Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

  Business.

  What kind of business?

  Journalism.

  I see you were in Bangkok, said the customs man, flipping through his passport very lazily. Earlier this year?

  Yep.

  You like it there? I bet you really liked it there.

  It was all right.

  I lived there ten years, the customs man said.

  What part of Bangkok?

  You wouldn't know if I told you. I bet the only places you know are Pat Pong and the shopping mall.

  What shopping mall? said the husband defiantly.

  The customs man had unzipped his backpack and was turning it inside out. The husband almost admired him, because he was impervious to the husband's dirty underwear, squeezing every wrinkle so gracefully, looking for contraband . . .

  And the husband thought: Have I only lately become a sleaze to them, or did they always think I was a sleaze?

  He stood in a dream until the agent let him go.

  46

  Hello, Sien. I hear you wanted me to call.

  Yes, sir. I have some news for you. You know sir we contact Cambodia go disco show picture your taxi girl they say no one like that is working there now. They say no one like that ever worked there.

  She's not there anymore?

  No, sir. When she working there? Long time ago?

  September.

  September is not long time. I don't know why, sir. I think maybe your letter was too heavy. We enclose the four photos of you and the four photos of her. When it got Phnom Penh my contact say only one picture of her and one picture of you in there. Letter was too heavy.

  You think she's dead?

  I don't know, sir. I think maybe no news is insufficient news. We must try another way.

  47

  By now, through the weird and inverse pointillism of so many other influences, Vanna's image had disintegrated and dispersed in the blackness of his mind like the dust of a losing protostar.

  That night in a dream he saw a woman he hadn't seen for many years, a white woman with a beautiful face whom he'd always loved and who had never loved him. In his vision she wasn't saying anything to him, only gazing lovingly into him, which was enough and more. In real life this woman was dying or had already died.

  It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves . . . The passions, in turn, owe their origin to our needs, and their increase to our progress in science.

  J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality (1755)

  The phlebotomist rolled on white rubber gloves before she stuck him. When she asked questions for the case record, she looked right through him. When she was finished the doctor came in. The doctor was tall and muscular like a gym teacher. He didn't bother to shut the door.

  Drop your trousers, said the doctor.

  He looked at the door.

  Drop your trousers, I said.

  He dropped his trousers.

  The doctor rolled on white gloves with an angry and disgusted face.

  Doctor, do you see anything?

  Take a deep breath, said the doctor.

  The doctor slammed the culture probe up his urethra. He grunted with the sudden stunning pain. The doctor almost smiled.

  Doctor, what do you think my chances are of having the virus?

  How would I know? I don't know how you've been spending your life. What's more, I don't want to know.

  Do you think I have a fifty-fifty chance?

  You've been doing a lot of stupid things, said the doctor, writing something onto the chart.

  He rose and flipped a box contemptuously down. - Have some condoms, he said. Maybe your wife can still be saved.

  He knew and sensed that everything was going according to timetable. There was no need to interfere. They knew everything themselves. It would only make people nervous. They were good lads.

  Yaroslav Golovanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer (1975)

  As small black vermin-birds fluttered through the air of the Greyhound platforms, which then whirred behind picket by picket through the scratched windows, he thought: Well, in a few hours my life will be different.

  Rolling down the concrete tube fringed by stalled buses, they proceeded across the Bay Bridge, whose replicated girders sickened him through the windows. Pale shining bluish-whitish-grey water gazed at him. He was so tired.

  He got to the clinic and they kept him waiting for an hour and said: You see that the numbers match.

  Well, it says right here: HIV ANTIBODIES PRESENT.

  You have the virus.

  So I finally won the lottery, he said. That's good. That's very good.

  I wouldn't be smiling like that if I were you.

  No, he said, I'm sure you wouldn't. But I'd be smiling if you were me. I'd really like to see how you coped with that.

  Here are some brochures on AIDS resources which you might like to look over . . .

  Oh, I have all the resources I need if I want to get AIDS.

  You certainly are upbeat about it.

  Then why aren't you? the husband laughed. He went out smiling.

