Butterfly Stories: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

You mind if I hop her while you're in the shower? he said.

  I don't think she'd like that, the journalist said evenly.

  That's a good one, the photographer jeered.

  54

  He made eating motions and she nodded faintly.

  He took her downstairs, this time holding her hand and introducing her to everyone as his girlfriend, but she didn't look anyone in the eye.

  At the restaurant they pretended she wasn't there and asked him what he wanted.

  Ask her, he said.

  They looked at him incredulously.

  He said it again, and she said something.

  Uh, they said, she want, uh, only soup, sir.

  Two soups, please, he said.

  When the soups came she put pepper on his and smiled a little. She picked the meat and noodles out of hers, leaving the broth as people always seemed to do in Cambodia, and then she just sat there. He suddenly wanted to cry.

  He drew an imaginary gold circlet on her wrist, and she nodded.

  They went out, and he was about to take her by the hand to go to the market where he'd seen some gold things for sale, but she took him by the hand and led him to a motorbike and they got on. They traveled far across the city, down shady lanes of coconut palms, past clean white two-storey houses already shuttered against the heat, then a sudden crowded marketplace, then a sidewalk lined with the checker-clothed tables of the cigarette vendeuses, ahead more palm trees receding infinitely ... He gripped her shoulders. Everyone was looking at him as usual. He kept expecting to get used to it; instead, every day it got harder to bear. There was a young soldier in fresh glowing green who lounged in sandals, smoking and talking with a friend sitting on a Honda; the soldier looked up suddenly and locked his eyes on the journalist's face; when the journalist looked back, the soldier was still watching. Two old brown faces leaning close together, smoking Liberation cigarettes over a bicycle, peered round and caught him. They stood up slowly, never looking away. A cyclo driver with veined brown pipestem legs saw him, and there was almost an accident. The journalist never tightened his grip on Vanna's shoulders; he did not want to add to her shame. They vibrated past shady chessboard-floored chambers open to the street, their corrugated doors and grilles retracted to let the last of the morning coolness in, glass-fronted shelves not quite glinting in the dimness, people resting inside with their bare feet up on chairs, schools of child-fish watching TV; and the journalist drank them in almost vindictively because so many had drunk him in; everywhere soldiers and gorgeous-greened police rode slowly on motorbikes, looking both ways.

  At last they reached a video arcade which was also a jewelry store without any jewelry, without anything in the glass case except for a tiny set of scales on top of a cigar box. The Chinese-looking man in the straw hat opened the cigar box and took out three gold bracelets. Vanna gestured to the journalist to choose. He smiled and signed that it was up to her. She smiled a little at him. Already a new crowd was secreting itself, like the swarm of black bees eating the sugar and flour in the market's open bowls ... - Two of the bracelets were slender and lacy. The third was quite heavy and had three blocks that said ABC. That one would obviously be the most expensive. She took that one. He took a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to her. She looked at it as if she'd never seen one before, which she probably hadn't. The man in the straw hat said something to her; the motorbike driver joined in, and they all began to discuss the alphabet bracelet with its every ramification. There was one chair, and she gestured to him to sit down; he gestured to her to do it, but she shook her head. The man in the straw hat gestured to him to sit down; he gave in. The man in the straw hat got a calculator from somewhere and clicked out the figure 30 and said dollah. The journalist nodded. I guess I can give Vanna a lot of change, he thought. They all talked some more. The man in the straw hat clicked out 137. They were all watching him to see what he'd do. When he got out two twenties, everybody but Vanna started to laugh. Were they happy, polite, scornful, or sorry for him? What did it matter? The man in the straw hat brought out his miniature scales and weighed the alphabet bracelet against a weight. Then he switched the pans and did the same thing again. The journalist nodded. Vanna took the bracelet and draped it over her left wrist. He realized that everyone was waiting for him to fasten it for her. He bent down and did it, taking awhile because the catch was very delicate and he was clumsy and nervous with his fat sweaty fingers. The man in the straw hat came to help him, but he waved him away. When he'd finished, he looked up. An old lady was standing at the edge of the crowd. He smiled at her tentatively, and she stared back stonily.

