The Butterfly Plague

by Timothy Findley

  “Good. How’ve you been keeping?”

  “Fat.”

  They both laughed at that and when they were through she giggled a light cadenza that ended suddenly in a pout.

  “I came to ask you to come back,” Adolphus said abruptly.

  She looked right at him. Then away.

  “Back where?” she said, watching the room mess up around her. Chocolate wrappers had suddenly appeared everywhere.

  “Back to work.”

  She seemed to consider it. “Work, eh?”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “It’s too late,” she said. She lifted a fat arm and let it fall. “The damage is done.”

  “No,” said Dolly. “It isn’t. No damage. No damage, my dear.”

  She sat up. She let the robe fall open. Her breasts broke forward like cellophane bags full of water. Her chiffon nightgown held them back from total collapse. Her weight had tripled.

  “Look at me, Dolly.”

  He looked. And looked away.

  She sneered. This was the extremity of ugliness and sadness combined.

  “Old Fat!” she exploded over the bed. “OLD-ITCHY-MIDDLE-AGED-FAT!”

  She closed her eyes and her gown and huddled.

  “You can diet, Myra. Anyone can diet. In a week…”

  “I can’t diet my age. I can’t diet my damn eyes. I can’t diet my mind. Diet—hah! Don’t eat that, Charlie! Not eating won’t do anything. I’m finished. You bleed. I got old and fat. It’s over.”

  Delicately horrified, he listened to her, looked at her—and knew that she was right. Something was suddenly over. Nothing could change what had happened to her will. And he knew that it was her person, not her body, that everyone really loved. Himself included. And he saw that it was her person that had taken on so much weight, had so voraciously and heftily bulked. It had grown so far out of proportion that she could never hone it down. The fineness of her vulgarity was gone. Her spirit was gone. She had lost the love of the challenge and now she was merely passive. Which is what age is, he thought. Wrinkles and fat. Passive acceptance makes all of these. It gives you fat hands.

  “Well,” he said. “Well.”

  “So. Well.”

  They sat in silence.

  She was only thirty-two. It didn’t matter. She thought it was sixty.

  Finally, Adolphus sighed and rose and walked around the room. His toes kept butting up against chocolate boxes and paper wrappers and every time they did he gave a little kick of frustration. He forgot his own fear.

  “You’ll make yourself bleed,” said Myra. She tried to smile.

  Her face mooned out at him from pillows and sheets and blankets.

  He looked at her expectantly. Perhaps if he promised her something…

  “We’ll go to the Black Stocking every night,” he said. “We’ll drink gin and cocktails and brandy Alexanders and get tight as ticks. We’ll dance around to the rhumba band. Eh? Wouldn’t you like that? Artie Shaw playing solo while you entertain the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Elsa Maxwell, and the Count of Monte Cristo? Louis B. Mayer sending you mash notes from a table across the room and everyone saying, ‘Look, there she goes, that’s Myra Jacobs, the girl with all the friends. There goes…’”

  “…Old Fat, ex-queen of the movies,” said Myra with a slump in her voice that brought them both down so hard that the dream could only wither and die.

  “It will happen,” said Adolphus, out of breath from dancing.

  “You bet my itch it will,” said Myra. “It’ll happen when hell freezes over and the North Pole has palm trees.”

  “Well then. What will you do?”

  “Sit.”

  “Just sit?”

  “Yes!”

  Her vehemence was slightly hysterical.

  He watched her carefully. Then he tried to lighten the blows by saying, “Who’s gonna pay for all the candies?”

  “Me.”

  “You’re broke.”

  “No. I’ve got some money.”

  “Where from?”

  She fidgeted. “Never mind where from. I’m not broke, that’s all. Fat ladies have some friends.”

  “O.K., O.K. Well, I guess I’d better be on my way, then.”

  “Whereto?”

  She looked up, afraid at last of his absence.

  “Back to the Studio.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ve got to tell them. Start tearing down the sets.”

  “What sets?”

  “Your sets.”

  “My sets?”

  “Your sets.”

  “Tearin’ ‘em down, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  He stood by the door.

