The Dreams of the Black Butterfly

by Mark James Barrett

  “I can’t!” she said.

  A whistle blew. “You must!” Vital urged.

  “They’ll see us, it’s too bright, it’s not going to work.”

  “Trust me.” He held out his hand.

  Maria looked at his eyes, at the sweep of his nose and the delicate swirls around his cheekbones.

  “Ja ciabe kakhaju.” Something spilled from her eye and splashed white on the concrete as they ran for the closing doors.

  They sat in the emptiest carriage at the rear of the train. Vital laid the tickets out on the pale, smooth table. He picked up a newspaper somebody had left behind and opened it to form a shield against prying eyes. For a while he stared at the creased pages, wondering what the tiny black shapes on them might mean. When the train was moving, he lowered the paper for a moment.

  “Can I eat now?” Maria asked.

  Vital had a quick look around. There were only five other people in the carriage, two of whom were asleep. He nodded.

  Maria picked up the holdall between her feet and lifted it onto the table. Inside it there was another bag, which shimmered with shades of pink and lilac. She pulled off her gloves quickly and for a moment her elegant hands fluttered over the provisions like mating butterflies. She took out a cobalt-blue flask, which leaned awkwardly when set on the table. Two small packages wrapped in paper followed: a flat round of rye bread and a wedge of sweet, heavy cake. Maria unscrewed the lid of the flask and filled it up with Okroshka. Vital declined her offer and her excitement fell as quickly as it had risen. She turned to face the window and sipped the cold soup. The glass rocked rhythmically, revealing the surprising strangeness of her own face.

  When the ticket collector came, Vital laid the newspaper over their provisions. The man punched their tickets, flung them onto the table and moved on. When Vital picked the paper up again, the pages were dotted with yellow ochre, cobalt blue and raw umber.

  “Is it really there?” Maria asked him, noticing the hairline cracks that had developed in his cheeks since they had boarded the train.

  “Of course, but we have to be quick because–”

  “Tomorrow it shuts forever.”

  “Yes.”

  He jumped to his feet and headed for the toilet. “I’ll be back soon,” he managed.

  Maria stood up.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Heads rose along the carriage. Maria sank back into her seat as her husband stumbled out.

  Vital leaned over the sink and stared into the trembling mirror. He saw himself clearly for the first time: A simple figure whose eyes swirled with questions and fear of the answers to them.

  When the fog came to the village, everyone sensed its destructive power. It was thick, impenetrable and rotten smelling. It loosened the skin and burned the eyes. Most people stayed indoors in an effort to lessen its effects, but nothing could protect them. On the outskirts of the village, houses began to fall in great slaps of colour.

  In desperation, Vital did something nobody had even considered before. He struck out into the dark, colourless woods that surrounded their home and came out the other side with no idea what he was searching for. For a time, he trudged along the roadside without hope. Then he noticed a newspaper flapping in a bush.

  There was a picture of him and Maria on one of its pages.

  Vital took the newspaper and sat by the banks of the Zapadnaya Dvina River, unwilling to go back to the village without an answer. He watched the nearby farmhouse as the sun passed across the barren sky. Eventually, he realised what he must do. When the old man came out again to feed his animals, Vital approached him.

  Overcoming his initial shock, the man invited Vital into his house. He read the newspaper for Vital, looking up from the print constantly, as if unable to believe what his eyes were telling him.

  After some bartering, Tymokh told Vital how he and Maria might make their way to Moscow. He supplied the clothes needed to hide the couple’s strange physique and the roubles for the train fare. In return, Vital brought candlesticks, goblets and trinkets he thought would appease the man. When they left for Moscow, Vital gave Tymokh a peacock as a parting gift. The old farmer threw it among the chickens in his yard. They tore it to pieces and the mud was soaked a dazzling blue.

  From these bewildering moments, others quickly followed, like a string of beads snapping, tumbling one after another until Vital found himself staring into a mirror on a train: a train rattling relentlessly through the night, heading for a place called Moscow, where the lovers would alight with no money and no way of returning home.

  Removing a glove, Vital held his hand up and studied it in the spotlight above the sink. With careful deliberation, he ran his finger across the mirror, spelling out the name that was in the newspaper he had found, the name Tymokh had taught him.

  C H A G A L L

  The letters were running down the glass as he left the toilet.

  The train arrived in Moscow just before six in the morning and the couple slipped off like ghosts. The first road they found was eight lanes across, but the traffic was light. They hurried across, gripped by a sudden elation. They had survived the road, the terrible wind and the train. Now, impossibly, they were within reach of their destination. Vital felt something change in him. The fear he had been holding since they left the village, left his body quite suddenly as they crossed. He pulled on Maria’s arm, grinning at her, and whooping at the lightening sky in a sudden, exuberant release of nervous tension.

  He forgot about the kerb at the other side, saw it at the last moment and lifted his feet in panic, imagining them snapping against the hard step of concrete. It was too late. Vital put his right arm out to break his fall and tried to roll into it.

  Maria went to him. “Darling, are you all right?”

  Vital got up slowly and shook his right arm. A thick flurry of flakes fell to the ground. He felt no pain, none physical anyway, just a deep sense of loss at the strange looseness in the arm of his coat.

