Sound of Butterflies, The

by King, Rachael

  Towards evening, when the rain had abated, the pilot steered the boat towards a dock. An acrid smell like burning effluent hung in the air. Thomas’s nose twitched and George shielded his face with a handkerchief.

  ‘Pooh!’ said Ernie. He pointed at the tendrils of white smoke rising above the trees.

  ‘It is the rubber,’ said Antonio, who had joined them. ‘The seringueiros are smoking the day’s harvest in the fire of the attalea palm. You will see it when we arrive in the camp.’

  During the short walk to the camp, the smell grew stronger, but Thomas was used to it; it even excited him.

  When the rubber tappers saw Antonio, who led the party, they scrambled to their feet; when they saw Santos, they fell to the ground again, bowed in supplication. Santos murmured something to Antonio, who then barked orders at the men. They were to vacate their camp for them, it seemed. Thomas couldn’t help but feel guilty. Where were they to go, with night about to fall?

  These men were the seringueiros he had heard about — men of mixed race, recruited from the workforce around Amazonia, even from northern Brazil — not the Indians Santos employed in Peru.

  Only the men standing over the fires stood their ground. One man, with a smooth face like a baby’s, bore a flood of tears from the smoke. The fire — more smoke than flames — was piled high with palm fronds. He turned a pole smeared with rubber that grew as the men watched into a large and heavy ball. Weeping ulcers marked his arms; intermittently he scratched at them and smeared his skin with blood and pus.

  ‘I promised you, didn’t I, sirs?’ said Antonio, as the men stood transfixed. ‘That you would see how the rubber is prepared. Quite a sight, no?’

  Thomas looked around him. Ernie and George watched with eyes bright, while John hung around behind them. The look on his face was more pity than fascination, and he met Thomas’s eyes for a moment with a small shake of his head.

  Santos stood talking to a black man. To Thomas’s wonder, they were speaking English. The man, dressed in a light long-sleeved shirt, with a handkerchief knotted at his neck and a felt hat, and a rifle slung over his shoulder, stood rigid beside Santos, nodding vigorously. Though he had an air of authority about him, he was utterly deferential in the presence of Santos. Santos commands so much respect, thought Thomas.

  Clara stood by her husband, with her hand tucked into his arm. She wore her city clothes, which surprised Thomas; he had thought she was of hardier stock, and the delicate parasol she twirled absentmindedly over her shoulder looked ridiculous in the middle of the forest, where the sinking sun came in thin spikes through the canopy.

  The servants bustled about with the seringueiros, loading up possessions on their backs to vacate the huts. This camp was larger than the one on the Tapajós, with more than ten huts facing in a circle and a cookhouse. Gas lamps hung from poles; when one man reached up to take one, Antonio barked at him to leave it.

  Thomas’s heart sank when he entered his hut. Though it was bigger than the ones he had previously shared with John, a hammock was once again to be his bed. The room, elevated presumably to prevent flooding, and with poles for a floor, was bare, with no desk for him to work at or shelves for his books.

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ Antonio walked in behind him.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Antonio.’

  ‘We have sent for some furniture for you. It will arrive in two days.’

  Thomas’s heart lifted. ‘Thank you. That is most helpful.’

  The room held the most basic human smell — old sweat and perhaps waste as well — but a scan around the room told him he must be mistaken. Merely a room, with four hammocks, where four men had worked hard and slept soundly, not caring for the niceties of society, or wanting for them.

  As he placed his bags in a clean spot in the corner of the room, a movement caught his eye on the wall beside him. He had startled something — an insect. No — an arachnid. He leapt back from the wall, then mocked himself for taking fright. He was supposed to be a naturalist, for pity’s sake. The spider was thickset and large, with legs like wide, fibrous cords. A tarantula.

  Antonio popped his head through the door again. ‘Are you all right? I heard a cry.’

  Had he cried out? He seemed to be making a habit of taking fright and being deaf to his own noises.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s just a spider. I’ll kill it.’ He reached down to remove a boot.