  Then he looked at Vanna. The smile that she gave him was worth everything. And she took his hand in front of them all.

  They got back on the motorbike and went to a bazaar. She paid the driver off with two of the one hundred-riel notes he'd given her last night, and led him into the awninged tunnels. People stared at them and snickered. A woman with her three young children was sitting on a bedframe on the sidewalk, eating rice. When they spied Vanna and the journalist, they forgot their rice. Someone called out: Does you loves her? - She stared ahead proudly; he hoped that their cruelty did not touch her.

  55

  She went to a bluejean stand and held a pair of black ones against herself and then put them back. (Did she want him to buy her something?) She looked at a white blouse and a yellow blouse. She put them back.

  She kept looking at her watch. Had he already used up his hundred thirty-seven dollars' worth of her time? She caught them another motorbike and brought him to a place that looked like a prison. Soldiers were sitting at a table behind a grating, with their pistols lying pointed out. There was a ragged hole in the grating. She put some money in, and a hand reached out and gave her two slips of waste paper with hand-written numbers on them.

  Then he realized that they were going to the movies.

  Taking him by the hand, she guided him upstairs through the molten crowds and bought them fruit. Then they went into the auditorium. It was almost unbearably hot, and the shrill screaming crackling echoing movie was interminable. But he was very happy because she held his hand and snuggled against him, and he could watch her smiling in the dark.

  There was a newsreel about the latest floods. She pointed, held the edge of her hand to her throat like rising water.

  Then she brought him back to the hotel. People lined up on the sidewalks to watch them pass; he longed for one of those Chinese rockets-on-a-string, to clear the landmined path . . .

  Well, what have you been up to? said the photographer, on the bed, nursing his skin rash.

  Got married.

  Oh. Well, I guess that means I'd better clear out. Is an hour enough?

  He still didn't really want to fuck her. He just wanted to be naked next to her, holding her for the last ten minutes or two hours or whatever it would be until she went to work. He stripped and took a shower. While she did the same, he looked for his gonorrhea pills. When she came out he got into bed with her. She pointed to her watch. She had to go soon. She snuggled him for a minute, then pointed to the tube of K-Y jelly. He didn't want to confuse or disappoint her anymore. If that was what she expected, then he'd better do it. She touched his penis, and he squirted the K-Y jelly into her and rolled the rubber on and got ready to mount her, and then something in her face made him start to cry and he went soft inside her and rolled off. - She was not pleased, no two ways about it. After all, it was their honeymoon. She was rubbing him; she wanted him to try again. He put more K-Y jelly inside her and took the rubber off and threw it on the floor. The doctor had said he wouldn't be contagious anymore; sex was only hurting him, not anyone else. As soon as he was inside her, he went soft again. He was crying, and she smiled, looking into his face, trying to cheer him up; he was behaving like a baby. He traced a heart on his chest, pointed from himself to her, and drew a heart between her breasts. She nodded very seriously. He made a motion of two hands joining and she nodded. He said: Yo
u, me go America together . . . and she shook her head. She drew a square on his chest, not a heart, then pointed to a heart-shaped chain of gold that some other man must have given her . . .

  She got up and took a shower. He started to get dressed, too, but she gently motioned him back into bed. She dressed very quickly. She came and sat with him for a moment on the bed, and he pointed to the number eight on his watch and signed to her to come to the hotel then and she nodded and he said: Ah Khun. * - Then she stood up to go. She clasped her hands together goodbye and he was crying and she was waving and kissing her hands to him and she never came back again.

  THE END

  ' Thank you.

  56

  But the end of the story is not the end of the story; that doesn't happen until THE END when they lower you into your pitch-dark grave. The punchline of the closed episode recedes as experience continues, which must be why it's so difficult to learn anything.