  “Help me take my glove off … carefully.” He held his left arm out. Maria gently pulled the glove off. His index finger and thumb were gone. She shook the glove. The two digits fell to the pavement, softened and broke apart, then ran into the cracks.

  “What is happening to you?” she asked.

  He looked into her eyes. “We have to be quick.”

  After that they took the subways that ran under the huge roads. Grizzled men huddled at the entrances, arguing to the beat of painful music, their cigarettes blazing and fading like fireflies succumbing to the cold. Inside, babushki sat behind tiny, haphazard stalls littered with guttering candles. The old women held out jars of pickled vegetables and pairs of tights as the couple hurried past.

  The sun was hidden behind formless clouds when they reached the State Tretyakov Gallery. The building was white and low, its glass facade shimmering with cold light. The couple approached it. They stood in front of the locked doors for some time.

  “What now?” Maria asked.

  “The old man may have lied to us.”

  The wind came down from above with a fine drizzle, catching at the corner of the laminated poster on the doors. It was an artist’s impression of a gleaming steel and glass building, similar to the one in front of them but much taller. There were people drawn in the foreground, walking past a fountain or sitting under ornamental trees.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But the paper said–”

  “Tymokh said,” Vital snapped. “We don’t know what the paper really had on its pages. Maybe it’s not here now … or it never was.” He stopped himself abruptly, feeling ashamed. He wanted to go home.

  “Can we go back?”

  Vital shook his head.

  There was movement from within the gallery. A short, fat, middle-aged wo
man was making her way towards the front doors. Her feet were splayed and the left leg bowed outwards below the knee, causing her to rise and fall as she walked. A set of large keys hung from her hand. She opened the tall, glass doors and appraised the couple.

  “Your hoods, take them down.”

  They obliged.

  “Let me see … You have come from Vitebsk?”

  “Yes. How do you know?”

  “Chagall came from there.” She ushered them in. They passed through another set of doors and entered a reception area. A young man in an ill-fitting uniform sat behind a desk. The woman flicked her head as she passed him. “We’ve got another two.”

  The man grunted.

  They passed through long corridors bathed in bright light. Vital and Maria followed the woman in silence, listening to her uneven gait play its strange rhythm on the polished, wooden floor. Occasionally, one of them noticed something wondrous in one of the many rooms they passed and stopped. She came back to them every time, grunting with effort.

  “That’s a Pavel Filinov,” she would say. “This one’s a Serov … a Kandinsky … ah yes, Goncharova – ‘Peacock in the Bright Sunlight’. Beautiful isn’t it? Come along now, I don’t want you making a mess in here on my last day.”

  Finally, the woman stopped and turned into one of the rooms. For the first time, she looked at their faces.

  “This is what you came for, isn’t it?” she asked, moving aside.

  The lovers gasped and stepped forward.

  “Don’t touch,” she said quickly. “There are still some rich people who want this sort of thing.”

  Maria studied the painting. “It’s us … and the village. It’s really us, perhaps–”

  “It’s called ‘Over the Town’,” the woman continued. “And no, it can’t help you. It’s just a painting.”

  Vital held out his broken hand to the curator. “I don’t understand.”

  The woman sighed. “I’ve worked in this museum for thirty years. I remember when people used to flock here. I don’t know, maybe they put their dreams into these paintings when they looked at them. Maybe their love brought you to life … kept you alive.”

  She shrugged and picked at a large mole on her cheek.

  “They love other things now.”

  Vital stepped closer to the painting. He could see their house. He wondered if it was still standing. A dizzying feeling swept through him and Maria’s arm went around his waist, just as he was about to fall. The colours in the painting began to loosen and bleed slowly into the room until Vital almost believed he was home again.

  “You can’t stay here,” the old woman said.

  The rain was light and cool outside. They sat on a bench which faced the road and lowered their hoods again. The street was filling up with people.

  “Was Chagall one of these?” Maria asked.

  “Yes, I think he was.”

  “They don’t look like gods.”

  The young man kissed his lover on the cheek and they ran together for a moment. “I don’t think they know they are,” he said. “Do you remember our date? How tightly I held your hand, so scared you might fly away.” He took her hand as if to remind her, and looked in wonder as it melted into his, like paint on a palette.

  Maria smiled, but it slipped a little. “Yes, you wouldn’t come up.”

  “You looked so beautiful above me in that dress, floating in its purple waves.”

  “Will you fly away with me now?” she asked.

  “Soon, Ja ciabe kakhaju.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Vital and Maria sat on the bench and watched the people hurrying past each other. Some of them talked into small boxes held to their cheeks, others had things pushed into their ears that made their lips move noiselessly. They hardly glanced at the odd-looking couple who smiled contentedly, as they remembered a world without perspective, filled with music and colour and flying cows.

