They were each about the size of a regular matchbox, with tangled cobwebs hanging from them. As Javier turned one in his hand, the lid fell open. The skin on his back tightened as he ran his finger with and against the velvet-like nap.
“And in here?”
The two girls gave each other a worried look.
“Nothing, Papa.”
Javier fixed them with a serious look. “Eh?”
“Goma de mascar. Momma took it from us, but it was okay, it tasted fine. We think it was a present from God. You see–”
Javier held up his hand. “Slow down, Virginia, slow down.”
She took a gulp and reached for the cobwebbed box. “Por favor?”
Javier watched her climb the stairs. When she reached the top, she put her hand through the iron balusters and dropped the box. The cobweb opened into a delicate parachute and the box spun slowly to the ground at Javier’s feet.
His eldest daughter smiled down at them both. “You see … God sent us some presents.”
Monica served him his dinner, prepared the children for bed and then went out for the evening. It was her bridge night. She had been going for two months now. Apparently, it was the thing to do at the moment: another disease of affectation contracted from the States. It pained Javier that his wife was becoming so stuck up; no doubt their old friends whispered ‘pitucos’ behind their backs these days.
He pushed his dinner around the plate without interest. Lomo saltado again; the beef aggravated his bowels but Monica seemed oblivious to his complaints. In the lounge, his mother watched soap operas with the sound turned way too high and shouted expletives at the characters. He took his beer and joined her for a few minutes.
She shifted her bulk into a more upright position and immediately turned the station over as she always did; she couldn’t enjoy it with him in the room it seemed. The big ceiling fan rotated hypnotically and his mother’s predictable questions about his day at work mingled with the newsreaders words until he could not pull them apart. After what he considered to be an acceptable time, he made his excuses.
“I am going to check on the girls, Mama. Are you okay?”
“Of course. God is kind; he gave me you to watch over me in my old age.”
He looked at her face, trying to gauge whether she was being sarcastic or not. “Okay,” he said, bending to peck her on the cheek. “Can I turn it down a little? The children …”
She fingered the remote and the sound dropped dramatically. “I don’t wish to hear about these new duendes anyway.”
Javier glanced at the television and saw a familiar scene: a hospital ward set up to house the victims of the new phenomenon that was terrifying the city. A doctor was shining a pencil light into a man’s eyes. The patient, his face blank, mouth slack, showed no sign that he was aware of the world around him. It cut to a young woman on a dark suburban street. She was telling a reporter that she had seen the thing that had attacked the man – her boyfriend – in their bedroom the previous evening. Javier turned the sound back up a little, but the woman broke down as she tried to describe the attacker to the reporter.
“She is delusional,” whispered Javier’s mother. “It is a disease, that is all … eh, Javier?”
“Yes, it could be a virus or something; that is what the government is saying … but why all these stories?”
“Delusional,” his mother repeated.
Javier patted her hand and she flinched a little.
The girls were at the bedroom window when he came upstairs, their faces stained orange by the sunset.
“El cielo de brujas,” he murmured, joining them.
“Why is the sky full of witches, Papa?” Sofia asked.
“It is not. This is just a name for the colours you see at this time of year. Now into bed or los duendes will come for you.” He immediately regretted his words. What had always been a myth to tease the children with, now seemed a possibility too frightening to voice.
The girls scrambled into bed.
“They live in the walls?” Virginia asked.
“Can you hear them?” Javier asked.
His daughter’s eyes flicked from side to side, as if to help her ears. After a few moments, she shook her head.
“Of course not, because we had all the duendes removed from this house before we moved in. They live far away in la selva now,” he said quickly, and kissed both of them on the forehead. He moved across to the window and as he closed the wooden shutters, noticed a few matchbox-sized shapes scattered across his back garden. Javier felt a cold breeze pass through his mind. He went down and on entering the garden, was overcome by the feeling again; it was very still and humid out there, everything made vague by deepening shadows. As he was picking up the boxes, the cicada stopped purring and he froze. His head swivelled back and forth, anticipating an attack from something hidden in the foliage of the borders. But what was he scared of? Before he could put any kind of name to his fear, the cicada started up again and broke the spell. He hurried back inside.
The soaps were back on in the living room, so Javier sat in the cool of the kitchen after retrieving the boxes, feeling a little ashamed of his jumpiness. He rolled a ball of the gum around in his hand and took another sip of beer. He had binned the other six.
These things are connected to the new epidemic, Javier thought to himself. Instinct told him that, even if the purpose of the boxes and the gum eluded him. He tried to open his mind, as the Church of the Black Butterfly encouraged him to do. The old Javier would have turned away from this problem, but he trusted his imagination now, was no longer ashamed of it. The Catholic faith could keep its reveries and the endless catechisms that constricted the mind, chained it to a rigid and archaic doctrine. When Javier took up the pen in the black church, his mind really did open up like wings and his thoughts flew. Although he would not admit it openly, he believed in what Moises Quispé had alleged. It made sense, didn’t it? All these strange occurrences, all the magic and the terror reported daily around the globe. Moises had said he had read these prophecies on the wings of the black butterfly and he was trying to warn the world. Then he disappeared.
