Butterfly Winter

by W. P. Kinsella

  THE FIRST QUESTION FERNANDELLA asked Quita was, “Do you play baseball?” The second was, “Do you have any idea how old my son is?” And the third, “Are you pregnant?”

  Quita, staring at Fernandella with an open, almost insolent gaze said, “No. No,” and, “I hope so.”

  After years of dealing with the deviousness of her husband and the Wizard, Fernandella had come to appreciate candor of any kind. Fernandella quickly came to admire Quita’s independence of spirit and her unforced industry around the house. Quita plumped up quickly on a diet of pheasant burritos, and plates of the tasty fish, filleted and fried, directly from the sky-blue stream. A little too quickly, Fernandella thought.

  “You are nothing but a girl,” Fernandella said to Quita one evening, but though she intended some disdain in the statement, her tone emerged as sympathetic, and she found herself putting her arms around the wild, ragged girl, who allowed her head to rest on Fernandella’s shoulder, and whose heartbeat Fernandella could feel through the thin layers of clothes that separated them.

  “I have seen terrible things,” the girl whispered, as if Fernandella had asked a question. “I am like one of the princesses from the fairy tales of my childhood. I have fallen from grace, been cast under the spell of a wicked witch, where I have gone from princess to peasant in a matter of seconds. Though the spell I have fallen under was cast, not by a witch, but by the wicked Dictator for Life of Courteguay, Dr. Lucius Noir.

  “I was indeed a princess. My father was Milan Garza, the most famous baseball player ever to come out of Courteguay, until perhaps Julio. My father’s wealth was unimaginable. Comprehend that the average Courteguayan earns just over four American dollars per month. An American twenty-dollar bill is a fortune in Courteguay, where the centavo is worth 1/64 of a cent, or less than nothing, and our regular currency, the guilermo, almost as little. Though I was too young to remember clearly, I am told that my father earned one million American dollars, and sometimes even more, for the many years of his career, which ended when I was six.

  “We lived in a fifty-room mansion on the top of a hill from which we could see the lights of the capital city, San Barnabas, burning like scars across the beautiful night sky. We had other residences. Land. My father was said to own one-quarter of all the acres in Courteguay, which would still be a small holding by American standards, for Courteguay would fit inside Delaware, one of America’s smallest states, with room left over for the city of San Barnabas. I was educated by a tutor. I learned to speak five languages before I was ten. My father had a fleet of cars, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Maserati. Gasoline in Courteguay is over seven dollars a gallon, and only the rich own automobiles, and then only one to a family. A motor scooter in Courteguay holds more prestige than an acre-sized Cadillac in the United States. But in Courteguay my father could have anything he wanted, so he built his own gas station, had the gasoline shipped in on a special boat from Miami.

  “Unfortunately, my father decided to want the only thing unavailable to him in Courteguay, political power.”

  FORTY-ONE

  THE WIZARD

  The Wizard, who had not always been a wizard, remembered the first village where he had taken up residence. It was a village where desire was visible. At first the Wizard had not realized the significance of the swarm of deep red, firefly-like stars that flowed from the sweet thighs of a passion-seeking woman.

  The fire is always there, an acquaintance explained. Desire just makes it visible. A man must always be ready. A man of this village is excused from the cane fields, from the army, even if it is in battle, if word reaches him that his woman’s thighs are on fire.

  Unattached men walk the streets of the village late into the night, studying the windows of houses where widows or single women live, ever watchful, ever hopeful.

  Sometimes the stars gather like a Christmas wreath in the window of a married man’s home, pulsating, the molecules rearranging themselves, seeming to dance against the upper panes of glass, seeking escape. But they do not escape. They only throb brightly.

  “Ho! Edwardo Gonzales!” the wandering men would shout. Someone would bang rhythmically on a tin can drum. “Wake up, Eduardo! Your good woman calls!” The men would dance in the street, their feet raising puffs of dust in the moonlight. They would clap and hoot until, inside the house, the husband wakened to the desire that filled the air, reached out to his willing partner and gathered her in his arms. As that happened the stars would retreat from the window in the wake of the soft groans of passion, and the gentle scufflings of love.

