by straight black hair, watched the gameboard or the TV or themselves in the pink-bordered mirror. Whenever something violent happened on TV, they looked up with calm interest.

  Traffic crept outside. A police whistle shrilled steadily, then there came a sound of faraway singing or screaming; a tuk-tuk passed slowly enough for the passengers to watch the TV. At a quarter to six, when the next white man came in, they switched on the music for a minute, and a girl started dancing, leaning on the bar, clapping her hands. Outside, the lights were turning red and the girls were standing everywhere in sexy skirts. A middle-aged midget in a double-breasted suit came down the alley, walked under one girl's dress, reached up to pull it over him like a roof, and began to suck. The girl stood looking at nothing. When the midget was finished, he slid her panties back up and spat onto the sidewalk. Then he reached into his wallet. The music was getting louder everywhere; girls grinned gently in every doorway as the businessmen passed, sometimes hand in hand; a girl leaned against a vegetable cart smoothing her long hair as the motorbikes passed.

  The long-haired girl in the burgundy shirt looked up from her calculator and came to put ice in the journalist's beer.

  4

  There was a bar aching with loud American music, pulsing with phosphorescent bathing suits. He picked number fourteen in blue and asked her to come with him but she thought he wanted her to dance, so she got up laughing with the other girls and turned herself lazily, awkwardly, very sweetly; she was a little plump.

  You come with me? he said when he'd tipped her.

  She shook her head. - I have accident, she said, pointing to her crotch.

  She sat with him, nursing the drink he'd bought her; she snuggled against him very attentively, holding his hand. Whenever he looked into her face, she ducked and giggled.

  You choose friend for me? he said. Anyone you want.

  When you go Kambuja?

  Three days.

  She hesitated, but finally called over another lady. - This my friend Oy. My name Toy.

  You come to hotel with me? he said to Oy.

  She looked him up and down. - You want all night or short time?

  All night.

  No all night me. Only short time.

  OK.

  5

  In the back of the taxi he whispered in her ear that he was shy, and she snuggled against him just as Toy had done. She smelted like shampoo. She was very hot and gentle against him. Knowing already that if he ever glimpsed her soul it would be in just the same way that in the National Museum one can view the gold treasures only through a thick-barred cabinet, he tried to kiss her, and she turned away.

  Please?

  She smiled, embarrassed, and turned away.

  No?

  She shook her head quickly.

  6

  He reached over her to turn out the light, and she cuddled him. He sucked her little
nipples and she moaned. He kissed her belly, and eased his hand in between her legs. She'd shaved her pubic hair into a narrow mohawk, probably so that she could dance in the bathing suit. He stuck his mouth into her like the midget had, wondering if she'd push him away, but she let him. He had to suck a long time before he got the cunt taste. She started moaning again and moving up and down until he could almost believe in it. He did that for awhile until she pushed his face gently away. He got up and opened her with two fingers to see how wet she was because he didn't want to hurt her. Not surprisingly, she wasn't very wet. He reached under the bed and got the tube of K-Y jelly. He squirted some in his hand and smeared it inside her.

  What's that? she said.

  To make you juicy, he said.

  When push came to shove, he didn't use a rubber. She felt like a virgin. When he was only halfway in she got very tight and he could see that she was in pain. He did it as slowly and considerately as he could, trying not to put it in too far. It was one of the best he'd ever had. Soon he was going faster and the pleasure was better and better; she was so sweet and clean and young. He stroked her hair and said: Thank you very much.

  Thank you, she said dully.

  He got up and put on his underwear. Then he turned on the light and brought her some toilet paper.

  She was squatting on the floor in pain.

  Look, she said.

  Blood was coming out of her.

  I'm sorry, he said. I'm really sorry.

  No problem, she smiled . . .

  I'm sorry!

  Maybe I call doctor.

  He got her some bandages and ointment. She prayed her hands together and said Thank you.

  He gave her one thousand bhat. She hadn't asked for anything. - Thank you, sir, she smiled.

  Enough for doctor?

  This for taxi. This for tuk tuk.

  He gave her another five hundred and she prayed her hands together again and whispered: thank you.

  He gave her some ointment and she turned away from him and rubbed it inside her. When they finished getting dressed she hugged him very tightly. She turned her face up to let him kiss her if he wanted. He kissed her forehead.

  She hugged him again and again. When he'd shown her out to the tuk-tuk, she shook his hand.

  Well, he said to himself, I certainly deserve to get AIDS.

  7

  I can't help but feel it's wrong, he said.

  Well, we're giving 'em money, aren't we? said the photographer, very reasonably. How else they gonna eat? That's their job. That's what they do. What's more, we're payin' 'em real well, a lot better than most guys would.

  8

  What did the journalist really want? No one thing, it seemed, would make him happy. He was life's dilettante. Whatever path he chose, he left, because he was lonely for other paths. No excuse, no excuse! When the photographer led him down the long narrow tunnels of Kong Toi (they had to buy mosquito netting for Cambodia), he got bewildered by all the different means and ways, but everyone else seemed to know, whether they were carrying boxes on their shoulders or hunting down cans of condensed milk, dresses, teapots, toys; it was so crowded under the hot archways of girders that people rubbed against each other as they passed, babies crying, people talking low and calm, nothing stopping. How badly had he hurt Oy? He had to see her. Lost, the two vampires wandered among framed portraits of the King, greasy little blood-red sausages, boiled corn, fried packets of green things, oil-roasted nuts that smelled like burned tires, hammerheads without the handles . . . But it was equally true that the vampires felt on top of everything because they were fucking whores in an air-conditioned hotel.

