by Takis Würger
I wrote him letters asking him why he’d done it. I kept watch on him; I wanted him to know I wouldn’t forget it. It didn’t occur to me to go to the police. I felt guilty; I’d sent out the wrong signals. Years later a therapist told me that abuse takes many forms and that victims often feel guilty. Only then did it become clear to me that it was all his fault.
After that, the nightmares began. His mouth on my neck again. I clawed at him in my sleep and tried to scratch this man off my skin. On one of those nights, waking to a pillow flecked with blood, I called him for the first time. I knew that eventually the day would come when I would find some peace of mind.
When I saw Charlotte’s name on the list of applicants, I didn’t yet have a plan, just a satisfying feeling of getting closer to my goal. It was a mystery to me how a man like that could have such a wonderful daughter. She was everything he was not, and she deserved to know the truth.
I wanted him to feel what I had felt. The feeling of being an object. That was all. He should feel what it meant no longer to have any control over your own life.
I had the urge to run. I felt strong. I was fifty-nine years old, young enough to run another race this year. I still have a couple of marathons left in me. I dodged the bankers, the men emerging from skyscrapers, heading off to lunch. I darted past the gray suits. I speeded up; at some point I started sprinting. The heels of my shoes were too high, but I didn’t care. Perhaps it was coincidence, everything coming together like this in the end; but I know that in reality there’s no such thing as coincidence. I ran as if I were running for my life, breathing fast, sucking oxygen into my lungs. I wanted to keep on running and seeing the men make way for me.
Angus
The walk from the station into town was a short one, past cafés, colleges, people laughing as if nothing had happened. I didn’t look at them.
I tried to call Charlotte; the phone rang to empty air. When she moved into her flat she had given me a key, just in case.
I rang her doorbell. No one answered, so I let myself in.
“Hello? Charlie?”
Items of clothing on the floor, a few open drawers. I went over to her desk; I was afraid Alexandra might have written to her, or told her something. People were laughing again outside. Every detail seemed like a metaphor. The crack in the flower vase, the clouds before the sun, the solitary chestnut tree outside the window. The heating clicked, and I jumped. My suit felt too tight.
There were photos in an open drawer of the desk. I picked a few of them up. One showed my wife, myself, and Charlotte as a girl; it must have been fifteen years old. I stroked Charlotte’s face and slipped the photo into my jacket pocket. In the bottom left-hand drawer I saw a heavy yellow envelope with a yellow wax seal. Underneath it was a medical report and covering letter.
Forensic medical report
RE: Injuries sustained by
Charlotte Maria Farewell; possible
administration of GHB
History
Ms. Farewell reported that she had been to a party the previous evening and had been drinking alcohol. She woke up the next morning in a field. She reported having no memory of how she had got there, and as both her underpants and her tights were bloodstained, she feared that she had been raped. Ms. Farewell complained of pain in her lower abdomen.
Forensic examination report
Ms. Farewell is 170 cm tall, weighs 71 kg and is right-handed. She was alert, fully oriented, and appeared psychologically normal.
Forensic evidence obtained
Swab of bite mark, gelatine lift of bite mark, vaginal introital swab, anal swab, cervical swab, cheek swab sample for comparison, blood and urine samples for chemical and toxicological testing.
Evaluation
At the time of examination, the nineteen-year-old Ms. Farewell was observed to have blunt force trauma injuries to her face, arms and buttocks. The injuries to the left side of her lip were probably caused by the impact against her teeth. According to the examining clinician, the injury to her left nipple was probably a bite. The red circular marks around her wrists indicated that an implement was probably used to immobilize her. She had extensive bruising on both buttocks caused by blunt force trauma. This is likely to have been inflicted by blows from a blunt object.
The gynecological examination found deep tears in the mucous membrane at the entrance to the vagina, indicating penetration with an object.
A pretest for seminal secretion using a PSA SemiQuant test gave a positive result on the hair and was negative on the other samples. The semen of at least two men was detected. Further molecular genetic tests are necessary. We are requesting permission to carry out these tests.
The chem-tox analysis (see separate test report) gave no indication of alcoholization or the influence of medication or narcotics at the time of examination. No trace of GHB in the urine. This does not rule out the administration of GHB, however, as it is usually only detectable in the blood for up to 6 hours, or up to 12 hours in urine.
I took the envelope with our yellow seal from the drawer. It was empty.
Charlotte returned to the flat that evening. I heard her before I saw her. I was sitting in the chair by the desk, still holding the envelope.
“I’m one of them,” I said, before she could speak. “I’m a Butterfly.”
She saw the envelope in my hand. When she spoke I could barely understand her; her voice was thick with tears.
“Why didn’t you protect me?” she asked.
I looked at her, my daughter: her blonde hair reminded me of my late wife. Deep inside me I felt something shatter.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t ask for her forgiveness.
I left the flat. I couldn’t put my finger on what had just happened, but I knew that life as I knew it no longer existed. Outside on the pavement I collided with a young Asian man in a Pitt Club tie. He looked a bit like a clown. I was shocked when he shoved me aside and bawled in my face, “Watch out, old man!”