  Many married men considered it a sign of prowess for their windows to always remain dark. They considered it a sacred duty to satisfy their wives before sleep came so the signal of passion never wandered their house like a spirit, preening in the window like a conceited bird.

  These same men were sometimes the object of teasing, usually good-natured, but sometimes not.

  “How do we know Ignatio’s woman has any passion to offer?” they would cry. “Ignatio tells us, but we have all heard his hunting stories, and seen the gigantic fish be bragged of, fish I would be ashamed to hang between my legs in place of my instrument of pleasure. We have heard his fish described as five feet long, and heard how Ignatio staggered under their weight.”

  The more prudent let the fires burn in his window occasionally, sometimes let them burn a long time, enjoying the ruckus in front of his house.

  A woman who wailed with passion was a prize to be treasured. A man who could extinguish the fire slowly, a star at a time over a long period, until the fiery orb of stars diminished to a few pinpricks of lust, then to nothing at all, could walk the streets of his village the next day with his head held high and his chest expanded. At the communal washtubs his woman would feign tiredness but with a sly and enduring smile.

  “It is an embarrassment and also a great blessing,” an old woman told the Wizard soon after his arrival.

  “There is much rejoicing in the village when a girl is old enough for the colors to fly from between her thighs. When a girl comes of age, when the stars of fire first roar from between her thighs, it is a cause for much celebration and ceremony in the village. And for one old as me,” and she bobbed her turbaned head, and eyed the Wizard with what he was afraid was a leer, “alone, and long-widowed, it is a sign that I still possess life’s juices. The stars have nothing to do with the ability to reproduce, and everything to do with passion itself. For me they are an advertisement, and there is always someone willing to answer an ad.”

  She cackled and pulled at the Wizard’s sleeve, while he couldn’t help but eye her faded yellow caftan where he thought he detected a few pricks of light, like blood-colored gnats, dart across his field of vision. Excusing himself he practically ran away from the old woman, though he gathered he was under no obligation to assuage her passion.

  It is said, the Wizard learned, that the stars of a virgin’s desire are silver trimmed with crimson. After such an event the young men of the village would gather to preen and dance, roughhouse and joke, display their finest clothes, their hunting trophies, their guns. They would also bear presents, dresses and serapes, scarves, carvings, baseball bats with the girl’s name burned into the wood a half-inch deep. Sacrifices were prepared. Acts of heroism attempted.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE GRINGO JOURNALIST

  Julio asked the Wizard about the Hall of Baseball Immortals. “Some think it disrespectful that The Courteguayan Hall of Baseball Immortals holds the taxidermied bodies of past baseball heroes,” said the Wizard. “It was the Old Dictator’s idea, though I admit I had some input. The Hall put a stop to some very odd goings on.”

  “Odd even for Courteguay?” asked Julio.

  The Wizard smiled. “Even for Courteguay. You are too young to remember Barojas Garcia.”

  “I know who he was. A great pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. But he died young, in a car wreck?”

  “His car hit a bus head-on.”

  “Now I reme
mber.”

  “I can still hear the voice of the Old Dictator crying out, ‘Bring me the arm of Barojas Garcia.’ ”

  “Dr. Noir would have made such a request while Garcia was still alive.” Julio chuckled at his cleverness.

  “There was some terrible confusion,” the Wizard went on. “Those sent to retrieve the appendage were not baseball fans. They brought the right arm to the Old Dictator.”

  “Fools!” he shouted at them. “Barojas Garcia was a left-handed pitcher. What could I possibly want with his right arm?”

  “What could you possibly want with the left arm of a dead man?” one of the procurers asked. He is still, to the best of my knowledge, cleaning latrines. What happened next, and this is a secret between us, resulted in Milan Garza’s finest year in the Major Leagues, the year he won thirty-five games.

