The Butterfly Plague

by Timothy Findley

  The only place you could not fall from was the ground. The only place people did not walk was under tables. Ergo, he sat on the ground under tables.

  George took his son’s eccentricities at face value. He adored Dolly and was proud of his strangeness. “My son sits under tables!” he would announce, proudly introducing Dolly to his friends. “My son, Adolphus, lies for many hours on the ground,” he said. And, “This is my son, who sleeps under his bed,” and, strangest and proudest of all, “Say hello to Adolphus…” and then, leaning in, confiding, perhaps, the laurels of genius, he would whisper with eyes significantly narrowed, “My son is very strange, you know.” With a wave of the hand he would indicate Dolly’s clothes. “His mother dresses him in white. She won’t tell me this, but she takes him to visit priests. Could be a saint. Maybe even the Pope, some day. My son, Adolphus. Very strange.”

  So, Adolphus was sitting under a table.

  It happened that a woman dropped a brooch.

  Adolphus reached for it. A foot appeared. He withdrew his hand with overviolent self-protection. He was stabbed.

  The brooch stuck into his palm.

  He screamed.

  The sight of blood was rare to Dolly (so much care had been taken) and he rose, spilling the table and its contents onto the grass.

  Under ordinary circumstances, nothing need have gone wrong. A doctor would have been summoned (George was never there; today he was). The flow of blood was minimal, but to Dolly it looked like a flood. He screamed and screamed and screamed. He screamed about bleeding to death. His father (closer than his mother) rushed across the lawn to his side. In his fear and in the urgency to get help for himself (Naomi had said, always let me know at once if you bleed), Dolly told all. He said it to his father. The well-guarded, the perfectly hidden facts and eleven years of lying fell by the wayside, victims of panic.

  Now George knew.

  The party continued around them.

  Bully danced with Letitia.

  Three hundred guests applauded. Dolly was removed to his room and a doctor was called for, came, and mended the damage. But it was the end of a marriage.

  George summoned Naomi to the library.

  He closed the doors.

  He was white with fury. Livid.

  She bowed to fate.

  (“Mrs. Damarosch! Mrs. Damarosch! Please, Mrs. Damarosch, let me take your arm. I’m going to help you, Mrs. Damarosch. I’m trying to help you. Let me help your)

  All the time George yelled at her she stood there (in rose and gray) staring at the sky outside through the windows. She could remember that particular shade of blue for a long time.

  As the tirade continued, she began to make plans. She would take the children to Topanga Beach. They would build a house. They had always wanted to live by the sea. Later, Ruth could be finished in Italy. She had always dreamed of that. Dolly would need doctors. More and more care as he grew older and more and more vulnerable. She had a great deal of money. That was all right. Falconridge had been lovely (she went right on thinking these things as the voice rose and the eyes blazed and little flecks of foam appeared at the sides of the mouth. He was screaming about purity of line, something to do with his children. He kept screaming “my children” this, and “my children” that, and things like “you are a blot on motherhood!” and “you have infamous blood!” or “for eleven years that boy has lived in the terror of your lies!” It was senseless to listen).

  Falconridge had been the first home she had created from the ground up. But it had always seemed unreal. A fairy-tale castle. A monument to tenuous fame, tenuous happiness.

  The very steps leading down from the gardens to the driveways and garages were built of people’s names. Wally Reid—Letitia Virden—Marie Dressier—and away down at the bottom was Naomi Nola. The first and last step. It depended on which direction you were going.

  So that was Naomi’s dream.

  Or parts of it. There was much more. But these things can be guessed at. We know she loved her husband. We know that she left him obediently. We know he was a fool. But Naomi knew that he was, like her, a dreamer. That she had buried his dream forever. She forgave him his foolishness and his selfishness, as perhaps readers of this chronicle may not.

  When the tirade was over (and all else with it) George made his way blindly from the library. (Later that day he committed a murder.)

  Naomi stood in silence for a while.

  Then she remembered her guests and went outside.

  At nightfall, she began to pack.

