The Butterfly Plague

by Timothy Findley

  “Yes, Bruno.”

  “One.”

  “Count!”

  “And-one-and…”

  “COUNT!”

  “…and-two-and…”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, Bruno.”

  “Count.”

  “…And…”

  “Listen to me. Go on counting. And listen. I am going to shave your head.”

  “One-and-two-and-one-and-two…”

  “I am going to have your head altogether bald and I am going to…Count, God damn you…I am going to buy you some new clothes.”

  “And-one-and-two-and-one-and-two.”

  “I have plans for you.”

  “Yes, Bruno.”

  “Count.”

  “And-two-and…”

  “We have come a long distance. Traveled a long way.”

  “One.”

  “And we are here, now.”

  “Yes, Bruno.”

  “Count.”

  I began not to sleep at nights.

  The fact that Bruno had used Mr. Seuss’s words frightened me. “We have come a long distance. Traveled a long way.” But the journey was in reverse. It was wrong, somehow. I did not understand, but I felt, This is wrong.

  I tried to read the books that were at hand, literature locked in Bruno’s bureau drawers. I broke the locks, but the books were unfathomable. Biochemistry meant nothing to me. Nor did The Theory of Races. Nor did The Birthplace of Power. I had the locks fixed and did not break them again.

  I ceased to visit the places of interest. The streets were alien. I felt afraid.

  My swimming improved.

  The clothes that Bruno bought for me were uniforms—white shirtwaists, green shirts, brown dresses with buttons down the side, long-sleeved, without style and harsh to the touch. I was told to wear them for all occasions.

  Bruno spent many days away. I was left alone. I worked out with the team and traveled in darkened cars. I gathered I was some sort of secret. Sometimes I worked at night in the pool, alone, with Bruno screaming at me to svim, and I felt as though I never saw anyone else, even when the others were there.

  But my swimming improved. Not so much my style but my stamina. My control.

  I was bald. This, too, was some kind of beginning.

  I was given a wig for appearances in public. In order that I might not wander too far away, Bruno kept this wig hidden from me in a secret place. It would appear mysteriously when duty demanded that I be presented to any official. I had to give it back when the presentation was over and we were home.

  I received a telephone call. I don’t remember when this was. It came from a mysterious Countess von Buëll. She begged me to meet her at a certain hour for luncheon. I was to stand outside my billet at 11:30 and wait, holding a yellow rosebud in my hand. A car driven by a chauffeur would come and pick me up. I was not to be alarmed by the driver’s silence.

  I did as I was told. Perhaps this was part of the pattern laid down by Bruno. I had wanted so much to be obedient; now obedience had become a habit—something automatic.

  I looked forward to being out of doors.

  Fear or no fear, I longed to see the sky.

  The Countess had instructed me to come alone. I was not to inform my husband of this assignation. Naturally, I did not want to do anything behind Bruno’s back—but there was always the possibility that he might be responsible for this approach. Besides, the Countess’s voice was vaguely familiar and my instinct said obey her and I did.

  I wore an ingenious combination of interwoven chiffon to cover my baldness. I chose one of my own dresses.

  At 11:30 I stood outside our billet on the sidewalk. The sun shone. The street was fairly empty. I carried my rosebud which had arrived anonymously by messenger. I had taken a liking to Mr. Seuss’s star and so I had that as well in my handbag. It made me feel comfortable and it reminded me, as he had said it would, of where I was. I was on a comfortable residential street glittering with crystal air. And there were trees. The fear receded, held at bay by sky and sunshine.

  We had been billeted with Herr Doktor and Frau Doktor Mittelstadt, a pleasant middle-class couple in their fifties. Their son was a lovely, quiet boy in a black uniform. Sigmund.

  Frau Doktor Mittelstadt had placed geraniums on her balcony and window ledges. Everyone had. It was decreed. They were in bloom. No pinks and no whites. Just red. They were splendid.

  The sun shone.

  The trees were jungle-green and lush.