  “Good-bye.”

  She was looking at her fists, laid out flatly on the blankets, either side of her legs. She seemed to be only partly with him and only partly with herself. The rest of her had swelled and burst and lay about the room like discarded clothing that was out of style.

  She looked up at him and made a fumbling motion with her eyes.

  “Really tearing ‘em down, eh, Dolly?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but they must.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. That’s all right.”

  He moved a few more steps out into the hall. He could no longer bear to look at her.

  “Dolly?”

  “Yes?” He put his head back around the door and saw her reflected mercifully in the soft distance of a mirror.

  She smiled. “You want one for the road?” She held out the full box of chocolates. He looked at them.

  “No thanks, Myra.”

  “No? Come on. Just one. Please.”

  She seemed genuinely disappointed.

  “No,” he said. “I might choke and bleed.”

  He smiled.

  She laughed.

  “Good-bye,” she said, “I’ll see you, won’t I?”

  “Not if I see you first,” he said, and by the time he’d finished saying it he was halfway down the stairs.

  Even there he heard her sigh and lay the chocolates down and smooth the covers. Then he went on to the bottom, slowly and quietly. He knew his heart was broken and he wondered if anything could ever mend it.

  October 16th, 1938:

  Beverly Hills

  3:00 a.m.

  In the middle of the night, Adolphus was awakened by the telephone.

  He did not like using the telephone for anything more than business calls, so the only one he had installed was far away in the living room. For a moment he lay in his bed, listening, knowing that if he got up and went into the other room he would probably stub his toe on the big table, start internal bleeding, and find it was a wrong number. This had happened to him once before in the middle of the night and he had sworn never to let it happen again. Except that the white phone kept ringing.

  He thought that it might be Ruth. Perhaps Naomi had reached the crisis. Maybe she was dead.

  He pushed aside the covers with a tired gesture of martyred resignation. The phone kept ringing. He switched on the bedside lamp and stumbled carefully through the door into the darkened living room. He found the light switch on the wall and turned it on. The phone kept ringing. He pigeon-toed across the room without incident or accident. He was naked. The phone kept ringing. With one hand he reached for the receiver and with the other he reached for, caught at, but dropped a large glass box of cigarettes. The phone stopped ringing. Dead.

  “In the name of gawd,” he said, “for heaven’s sake, couldn’t you just wait one more ring?” He yelled this into the dead receiver against its buzz.

  He slammed the phone down and picked up the spilled cigarettes. Now he was thoroughly awake. Damn it all. Now he would start thinking and not be able to sleep.

  Wouldn’t that kill you! It must have rung a dozen times and it still had to go dead just when he picked it up. Just in that one second. Well, the bloody thing! Never again. He swore it. Never, never would
he answer or try to answer a phone again in the middle of the night.

  He rose wearily and was about to leave the room when he was caught by the sight of his own image in the window glass. The delicate glow of his nakedness seemed to swim across its surface away from him. His own elusiveness challenged his imagination and he paused, waiting. It really wasn’t a bad image, he thought. Slim, good lines. He advanced on himself, holding himself up, pelvis forward, erect. He might not carry much weight, but for twenty-seven years he still had a damn good figure. Ahem. Damn good.

  He swallowed. He also toyed with the cigarette.

  With a final glance at himself he turned and strode away across the room. Now that he was wide awake after all he might as well do something. Get out the books—or something.

  His hands flew over the shelves, selecting material. Tomorrow was Sunday. Today was Sunday. No obligations. He could spend as much time as he liked. It didn’t matter how late he stayed up. Moby Dick, Madame Bovary. He went on selecting for about five minutes. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. The Selected Poems of Edith Sitwell. Finally he walked, burdened with his books, into the bedroom. Naked, he closed the door.

  October 17th, 1938

  On Sunday, October 16th, Myra Jacobs, the film star, was discovered dead in her bed by her personal maid and long-time companion, Miss Ida Forsythe. The actress’s bedside table contained a box of candy, a copy of Photoplay magazine, an empty glass, a carafe of water, and a bottle of sleeping pills, also empty.