  ‘No!’ Antonio stepped through the door. ‘You mustn’t kill it, Mr Edgar. It will drop all the hairs on its legs, and these are more dangerous than the spider’s bite. They are like pins, and poisonous.’

  ‘Well, what will I do with it?’ He didn’t want to have to pick the thing up. He was ashamed at his squeamishness, but there — Antonio already knew he was a coward.

  ‘Leave it alone, sir. It will not bother you. By morning it will be gone. You’ll see.’

  He supposed he should call George, but he was taken by a sudden urge to keep the tarantula from him. George didn’t seem all that interested in spiders, after all, and he would only come in and give him some lecture about it.

  Everybody retired early to get a good night’s sleep before a day of collecting. Santos was unusually quiet and Clara ate her supper in her own hut. At first Thomas couldn’t see the tarantula in the black shadows cast by the lamp, but when he lay on his hammock he saw it moving around on the rafters above him. Too nervous to turn the lamp off, in case the tarantula crawled onto the ropes of his hammock, he left it on. Every time the spider moved, a wash of cold crept over his skin. It wasn’t just the spider that made him tense; only a few flimsy walls of palm leaves separated him from Clara. It was strange to hear a woman’s voice — low and husky as she talked to her husband — out here in the jungle, mixing with the trills of the crickets and the cries of the night creatures. Birds that were named for the sounds they made — the murucututú — a sort of owl — and the jacurutú — sounded at intervals throughout the night as Thomas finally fell asleep, the spider weaving a web through his dreams.

  Thomas set out collecting on the first day with winged feet. Colours seemed brighter, the birds and monkeys in the trees louder. Santos accompanied them, which made things rather uncomfortable; where the men were used to hunting in silence, he seemed determined to converse with them.

  ‘It’s just strange to me,’ he said, ‘that you worship these creatures you collect — you in particular, Mr Edgar — and yet the first thing you do when you find them, in their wild, natural state, looking as magnificent as they ever will, the first thing you want to do is kill them.’

  ‘Well, we are scientists foremost,’ said Ernie, who didn’t at all seem to mind the distraction, despite the fact that their presence scared away birds. Flashes of brightly coloured wings sprang up in all directions, but Ernie was focused on Santos.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean you, Dr Harris,’ said Santos. ‘I declare that you appear to have no feelings for these animals at all.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Ernie. He stopped for a moment, and looked crestfallen at his patron’s assessment of him. ‘I do sometimes feel guilty about killing them.’

  ‘Then why do it?’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying, Mr Santos,’ said George, ‘you have paid for all of this. Do you have no conscience about it?’

  ‘But I am a hypocrite, Mr Sebel, and freely admit it! And anyway, I do not love animals. I love to eat them, but I find them a nuisance at best, and insects I have even less tolerance for. But you … I have heard you profess to love your precious ants and beetles. And you, Mr Edgar, your butterflies.’

  Thomas considered his answer carefully. Santos had raised an issue he had always pushed from his mind. He was going to make a mess of it, he knew. ‘I love them as an example of God’s work, sir. It is our duty, as scientists —’ At this point he thought he heard George give a kind of a snuffle. ‘— As scientists,’ he repeated, louder this time, ‘to study just how amazing God’s work is. I mean, the intricacy of t
hese creatures, the minute and precise workings of them, more complex than any machine —’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Edgar, all very admirable, I’m sure, but I’m afraid you have not convinced me.’ Santos dropped back to continue the conversation with George, and Thomas, finding his heart pumping faster and his face flushing, pushed on ahead, defeated.

  The hottest part of the day came, and Thomas reminded himself what Santos had said about the giant butterfly emerging in the cool of the evening. He contented himself in the afternoon with cataloguing and reading.

  Clara and John had stayed close to camp, and John seemed to be concentrating on giving Clara lessons in botany rather than collecting specimens. They sat side by side in the shade with piles of leaves in front of them, which they were drawing and painting and writing notes about. Though he was still avoiding Clara, Thomas couldn’t help but feel a pinch of jealousy at the easy way they related to each other. He knew that if it wasn’t for what had happened between them — he couldn’t even bear to name it, not even to himself — he might be able to relax around her, even engage her in conversation, for she seemed a bright and intelligent woman.