  2

  You can notch the fish's fin, harden the removed bit of tissue with epoxy, and then slice it with a diamond saw, slice it thin for the microscope. Now turn the brass knob on the stem, your eye gazing passionlessly into that other world that used to be a fish; when it comes into focus you'll see the fish's age straightaway; it's just like counting tree-rings; it's no different than half-listening to the interpreter explaining the difference between Soviet pistols (he never did learn the difference between the K-54 and the K-59) while gazing out the car window at the houses on stilts over the squishy river, houses connected by gangplanks; you can see the people inside looking out; there is no privacy. That's how it must be for those mercilessly illuminated fish-cells. When he was six or seven his parents told him that he was a big boy, but he got sick and then he was little; they wouldn't use the oral thermometer. They made him pull down his pants on the bed and then the anal thermometer went in, cool and greasy. The whole world saw. He lay still. When they pulled it out and told him that he could move, he continued to lie there with his face in the pillow. He'd gone out of himself; the worst thing now would be if anyone saw him coming back into himself; then that would prove that this thing had happened. But you do it; you look, see, stare, observe, count, measure and categorize. You have to do it! You suck into your eyes the naked children squatting in the mud, coffee-colored puddles in the muddy road, grass-roofed wooden booths in the mud. You match the numbers, my dear technicians. HIV ANTIBODIES PRESENT. Then you continue on down the wide almost empty mud road so beset with puddles that the driver must snake along on brown ridges between them while whitish-pale beggar children hold out their hands screaming. But you do it; you undress it. The fish has been caught; that is the end for the fish there between tall lush pale green trees.

  Vanna's husband didn't believe any of it yet. He remembered so many other false alarms.

  There had been that night outside the hotel when a cyclo driver came to him and said that he and the photographer were in danger. So he had to buy the cyclo driver orange juice.

  What sort of danger are we in? said the husband. I haven't noticed any danger.

  So much the worse for you, Monsieur. Pardon me, but I speak frankly; excuse me, Monsieur, but so much the worse for you.

  Well, what do you want, exactly? I'm only a poor stupid American. We Americans cannot understand mysteries.

  Ah, tomorrow I will bring you a souvenir, Monsieur. No obligation, but I am a very poor man. Five sons. My situation is intolerable.

  That is sad; I'm sorry, but I can't save the world. What is this souvenir? You say you speak frankly; then speak frankly. I give you five more minutes.

  The situation is grave, Monsieur. Very grave for you. What do you do tomorrow?

  I go to work.

  With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

  Yes.

  I would not
get in the car, Monsieur.

  Why? This is very fatiguing for me, complained the husband. Your French is full of obfuscations . . .

  You quit me now?

  Yes.

  So much the worse for you.

  I think I've heard that before.

  The husband went back to the hotel and told the photographer. The photographer agreed with him that it was probably nonsense but wondered where he could hide his film. The next morning they stood on the hotel balcony together, watching bright-green uniformed police gathering on the sidewalk. The official car did not come on time. It was the first instance of the car not coming on time. The husband went and called the Ministry and they said they knew nothing about it. Then the car came and nothing had happened and everything was fine . . .

  3

  He had a sore throat.

  This is a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Look, young man! For you have been born (may heaven avert the omen!) into an age when examples of fortitude may be a useful support.

  Claudius Tharasea Paetus, upon opening his veins (AD 66)

  In the empty house silent within the night winds he scraped a can of dinner into the saucepan and stood waiting for it to cook while his hands held one another on the white enamel coolness of the stove not far from the burner, and he wondered how the stove could stay so cool when the chili was already boiling. He swallowed his pill, in much the same spirit of obedience as when at the board table restaurant in Phnom Penh he'd drunk a fruit shake because that was religious food. He ate dinner, and put the saucepan in the sink to wash later. He picked up the newspaper and read Khmer Rouge sees opening in Cambodia chaos and he thought of the place where they'd suffocated babies by the hundreds, hanging them from the branches to choke inside plastic bags. He thought of the scars on Vanna's back.

  2

  On the marriage bureau wall, dozens of green lizards waited, light green with silver legs. They waited for him because he'd married her.

  3

  He was so alone! With his other wife he'd been resentful when he did what she wanted and guilty when he didn't, and after either failure, once she'd driven off into the night screaming and weeping so that in the middle of his anger he was terrified that she might get into an accident, then he'd lie down on his stomach on their double bed, waiting for the trembling and the sickening stabs in his guts to go away, and then when he felt a little better he'd go into his study to find his address book - he had to find someone who could help him; he had to! - it was the infatuation with wise men all over again - and he'd lie back on the double bed with his heartbeats almost shattering his chest; he was speeding through the pages like an addict: his two best friends in San Francisco didn't answer; in New York it was too late now; he devoured the numbers for Arizona and Nebraska but there was nobody anywhere; he was so alone! - that was the worst part of those arguments, the dread in the middle of the shouting that afterward, no matter what, he'd be so alone . . .

  4

  But something had changed in him. He knew now what he wanted. The other girls had helped him; the hypnotist had revivified his desires; the disease had given him a directness and urgency which he'd never had before in his life. He loved Vanna and no one else. One way or another he was going to be with her.