  When discovered by Miss Forsythe in the early hours of the morning, the body was sprawled across the bed with the arms and head in the direction of the telephone. Apparently Miss Jacobs had been overcome while attempting to call for help. One hand held the receiver of the telephone and the other had fallen across the cradle in such a way as to disengage the line. Her personal telephone directory was lying open beside her, but it did not disclose whom she might have been calling, beyond the fact that the book was open at the letter “D.” It can therefore be surmised that Miss Jacobs was probably trying to reach her doctor, whose name was Durbin—as in Deanna.

  Miss Jacobs, who was recovering from a rare disease, was to have recommenced work Monday morning on her film Hell’s Babies at the Niles Studios.

  The actress was thirty-two years old. No funeral plans have been announced.

  ITEM

  There is conjecture in some circles close to Miss Jacobs that she was depressed over recent developments in her romantic life. A mysterious Mr. Cohn is said to have been sending daily bouquets of roses which Miss Jacobs accepted without reply. This information has been verified by Mr. Arnold Stern, the florist who supplied the flowers.

  A picture of the carrier boy, Jesus Martinez, appears below. When questioned about Miss Jacobs, whom he saw only once during his calls to her house, he said, “She was fat.”

  Jesus is sixteen and wants to be in movies.

  Book Three

  The Chronicle of Race

  Friday, October 14th, 1938

  ITEM: From the Bozo Bulletin, Venice, California

  The College of Botanical and Zoological Sciences at Venice, California, announces the following excursion dates for the month of November. (For the October Calendar, see Bozo Bulletin of September 16th.)

  November 1st: To Del Mar to observe suspected Phylloxera in the vineyards.

  November 10th: To the home of Mrs. John Porter-Temple, which is being devoured by a recently introduced species of termite (Cryptotermes). Mrs. Porter-Temple will serve a barbecue.

  November 21st: To Catalina Island to observe the pelican cemetery. (Wear rain apparel.)

  November 23rd: To Salinas to pray for rain. (All Christian denominations welcome.)

  November 28th: To Fringes Bay to observe the butterfly trees (roosts of migratory phase of Danaüs plexippus).

  All those wishing to take part in these field trips are requested to register with the Excursions Registrar (E.C.D.F. Smith, B.A., M.Sc., Ph.D., F.B.S., F.A.Z.S.) at the Biological Sciences Building, 215 West 14th Street (at 3rd) between the hours of 9:12 a.m. and 4:55 p.m., Mondays to Fridays, at least two weeks prior to the excursion date.

  Note: Equipment will be limited to specimen bottles, killing jars, binoculars (where appropriate), and notebooks no larger than 6” x 8”. No microscopes, cages, or picnic baskets may be taken into the field. Lunches will be provided at a nominal cost by the College.

  Further note: PLEASE! No alcoholic beverages of any description. Our recent trip to Tijuana to observe body lice was badly marred by intemperance. Further occurrences will not be tolerated!

  Furthest note: For the excursion of November 28th, it is hoped that we shall have enough interested trippers to fill our three buses. In previous years we have observed the Danaüs plexippus phenomenon at more commercial points. This year’s choice of the little-known trees at Fringes Bay should afford a better opportunity for observation.

  ANNOUNCEMENT!

  Will the gentleman who collected carrion beetles with the lady in the purple hat on our excursion of October 2nd please contact Miss Eva Allen, c/o Doctors’ Hospital, Santa Monica. She has important news for you.

  Saturday, October 15th, 1938

  On the radio news broadcast of 9:00 a.m., there was an item about a Santa Monica woman who had been attacked by a rapist wearing an arm band with a strange device on it. This occurred in the small hours of the morning and the woman had managed to escape with a description of her attacker.

