by Takis Würger
“Thanks,” I said.
Billy clasped my hand and shook it.
Charlotte
After my night at the Pitt Club I walked past the pigeonholes in my college almost every day for three years, looking for an envelope with a yellow butterfly seal. I was relieved that I never found one.
Then a few months before Hans came up to Cambridge I saw a yellow envelope in another female student’s pigeonhole. I glanced out of the window to see if anyone was watching and removed the envelope. On the back I saw a yellow wax seal stamped with a butterfly. I slipped the letter into my pocket.
Back in my room I started shaking. I opened the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk, pushed aside some papers and the doctor’s report and took out the letter I’d received three years earlier. The seals were identical. I opened the new envelope with a bread knife. The handwriting on this invitation was different, but the words were the same.
My blood ran cold. I grabbed a padded jacket, left the room and wandered round Cambridge for a while like a lost soul. As I found myself walking towards the station, I considered taking the next train to London and never coming back. Perhaps I could start a new life. But I knew this was the only life there was.
Apart from my friend and the hospital doctors, I hadn’t told anyone about that night. My friend had asked me so many times to file a complaint against a person or persons unknown that we were both relieved when she graduated and moved to Cape Town.
I’d requested a copy of the examination report. The doctors had informed the police, and a few weeks later I’d received a letter asking me to come to the police station and make a statement. I went and told them it had been a misunderstanding. I’d slept with a hammer under my pillow ever since.
I’d never gone back to the Pitt Club, and when Father asked if I wanted to accompany him to their Alumni Ball I declined, though there was no way he could have known why.
I took my phone out of my bag and wrote an e-mail to Alex.
Dear Alex,
I’d like to make an appointment with you. It’s not about my PhD, it’s a private matter and it’s important. When would you have time? It’s urgent. I need to see you today, please.
All the best,
Charlotte
Alex
When we interview students as part of the selection process, we like to ask them questions to which there is no answer. What is time? Do we have an obligation to save strangers? And a question that’s become rather unfashionable these days, but of all the mean questions it’s still my favorite: Is it right to kill one person to save a hundred?
The applicants who’ve been educated at expensive boarding schools talk about utilitarianism and Peter Singer. One of them once managed to find a way of linking the question to the issue of global hunger. The clever applicants talk about Kant and human dignity, which is supposedly violated if you use a person as a means to an end.
I don’t believe in God, as Kant did. I don’t believe people are unique in that they have something some philosophers call “dignity,” and that this something sets us apart from beasts.
What sets us apart from apes is that we have the capacity to exact revenge. Not just to bite back; to exercise patience, conceive a plan, enact this plan, and find satisfaction in it when it succeeds.
I liked Charlotte. She was a good girl and a talented art historian.
Charlotte
“What can I do for you, Charlotte?” asked Alex, the day I found the letter. She was sitting on the edge of her desk in jeans and a white T-shirt, and she looked great.
“Before I tell you, please—no lectures about why I didn’t say anything before,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Alex.
I took the letter out of my pocket, put it on the table, and told her everything.
She took the new envelope, stroked her index finger across the seal, and closed her eyes. She sat like that for a few seconds, then looked at me.
“When you were at the hospital, did they do all the usual tests for someone in your situation?”
I didn’t know what tests were usually done on someone who’d been raped, but I said yes.
“Why have you come to me?”
I’d practiced my speech in front of the mirror in my room four times, because I was afraid I might burst into tears. Now this question. Why had I come to Alex? The real reason was that she was a woman. And because I knew she traveled to Iraq during the war to examine a long-lost Picasso and verify its authenticity. The painting was called The Naked Woman. Alex drove through the desert in an armored Humvee to reach it. She was also the one who’d persuaded me to stay on at Cambridge after my undergraduate degree. I liked her because she didn’t wear tweed jackets, she drank beer, she was a feminist, and she had the reputation of being one of the brightest women in the country. After graduation I’d thought about where I wanted to work. My friends opted for management consultancy, banking; one went to MI6. I saw no reason why I should work in a bank. Alex told me: Do a PhD. I don’t usually supervise PhD students, but I’ll supervise you.
Father was against it. He begged me to go and get a job. Even then, though, I already wanted to curate exhibitions, and I knew I stood a much better chance of getting a job in a museum if I had a PhD. I could have asked Father to help me, but I thought it was wrong to use connections in order to get a position.
No other university would have provided the level of supervision I had at Cambridge. I felt I was strong because I’d stayed. I hadn’t run away. But every time I walked past the white pillars of the Pitt Club my heart started racing.
“Why have you come to me?” Alex asked again.
“Because you’re the vice-rector. You’ve known this place for forty years; I thought you might be able to help. And because I trust you.”
“You don’t want to go to the police because you don’t want to have to testify?”
“I’d even make a statement.”
“But you want to avoid a messy trial.”
I nodded.
“Everything would be dragged up again and made public,” said Alex.
She sat opposite me, calm and focused. I’d come to the right person.
“What do you want?”
