Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

  18

  He wondered about the girl he'd almost married. She'd worn a parka of blue duffel. . . Was she well and happy? If he'd married her, would he be closer to where he wanted to be as Vanna's husband? If he married her now, could he marry her and Vanna at the same time? Suppose they all lived together, the husband with all his wives (even the one he'd put off could come back then), all loving one another like the inmates of a monastery, walled off from sadness because none would ever have to go away ... ? This ideal city of wives might well be the answer, or at least part of the answer. Certainly it wouldn't be a shortcut to his ultimate union, but it might be a flowering from it. It was so simple! If he could keep them all with him, then he could make them all happy!

  19

  There was a Peruvian lady who was working with the flying court while her divorce pended (the notion of a flying court always made the husband think of red-buttocked gibbous judges leaping through rings of fire, landing perilously on legal tightropes which they clenched between their hairy toes to pivot their bodies three hundred and sixty degrees through the air, to the accompaniment of stormy cheers; from this conception it was an easy progression to imagining sexual trapeze acts with the court stenographers, which the Peruvian lady was), and just for amusement's sake he started calling her his wife. She was warm and plump; how good it would be to snuggle her while the wind slavered outside . . .

  But I am married! she cried in indignation.

  Exactly, he said. To me.

  Everyone else laughed, and she pretended to pout. - Eh, what will you give me, if I am to be your wife?

  He still had oodles of Cambodian money, which he carried around with him everywhere. He started swirling the almost worthless notes down around her by the handfuls, and everyone had a good time . . .

  On the day he had to leave he went into her room to say goodbye and she said: Wait! I have no clothes! I am undressed for the shower!

  Well, that's perfect, he said.

  She laughed, but kept the door closed until she'd put her dress on.

  Can I kiss you goodbye?

  Kiss me where?

  On the mouth.

  Her roommate came in just then, and the Peruvian lady said: He wants to kiss me on the mouth!

  Pig! laughed the other girl.

  Okay, okay, just one time on the mouth. You sure you don't have herpes?

  I'm sure.

  They kissed a few times. The husband was really enjoying himself.

  But you know I am really married, said the Peruvian girl. I am not yet divorced. And you?

  The same.

  Why is it no good with your wife? I think you are very intelligent. Is that true?

  I guess so.

  And your wife, is she intelligent?

  Very intelligent.

  Ah, then that is why. You are intelligent, so you need a stupid girl.

  Maybe you're right, said the husband thoughtfully. Maybe that's what I need.

  I think so - husband, she laughed.

  Well, wife, you're always right.

  And now I must get undressed again. No, you can't stay. But here is my telephone number in Jeune-Lorette. Call me sometime . . . when my husband isn't around.

  20

  At the co-op hotel in Grise Fiord he met a white man who was almost bald; what hair he had left was bluish-white like the snow outside. The man said little at dinner, but from what he did say the husband began to understand that he was wise and good. The husband believed in wise men because he had to. He was desperate for someone to explain to him what he should do, and why. Having advanced beyond any picayune hopes of those paid mirrors, psychiatrists, he'd been torturing his friends with questions for years every time any of them showed signs of wisdom. (That was when he still allowed himself to mention Vanna directly to others; now the most he could do would be to mention the Inuk girl.) A year or two ago, he'd nerved himself up to go to a priest, thinking that if he could only be made to BELIEVE he'd gladly COMMIT or RENOUNCE; he was with his other wife then and they were so unhappy together because he'd done everything possible and she'd done the same and they'd both given until they were exhausted and couldn't give anymore and were screaming at each other hating each other so much; these arguments had always come out of the blue, so at first he'd been stunned by them, and then after awhile he was continually waiting for them - oh, how he needed wise men! - maybe the priest could help ... but just as he walked into the church he saw a newsletter with photos of the priest's henchmen blockading abortion clinics, and he came to his senses. After that he'd given up on wise men for awhile. But as he spoke with the old man, he began to feel a thrilling sense that this had been meant to happen, that this person had been sent to him to help him, if he had the courage and intelligence to ask the right questions. Once he'd told a French-Canadian friend how he'd been lost and hallucinating in the snow and had seen angels and the woman said: Mon Dieu! and he said: But I think they were all one angel who was meant to help me; I think maybe I saw my guardian angel, because she told me what to do and I did it and I lived! - and she said in a low voice of utter belief: Yes, I think so. - This wise man, then, was his guardian angel. The husband knew it. And he knew that this time he'd not be tested cruelly beyond his faith; the answers he'd receive would make sense in and of themselves.