  57

  I wonder if she's waiting for me at the disco, the journalist said. Maybe she misunderstood -

  I'm sure she is, drawled the photographer. Yep, she's just sitting around waiting for her knight in shining armor.

  58

  That night he had a dream that he was getting married and everyone was so happy for him; all the street orphans were there drumming and dancing; reformed Stalinists made him fish soup; the cyclo drivers donated their vehicles to serve as chairs . . .

  59

  When he told the photographer a little more about it, the photographer said: She must have thought you were a real pain in the ass.

  60

  They were on the way to the battlefields, although not much was going on there; truth to tell, that was how they liked it. Their official driver (the interpreter assured them that he was not in the secret police) sped importantly down the road in the government car whose insignia meant secret police; every fifteen seconds the driver honked. A woman rode side-saddle on the back of. a motor scooter, holding a basket of green fruit in her lap. The driver honked and the motor scooter skidded aside; the woman almost went flying. The driver gunned it and pulled ahead, drowning her in dust. Down the hot white road where cyclists bore bushy loads of grass, the pale car rocked and bumped. The driver honked, and pedestrians leaped for their lives, scrambling up the dyke of yellow dirt. They passed angle-roofed tin-walled houses on stilts. A naked brown child was fishing in tea-colored water. A water-buffalo sucked its mother. - There are two kinds of land mine, the interpreter was saying. One explodes if you touch it anywhere. The other kind explodes only if you step on it. - The journalist was barely listening. He could not stop remembering the way she'd been looking at him when he started crying and she was trying to cheer him up by smiling and teasing him with her finger though her eyes were sad and distant like always, so he tried to smile back like a good sport even with the tears running out of his eyes and he could not miss her looking at him so searchingly and then she rose to pray her hands ah Uvun and goodbye, gently going out the door.

  You see, an English student had told him (another of his myriad helpful interpreters), sometimes I too like to play with taxi girl. But, you see, I have girlfriend.

  61

  And I think you have already had a taste of Cambodian girls? the interpreter said suddenly.

  Uh huh, said the journalist, thinking: Which spies and busybodies in the lobby didn't report us?

  A poster of a worker, hammer in one hand, gun in the other. Jungle to the left (to the far left); that was where the Khmer Rouge were. More empty orange rivers; a kid barfing out the window of the Red Cross van . . . The journalist rubbed his balls.

  62

  The Chief of Protocol received them on a high porch. He was pleased with the journalist's French. He read their dossiers and clapped a hand to his mouth in mirth.

  Ah, a beautiful girl there - did you remark her? he said in the car.

  No, Monsieur, said the journalist.

  But I believe you do regard them.

  Yes, I do regard them, replied the journalist in the most pompous French that he could muster. For me, every girl in Cambodia is beautiful.

  The Chief of Protocol laughed so hard that he had a coughing fit.

  Clearly it was his job to amuse the Chief of Protocol. - In Phnom Penh, every girl is a delicious banquet, he said.

  Delighted, the Chief of Protocol embraced him.

  What did you tell him? asked the interpreter.

  I said that it is very hot today, said the journalist.

  The Chief of Protocol said something to the interpreter, who giggled.

  Yes, yes, said the interpreter, and Battambang is famed for its lovely roadside flowers.

  Sounds like we'll be gettin' some pussy tonight, said the photographer.

  Well, said the journalist cautiously, that's up to them. But at least we know it's in our file.

  63

  At the expensive restaurant where they had to take the driver, the interpreter and the Chief of Protocol, two hostesses came to sit with the white boys. The journalist tried to give his girl to the Chief of Protocol, who sat constantly at his right hand talking until his ears ached, but no matter how many circumflexes the journalist piled on, the Chief of Protocol said: I am married!

  So am I, said the journalist, kissing the hole on another can of Tiger beer. You see, Monsieur, I married a flower in Phnom Penh.

  A flower - in Phnom Penh! Hee, hee, hee!