  (At last having called Ruth to help her, Miss Bonkers was able to release the hand from its twisted grip on the bedpost and, taking the arm, she smoothed its tension and applied the needle to its place.)

  12:00 midnight

  Ruth made the telephone call, but Adolphus, afraid of both darkness and of how the taxi driver might react to the darkness, did not come till morning.

  Thursday, November 17th, 1938: 8:45 a.m.

  It was a long night—a vigil shared by both Miss Bonkers and Ruth, and it so happened that when Dolly arrived by taxi, Ruth was asleep.

  Miss Bonkers admitted him, and once he had looked in and seen that both Ruth and Naomi were non compos men-tis, he returned to the living room, where the nurse gave him a cup of black coffee.

  “What do you do now, Mr. Dolly? Are you making another film, or what?”

  “No. I’m hard at work trying to salvage Hell’s Babies,” said Adolphus. “Every day I go down and we edit and edit and edit, but I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’ve come to a kind of strange conclusion, Miss B., and that is that every movie should be made as though it were going to be your last. Miss Jacobs’s memorial film, alas, is not appropriately somber.”

  “Oh, well, now. You mustn’t fret about a thing like that. Myra Jacobs was always a gay little girl; at least, that’s what I thought. It wouldn’t be right to remember her sadly.”

  “I just hope they’ll let us use that footage of her swimming. Enchanting—enchanting—just enchanting.”

  “Was there much left to film when she died?”

  “Well, not much, no, but what there was, was vital. The last scene of all, in fact.”

  Dolly sipped his coffee loudly. He could not drink anything too hot right down.

  “What do you think you’ll do then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dolly. “This is what I’m working out now. I had thought that I might find some other actress—the way they did for Harlow’s last film—and try to get some way of telling the end with her off in the distance, or even with her back to us. But I don’t know. Who could play Myra Jacobs’s back?”

  “No one, I guess. Still…always leave them laughing, Mr. Dolly. Isn’t that what someone said? Seems like a good motto to me for Myra Jacobs. Always leave them laughing. Eh? How about that?”

  “I’ll think about it, Miss Bonkers. But it’s getting pretty difficult to laugh these days.”

  “Oh, pshaw! Go on with you! I can laugh right here and now. I can laugh any time I want to. Listen…”

  Here Miss Bonkers commenced, indeed, to laugh. It began as a low, husky chuckle and it rose, by grades, to a thigh-slapping, almost masculine locker-room roar. It ended, abruptly—and without a smile.

  “I learned how to do that at nursing school,” Miss Bonkers confided. “That, and how to cry.”

  “Yes,” said Dolly, impressed against his will. “I imagine it comes in handy from time to time.” He looked into the death room.

  “Well, it certainly does,” said Miss Bonkers. “We medical people are human, too, you know. I mean, we get tired and sick of it all just like you movie people do, and we have to fall back on our techniques.” She thought about it for a moment.

  “Do you want some more of that coffee?” she said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, I’ll go and see what I can do about those two in there. Your sister’s had an awful night. She just won’t leave your mother’s side.”


  Miss Bonkers strode into the death room, on her heels. “Extraordinary,” said Dolly, out loud. “Just extraordinary. Should have been an actress.”

  11:00 a.m.

  Ruth was persuaded to retire to her own room and bed. Adolphus went walking on the beach.

  Miss Bonkers sat in the watching chair, and, again, she truly watched. Book reading was behind her, it seemed.

  9:30 p.m.

  The doctor came. He approached all that Miss Bonkers had done with approval. He expressed the opinion that Naomi would now probably slip away without regaining consciousness, and suggested that as long as one of the vigilants remained awake and in the room with her, the others might as well retire and rest.

  He provided Miss Bonkers with what he judged to be enough morphine to see his patient to the end and, telling them that he would be happy to stay but for the fact that he had children to deliver and an appendix to remove, he bade them all farewell.

  Adolphus, sitting ramrod still, essayed the first watch; Miss Bonkers the second; and Ruth the third.

  It was during the third watch that Naomi disappeared.