  The wise man said that he had an Inuk wife who was twenty years younger than he. They were ecstatic together. She was the granddaughter of one of Baffin Island's last shamans. The shaman had never said anything against his enemies, and never seemed to do anything against them, but by some coincidence they all came to horrible ends. The wise man's wife had inherited some of his power. Whenever the wise man started thinking about how he was ready for a cigarette or a cup of coffee, before he'd even said anything or started to move, his dear wife would be handing it to him. One night he was dreaming beside her and he felt her somewhere very near and when he opened his eyes he was speaking Inuktitut to her even though he didn't know that language. Another time he was dreaming of sailing and his wife shook him awake quite angrily and said: Get out of my dreams! and he said: What was I dreaming of? and she said: Sailing . . . and he shivered because she was so very special and strange. Whenever he went anywhere on a trip, the phone would be ringing when he walked into the hotel; somehow she'd know that he had just arrived and would be calling to say she loved him.

  I almost married an Inuk girl, too, the husband said. But she kept sniffing too much gasoline. It never would have worked.

  The wise man smiled gently and said to him in the voice of truth: You made a mistake.

  21

  After that he was on assignment in Hall Beach - which is to say eight million frozen tussocks away from the wise man - and it was exactly as cold as Phnom Penh had been hot and his friend Jeremy started swearing because the pilot light had gone off; they felt the winter instantly even through the triple thick walls. They sat drinking Scotch. Jeremy said that the first time he'd been unfaithful to his Inuk wife he'd gone to a dance and picked up a Greenlandic girl, a friend of his wife's. He'd done it with her once and then she called him and so he did it with her again. Then she called him a second time, and he said he wasn't interested. Jeremy told the husband proudly that he'd never enjoyed it, had only done it for revenge against his wife; therefore he'd been extremely moral. The husband nodded and drank his Scotch.

  Well, Jeremy, what was the reason you did it?

  My wife, you see - I still don't like to talk about it. I'd moved in with her, aye? And we were getting married; everything looked good. Then I found this letter she'd been hiding. Something about it, just the way those hooks and symbols lay on the page, well, I didn't like the look of it. So I got it translated. And it was a love letter. It talked about all the things he did with her. And I'd been drinking with the bastard the same night! I went over to his house and he was asleep. I told him that I was going to kill him. I smashed a few things in there and whacked him a couple of times, and then he apologized, aye? But I nev
er could quite make up with the wife. She's such a witch sometimes! That was around the time she'd started getting cold to me, you know what I mean? At night she always brought one of the kids into bed between us so she wouldn't have to do anything. That was when I started screwing around. And I've done it with ten or twenty girls now - some real young ones, too, I'll tell you! - and I am proud to tell you that I've never enjoyed it once! I'm a man of principle! But I don't know what to do about this new AIDS business . . .

  And how are you getting on with your wife now?

  Pour you another shot?

  Sure.

  Well, just recently she started coming on to me again, but she's getting older and doesn't attract me quite so much, aye? And now she's having some kind of mid life crisis. Suddenly she wants to be Inuk more than ever. She insists on eating walrus meat, which she always hated before and which I hate because it's a putrid jelly. It really stinks up the house. But that doesn't matter; she has to do it. And then there's the matter of striking the kids. That's what burns me up. I think it's a good idea to discipline the kids a little. Hell, the rest of the world does it. Maybe those Inuks should realize that if everybody else does it, maybe there's a reason. Maybe they could learn something, aye? Look how fucked up all the kids are up here! But no, the wife won't have it. One time she wanted some caribou from the freezer to boil for dinner, so I said to our eldest, Cecily, I says, go and get your mother some caribou. And she had the cheek to refuse! Well, I said, if you don't do as your mother wants you'll have nothing to eat tonight. - I was defending my wife! - And my wife turned on me and said: Don't you dare threaten your children!

  So you think you made a mistake to marry her?

  Damned right I did! Just last night she struck me again with the hairbrush; tell me if you don't see the mark!

  What about Stuart and his wife? They don't have problems, do they?

  Oh, yes, Stu has problems.

  Well, what about Roger and Annie? the husband said in triumph. Roger and Annie were the couple at the Bay store, the perfect ones who had told him to drop in for dinner.

  Oh, but they're young yet, eh? - A grim and monitory laugh. - Only in their twenties. I'd like to uhh! her! But give her ten years, and she'll be just like my wife.

  What about me?

  What about you?

  That Inuk girl I had that crush on -

  Easy enough to get a crush, now, isn't it?

  So you really think it would be a mistake to marry her?