  “Milan Garza used to carry the arm in a tuba case. There was a lot of speculation by the media that year, a lot of television gone over frame by frame looking for something odd. Some batters claimed they saw two arms coming toward them, one attached to Milan Garza, the other one free in the air. But nothing ever came of it. Milan Garza told the Old Dictator that he pitched until he got tired, or was being hit too hard, then he let Barojas Garcia pitch for a while.”

  “A portable relief pitcher?” asked Julio.

  “The thing was Garcia had a knuckle ball that dropped off the table, and it would come as a complete surprise when Milan Garza threw it.”

  “Is that how it happened?” Julio asked.

  “If it isn’t, it’s the way it should have happened,” said the Wizard.

  FORTY-THREE

  THE WIZARD

  As soon as he arrived in Florida for spring training, Julio brought up the subject of bringing Quita to America.

  “If I understand what yer saying,” a phrase the manager, who had replaced the boys’ beloved Al Tiller, always used to preface any discussion with his Spanish-speaking ballplayers, “this little girl you’re talkin’ about ain’t even yer wife. What are you, some kind of immoral, godless, heathen-communist?” he thundered. “Baseball is a clean game. We don’t allow nothin’ dirty or immoral like that.”

  “Would it make any difference if we were married?” asked Julio. “We could get married.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t, in so far as you draggin’ her along, except that y’all would be sanctified in Jesus. It’s baseball tradition that we leave our women at home. If one woman got to come along why soon a whole passel of them would want the same, and the game would be on its way to hell in a handbasket before you could say Strike three!”

  It had never occurred to Julio before that even the manager and the American superstars all traveled alone during the season. He had slowly come to realize that baseball players were chattels, slaves, but being single he had never noticed that all the players traveled alone, never with their families, and that those wives and families usually lived in the player’s home town, not in the city where he spent six or seven months as a player.

  “These Americans are of a very strange morality,” Julio remarked to Esteban. “They insist for some reason on being married, then can’t wait for the game to end each night of the season so they can rush out and break every marriage vow they have ever made as well as several of the Ten Commandments.”

  “In most cases the flesh is weak,” said Esteban, scarcely looking up from the Latin text he was reading.

  “But it makes no sense,” said Julio.

  “What makes you think religion is supposed to make sense?” said Esteban. “Those who insist on sense, logic, or justice in religion, must of necessity be nonbelievers.”

  “Then why do you choose to affiliate yourself with something that lacks sense, logic, and justice?”

  “Faith,” said Esteban. “I believe that God is good. It makes my life easier.”

  “But how can you believe God is good, when the world all around you is brimming with unnecessary suffering, that makes your very statement a lie?”

  “Faith,” repeated Esteban dreamily.

  “I can’t argue with that,” said Julio. “I don’t mean to imply that you are right, only that I can’t argue with what you say.”

  But Julio, who was born with intelligence instead of faith, couldn’t accept that it was all right for the God-fearing American ball players to whore, and drink and gamble in their free time, while their families languished at home, while it was unacceptable for him to bring his true love to America to live with him.

  He remembered a discussion he had had with a thick-boned, brawny outfielder.

  “What are you, some kind of heathen?” the man had said, parroting the manager, when Julio mentioned his longing to hold Quita in his arms, after he had managed to get a phone call through to Courteguay and found out that Quita was pregnant.

  “So, when are you gettin’ married?” the outfielder had said.

  “We have no plans to marry,” said Julio. “I will stay with Quita forever. While you … how many times have you been married?”

  “Four times,” said the outfielder, “and every last one sanctified by the Lord. I should introduce you to the Rev. Queeg. He’s pastor of the One True Church of God’s Redemption and Reaffirmation in my home town of Dothan, Alabama. Five minutes alone with you and Rev. Queeg would have you givin’ up your godless ways and on your knees praying to the Lord for forgiveness.”

