Virgin With Butterflies

by Tom Powers

  The next morning I told Aunt Mary what I was going to do. So she and Mr. Bosco started off about the middle of the afternoon in a car together, and the prince and me likewise.

  “You know,” I says, as we were driving away from our first stop, which turned out to be what he called his orchid swamp. “Once I took Martine McCullough to our church—I mean Saint Stephens—and she was a Baptist so she didn’t know how to bless herself, or to show respect to the altar when she crossed the church, or to hit her chest for mea culpa, or that girls without a hat were supposed to wear handkerchiefs over girls’ heads, or nothing. I’m telling you this because you know I have never been to a temple before so if I don’t do right it ain’t lack of respect.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Are you just going there to show it to me, or do you want to say your prayers after being away so long?”

  “Both,” he says. “The wise men of the temple gave me their blessing when I went away. Now I go to tell them I am back safe,” he says.

  “That’s fine,” I says.

  “And perhaps for other reasons, too,” he says.

  We were driving off of the road through a good road into a jungle. And it was kind of a place where we got quiet, and even the two men that was driving us went slowly and we just floated through that dark green place.

  All of a sudden we turned sharp and I was knocked breathless, for there in front of us was a statue of a lady, big enough to scare Dracula. She was a stone lady about the size of the courthouse in Springfield. She looked peaceful and quiet, and there was no light hardly under the trees and vines and stuff.

  They stopped the car and we got out and they drove the car around the back of her, like going around a building, and there we stood in front of that huge big lady. She didn’t look like our Virgin of course, but she was calm and quiet and I could sure feel how they must feel about her.

  I just stood there looking up at her, and while I was, a little streak of sunlight broke through those big trees from somewhere and fell across her face and I saw there was a little smile on it. All of a sudden from the damp shade of the jungle there came up a great swarm of yellow butterflies and they fluttered up into that sunlight and once around this virgin’s head and away off up into the sky.

  The prince looked at me.

  “She’s beautiful,” I says.

  “It is here,” he says, “on this spot that I made the oath with my brother.”

  “Then it’s right here that you could break it,” I says.

  “That is why I have come here,” he says, “and that is why I wanted you to come with me. I need you. I am weak,” he says. “You are strong.”

  “I don’t think you are,” I says. “I think you are a fine, good man.”

  “Thank you,” he says, and we walked around the goddess and straight behind her was a wide road going down wide steps to the temple.

  It was a wide, low temple that was set down the steps below us. It was made out of green and black stone and about as big as the Art Museum.

  We come down that long wide flight of shallow steps and there didn’t seem to be nobody anywhere. And finally we got down to the front door. It was open, and just as we got in front of it, I sure did jump.

  There was the boom of a great big gong, and then something inside the church that sounded just like little ponies, a lot of ’em, galloping across a wooden floor. This noise stopped again, and then voices together like people praying.

  As we got to the door, an old old man was standing in the shadow. He looked at the prince but he didn’t look at me at all. We went in through a dark hall and then into a huge big church with no windows and no pews and no Stations of the Cross or anything to make you feel at home.

  Well, it’s no use trying to tell all about it, because if anybody’s been to the movies enough you don’t have to describe nothing much. They know what it looks like. And that’s just what it did.

  The prince went to a kind of altar and I followed him and it was the same lady like up the hill, but here she was littler, still with that small smile, and I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t do anything.

  The prince kind of knelt down in front of her and kind of fell over at the same time, then he came back to me and we walked up two steps and sat on a stone seat with a back that went nearly up to the high dark ceiling. The gong went boom again and the ponies started galloping on the hardwood floor and stopped like before, and went on just the same and stopped again.

  The old man brought a thing like a long candle but made out of wood painted blue, and the yellow flame turned blue as he set it down in a thing in the stone wall. Then he went and got some more of the same so we could see better right where we were. Then the old man went away and we sat on the stone seat and waited.

  “He goes to get the wise men,” says the prince, and he didn’t say anything else till a door opened in the dark wall, and the old man and four more men in long robes with funny hats on came in.

  The prince went down the steps and met ’em, and they spoke quietly. Each one touched the little lotus flower that the prince always wore, and then they said some more.

  The door opened again and two little boys with bald heads led a man through it. And he come up and felt the lotus button, and when the light flickered on his face I saw that he wasn’t just a blind man. I saw that his eyes had been burned right out. I heard the prince draw in his breath and ask a question, and they told him something. And then the two boys led the blind man out the door, and then the other wise men went out. And there was the big gong and the ponies again.

  The prince gave a sigh.

  “What happened to his eyes?” I says.

  “My brother,” he says. “The priest would not help him, and he had his men do things to the priest. You are right,” he says. “When the English came to me,” he says, “and asked me about my brother I could not tell them. But I went away to get more money than the Japanese will give my brother and keep him from doing these things. But for all my long trip I have not saved him. But in going away,” he says, “I have found you. You are everything I want. You came here alone, American way,” he says. “And so tomorrow, if they find my brother, I do as you say. Then I have you near me always.”