For most people, these were the ravings of a mad person and yet, logic was receding lately. Javier believed in what was replacing it. Late at night, as his family slept, he would often re-read what he had written in the black church and his cheeks would flush at how he had betrayed his faith, his wife and his country with such uncensored thoughts. And he felt free.
To understand, you had to take chances, you had to be brave. Javier popped the gum in his mouth and began to chew slowly.
It tasted fine.
He lay in bed, waiting for his wife’s return, wondering about the small boxes and the chewing gum. He felt sure there was a method behind them. And as the ceiling fan spun him into sleep with cool sweeps of air, he suddenly had an idea about the gum and the threat of something unfathomable, out there in the warm darkness. Something to do with fishing, how when a bait was taken, predator and prey were linked, drawn together until … He tried desperately to come back to wakefulness, praying unashamedly to a god he no longer believed in, to keep his daughters safe.
Before he was fully awake, he found himself on his feet, propelled to the door of his bedroom by a noise, a muffled cry perhaps, an alarm in his ears. He stubbed his toe on the door frame and stumbled through it as his mind tried to catch up, came into his daughters’ bedroom and took a huge breath, stunned by what was in front of him. Sophia and Virginia were huddled beside their beds, shivering in each other’s arms. Over them stood something insubstantial, yet filled with menace: a tall, swaying figure like a jellyfish suspended in rippling water. The shape shifted a little and a long, slack face turned to appraise him. He looked into the tiny eyes: black hollows that seemed to suddenly stretch away through the walls of the house, out across the Paci
fic Ocean and on into the endless indifference of space.
Then it was on him: a damp blanket kissing his eyes, his mind and filling up his mouth. He tasted smoke and brine and blood, and last of all, the exquisite bite of complete hopelessness.
The hospital always smelled of sweet urine and sharp lemony disinfectant, echoes of the unending battle between thoughtless bladders and underpaid nurses. Virginia Escobal pulled her chair closer to her father’s and sliced a piece of black sponge cake. She pulled the piece of butterfly wing free and held it to her father’s lips.
“Eat, Papa … It’s my birthday. I’m fourteen today.”
The man’s lips twitched and some crumbs fell onto the floor. He bit a piece off and chewed slowly, his eyes looking across the room at the colourful wall Virginia had been allowed to paint for him two years before. She put her arm around his wasted shoulder and followed his gaze.
“El cielo de brujas,” she sighed. “The sky of witches is beautiful, no? You see the butterflies, Papa, flying away to better worlds … safer worlds than this.” She pointed at the scene she had so lovingly rendered. “Can you see the black butterfly?” His eyes moved to the right and up. “You see it …? That is your butterfly. Did you go with it, Papa?”
Virginia didn’t know why she talked such stupidity; she knew that her father’s essence, the best part of him, was not with the black butterfly. She had watched the creature suck it out of him and become stronger, more substantial. And then, apparently sated, the thing had fled back out of the bedroom window, like a curtain torn from its tracks and flung into the night sky by a bitter, black wind. She would not abandon her father as the others had. His visits to the Black Church caused the attack, that’s what her grandmother often said. He had attracted the demon with his sacrilege. Virginia thought it was just bad luck, nothing more. The world turned on chance, but nobody wanted to believe that.
Nowadays, The Church of The Black Butterfly was the fifth most popular religion in the world and her grandmother refused to speak about it at all.
Virginia took out the newspaper, as she always did on her visits. “They have found another black butterfly, Papa, in Sumatra. That is six now.” She pushed some more cake into her father’s mouth, knowing that even if she baked it a thousand times, improving the recipe on each occasion, it would always taste the same to him.
The Shining Path to Turtle Bay
“It has taken two years and lots of painful negotiation, but today, Moises Quispé will finally speak at the General Assembly of the United Nations here in New York.
From day one, this has been a controversial subject to say the least and as I speak, a huge crowd of representatives from the Evangelical and mainstream Christian churches of America are gathering just four blocks from here on First Avenue to protest against what they see as a rejection of God himself. Pitted against them, on the other side of a strong police barricade, members of The Church of the Black Butterfly wave their dark flags defiantly.
Security is high here, particularly after the terrorist organisation, The Shining Path, or New Shining Path as they now like to be called, have vowed to kill Mr. Quispé before he can speak. They believe that appearing on this grandiose stage is proof that he is nothing more, and I quote, ‘than a black puppet of capitalism,’ reference there of course to the black butterfly that Mr. Quispé has so far refused to reveal to authorities or indeed, the general public. We have less than an hour now before Turtle Bay welcomes …”
Moises looked away from the flat screen on the wall towards Miss Gallo, who was deep in conversation with the General Secretary and two men from the Peruvian Government. Moises didn’t even know what their titles were, or care, he just wanted it all over with. His hands rolled nervously with each other on his lap like mating snakes. He stopped them and studied the nub that once was the little finger on his left hand.