  It was absolutely lovely.

  Countess von Buëll.

  I knew her voice.

  Frau Doktor Mittelstadt came out on her balcony and waved at me and watered her geraniums. I hoped that she was discreet. Bruno held conversational evenings with her and the Doktor. They discussed the new philosophy.

  This reminded me to look for my identification card. We had been told never to be without it. I looked in my purse. There it was. It had the Olympic insignia on it, my name, and my nationality: American. This gave me, I remember, a slight shock. The word. American. There, too, was Mr. Seuss’s star. I smiled and closed my purse.

  A large dark motorcar appeared at the far end of the street. Tremendous and official, its polished surfaces mirrored the sun. It was ablaze with blackness and light. At the front, near the headlights, on either side, there were fluttering standards. The insignia was plain on both. One was the usual red, white, and black. The other bore a coat of arms, silver eagles rampant on a black field.

  Frau Doktor Mittelstadt stepped back out of sight. The expression on her face was extraordinary. She shaded her eyes. Her mouth twisted. She was more, much more, than afraid. She was terror-struck. But I was not. I looked at the sky.

  The car stopped. A youth of remarkable proportions, dressed all in black with boots shining to his knees and fiery hair showing at his temples, beneath his cap, came round to open the door. He was like a fallen angel; Lucifer could not have been more golden.

  As I stepped forward his arm shot sideways in that strange salute of theirs.

  I ducked under this and got inside. The seats were covered with leather and a beaver-pelt throw rested on a silver bar before me. I sat back.

  What was going to happen? Where was I going?

  I was doing what I was told.

  The voice had been familiar.

  Obey obedience.

  I was convinced that I must not show fear. Or feel it. I must look as natural and unconcerned as possible.

  I waved.

  Up on her balcony, Frau Doktor Mittelstadt raised her smelling salts to her nose and stumbled back inside her house.

  We drove away. It was either a dream or a fairy tale or a nightmare.

  But that did not matter.

  It was happening.

  The streets of Berlin were alive with visitors that summer. Uniforms and flags abounded. Never had there been such perfect weather as there was that August and September. The air was positively crystalline and the sun never ceased to shine. We drove for a great while and there was total silence. The car must have been soundproofed and armored. I noticed that pedestrians behaved with deference as we passed. Their expressions were anagrams of fear. The glass of the motorcar’s side windows was slightly smoked and you could probably not see who rode within, although the rider could see the exterior world with perfect clarity.

  At several intersections the populace gave us the salute. I felt imperial. It was marvelous. And awful.

  We drove to the Wansee. The lakes shimmered and appeared warm. There were bathers and acrobats. Again, as everywhere, the flags were flying and the trees in their unbelievable foliage were like paper cutouts exquisitely painted by hand. Balloons of blue and white proclaimed the Olympiad. Other balloons were black.

  We arrived at a gate.

  I was not afraid.

  A youth very like the driver, wearing an identical uniform and of identical stature, opened the gate and saluted as we passed through.

  At the far end of t
he drive I saw the facade of our destination—a palace from the period of Frederick the Great. Coldly impressive, multiwindowed. Sad.

  We came to the entrance. More angels in black.

  The car was opened for me. I was saluted. I was led up steps and told to go through doors. I was not afraid.

  I came into a high wide hall.

  I stood on marble.

  I waited for the Countess von Buëll.

  Before me a grand staircase seemed to have abided the centuries, only waiting for the Emperor’s return.

  “Ruth!” said a voice, and without the distance and distortion of the telephone I knew at last who it was. I knew why my instinct had told me I was safe. That I could be myself.

  It was Lisa.

  I was “finished” in Italy at the Pension of the Signorina della Ponte. There were fifteen of us that year. Mother waited out the season in the mountains, near Florence. She had Adolphus with her and she paid little attention to me. She took Dolly every day to the famous Dr. Renaldo. I seemed forgotten. She had placed me in the hands of the Signorina and she entrusted me to her graces. It was our first separation.