  The man stopped at the side of the road and sighed. He pinched the roll-up against his lips and had one last, long suck before flicking it away. He stamped the stub out, picked it up with his litter-picker and deposited it in the trolley. He took a swig of aftershave and reluctantly went over to the bench to sort through the clothes lying on it. The man didn’t notice the pool of multi-coloured paint beneath the bench until he felt it pulling at his boots. He looked down in disgust at the two pairs of shoes and mumbled an obscenity. It must be the latest craze, he thought, vaguely remembering seeing other such vandalisms in the area. When he turned, there was a short, ugly woman standing just a few feet away. She was watching him. She had a strange look on her face.

  “Dumb kids,” he said, gesturing at the dripping coat in his hand.

  The woman turned away. He laughed at her funny walk as she made her way back towards the museum.

  * * *

  …Moises pulled back from the microscope and stretched his arms. Outside the hut, he could hear a mother calling her children in for supper. It was getting dark. Sheets of yellowing paper were pinned on the hut wall above his desk. One of them had the name and address of Hawthorne’s parents on it. Moises had made a promise to contact them if anything happened to their son. Something had happened, but what could he tell Margaret and Colin Hawthorne of 16, Derwent Avenue, Luton?

  The address had an exotic taste to Moises’s mind. He wondered what it looked like. And wondering, went back to the butterfly and began to read …

  They Sang Before Memory

  The stick just didn’t belong there. That was Margaret Hawthorne’s first thought upon seeing it and the feeling wouldn’t go away. She slammed the shovel down into the compacted clay soil and knelt, wincing at the dry crack of her knees. Why did you jump, you old fool? She wondered. It’s just a stick. But it wasn’t just a stick; Margaret knew that instinctively, just as she knew it wasn’t a piece of junk, or a bone, or a piece of antiquity that she might have recognised in some vague fashion. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Around 20 inches long and resembling a curved piece of polished wood, it shimmered like nacre in the cool morning light, revealing an organic quality. Its vibrancy was a little unnerving.

  Margaret picked it up cautiously between thumb and forefinger. She could see a system of many small holes on one side of the object. She took her gardening gloves off. Her intuition had been correct. The stick was warm.

  She turned it over and over, mumbling a discussion as to the possible age and purpose of the piece. She looked around her at the broken earth, at the trays of marigolds and lobelia that she had bought from B&Q the previous evening. Had she dug this spot before? No, she was digging where the old water feature had sat: a reconstituted stone well with a bucket suspended above, which filled to tipping point with fizzing water, emptied with a whoosh and swung back to fill again. She had always found the repetitions relaxing. The well had been there twenty years ago when Margaret and Colin moved in, and she had finally agreed that it should go to the tip the previous October.

  She liked the feel of the stick in her hands, the comforting warmth. The holes ran in a random pattern. It was not hollow and there was no mouthpiece; her fingers moved over the tiny holes, trying different combinations in an effort to unlock the object’s purpose. Margaret realised that sometimes, when her fingers were in a certain position, she felt a slight suction from some of the holes. It was like having a tiny vacuum cleaner placed against the tip of each finger. She began to work methodically. When she felt a tug, she kept that finger in position and re-arranged the others. When seven of her fingers could feel the suction, something happened. A small shock like static electricity pulsed through her hands and she heard a melody so fragile, so compassionate, that water sprang to her eyes like blood to a fresh cut.

  Margaret let out a small, shrill cry and shook away the stick.

  The singing st
opped.

  She looked at her hands, as if searching for something to help orientate herself again. It didn’t help. She stayed quite still for a minute or so, listening to the regular thrum of passing traffic and occasionally turning her head to watch the blue tits going back and forth to the bird box on the garage wall. At this time of year, Margaret liked to put her ear up to the box and listen to the delicate cries of the chicks.

  Finally, she forced herself to look down at the stick. It lay in the mud where she’d tossed it, like a rare conch flung up from the seabed by a violent storm. Margaret stifled a sob and reached out. Her fingers seemed to remember which holes to cover instinctively.

  The sound of children.

  Margaret heard them laughing and taunting each other, rattling sticks along the fence as they passed the back garden. Something about the familiar noises unsettled her. She looked around the garden dreamily, noting the spade upright in the mud, the flowers still in their plastic trays. Her hands felt numb with cold. She looked down at them and it came to her like a slap in the face. The children were coming home from the secondary school across the main road. She had lost three hours.

  She ran to the house and once inside, placed the stick upon the windowsill, her eyes returning to it again and again as she drifted back and forth across the linoleum, like an automaton programmed in the basics of domestication. She found herself opening cupboards and drawers, finding ingredients, measuring them, mixing them. She washed and diced and gauged cooking times, her mind utterly focused on the job at hand and yet somehow removed from it all.

  When the table was set and the pots bubbling gently, Margaret went into the lounge and sat on the sofa. Her head still felt thick, as if she had taken a couple of glasses of wine at lunchtime. She was angry with herself, wasting a day’s holiday that she had set aside for gardening, just daydreaming it away like that. She turned on the television. A cheap American soap opera: a man argued with another man about the first man’s wife who had lost her memory in a car crash and was being brainwashed by the second man who … Margaret pressed the remote: a slack-jawed young man on a stage and two young women screaming obscenities at each other while two burly men held them apart … She pressed again: two men in harnesses were swinging through the air, trying to stick coloured balls onto a giant target; below them, a large crowd screamed encouragement.