  Friday, November 18th, 1938

  Ruth, dreaming her own dream, had slept. It was not a conscious drifting into sleep, but that sleep which possesses the sleeper while she’s still awake.

  Later, she swore that she was not aware of sleeping at all, but the fact is, she did sleep, and apparently soundly enough for Naomi to wake, rise, dress herself, and leave the room.

  By what miraculous power Naomi was able to do these things—against not only pain and drugs but against the incredible weakness of her own body, as well—no one was able to discover.

  Something, however, of sheer determination must have done it, for, on waking, she sensed that death was very close beside her, and, seeing that Ruth slept, and knowing that anyone awake would prevent her, she had risen to take her last moments on the beach.

  The dressing was hard enough. She chose the green dress and the tennis shoes and the orange parasol and out she went. The descent to the beach was worse.

  Every step seemed like total collapse.

  She was hardly aware of pain, although there was pain. And hardly aware of weakness, although there was this, also. She was aware only of not being in proper command of her body. It would not go the way that she directed it, which had been some distance up along the beach. Instead, it kept leading her down to the water’s edge, and from her drug-clouded eyes she kept perceiving the froth of little waves and the dancing of sandpipers, certain that this water and these birds had miscalculated their place, and should be driven back down to the shore. Thus, she made driving motions with her hands and mumbled objection at them until, finally, forced to agree with the fact that they did not seem to be aware of her, she stumbled away and found herself seated on a sandy knoll created by the late high tide.

  Somehow, she was able to raise the parasol. Even to spread her skirts, with her innate sense of decorum, about her legs. The lotus position was beyond her now, so she had to be content with a straight-legged support, her feet at what seemed to be a great distance before her, toes up, like two little tombstones in shoes.

  She smiled.

  She took a deep breath.

  George and Naomi. Rest in peace.

  Some part of her came awake—alive.

  It was past dawn, but still cool, still quiet. No one else had ventured onto the sands as yet.

  She thought, Where am I?

  Then she knew.

  Clarity came and went.

  Part of it was dream.

  Part of it was life.

  “Good-bye, seals,” she whispered, thinking she waved. In reality she only barely lifted her free hand, seal-like, in the direction of the rocks.

  “Good-bye, birds, good-bye,” she called.

  The sandpipers ran and cajoled, jabbered and ran, and did not hear her.

  No matter.

  “Their legs are as thin as mine,” Naomi thought.

  Where was she? Oh, yes. At Falconridge, packing.

  And then the long night.

  How long?

  All these years.

  All.

  These.

  Years.

  Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.

  All. These.

  Was it not profoundly moving that Bully had loved Letitia?

  Yes, it was.

  Dancing.

  Was it not amazing that her own children had survived?

  Yes. It was. Amazing.

  Was it not incredible that George…

  Now.

  The drift was lifting her forward into the light.

  Now.

  Why was she weeping? Why? This was the end of her pain. Then why the weeping?

  Her dream would tell her. She tried to open-close her eyes. There seemed to be a sound somewhere…of rustling and of voices hushing.

  It was a theater.

  For the first time in her life Naomi believed in the magical and absurd words of her films. The dialogue cards flashed on and off in her wondering, almost dancing mind.

  “I shall abduct you sharp at midnight, madam.”

  (Ladies Please Remove Large Hats.)

  “I am promised to another.”

  (Will the Tsarina of all the Russias please report to the box office.)

  “Does this mean there is hope?”

  (Patrons Will Kindly Refrain From Whispering.)

  “I shall wave my favorite tear-stained handkerchief. Adieu.”

  (Next Week: EAST LYNNE.)

  “As dawn slowly broke in the East…” (Three thousand miles away.)

  (Little Naomi Nola go home.)

  (INTERMISSION)

  “…Good-bye.”

  7:30 a.m.

  They found her, with her hand full of sand, at 7:29 a.m.

  The yellow dog was at her feet and would not move until Ruth came.

  It was B.J. who said it best.

  “It was wrong, somehow, to close her eyes.”