  Although I do not make friends with ease, I stood in need of a friend that year, and I chose Lisa. Lisa chose me. We were very much alike, an unlikely reason for girls and women to become close. But we never had to speak of our alikeness. We shared it the way other girls shared clothes. Our alikeness was our mutual sense of awkwardness. We were both handicapped, myself by height and lack of grace and Lisa by poverty and loss of nobility. Her mother was Italian. Highborn. Her father, killed in the war, had been German. Lowborn. It was a marriage frowned upon. Not only had the Germans been enemies, and thus Signora Goss had betrayed her country, but she had also betrayed her class. She was disowned and stripped of her rank. However, she was courageous and determined. Silently, alone, she plotted a course for her daughter’s life. It was to be full of twists and patterned on revenge, but it would place Lisa higher than her mother herself had been. Her daughter, Signora Goss decreed, would become a great German lady. Thus, though her mother virtually enfeebled herself doing it, the year at Signorina della Ponte’s was financed and Lissl was finished in the proper style. I remembered her as a willfully smiling, lovely girl with the best of both races in her features (dark skin and hair, blue eyes). Her expression in those days was haunted. She did not grasp her situation beyond her mother’s instructions. She knew, materially, what she was working for, but she did not know why. She did what could be called “the right things.” She developed grace and style. She read books. She had a natural flair for music and, secretly, she wanted to write poetry, although she only talked about this. She never wrote the poetry down. Or thought of it. We did think a lot about boys, but our thoughts were purely romantic. For our generation, all the best and all the handsomest and all the most romantic young men were dead. In the war. Boys died. And girls were virgins. Letitia taught us that. Yes. Her shadow even fell on Europe. The Little Virgin was everyone’s ideal. Until you discovered men. Locked in the arms of the mountains, high above the world, at the Signorina’s, men and boys played a role only in the books we read. The conclusion that both Lissl and I would marry older men, when it came to reality, was simply not a part of our lives. We were really just worldly nuns, brought up to marry not gods but mortals.

  “Ruth!”

  She stood at the top of the staircase. Surely it was she, and yet it seemed…

  “Lissl…”

  A young man sprang to leathered attention, interrupting what I had begun to say.

  I fell silent.

  The Countess Lisabeta von Buëll came down.

  She wore blue.

  She was not the same. She was impeccable. Impeccably coiffured. Impeccably manicured. Impeccably made up, impeccably gowned, and impeccable of speech. Her face was flawless. But I did not recognize this until I was able to see her eyes when she reached the bottom of the stairs. They were blind with fear.

  She offered her hand, wrist first. A beautiful gesture of the kind I can never hope to master. I took her fingers lightly in my own and curtsied over them as best I could remember, sensing that I was playing a role, hoping we would both laugh about it later. Soon.

  I stood up straight. I gave her my gaze. She did not return it.

  “Wolf.”

  “Countess.” The youth stepped forward. He bashed his leather heels together and bowed.

  “Frau Haddon and I will walk in the garden.”

  (All this in impeccable High German.)

  “Yes, Countess.”

  Lissl took my arm and began to guide me along a gallery that led, I could see, to terraces and gardens at the rear of the palace. Wolf followed.

  “Wolf.”

  “Yes, Countess.”

  “Frau Haddon and I wish to be alone.”

  There was a stubborn pause.

  Wolf said, “Frau Haddon’s papers, your Grace?”

  Lissl remained cool. Her expression did not alter one iota. She turned to me.

  “Your papers,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Identification. Have you anything at all?”

  “But Lissl,” I lowered my voice. “In your home. It’s ridiculous…”

  Her eyes stopped me. She might just as well have drawn a knife and held it between us. I opened my purse.

  I was nervous, I suppose. I had thought I was merely indignant and amazed, but I suppose I really was nervous. I dropped my papers and my cards and Mr. Seuss’s star on the floor.

  Wolf stepped forward to retrieve them.

  I bent to retrieve them myself.