  The journalist did not want a Battambang flower. He wanted Vanna. But he did not want to disappoint or humiliate the hostess. And he did not want to make the Cambodian officials think less of him. It seemed so important to them . . .

  The woman smiled at him shyly. He smiled back. He could think of nothing to say to her. He was exhausted.

  Tell her I'm in the KGB, he said. Tell her I want to take her to Russia with me. My name is Communist Number One.

  She says, she don't want to go with Russian. She afraid. She go your friend.

  So the photographer got two girls that night. The journalist was relieved. He yawned and blew his nose. The Chief of Protocol was very sorry for him. It all worked out well: the journalist with a good night's sleep, the driver and interpreter well amused, the photographer with his girls grinning vanilla-teethed, nodding on his shoulder, the Chief of Protocol grinning hilariously in the dark doorway behind . . .

  64

  Riding atop the jolting Soviet tank in the rain, he saluted the staring or laughing girls, kissing his hand to them, waving to the kids, the old men and ladies, tossing ten-riel notes down into the road like bonbons (the photographer and the driver did the same; the driver was dressed in a black uniform today, and wore his Russian pistol especially for the occasion); and the interpreter and the Chief of Protocol and the soldiers with their upraised machine guns watched the journalist, grinning, and the journalist saluted for hours as they rolled back in from the tame battlefield. He was utterly and completely happy. In Cambodia he could never disappear; now at least when people gawked at him they saw someone comic and grand, a man with a private army who gave them money; he felt like God - a loving God, moreover; he loved everyone he saluted; he wanted to love the whole world, which (it now seemed to him) was all he'd ever wanted when he had whores; his balls still felt funny; all he wanted to do with people was hug them and kiss them and give them money. His forehead glowing with sunburn and three beers, he sat against the spare tire, blessing everyone like the Pope, nodding to his elders, wishing that his lordliness would never end. Most of the time they waved back. Girls on bicycles giggled to each other. Children saluted back with slow smiles. Skinny white-grinning men waved back. These gratifying demonstrations almost balanced those other stares they'd given him and Vanna ... He ached to hold her. Since he was drunk and only a flightless butterfly, he squeezed the spare tire instead.

  65

  The Hotel Victoire, which just after the liberation they used to call the Hotel Lavatoire, was a very good hotel, possibly the world's best. It had run
ning water, electricity, air conditioning, a toilet and screen windows. No matter that none of these worked. Sleeping there was like sleeping in a sweltering locker room. It cost two thousand a night for the photographer's and the journalist's room, and five hundred for the driver's and the interpreter's room. This infuriated the photographer, but the journalist said: Look on the bright side. We're paying for everything. At least we don't have to pay twenty bucks a night for their room, too. - He went up to the room, and the interpreter told him that it was his turn to get a girl that night.

  I only want to salute her, he said.

  Excuse me? said the interpreter.

  OK, I'll make her happy, he sighed.

  His fever was getting worse. Even his lips felt sunburned. He picked a cunt-hair out of the K-Y jelly and slathered some on his forehead . . .

  He went for a walk in the rain to cool down; everyone laughed at him. After awhile he came back drenched, and a dirty gentle little boy came into the lobby (which was otherwise utterly empty) to slap palms with him and smile. The journalist had a nasty cough from Vanna. - Every time you get a new whore, you get a new disease! growled the photographer, shaking his head. - The boy stood very sincerely wiggling the sheets of glass that lay evenly spaced upon the long white-clothed table that no one used, and the boy hummed to himself and said unknown words, yawning and smiling and stretching his neck; he sat down in an adjoining chair, and when the journalist winked at him the boy winked back, singing and holding his knees. Outside the big fancy windows it was grey and dripping and peaceful. The palm-trees seemed to stretch, drinking in cool mist. - He went out again and saluted a line of white cows running in the rain, necks down, halters dragging, ears flapping; somehow it wasn't the same . . .