  The Chronicle of

  the Butterfly Trees

  Scientific note: It has already been stated see: The Chronicle of the First Butterfly that Danaüs plexippus, the monarch butterfly, overwinters in California, and that it begins to arrive as early as the first weeks of September.

  All up and down the coast and in some inland areas, colonies of these migrated monarchs cluster in willow groves and stands of cypress. They roost by the hundreds and thousands on orange trees and Monterey pines. When they cluster in these numbers, the trees they have chosen become known as ‘The Butterfly Trees.”

  They settle in Bodego Bay, on the Tiburon Peninsula. They settle at Stinson Beach. They settle at Pacific Grove.

  They extend, in their colonies, from one end of California to the other: Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Cayucos, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, Santa Monica, Redondo, San Pedro, Laguna Beach, San Mateo Point, Oceanside, Merle, Del Mar, La Jolla, False Bay, and San Diego.

  In the autumn of 1938 a dual phenomenon occurred. Although it is quite normal for the butterflies to overwinter in California, it is not at all normal for them to be active at this time. Usually, they do little more than rest in the sun, and occasionally feed. But in 1938, the butterflies were remarkably restless. As though agitated; as though unsure.

  It was a season unlikely ever to be forgotten, for in that year the coastal regions were overwhelmed with monarchs, and this constituted the second phenomenon.

  Many people who have survived these strange events speak of fields, trees, and even houses smothered in blankets of butterflies. They remember babies who suffocated, and helpless elderly persons who choked to death on butterflies. Crops were utterly destroyed—not eaten, but weighted down by monarchs. Tormented sheep and cattle leaped to their deaths into the ocean and into canyons, and in many instances, citizens awoke at night to find their bedroom walls and their blankets seething with rusty bodies. Incidents, too, are remembered of window screens and panes of glass blackened wi
th crawling butterfly bodies—bodies in such stupefying numbers that for the first time within memory in California there were autumn bonfires to equal those of New England; not bonfires of fallen leaves, but of fallen wings.

  However, these things did not happen all at once, or in any one place. As events, they accumulated and grew between the months of November and March. They began with the normal demarcation of the Butterfly Trees and they ended with the horror of the Butterfly Plague.

  In between there were dreadful times and normal times, but the butterflies were never far from anyone’s mind.

  Sunday, November 27th, 1938:

  Topanga Beach

  10:00 a.m.

  In the morning, Adolphus proposed that he, Ruth, and Miss Bonkers should journey to Fringes Bay, thirty miles to the south of Santa Monica, to see the Butterfly Trees.

  At first Ruth did not want to go. She had not left the house since Naomi’s death, except to attend the cremation of her mother’s body, and the longer she had remained indoors, the more difficult the decision became to venture out. But at last, Dolly and Miss Bonkers convinced her that Naomi would have found no fault in this journey, and Ruth relented.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  Without telling Miss Bonkers of her suspected pregnancy, Ruth had retained her to care for her on the pretext that she could not bear to be alone and that she would suffer from depression if the nurse were to leave her. Miss Bonkers, for her part, was only too glad to remain, since she had become attached to the Damarosch clan and could not quite picture herself working for anyone else. She still had hopes of learning how to fly, and even, perhaps, of buying an airplane one day, and there were certainly no better wages nor circumstances to be had in any other situation. So she stayed. Secretly, this pleased Dolly, too, who liked the security of having “a nurse in the family.”

  Ruth wore black—a black suit that had slightly padded shoulders, and black stockings and a black hat, with a small, spotted face veil. Adolphus, feeling the need to make some concession in the direction of mourning, switched from pale-blue clothing to a suit of creamy-white silk with a black arm band. He also went out and bought a black walking stick with an ivory handle in the shape of a ram’s head. A black handkerchief at his wrist completed the ensemble. Miss Bonkers, of course, wore her white uniform and her aviator’s leather helmet and jacket, the gauntleted gloves and the jack boots. As a trio, they were befittingly subdued in garb to appear in public so soon after the death of a loved one.