  5

  The reception room at CBS on that slow summer Friday was like some dream too stuporous to be affected by doom, the security guard's martyred face personifying the hum of lights, the black leather swivel chairs waiting for buttocks, the old reception man shaking his head in weary amazement, saying: I tell ya, George!, while ladies with legal pads and sodas wandered in past the metal detector and messengers trudged out bearing big square boxes of disbelief on their shoulders. A man whose slacks were composed of some spongy effete material leaned over the reception desk, offering an almost alarming view of his fat ass. Grizzled cameramen strolled out yawning, their scuffed leather shoulderbags resting easy in place now that continued use had worn a hollow in each scapulum.

  I tell ya, George! the reception man said again. All right, she says you can go up now. Second floor, first right. What's that you said, George? 'Scuse me but I got interrupted.

  You don't look well, Padgett said to him. You've got to get over it. I've been divorced twice, and the second one was just as hard as the first, but I got over it. I hate to say this to you, but your work is slipping.

  I'm fine, he said. Maybe a little tired is all. So you can't use me?

  I hate to have you put it to me like that, Padgett said, neatening papers on her desk. I really thought you understood.

  I understand now. Do you have any advice for me? Seems like lately I've been asking everyone for advice . . .

  I know how it is, Padgett said. It's hard to be alone again, isn't it?

  I'm not alone. I just got married.

  Well, congratulations. Who's the lucky lady?

  Someone I met in Cambodia.

  That's fabulous, Padgett said. Why didn't you send me an invitation? Listen, I've got a meeting I have to go to. Thank you so much for dropping by -

  6

  He picked up the newspaper and read Khmer Rouge officials return to Phnom Penh and there was a photo of someplace blurry; he thought he recognized the place where the English teacher's friend, another fatherless boy, said that his girlfriend, who died of a headache in 1989, was cremated.

  He said to himself: For me to get through this, I'm going to have to stop reading the papers.

  He said to himself: I'll be a fine one then. A journalist who doesn't read the papers.

  7

  He picked up the newspaper and read More rioting in Phnom Penh.

  8

  He picked up the newspaper and read Bloody Clash in Cambodia.

  9

  It was lunch hour at the Time-Life Plaza and he lurked among the people squeezing balls of aluminum foil in their hands, sitting on the edge of the pool whose row of fountain-foams resembled the heads of asparagus. He was waiting for an editor from Asia Today to come outside. Maybe the editor would give him a job. Businessmen in amazing shoes strode past cigarette butts, and golden monograms glittered on their heels. The businesswomen in "burgundy" dress suits - the standard color -dangled their high heels. Then the editor from Asia Today came out, and he looked into the editor's face while the editor looked into his face and he saw that there was no sense in even asking.

  10

  The funny thing was that he couldn't feel anything wrong inside him yet. He thought he looked great. The doctor said that right now he was only HIV positive. It would be two to six years before he developed ARC, which was to say an AIDS-related condition, which was to say being sick, and then once he got sick enough they would be able to note down in his medical records that he had AIDS. It was easy to believe that the virus wasn't doing anything yet, but of course it had already begun wearing him down moment by moment, like a river undercutting its banks. When he was in Phnom Penh the Tonlé Sap had been rising, so people were laying down mounds of fresh dirt with shovels, walking on them, smoothing them out. A little boy was swimming beside his porch. It happened every monsoon season, they said. The air smelled like fish. There were crowds. A woman was wading from one house to the next. Serious crowds with spades tamped down the levee.

  11

  The photographer called him and said: Well, I just heard from your friend Sien. That disco's finished. They closed it down.

  What happened to the girls?

  The girls? Probably in some fucking concentration camp. I'd say you better kiss off any chance you had of finding Vanna again. Sien's out of it. He doesn't want to get involved anymore. You better go to Thailand and shop around. There are thousands like her. It's too bad, though. That disco was GREAT! And I feel sorry for those poor girls . . .

  What do you think Vanna would have done if I'd been able to get her home? What would she have done when I first took her through my front door?

  Remember when you asked me that before? I told you she would shit in her pant
s, man! She would have loved you so much for your money! She would have never ever left you . . .

  Well, thanks for saying that.

  Oh, that's all right, the photographer said.

  12

  He woke up and had a sore throat.

  13

  He picked up the newspaper and read Cambodia and did not read anymore. He went to bed in the night-sodden house and dreamed that Vanna was screaming with terror, stretching out her arms to him, waiting for him to come and get her while she was still alive ... *

  * Witness's testimony: "In the society built up by the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique there was no prostitution (a good mark to their credit). There a man was not allowed to have two wives. If a married man or married woman had a lover, the couple would incur death."