It was all happening exactly as he had read it would. So why don’t I stop it? Because I am Pachamama’s instrument now, her revenge upon the world.
Miss Gallo came across the room, her leaf-green trouser suit whispering as she walked. She sat on the long, grey, leather settee beside him and took his hand. Moises’s heart hammered alarmingly in his chest.
He remembered the first time she had shaken his hand, in a rundown library in Iquitos four months after Lyman Dollie had died. It had been arranged by Raphael with great difficulty; everything in this process had been long, tiring and fraught with danger. And for what? So he could be here today and watch something beautiful die …
She had taken much persuading of course. Moises had read the black butterfly for her, his eyes naturally drawn to those stories which were relevant. Within six months, she had proof of the power of the butterfly, when those things became true in the natural world. But it was his heart that Moises remembered the clearest; how it thundered when she shook his hand.
“This is your moment, Moises. I am so proud of what you have done and what you are about to do. I will help you today.” It sounded like a speech she had practised, but it didn’t lessen the effect one bit.
Moises turned to look into her eyes, so clear that he thought he could see his own face reflected in them. I don’t deserve to be in there, he thought. Her heavy lips were avocado, the skin around her eyes shades of moss green.
“Today, you are Señora de la Selva,” he heard himself say.
She grinned. “I am proud to be … Come on, it’s nearly time.”
Moises stood up, feeling awkward in his green, linen suit. He wore it so that they might take him seriously; a skirt and beads would surely have been distracting. He wanted them to listen, but he knew that he wouldn’t finish the speech.
Through the long windows, he could see the East River, like a length of hammered iron under the overcast sky. He turned away from it, as he had read he would.
The corridors were high, clean and grey, pricked with numerous spotlights. Moises passed through them in a trance. The suited old men who patted his shoulder and whispered words of encouragement and the others who eyed him suspiciously; he was under no illusions as to their thoughts. The Americans, and most of the other nations, wanted the butterfly, but it was far away in the heart of la selva. Moises thought he might be kidnapped by the American Government at some point on this trip. Not before or during of course, because he had read about all that … but afterwards? He had attempted to avoid that possibility by arranging a helicopter to whisk him away afterwards, surrounded by Peruvian dignitaries, ecologists and as many celebrities as he could stomach. Besides, he was of no use without the butterfly and it was of no use without him; their fates were entwined now.
Raphael touched Moises’s hand as he passed him and entered the vast General Assembly Hall, then Miss Gallo’s footsteps went silent on the green carpet.
Moises did not look at the representatives as they turned to watch him make his way forward. He watched the woman in front of him: the swing of her arms, her hips, the slight sway of her hair, and he hated himself completely.
The tall, gold panel with the UN emblem on it loomed over him and they turned to skirt left and climb the steps to the rostrum. Miss Gallo stopped at the top and Moises heard his name announced. She stepped aside and smiled encouragingly. Moises moved forward through the silence and placed his speech papers on the green, marble lectern. He turned to the President of the General Assembly, Secretary-General and Under-Secretary-General, who sat at the large, green table beside him. They nodded.
Moises spoke well, as he knew he would do. He told the assembly his story, with a few alterations. He told them that he believed the appearance of the black butterfly was a warning from Pachamama or Mother Nature, its prophecies punishments for the damage being done to the earth. And he offered the UN a deal. If swift, radical changes were made to the way man was treating the planet, he would hand over the butterfly. The words flowed from his mouth like a bleak song, somet
imes booming with anger, at other times falling to a hush, such was his emotion. Yet all the time a small part of him was separated from it all, tracing the journey of the words across the paper, unable to stop the moment that was approaching steadily.
After twenty minutes of the hour-long speech, Moises stopped and took a sip of water. He looked up into the vast, domed roof above him for a second. Ringed with spotlights, its pale, marble centrepiece shone like the pupil of something unworldly. It watched him with ambivalence as he prepared to continue.
Moises cleared his throat. “The rainforests are the oldest ecosystems on this planet. They have existed for almost one hundred million years. They cover only two percent of the earth’s surface, but are home to two-thirds of all living species, and almost half of all of man’s medicines have come from rainforest plants.
Some people call them the lungs of the world, but they are more than this. La selva is the heart and the soul of this world. It represents the massive damage being done to every eco-system on earth.” He paused for a second. Why can’t I stop? Why won’t I?
“Half of the four billion acres of rainforest have gone already. At present rate of destruction, there will be no rainforests by the year 2060. By then, world population is predicted to be close to ten million. It is estimated that more food will have to be produced in the next fifty years, than has been produced in the whole of human history. Who suffers? All other species on this planet, and man himself, because without diversity, where is man’s soul?”
Moises felt close to tears, but they were not for himself or the planet he lived on. They were for Natalie Gallo. “I bring you the news that nobody wants to hear. Man has inadvertently declared war on the earth. We must understand that Mother Nature has already begun her response.”
The words meant nothing to Moises now. They were never his anyway. He turned to Miss Gallo and called her something for the first and last time. “Natalie … I …”
The Dreams of the Black Butterfly Page 18