  “Tomorrow?” I says.

  “Perhaps,” he says. “If not tomorrow, the next day.”

  Before I could say anything the door opened and a man came in and spoke to him, and the prince went with the man through the door, and there I sat on that big stone seat all alone.

  I sat for a long time and something came over me that took me back to a church in Springfield one night.

  It was the last night, long after Willie was convicted, the very last night before what they had sentenced him to. And they sent word we could go to the Springfield prison to see him and we did.

  A tired-looking priest went in with us and there Willie sat, clean-shaven and his hair cut. He hardly said a word, and we tried to think what to say. Suddenly Willie looked like a little boy again and, “Sis,” he says, “I been bad, but I swear that girl wasn’t my girl and honest I never meant to kill Dr. Harwood,” and I had to believe him.

  Later we went away, Pop and me, and we walked and walked, and when the light began to come, we knew it was nearly time for it to happen. Pop walked into a little Catholic church and blessed himself. I hadn’t never seen him do it before. And we said our prayers, and there were some nuns praying up near the altar. And I sure was glad we went into that little Catholic church, though I would never have suggested it if Pop hadn’t have just gone in.

  And here it was just as quiet away over here, somewhere in India, and quiet voices of people praying to whatever they was worshipping.

  Nobody seemed to be around so I just slid off of the stone seat and walked down the steps and over to the shrine and I blessed myself and knelt down and asked whoever the lady was in their religion to keep an eye on Pop till I could get back to do it myself. And I prayed and prayed.

  Then somet
hing touched my arm, and there was the prince kneeling beside me. He and the priests must have come back, for there they were all around us. And I knew that when he had seen me kneeling there he must have thought this meant what it didn’t mean at all, that I was ready to worship what he worshipped, so I got up but I remembered to bless myself.

  “Listen, I said a little prayer to your virgin,” I says, “that nothing bad will happen to you because I like you, and I said a prayer, too, that I will get home safe to my Pop that needs me and that I love. I don’t guess,” I says, “that she will mind. She looks so kind, even though I ain’t her religion,” I says, “and I guess I won’t never be.”

  Neither one of us said anything for a long time.

  A door opened and slammed shut, and a young priest came running across the floor like the wind. And as he came running he told ’em why he had come and they all ran for the door like the devil was after them.

  Before I knew it, I was following ’em. Up the wide flat steps we all ran and I saw that out the other doors of the temple other priests were all running to the top of the steps at the back of the statue.

  When they got to the top of the steps, they ran right around the statue, but I got to the top just in time to see the prince stop like an arrow had hit him. The priests stopped too, but I kept on till I could see what they saw.

  Some Indian soldiers were bending over praying in front of the goddess, and right in front of her was a tall dark man with great black eyes. He had turned his head and looked at the prince, and now he got up slow and the soldiers behind him did the same.

  It was the brother of Halla Bandah Rookh. And they had met on the same spot where they had cut their wrists and made their oath, and I saw in the brother’s face that he was a hard man and a dangerous man.

  The two brothers stood like that for a minute, and then the prince walked slowly towards the other one, and I saw the prince reach up and take off his little lotus flower button and all of a sudden I felt like I was seeing something I had no business seeing. So I edged around the priests and went to where I had seen the car. And I got in and shut the door, easy.

  Through the jungle, I saw first a shaved head over a rock and then more and more till it seemed like from all directions hundreds of these priests were moving quiet as cats towards the statue.

  I knew something awful was happening between those two brothers that had loved each other so and had sworn never to be against each other in anything but always together. But I just sat still in the car with my hands clasped and my eyes shut and I prayed for the prince to be saved from what I knew was coming to him if this didn’t work out like I hoped.

  Then the prince spoke pretty near right in my ear.

  “Please,” he says, “go to the house of my father. If I can, I will come. I beg of you do not tell a word of what you have seen here, not to anybody.”

  He looked pale and old and sick and tired, poor little Halla Bandah.

  “I won’t,” I says. “I’m so sorry about it.”

  I knew somehow it was going to be to the death between those two, but I couldn’t say anything more, because the two men that drove the car came from nowhere, and got in.

  We drove off through the jungle by another road, so I didn’t pass in front of the statue, and I was glad because I didn’t want to see what I knew was going on there.

  I had a lot of time for thinking about things, riding along through India by myself. But I just thought mostly about nothing and looked at the places we passed. Some of the people that we passed sure looked at the prince’s car and me in it. And I thought maybe it was because I had on about the only woman’s hat in India. That’s what I thought, till I saw Lady Burroughs’ hat.

  “But surely,” I thought when I met her, “the Indians must be used to looking at everything Lady Burroughs wears.” Because she had been in India twenty-seven years and I sure believed when I saw her that everything Lady Burroughs had on had already been seen by the Indians every year since she had been in India.

  We went on driving towards the old prince’s palace, and we got there all right, except for a truck that had some English soldiers standing around it because it was stuck in a ditch, and some Indians were helping ’em like I’ve seen farmers help with their mule to pull a car out of a ditch in Illinois. This was just like that exactly, except that these farmers had their skirts tucked up between their legs, and a whole sheet around their heads falling off on one side, and the mule was different, too, because over here it was a very big elephant.