  Oh definitely, said Jeremy, pouring himself another drink, it would be a mistake.

  22

  I feel like I have a spirit inside me like a flame, his friend Ben once said. And I have to sleep with my spirit. If someone gives me something that I think is too good for me to accept, then 1 try to get up my courage to get my spirit to accept it. Because my spirit deserves the best. But my spirit isn't the only thing inside me. There are a lot of different souls.

  The husband listened to all the different souls clamoring inside him, his fears piercing the sky with their sharp and dusty backbones . . .

  23

  The two whores stood in the parking garage, eating the husband's fortune cookies and smiling. Light harshened their teeth and wrapped their bodies in glittering sheets. The husband's whore put the money into her shoe. The photographer's whore put her money into her pants. The husband's whore kept hugging herself. She was a little cold. The garage attendant kept popping out of his office and saying: How long you will be here?

  Shut the fuck up, you dirty A-rab, said the husband's whore. You're gonna get paid, too.

  How long you will be here?

  Not much longer, said the husband. This is such a sentimental spot for us. We're just standing here with our wives remembering the old times. Would you believe we first met here, on a double date?

  Okay, okay, said the attendant. How long you will be here?

  Shut the fuck up, ya dirty A-rab, said the whore.

  She stood fat and beaming with her hands behind her back. The other had her hands in front of her, leaning into a quick and wary smile . . .

  Doing this I get the strangest feeling, said the whore. Her upper arms were the size of pumpkins. She had to be over two hundred and fifty pounds. She smelled so bad the husband had to breathe through his mouth.

  You must have strange feelings too sometimes, said the whore, cupping a cigarette in a freckled hand whose puffy flesh reminded him of a cod's or a haddock's, and the match ignited and showered light over her freckles; her hand seemed to glow with its own blood; yawning, she dug her dirty black fingernail under the lacy black bra strap to scratch at her freckled shoulders which quivered with dimples so soft and deep and greasy she didn't really need a cunt; tilting her cigarette-end upward the whore said: I mean, don't you feel strange right now?

  I always feel strange, said the husband.

  Well, what are you looking for?

  Love, I guess. A new wife.

  But does it feel STRANGE?

  It feels strange to me that I'm here with you because I don't love you and you don't love me and all I'm here for is some clue.

  I'll show ya what you're here for, crooned the fat whore, suddenly becoming a heavy meaty bomb in action; stinking of urine she streaked for him, the neckless freckled seal-head hurtling for his fly, which she unzipped expertly with her teeth - hey, that was part of the SERVICE! - and now she was pulling him forward by his zipper; she was barefoot against the wall with her head uplifted for the blowjob, coughing and jerking like a red-haired bird; I have no patience, she mumbled, her belly jigging with all this effort; I just wanna make you feel strange is what I think.

  After awhile she got up and spat. - You like my hair this way, Ginny? she said to the other whore. I decided to wear it this way just today.

  You don't have any kids? said the other whore after a long pause.

  Ten minutes later, when they were in the cab rolling down the brick-flickers, smell of piss in the back, the husband said to himself: Vanna is not this erythrismic whore, that's all I know . . . but I have to love this whore, too, because she tried to be there for me . . . No, I can't love her. I want to, but I can't. She makes me feel lost. Can Vanna be there for me? She's so far away ... - and the husband's mind kept flying on steady fever-wings past the replicated squares and Xs of bridge-struts; he flew with a sunny nausea past hot palm trees and low warehouses. There went a nice convention of whores on the corner, in big black boots, bare thighs; one in red rolled her mouth into a kiss -

  24

  Hello, Sien? Yes.

  Do you know who this is? Yes.

  Any news for me from Cambodia? Not yet.

  Do you think everything's all right? I don't think so, sir.

  25

  Coming back from Battambang they'd stopped for a piss break by one of the half-ruined bridges and he picked a yellow-calyxed white flower, its leaves half eaten by insects; it was studded beneath its bloom with a cluster of pointed buds like bullets. He took it with him when they got back in the car, holding it in his hand and thinking that it might be Vanna. Two ants came out of it, then two flies. Within ten minutes it wilted.

  26

  Lights whirled around the CAMPUS marquee. Dirty ragged men leaned in the darkness. A troll in a skullcap squatted in a doorway on Turk Street.

  Uh no you have to go down Hyde, said the transvestite with the pale made-up face. I'll tell you when to turn right. Not this right but the next right.

  Not this wife, but the next wife, said the husband.

  The transvestite wasn't listening. That was fine with him; he didn't care, either. - I got beat up just last week but I'm too depressed to talk about it, she said.