  Lissl stepped on them and nearly crushed my fingers.

  “Frau Haddon is a great athlete, Wolf. She enjoys this exercise.”

  I looked up. She was smiling. She was not only cool. She was cold.

  Wolf retreated three steps. I picked up my things, returning them to my purse, and handed my Olympic registration card, American, to Lissl.

  She in her turn, without looking at it, handed it over to young Wolf.

  He scrutinized it carefully. He took so long that I was certain he was memorizing it. Then he handed it back.

  “Very good,” he said.

  He bowed toward me and I nodded.

  I replaced the card in my bag.

  Lissl again took my arm.

  We stepped away.

  Wolf remained absolutely static until we had gone.

  When we reached the terrace I felt Lissl’s whole body sigh and relax. Her shoulders fell.

  “What is the matter?” I said.

  She gripped my hand. Her expression implored me to understand.

  “I thought that since you are here so short a time, my dear, you should see the gardens now while they are in such lovely bloom.”

  Her tone was forced and she projected her words as an actress does from a stage. I gave a long look down the terrace where there were many French doors, some standing open, and I saw the folded arms and the knees and toes of two uniformed men. Beyond us in the formal gardens where we were going there were others. They were everywhere. I looked back up onto the roof as we descended the steps and they were there as well.

  My voice froze in my throat. My hands began to sweat. I adjusted my veils in an attempt to dry my fingers.

  “You look well,” said Lissl. Her tone remained unbearably formal. I longed to put my arms around her and to hear her laugh. Her laughter was once so marvelous.

  “I am well,” I said.

  We looked at beds of blue delphiniums and pink tea roses. Day lilies and late poppies. She pointed out nightblooming nicotiana and snapdragons and beautifully formalized rows and ranks of shrubs and trees, japonica, magnolia, camellia. Some in bloom, some not. Yew trees and sculptured firs. At intervals, scissored and razored cedars formed archways and arbors underneath which we walked. All the while her hand held mine and her fingers stroked my wrist and palm. I sensed that this was her true conversation with me, that
the words would have to remain formal and stilted, meaningless and polite, even unspoken, and that somehow her real messages were reaching me through her touches and signs. They were not in code. At least I hoped that they were not. If they were, I never deciphered them, never discovered what it was she wanted to say, but I imagined that I did decode it emotionally. It was a plain, stark monologue, messages of fear and loneliness, regret and sadness. Touching me as though I alone was reality.

  None of this was evident to the watchers, with that everlasting physical pose that seemed to go with their uniforms: hands behind the back, pelvis forward, knees out, strolling in ways of menace. They were everywhere in that garden, everywhere in the shadows, everywhere in the inner passageways of the palace, behind every tree and door, at the extension of every telephone, even behind the distant eyes of binoculars. But none of this prevented my sensing what was being said.

  We stopped by a bed of yellow roses. She showed me the bush from which my bud had been cut. I had pinned it to my dress.

  “Yellow roses,” she said, “are a sign.”

  A phrase that could mean anything or nothing. She had said it in the same tone as everything else. But her hand gripped mine tighter as she spoke.

  On the way back inside she asked me how I thought she looked. She had waited to do this until we were abreast of one of the listeners.

  I answered almost in a shout that I had never seen her look so well, that she was positively radiant, and this answer seemed to please her. She smiled.

  Indeed, her beauty had increased. But it was a lacquered beauty now. Every hair was in place and I could sense in the makeup and the beautifully shaped nails the presence in the house of cosmeticians and manicurists. She seemed cared for and turned out like a film star. It was a look I recognized and knew all too well. It hid the real beauty but it had a beauty all its own. Cold layered.

  “The Count will dine with us,” she said.

  We made a progress, nodding and being saluted, all the way down a six-hundred-foot corridor. At the far end doors were thrown open by invisible servants and we came into a room of massive distances—unseeable ceilings and such ruthlessly carved and heavily adorned furniture that it seemed to have been torn in chunks from the timbers it was made from.