I felt the blood rush to my face. What did I want? That was what this was about. I felt as if I were sitting an exam.
“No idea. Justice. I don’t know. I don’t want it ever to happen again.”
She stared at me. I didn’t blink.
“Justice,” she said.
“Yes … I mean … I hope that’s possible.”
What she said next made me shiver. She spoke so quietly I could barely understand, and I pretended I hadn’t heard her.
“You don’t want justice, Charlotte.”
Hans
At nine p.m. there was a knock on my door. I was wearing the new dinner jacket. At the first fitting Angus Farewell had said it shone like ivory black. Billy’s little stone was in my trouser pocket. I quickly reached up to the shelf, took down a miniature bottle of olive oil and drank the lot just before Josh and the four Butterflies entered my room. They were early. One undid my bow tie, took it from my neck and threw it in the bin. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out another tie in the Pitt Club colors and dangled it in front of my nose, then turned it over so I could see the outline of a little yellow butterfly on the inside, embroidered onto the silk. Once the tie was fastened the butterfly was hidden.
On the way to the Pitt Club Josh said that tonight we were celebrating the Feast of the Holy Trinity. For women, that meant they could only wear three items of clothing. Shoes and earrings counted as items of clothing.
Almost all the women at the Club were barefoot. One was wearing a bikini, another was in a hooded leotard with rabbit ears, one was wearing a long black dress and two earrings. The men were in dinner jackets. Everyone was observing the rules. What was actually wrong with these women?
The Butterflies accompanied me to the bar. They each
bought me a drink that I had to down in one. I’d got to know a lot of new drinks that year—Cape Codders, Rob Roys, Yellow Jackets—all of which tasted predominantly of alcohol.
The Butterflies dragged me onto the dance floor, where I jumped up and down a bit and pretended I was having fun. It smelled of expensive women’s perfume and tequila. I lost all sense of time. At some point I went outside and sat down on the curb; for a moment I was afraid Charlotte might show up. Josh sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. He often touched me. He talked about how he might extend his PhD so he could party and box for a few more years.
Next to us two girls were smoking a joint.
“Excuse me, ladies, could you do that somewhere else?” said Josh.
The Pitt Club began to empty around three a.m. Josh was leaning against a bookshelf beside me. He pointed to a girl in the crowd in a tight gold catsuit that clung to every inch of her body. She was laughing and dancing with her friends. I wondered what other items of clothing she had on.
“That’s ours,” said Josh.
I looked past the girl at the wood-paneled wall and pictured the forest from which the wood had come. How I would have liked to have been in that forest.
“Go get some more fresh air, brother, you look kind of battered. We’re in the lounge behind the bar, OK?” said Josh.
I nodded and left the room. At the top of the staircase I paused, turned, and watched Josh go up to the girl in the gold catsuit and put his arm around her. He talked to her for a bit and pulled her over to the bar. One of the other Butterflies tapped her on the shoulder. As she turned, Josh took a little plastic bottle out of his pocket and tipped a clear liquid into her glass. He looked at the other Butterfly and gave him a thumbs-up. He kissed the girl on the cheek and whispered something in her ear. The little plastic bottle was dropped on the floor.
The DJ played “Summer of ’69,” then turned the music down. Waiters and security guards passed through the Club asking the guests to go home. Josh took the girl in the gold catsuit by the hand and led her through a door behind the bar. She was steadying herself on the wall, and her knees buckled slightly with every step.
I locked myself in a toilet cubicle because I needed a moment to compose myself, whatever that meant.
When I went back into the room it was empty apart from the waiters. I went to the bar, wrapped the little bottle Josh had dropped in a napkin, and put it in the silk-lined pocket of my dinner jacket. Then I opened the door behind the bar.
One of the men pushed the door shut. The room was about fifty square meters, with a billiard table in the middle. A glass case was hung at the vanishing point at the other end of the room, with a ceiling lamp angled at the case. Close up, I saw that it contained a yellow butterfly: ornithoptera goliath, new guinea was written underneath. I touched the glass with the back of my hand.
Whatever the girl had drunk, it had worked fast. She started licking Josh all over his face. “Hold me,” she kept saying. “Hold me.” She was stroking herself. Her hands slid over the golden fabric, over her breasts, her belly, her crotch, her thighs. I could barely look at her. She was pure libido.
Josh pushed her onto a sofa and she made no attempt to get up. The men formed a circle, each putting their arms around their neighbors’ shoulders, and took me into their midst. I closed my eyes, not knowing what else to do.
“Repeat after us,” said Josh.
He recited an old-fashioned English oath, which I repeated. Later, I recalled one sentence in particular: “I was a caterpillar; the Club has given me wings.”
The girl on the sofa started mewing. Josh went over to her, picked her up, carried her across the room, and laid her on the billiard table. I stood in front of her. She gazed at me; her eyes were all pupil. She spread her legs and wrapped them around my back.
“You’re so serious,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Whatever you like.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lucia.”