  As the sun began to fall, Thomas ventured once again into the forest, taking Ernie with him, as he was nervous to go on his own when he was unfamiliar with the paths. He jerked his face towards every movement in the trees, but found only monkeys leaning towards them for a closer look, or heavy-bodied birds jumping from branch to branch. No other butterflies appeared — they had gone into hiding for the coming night. Though the snatches of sky through the trees were still blue, the light on the forest floor was failing. They would have to turn back.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Ernie, who was behind him. Thomas stopped, noting the serious tone of Ernie’s voice.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Thomas, but he didn’t need an answer. Standing on the path ahead of them was a huge black animal, barely visible against the darkening trees. It had seen them, but its look of curiosity was giving way to suspicion. Its ears began to flatten against its head and its legs buckled as it sank to a crouch. It was getting ready to spring if it needed to.

  ‘I can get it from here,’ said Ernie say faintly behind him.

  Thomas turned his head slowly, fearing what he would see, and sure enough, Ernie had his shotgun and was readying himself to fire. Forgetting the admonishment not to move, Thomas grabbed the barrel of the gun and pushed it upwards, just as Ernie squeezed the trigger. The sound exploded in his ears.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Ernie, but Thomas had already spun around to look back at the jaguar. Luckily, it turned and leapt away from them, making little noise in the undergrowth. Thomas heard only the buzzing in his ears from the gun.

  ‘Idiot,’ he said. His hands shook and, now the danger was past, he felt his cold blood flooding back through his veins. ‘Shooting at a beautiful creature like that, are you mad? And with shot. Shot, Ernie. You would only have wounded it and made it mad as hell. You’re lucky it didn’t tear your head off!’

  Ernie stood looking at him dumbly, the gun wilting in his arms. ‘You’re right, old man,’ he said at last. ‘Crikey, what a telling off!’

  He was looking at Thomas with a new respect, and Thomas realised that he had kept his head while Ernie had panicked. The jungle was becoming a part of him now.

  That night, Thomas lay in his hammock and pictured the jaguar. It had looked him in the eye and Thomas felt it was staring into his very soul. Ernie had sung his praises when they returned to camp and he had felt himself walking a little taller. But, despite the excitement, he was weighed down by disappointment. No butterfly. The whole idea of its coming out at sundown seemed preposterous, and he convinced himself that Santos had been mistaken about this aspect. He must be patient. He must continue as he had been, and when the time was right, the butterfly would appear.

  A week went by, and though Thomas saw nothing of his butterfly, he collected a good number of other specimens. The collecting was not as abundant as it had been in Belém, but it was slightly better than when they had stayed in Manaus. He noticed that when the men mentioned Belém, nostalgia crept into their voices, and he came to realise that they, himself included, had taken their life there for granted. Everything had been new and exciting, but they also had an abundance of food, natural life and friends. Life was as relaxed as it could get. He missed their chats on the balcony of the comfortable house, while hummingbirds and bees buzzed from flower to flower, and the local girls called out to them and waved. He even missed the young boys George had employed to collect for him, their gap-toothed smiles and their laughter. He scarcely wanted to admit it to himself, but the presence of Santos kept him always on edge. He was conscious of his manners at all times, and Santos regularly tried to engage him in intense discussions to which he felt he had not enough knowledge to contribute. And as for Clara … the effort of avoiding her was becoming a strain.

  Santos took tea religiously at eleven o’clock and four o’clock, whether they were inside waiting for the rain to stop, or wandering through the forest. Manuel was forced to light a fire to boil a kettle, and to carefully unwrap the precious china. The men felt obliged to take tea with him, and Santos used the opportunity to engage them in discussions about art and philosophy, particularly that of English poets. Thomas would sit and observe him: saucer balanced on outstretched palm, teacup raised daintily to his lips, his giant moustache coming away glistening with tea. Santos recited poems and George joined in, face shining over ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ or ‘Kubla Khan’. The two men then fell to discussing the poets, their lives and their work, while Thomas and John listened, and Ernie shuffled his feet and stifled yawns. Santos seemed particularly fond of William Blake. A visionary, he called him. Thomas had read Blake at school, but his masters considered the prophetic works too risqué to be studied.