  “I think not,” said Julio. “When do you pray for forgiveness? It seems to me you manage to break most of the tenets of your religion every day.”

  “Hell,” said the outfielder, “God’s a good ole boy. Long as you ain’t a heathen He ain’t about to give you any trouble. Hell, God knows a man can’t go short for but a day or two without it doin’ him serious physical damage. Nobody’s goin’ to fault a man for keepin’ the temple of his body in first-class physical condition.”

  The outfielder smiled piously, showing that he actually believed everything he had just said.

  FORTY-FOUR

  THE GRINGO JOURNALIST

  Shortly after Julio left for the United States and the new baseball season the political stability that Courteguay had enjoyed for several years came to an end. The Old Dictator, who had been in power so many years people had forgotten his name, was overthrown by the head of his Secret Police, a Dr. Lucius Noir. The Old Dictator’s name and his official title, El Presidente, had become synonymous. Some history books explained that he had been born Juan Barrios, become Col. Barrios, then General Barrios, and finally El Presidente.

  To Courteguay as well as the outside world, Dr. Noir was an unknown quantity. The international press barely noticed or acknowledged that the government in Courteguay had changed. Courteguay was poor and not strategically located militarily. The Old Dictator had been in power long enough that Courteguay had become one of the most stable unstable minor nations in the world. But the press barely commented on that either.

  In a statement issued on Courteguayan radio, which began as a 500-watt station in San Barnabas (after someone had pointed out that there were perhaps one thousand radios in Courteguay, and American intelligence couldn’t pick up such low wattage, the CIA in the guise of foreign aid increased the wattage to 2,000 so they could freely monitor every word), Dr. Noir said that, “El Presidente grew tired of the burden of leadership and called upon me, as his closest advisor, to form a new government, which, after due deliberation, I have agreed to do.

  “The transfer of power has been accomplished peacefully. El Presidente, who served Courteguay with wisdom and distinction, now plans to spend his declining years in retirement on his country plantation.

  “El Presidente has asked me to convey his gratitude to the members of the International Press, and to the people of Courteguay, and asks that you wish him well in his retirement.”

  Dr. Noir was dressed in enamel-white military garb accentuated by an ice-blue, diagonal sash, and many medals. He also wore a white surgical mask, which made his speech difficult to unders
tand.

  “The mask,” an aid in equally beautiful costume explained, “is necessary because Dr. Noir suffers from chronic asthma, and has, at last count, forty-seven allergies. He is, unfortunately, severely allergic to all eleven national flowers of Courteguay: bougainvillea, hibiscus, red and white plumeria, bird of paradise, orchids, poinsettias, Anthurium, lehua, vanda orchids, and ginger. The very touch of these flowers makes welts rise on Dr. Noir’s skin as if he has been scalded.”

  The International Press was not very interested in the new President’s medical problems, though the fact that he had once attended chiropractic college in America did raise a few eyebrows. But that was about all. The International Press Corps in Courteguay were made up of reporters with serious personal and attitude problems, ones who had perhaps attempted to organize unions, or had refused to take early retirement when requested, or had an inordinate fondness for alcohol and drugs that went beyond the usual.

  Noting the round, white mask which covered Dr. Noir’s face from chin to just below his eyes, a Syrian correspondent suggested to an Israeli reporter that perhaps the good doctor was wearing a yarmulke on the wrong portion of his anatomy. They were separated by a three-hundred-pound reporter from Gambia who had once played tackle for Notre Dame.

  The Old Dictator had indeed been in failing health. His last year in power he did away with the Republic Day Parade, when the military marched smartly through San Barnabas, machetes flashing in the sun, to Bougainvillea Square in front of the Presidential Palace, where El Presidente traditionally delivered a rousing speech praising the workers, freedom, baseball, motherhood, sugarcane, and mangos, while condemning the guerrillas in the hills, Haiti, capitalism, and, depending on how much military equipment had or had not been received in the last year, the United States.