Josh sat on the table beside the girl, dangling his feet. Then he grabbed the material over her crotch and ripped the golden catsuit from her body. She was wearing knickers with little cherries printed on them. I stood between the girl’s legs, not looking at her as she writhed before me on the table. I could feel the heat coming off her. She grabbed my neck with both hands and pulled me down. Her tongue was on my face and in my mouth. She wanted it; at that moment, she wanted it.
I hated the Club, but I was part of it now. I was someone.
Her thighs pressed against something in my trouser pocket. The stone. I slid my hand into the pocket and my fingers touched its smooth, cool surface. Abruptly I raised my head and stared at the wall again.
I remembered.
I knew where I’d seen that yellow butterfly before.
I pushed myself up, reached behind my back, and unlocked the girl’s legs. My hands rested briefly on her feet. Josh stroked my hair.
“In the rainforest, some butterflies live by drinking tears. Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him.
At Cambridge I’d learned how many great things humans are capable of. They can establish the basis of formal logic, calculate the speed of light, and discover anti-malaria medicine. But I’d also learned at Cambridge what humans are at heart: predators.
I sank onto one of the sofas and watched Josh move in front of the girl and undo his trousers. She was breathing heavily. “Thank you,” she murmured.
I thought of Charlotte and her scars. Perhaps she had lain on this very table. I was fulfilling my mission by incriminating myself. There was no clean way out of this. It hadn’t been clean since Alex had told me that sometimes it was right to deceive people. The girl would be raped, I would testify against Josh in court, and he would receive his punishment. I would have to allow this crime to take place, otherwise the Butterflies would just keep doing it to other women. Perhaps that was why old people walked with a stoop, bowed down by the weight of decisions which may have been right but still felt wrong.
Right or wrong, it seemed to me that there were no clear answers any more. Perhaps everything really was gray.
The coach had once told me that, after years in the gym, years of fighting, some boxers reach a state where you can no longer knock them out. Even if they take a perfect upper cut to the chin and their brain shuts down for a moment to protect itself against injury, their subconscious carries on boxing. They don’t fall down. In this state they do things they don’t remember; but sometimes it’s precisely those seconds that save them.
My movements were faster than I thought they would be. Josh was standing in front of the girl with his trousers down. He smiled when I pushed his hip aside; he was expecting me to do something else. The girl was very thin; I could hardly feel the weight of her as I pushed her legs together and lifted her off the table. I opened the door, into the front room and down the stairs, carrying the girl in my arms. The Butterflies’ shouts weren’t important now. I was surprised no one followed me. Perhaps Alex would be angry, perhaps I was in the process of ruining everything I’d worked for over the best part of a year, but there was no “perhaps” any more. There was no gray. I had made my decision.
I asked the girl which college she was in.
“Caius. St Michael’s Court,” she said, eyes closed.
She snuggled up to me and fell asleep in my arms. After a few minutes of carrying her through the streets my biceps started to ache and I had to put her down to give them a rest, but she still didn’t open her eyes, just stood there propped against me. Her college porter just winked when I asked him the way to her room.
She shared a set with another female student. It was four in the morning when I knocked. After a minute or two the door was opened by a young woman in a dressing gown. “Lucia” was all she said.
“Sit by her bed and keep an eye on her,” I said. “She’s taken some kind of drug and I don’t know how she’s going to react.”
I carried the girl into her room and put her to bed. Then I left before her roommate could ask me any questions. My arms were stiff and aching.
The sun would soon be up. Back in my room I picked up my passport and a credit card and took the train to the airport. I booked a flight to Hanover on my mobile phone; the flight was expensive, but I didn’t care.
When I landed in Germany there was a train straight from the airport to the village where I grew up. It was one of the old trains, with soft upholstery and windows you could pull down. I was still wearing my dinner jacket, but I’d taken off the bow tie. The wind blew in my face as we sped along.
I got out at my home village and walked the four kilometers into the forest. At the end there was an avenue of chestnut trees; there were no cars at this time of day and I walked in the middle of the road, the asphalt crunching beneath my leather soles. I hadn’t been back here since my parents died. The house in the forest had been renovated. There was a gleaming 4×4 in the drive. The new owners had laid the front to lawn and reroofed the house with black tiles. Before, the tiles were red and covered with moss. I knocked on the door. A blonde girl opened it; she was about seven years old and had a gap in her teeth.
I was startled by how young her mother was. She looked younger than me. I told her I used to live in the house and happened to be in the area. She said she’d heard about us from the previous owners; she was sorry about the business with my parents.
“Is the cherry tree still there?” I asked.
“The one out the back?” asked the woman.
I walked around the house. I didn’t want to go in, so as not to destroy my memories of it, but she didn’t invite me in, either.
It was late May. I could hear bees. The cherry tree was at least three meters high and covered in delicate pink blossoms. A swing hung from one of the branches. The blonde girl was hiding behind the corner of the house; she reminded me of Charlotte in the photo in Somerset. I placed one hand on the trunk of the tree. The woman brought me a pale tea; she said she made it from the cherry blossom, it was good for the energy flow. The tea tasted of hot water.