  ‘But have you really read them, Mr Edgar?’ asked Santos when Thomas told him this.

  ‘I have, Mr Santos, and I must boldly conclude that the man was quite mad.’

  ‘Mad? What makes you say that?’

  ‘All that talk about heaven being a place where people lead a tortuous existence. His refutation of Swedenborg, who was surely a visionary.’

  ‘But do you understand what Blake was saying?’

  ‘He was saying that hell is a preferable place to heaven. That we should deliberately sin to get there.’

  Santos laughed. ‘Oh dear, sir, you have had some priest or teacher beat that into you, I suppose.’

  Thomas blushed. He had a picture for a moment of his old master hunched over a podium, denouncing Blake with spittle groping the corners of his mouth.

  What was it Blake had said? Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desire. Being in the presence of Clara filled him with desire; he finally admitted it to himself. It wasn’t that he found her beautiful, but rather the opposite. It was her plainness that excited him, her throaty voice that spoke too loudly for a lady, her huge appetite for food and drink. All reason told him he should have been repelled by her, but if he unharnessed his thoughts for even a moment he remembered their encounter in the alleyway, the sweet taste of her tongue, and he became aroused. He took to carrying one of his setting pins in his pocket at all times, and if any wicked thought crept into his mind, he pricked himself soundly on the finger. By the end of a week, his index finger was bruised and bloodied, and he had to write by pinching the pen between his thumb and middle finger.

  At night he was hounded by erotic dreams of the butterfly and Clara. Ernie had warned him that taking quinine could provoke vivid dreams, so he ceased taking it in an effort to curb them. He stayed awake as long as possible, thinking of his life back home in England, of the cold and sterile rooms of the Natural History Museum. His thoughts wandered over the butterflies on display in the Insect Room; how he had pored over them in the dim light of the oil lamps and naked gas jets, shivering, never dreaming he would catch such foreign beauties himself one day. Until then, the most ex
otic specimen he had caught was a purple emperor, as a boy on holiday in Kent.

  He had had an unlikely ally in the capture. His brother Cameron, who was two years older than him, was a fat and angry child. It wasn’t until they were adults that Thomas understood that Cameron had been teased mercilessly at boarding school. When he came home, especially when he brought a friend with him, he let out all his pent-up rage and frustration on Thomas. There were bruises from being pushed down, grass-stained knees rubbed raw and muddied, broken toys and torn books. But Thomas never told on him. For one thing, Cameron always threatened him with a beating if he did, but second, he detected in his brother’s soft belly and sloping shoulders a terrible sadness, which he felt an overwhelming urge to quell. Perhaps, he thought, by soaking up the punishment he would relieve his brother of some of his pain.

  He was twelve years old when he and Cameron went to stay with their aunt one summer. She had a small lake on her estate, surrounded by a meadow with long, languid grass. Thomas spent all day stalking fritillaries while his brother swam in the lake and lay on the little jetty in the sun. Cameron had recently had a growth spurt: the soft belly had been stretched taut and his legs had grown dark and hairy.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Thomas one afternoon. ‘Race you back to the house.’

  Thomas reluctantly gathered his net and his jars, knowing he didn’t stand a chance against his brother. He was about to protest when a flick of colour caught his eye. He gave a shout when he saw what it was, though he had spent the morning trying to be as quiet as he could. The purple emperor seemed to weave in and out of the high branches of a yew tree, alternately flapping and coasting on a current twenty feet above them.

  ‘I can’t go yet,’ he told his brother. ‘I have to get that butterfly.’ The only time he had seen one in the meadow was two years before, when he had tried to coax it down with a decomposing rabbit he had found in a trap, but the butterfly had not caught the scent, or else was simply uninterested, and his aunt had smacked him for coming home stinking of rotten flesh.