  9

  In the bar after the rain, the girl leaned brightly forward over her rum and coke with a throaty giggle; everyone was watching the gameboard, smoking cigarettes while the TV said: Jesus Christ, where are you? and the girl said to the photographer: Tell me, when you birthday?

  She said to the journalist: You smoke cigarette? so he bit down on his straw and pretended to smoke it, to make her laugh . . .

  The girls leaned and lounged. The photographer's girl was named Joy. She kept saying: Hi, darling! Hi, darling! - Her friend's name was Pukki.

  Come here, darling, said Pukki. What you writing?

  I wish I knew. Then I'd know how it would turn out, said the journalist.

  He likes to write long letters to his mother, said the photographer.

  The girls had brought the photographer a steak. He didn't want the rest of it, so he asked Joy if she wanted to eat it. Pukki cut pieces for her, nice and fat; she screamed teasingly because it was hard to cut.

  You buy me out please, Pukki cried to the journalist.

  I love Oy, he said. Tonight I buy Oy.

  (That's real good, said the photographer admiringly. That's the way to show 'em!)

  The journalist got a little loaded and made the bar-checks into paper airplanes and shot them all over the room. Patiently one of the girls gathered them all up; she smoothed them and put them back in his cup and he said: You boxing me? and she giggled no. More girls swarmed around, cadging drinks (he bought them whatever they asked for), sliding their arms round him, snuggling their heads on him, stroking his money pouch slyly.

  The photographer squeezed Joy's butt and Pukki's tits and all the other girls cried in disgust real or feigned: You butterfly man! - He bought Joy out, and Pukki screamed at the journalist: Please you no buy me out whaiiiiieee?

  I'm sorry, he said. I promised Oy. I'm really sorry.

  He slipped her a hundred bhat and she brightened . . .

  10

  So they went to Oy's bar, the photographer, the journalist and Joy. Toy said: She no work today.

  Is she OK? said the journalist. I worry about her. I hurt her pussy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . .

  She no work today, Toy smiled.

  11

  The manager came and said: Oy? Which Oy? - Evidently there were so many Oys . . .

  The photographer went and looked (he was very good at picking people out), but he couldn't find her.

  12

  Racing the unhappy accelerator in stalled traffic, the taxi driver ignored the tree leaves wilted down into balls in the air that smelled like a black fart. The journalist sat up in front with him so that the photographer and Joy could fondle privately. The letters on the bus beside him swirled in white flame. Wet noises came from the back seat. The driver stared from the righthand window, disapproving, envious, appalled, or indifferent.

  He say me where you go I say Metro Hotel, Joy announced.

  Finally the light changed, the driver shifted gears so that his weird mobile of shells tinkled as the taxi sped past dogs and corn-stands. A big canvas-covered truck loomed in the darkness. The driver looked ahead when they stopped again: his lips were wide and rounded. Raindrops shone like dust on the other cars' windshields. A foreigner made chewing motions in back of a tuk tuk and then he was gone forever as the taxi driver made a roundabout and rushed between twisted pillars, honking his horn in the fog. He took them down secret-arrowed alleyways to the hotel . . .

  13

  All night the TV went aah! and oi! to dubbed movies while the prostitute lay wide-eyed in the photographer's bed, bored and lonely, snuggling her sleeping meal ticket while the journalist, unable to sleep on account of the TV and therefore likewise bored and lonely, could not ask her to come even though the photographer had offered because he didn't feel right about it the way she snuggled the photographer so affectionately (when he got to know her better he'd understand that she wouldn't have come anyway) and besides he was worried about the growing tenderness in his balls. He jerked off silently to Joy; it didn't hurt yet, just felt funny, so he could still pretend that it was nothing; as soon as he was done he wanted to get inside Joy as much as before, and then he had to piss again; that was a bad sign; as soon as he pissed he felt the need to piss again.

  14

  In his sleep he listened, and every time he heard the rustle of he
r in the sheets he woke up with his penis as hard as a rock, aching. It was a little before six. His desire seeped like the tropical light coming slowly in, first illuminating the white valleys in the curtains, next the white barred reflections of the curtains in the mirror, then the white sheets, his white sheets, her white sheets folded back down over her shoulders, the black oval of her head on the white pillow (could he see her fingers on the sheet?) Now the outline of the grating grew behind the window, now a white belly of light on the ceiling, the white upper walls, black wainscotting, the white closet shelfs black clothes. Her silhouette was sharpening; he began to see the shape of her hair, his socks and underpants hanging to dry on the curtains. He could see the outlines of leaves through the grating. Now the wall-blacks weren't quite black anymore. The frame of the TV had differentiated itself from the screen. The bathroom door detached itself from the wall-mass. Clothes and luggage were born on the tables. He could see her shoulder now separating from the sheet, the white bra-straps leaping out; her head was turned away, toward the photographer; he could see her neck, ear and cheek begin to exist as separate entities from her hair. He could see the border of paleness around the edge of her blanket. He could see her breathe.