  It was a trick elephant, too, and strong and far tamer than any mule I ever saw. A lot tamer it was than those English soldiers crowding around our car.

  I didn’t know they were English because it seemed like the English I had met in Calcutta spoke like us, or anyway enough to understand pretty good. But as near as I could make out from these English their army was made up of some people that didn’t speak English hardly at all. They are called Cockneys and these fellas didn’t look like they’d ever been to a dentist in their lives and didn’t even brush ’em.

  I couldn’t understand ’em hardly at all, but they could understand English. You see, I got tired of sitting there with them crowding all around and cutting monkey shines over me and my silk stockings and my white clothes and making remarks in the Cockney language and them laughing and not caring if the elephant never got their old truck from across the road. So I got a little mad and stuck my head out and I says, “Listen, big boys,” I says, “this is all a lot of fun but if you bright boys don’t take your eyes off of me for a minute and get a two-by-four and a rock to bend it on and ease that back axel up till Jumbo can get a hold on it, you’re going to strain a mighty good elephant.”

  Well, sir, they sure looked surprised that I knew what to do in a case like that, and I guess it was funny, me all in white in that beautiful car with two men in uniforms driving me.

  But they sure understood me, and they got a move on and did it just like I told ’em and it worked, and did that elephant give me a grateful look as we drove by. The Cockney boys all grinned with their snaggle teeth and gave three cheers as I waved to ’em and we drove away.

  And that’s how I learned what I didn’t know before, that Cockneys are really Englishmen, and pretty fine Englishmen at that, as I learned from what Boggs did for Roddy and me. He saved our lives I guess by drowning himself and he did it like you wouldn’t believe—smiling and making a joke.

  The English are funny about a lot of things but when it came to scratch they sure were there for me.

  So we kept on, till we got to where we was going to, and where we was going was something, I can tell you. Another movie palace but an A picture if I ever saw one.

  All white it was, and covered with ruffles and borders of white stone lacework around the doors and windows. And it was clean and pure looking, like the main building in Heaven.

  I got out but nobody could speak English of any kind, so I couldn’t tell the ones that opened the car and helped me out, or the ones at the main door of the house, who I was or what I was doing there. Come to think of it, I didn’t know the name of who I had come to call on. But I guess I talked pretty loud trying to make ’em understand, so finally there was Aunt Mary and then everything was all right, because she could speak so many kinds of talk I called her Mrs. Berlitz. That’s the name of a school that when Millie first saw Curly and thought he was a Spanish, she went to see about studying it. So she studied Berlitz, and look what it done for her.

  Aunt Mary asked me about the prince, and I just said he had gotten delayed and we had better send the car back for him, and she did.

  So we went into a big big room and that’s where I met Lady Burroughs, and that’s where I met her husband that I had heard about, I’ll say.

  He was a general and a sir, to boot, and I found out there was still another kind of an Englishman.

  For Sir Gerald Burroughs wasn’t silly at all, but was enough to scare you to death, barking like a Saint Bernard inste
ad of talking. But he didn’t mean it, as I found out later. And when I did, I couldn’t help smiling, thinking of an old saying Pop used to say, “A barking dog will never bit.” Then Pop would laugh and say, “Or maybe it’s a barking dog is worth two at a bush.”

  Sirs and ladies are called a lot of different ways. For an instance, Lady Burroughs was called that by me. She’s “her ladyship” when the servants speak about her, and “my lady” when they speak right at her. And General Sir Gerald Burroughs, K.C.M.G., is just Sir Gerald to me and the servants and everybody, talking about or talking to. I asked Aunt Mary and Lady Burroughs together what the K.C.M.G. meant after his name.

  Aunt Mary said it stood for Knight Commander of Michael and George, though I never found out who they were, and Lady Burroughs laughed like a horse and, “Not at all,” she says. “When you know Gerald better you’ll discover that K.C.M.G. stands for Kindly Call Me God.”

  I knew she was joking so I laughed, but I didn’t always know when she was.

  I wrote all this down in my book so as I would remember it, but I don’t know why, as I don’t ever expect to be able to use it, unless on Millie.

  Well, I didn’t see the old prince anywhere and I didn’t like to ask, especially since Lady Burroughs ordered tea like it was her house. So we had it, too strong like always, but good things to eat with it and lots of ’em.

  Lady Burroughs was called Agatha by Aunt Mary, and Sir Gerald she called just Gerald.

  They called Aunt Mary just Mary.

  Aunt Mary gave me some strawberries that were as big as my fist and cream so thick I thought it was ice cream but it wasn’t.

  I asked Aunt Mary if she had ever been here before and she said no, she had known Lady B. and Sir G. in England.

  And Lady B. said Englishmen had to go home from India every so often or their livers got too appalling. She said they were so glad to see Mary and to meet her charming niece because whenever they had seen her for years, she had always been telling them what a dear girl I was, and now they could see for themselves it was true.