I didn’t respond. I sat down on the pavement outside Charlotte’s house and leaned against her door. I lowered my head until the long, silvery blond hair of which I’d always been so proud fell forward across my face.
I disgusted myself.
Josh
Monday morning: a walk by the river, watching the rowers training. I’d recently started going for walks like these; they bored me, but I thought it was very stylish, going for walks on my own. Low-intensity activity is good for your health. And I’d seen Stichler jogging on his own and thought: maybe I can be the boxer who always goes for walks on his own. I’d like it if people said that about me. Strong story.
I watched the Clare College eight glide past. The team were all rowing in time. I’d always admired this harmony. I thought it was a retarded sport, and those one-piece suits were mega-gay, but I liked the calm atmosphere in the boat, which was only made possible by the subjugation of the self. Stichler and I were like that, too: We’d joined forces, we’d been like two rowers in one boat, even though we’d boxed in different weight classes and at different times. We’d won that fight together. I did find it pretty weird the way Stichler behaved at the Club, wanting the minx all to himself, but it was kind of funny too, watching this little bloke carry her off. We laughed for ages after he left. That was what I was thinking about that morning. Along with something I’d recently read: that horses are apparently incapable of crying out in pain, which was a fascinating notion, especially when you applied it to people.
Early that morning I’d called the bank where I would be doing my internship and asked if I could name a different person to be contacted if anything should happen to me. The bird on the phone sounded a bit confused, but she noted down the name “Hans Stichler.” Boom.
A few minutes later I got a message from Stichler. Coincidence, presumably. He wrote that he would wait for me in the University Library, south wing, fourth floor, next to the bookshelves marked na – nav.
I seldom went to the University Li
brary, a hideous building in the west of the city with a tower like a monstrous erection. In my first term a friend had told me that a complete collection of British pornographic literature was hidden in this tower. I’d checked it out, and was embarrassed that I’d believed the story.
Stichler was standing between the shelves, running the back of his hand along the spines of the books; with anyone else it would have looked camp, but with him it looked cool. He seemed different: he was wearing jeans, a hoodie and trainers, and he hadn’t shaved for a few days; the stubble was a greenish shimmer on his skin. Such a fit bloke. Maybe I could try out a beard like that; I’d never thought of it before. It wasn’t his outward appearance that made Stichler seem different, though; he came across as exhausted, yet somehow alert. His handshake was firm and a little longer than usual.
“Sorry I ruined the evening,” he said.
“Hey, no probs. You wanted the gold minx all to yourself; I get it.”
We went down to the Reading Room. It was thirty-six feet high, and a warm light fell through the arched windows along the tops of the walls. Library attendants made sure no one spoke. The air smelled of book dust. I worried about the moisture balance of the mucous membranes in my nose, but the smell drove me agreeably wild. Sometimes glued books smell fantastically like pussy.
Stichler sat at a table and went to pull up another chair, accidentally knocking it over. One of the library attendants immediately shushed him. Cambridge was so ridiculous.
He took a piece of white paper and a fountain pen out of his bag. I smiled when I saw that. When I was a child I used to sit at a desk writing for hours just to observe my own handwriting. I’d wanted to see how much I could change it, and I was proud of it.
Stichler unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen.
Do you know why I took the girl with me? he wrote.
“Why don’t we just talk, mate?” I whispered. The bastard library attendant raised an eyebrow.
Stichler tapped his forefinger on the sentence he had written.
Do you know why I took the girl with me?
Yes, I wrote, in blue ink and round letters. I handed the pen to Stichler. Our fingertips touched.
Why? he wrote.
I smiled to myself. I really liked this crazy guy.
It was your night, I wrote.
Stichler looked at the piece of paper for a long time, rotated it slightly, and frowned a little. We heard the pages of books being turned. A young woman was tapping on her laptop keyboard at a nearby table.
You have interesting handwriting, Stichler wrote.
No one apart from my teachers had ever commented on this. Stichler really was different. Maybe we could train together in Cornwall over the summer.
I took the pen and made an effort to write nicely.
Thank you, my friend, I wrote. I added a decorative flourish to the tail of the first y. Boom.
Stichler screwed the cap on the fountain pen, stood and picked up the paper, and we left the Reading Room. We wandered around a bit more between the bookstacks. I thought I’d like to go to the library more often in future. All that peace and quiet: sweet. The air was less dry in the upstairs rooms. I took a book about flambéing off a shelf, sniffed it, and lost myself in its pages. When I looked up again Stichler had disappeared. I’ll write to him this summer, I thought. I wanted to write and tell him that I didn’t actually like butterflies because they reminded me that they had once been caterpillars. Stichler was sure to appreciate that.
Billy
My parents’ house in Richmond smelled of warm yeast that morning, of starched cotton tablecloths, Penhaligon’s fragrances, scented candles at eighty pounds apiece, of oranges, gin, and old money.
I sat at the breakfast table with my mother. I’d come home because she’d made crumpets, which she didn’t often do any more. She’d sent a car to Cambridge to fetch me. The cook had spooned the jams into white porcelain bowls, and the crumpets sat beside them in a basket. In the middle of the table was a serving tower laden with French cheeses. Mother was choosy when it came to cheese; she insisted one could only eat cheeses from the Auvergne.