  He was something over six feet tall. The woman, Mrs. Ingmar Nielsen, had suggested he was six foot seven or eight, but it was felt that this could be an exaggeration. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and the victim admitted with some chagrin that he was “handsome.” Aside from the fact that he wore the arm band, the police were particularly interested in his shoes: he didn’t wear any. Apparently the attack had taken place in a back alleyway strewn with broken glass and several sheets of tin roofing, yet, according to the victim, the man had pursued her and caught her with great agility—even in his bare feet. She described him as “a guy who could have been Superman—except he didn’t wear no cape…” His description was widely circulated, and citizens were requested to keep an eye out for him and to report anything pertinent to the police.

  The victim took the opportunity of her momentary notoriety to speak out on what she called the “inalienable right of female American rape victims to be provided with legal abortions.”

  The State should be made to pay.

  Sunday October 16th, 1938

  Fire was discovered in the garage of Mr. and Mrs. Morris Reinglass of Santa Monica. The fire, spreading by way of a high board fence, ran quickly along the whole row of garages behind the houses on St. Finian’s Street and destroyed them all, together with many automobiles. It was a well-known fact that the residents of the district, of which St. Finian’s is the main thoroughfare, were retired people, mostly from the East.

  Tuesday, October 18th, 1938

  The late film beauty, lovely Myra Jacobs, was laid to rest in the cemetery at Forest Lawn. Many dignitaries and well-known personalities of the film world were present. Miss Jacobs had no family. The principal mourners were Mr. Adolphus Damarosch, the director of her last (unfinished) film, his sister, the famous Olympic star, Ruth Haddon, and Mr. Ogden Cohn, of New York City.

  Tuesday, October 18th, 1938

  The body of Gracie Hinxman, onetime usherette, was found in a mutilated condition, sitting upright in a 1936 Ford, license plate 4289-B8. The car was parked on Gate Avenue, district of Watts, Los Angeles. Harvey Tepperman made the discovery while delivering papers. Mr. Tepperman is nineteen and wants to be in movies. On the side of the motorcar a strange device had been drawn in mud.

  In the evening, only moments after sundown, there was a fire in a warehouse on Cort Street, district of Watts. The warehouse, property of Washington Jefferson Adams, was burned to the ground. It contained ten thousand Midway kewpie dolls. Mr. Adams, a member of the colored community in Watts,
was arrested.

  Later that night, Mipsy Peterson of Jones Avenue, Westwood Village district of Los Angeles, saw a tall blond man in his bare feet. She declined to go into details.

  In the Soviet Union, two writers, one a novelist (Gregori Grigorin) and the other a poet (Mikhail Shalansky) were purged for having written TROTSKY LIVES! on the Kremlin walls.

  All told, an eventful day.

  Tuesday, October 18th, 1938

  Ten thousand Jews were deported from the Third Reich to Poland. They traveled in boxcars. Among them was one Theodore Grynzspan.

  Wednesday October 19th, 1938

  Fire in Burbank, California. A small factory, manufacturing nurses’ uniforms. All was lost. Mr. Daniel Seidman.

  Mavis Seaton reported that she had been raped the previous day in West wood Village.

  Thursday October 20th, 1938

  Alice McKnee, a visitor from Idaho, was attacked while walking in the park at Pacific Palisades, California. Miss McKnee is blind and did not see “whoever it was did this to me.” But she said she was strongly aware of the “smell of leather.”

  There were no fires on this day.

  In the city of Chungking, Republic of China, nine hundred and fifty-two scholars were blown up or suffocated when a bomb, dropped from the sky, landed near their cave.

  Friday, October 21st, 1938

  In Los Angeles, police officials, alerted by the rash of rape and arson, have renewed their interest in the reported death of Miss Jean Pollux (real name: Henzie Fine), whose body was said to have been washed ashore on Topanga Beach in September. They requested another interview with Mrs. Ruth Haddon, who had informed them of the body’s presence on the beach. (The police never saw Miss Pollux’s corpse. It is believed to have drifted out to sea.) Had there been a fire? Mrs. Haddon replied that yes, there had been—a small one. It should be noted that Mrs. Haddon (an Olympic swimmer) is also the only witness in the matter of Clara Box, whose mutilated body was discovered by Mrs. Haddon while walking in Alvarez Canyon. Miss Box’s body is thought to have been destroyed in the great fire at Alvarez, September 15th of this year.