She told me how a few days ago a man had rung the doorbell and said he’d seen our kitchen from outside. He worked for a film production company and was looking for a house for a location in the new Bridget Jones film. Our kitchen was perfect, he said, with the stove kitchen island and the glass roof. He’d need the house for a month, during which our family could live at the Savoy, and we’d receive a five-figure sum in compensation. Mother had thanked him politely, given his visiting card to the butler who stood by the door, and gone to tennis.
The crumpets were good. I’d missed them. I was wearing my Blues blazer, my hair was freshly washed and tied back. Mother stroked my arm; she said how proud my father was of me, and that he sent his best. Clearly his pride had not been sufficient to ensure his actual presence. He’d gone in to work early, Mother said. Something to do with a pipeline in Nigeria that he had to take care of.
“It’s pathetic, I know; his son’s home for a visit and he’s taking care of a pipeline.”
We talked a bit about our summer holiday. I wanted to go to Colombia but Mother thought it was too dangerous; she’d rented a couple of bungalows in Barbados instead, which she said was bad enough. Perhaps my German friend from the boxing team would like to come out for a week.
I smiled, remembering how I’d realized Hans was lying. It was at the hospital. I may have been drunk, but I’d seen the name the nurse wrote on the form. I’d been surprised, but I’d pieced together a story the end of which I couldn’t figure out. I knew the feeling, though: Sometimes it was just easier to pretend to be someone else.
On our last day together, when we were sitting on the fountain in the marketplace, Hans had asked me a question I’d been thinking about a lot ever since.
“What is truth?” he’d asked.
I’d said nothing at the time because I didn’t know the answer, and that bothered me somehow. Now it occurred to me that it had sounded almost as if he were saying goodbye, and I wondered whether I would ever see Hans again.
“What is truth?” I asked my mother.
She spread a little lemon curd on her crumpets.
“The truth is that my crumpets have turned out very well,” she said.
She smiled, told me I should stop racking my brains about such nonsense and eat the crumpets instead. I took her hand and gazed at her blue veins and the gold ring with the blue stone. Mother gave me a serious look, and set her mask aside for a moment. I loved this about her; she was a bit like me, but the other way round. All day long she played the fine lady, who drank tea at Fortnum & Mason and purchased her lingerie at Rigby & Peller, but I knew that this was just her way of making life bearable.
“The truth, Bill,” she said, “is the stories we keep telling ourselves until we believe they’re the truth.”
Then her smile was back again. It was perfect. Perhaps it was from her that I’d learned to play the game.
I looked up from the table; the sky hung low and gray over the glass roof. The light blue of the blazer almost looked pretty against the color of the clouds. I wondered if it was too early for a gin and tonic. Mother would understand. I nodded to the butler standing in the corner and ordered my drink with two slices of lemon.
“For the vitamins,” I said.
Mother laughed and said I absolutely must try the lemon curd. The lemons were from the Amalfi coast; they were particularly flavorful this year.
Hans
I was woken by a chambermaid sticking her head around the door of the hotel room. Rays of sunlight fell across the empty mattress and rumpled bedclothes beside me. A brown, unlined notebook lay on the bedside table. I’d spent a long time writing in it the previous evening.
The flagstones on the balcony were warm beneath my feet as I stepped out, carrying Charlotte’s laptop, and sat down in the morning sun. I was naked, wearing nothing but the red gold necklace. I balanced the l
aptop on my knees.
On the website of a major British newspaper I read the story about the Butterflies. The paper had published everything I’d told Alex. She’d noted every little detail. The photo accompanying the article was of the yellow wax butterfly seal. The word “bloodstained” did not appear in the text. All the men named had either been uncontactable or had refused to comment on the accusations. Angus Farewell, too, had remained silent. These men should be considered innocent until proven guilty, wrote the author. At the end of the article stood the names of the current Butterflies. One of them was Hans Stichler, the man who, for a short time, I had been.
I showered, put on a vest and the jeans I’d been wearing all week and went downstairs in my bare feet. It had been Charlotte who suggested coming here. She wanted to get away from it all, she’d said.
We’d flown to Verona, rented a little car, and driven down the west bank of Lake Garda. I’d sat at the wheel with Charlotte alongside, her feet on the dashboard. She’d said she couldn’t drive on the right; she wound down the window and held her hand out into the wind. I’d been amazed at how relaxed she was.
In Gardone Riviera she’d asked me to turn right and stop in front of a pink marble villa. Mussolini and his lover had lived there, Charlotte said, waiting for the end of World War II. Now it was a hotel. She paid for a week in advance. The taps in the bathroom were gold.
That morning I walked across the terrace and sat on the jetty. It smelled of warm wood and seaweed. A waitress in white gloves brought me an espresso; a fresh roast of Kenyan beans, she said, floral with light grapefruit notes. All I could taste was coffee. I dunked the sweet almond biscuits and enjoyed it.
Sitting in the sunshine I ran through the events that had brought me here one more time. I thought of the Cambridge men who had seen me as someone I was not.