Butterfly Winter

by W. P. Kinsella

  “We’ll find someone to teach them English,” said the GM.

  The next day a slim, dark woman with gimlet eyes appeared in the clubhouse. She had a hatchet face with lips thin as razor slits. She wore a white-belted raincoat with a cowl that made her look like a spy.

  “Buenos dias,” she said to the boys as they trooped in from practice, where Julio’s sidearm curve had been dropping a full twelve inches, after gliding slowly toward the plate, fat as a full moon.

  The boys, feeling as if they had been in solitary confinement since they left Courteguay, rushed to her and hugged her, babbling in Courteguayan, asking questions, making statements.

  Al Tiller, never blessed with children of his own, took the boys under his wing. In the locker room he made a tent out of blankets and a bat. The three of them stayed long after everyone had left. They played cowboys and Indians. He took them to the zoo. He took them home where his wife cooked them burritos, and where he found they had an insatiable appetite for Popsicles. He would trade them half a Popsicle for proof that they had added a new English word to their vocabulary. He would reward Esteban with a lime Popsicle every time he got a hit. Esteban’s average suddenly began to climb.

  In Courteguay, Julio and Esteban had heard rumors of the radio though they had never heard one in person, had to believe the tales of their father and the Wizard concerning the talking box that told stories. They never even suspected television or the movies.

  On their arrival in America they discovered the television set in their room. When it crackled like walking on sand and the multicolored picture emerged Julio was dumbstruck.

  “I want to live in there,” said Esteban. He watched the set deep into the night, understanding nothing, understanding everything.

  “They never sleep,” he said, when Julio woke deep in the night and found his brother still transfixed in front of the set.

  JULIO WON SIXTEEN GAMES and lost four in his first season, and was named Rookie of the Year in the National League. Esteban batted .196 and was allowed to catch only when Julio pitched. The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South still finished last, the quality of the remainder of the team was so questionable that most of the players would have had trouble playing first string in Triple-A baseball.

  Esteban never learned the skill of giving an interesting interview. He was always indifferent to his accomplishments on the field, not that he was often interviewed about his own accomplishments; usually the press wanted to talk about Julio, and about their being twins. All too often Esteban would want to talk about religious or metaphysical matters. Reporters tended to duck away from him. Julio, on the other hand, never gave a bad interview.

  Soon after he came to the Major Leagues a reporter asked, “As a pitcher what is your greatest asset?”

  “Fast outfielders,” replied Julio.

  Back in San Barnabas, Hector Alvarez Pimental gambled with abandon. The Wizard, who now called himself Cayetano Umberto Salvador Juarez Geraldo Alfredo Jorge Blanco, ordered a second hot air balloon, and began considering running for public office.

  “The United States is not conducive to angels.” The Wizard answered when asked why he did not accompany the twins to America.

  “Treat your success with great respect,” the Wizard told the twins. “Success is like a turtle climbing a mountain, failure is like water coursing down hill.”

  Julio nodded seriously.

  “That is not original,” said Esteban looking up from the book he was reading. “I believe it is a Chinese proverb.”

  “There are no Chinese in Courteguay,” replied the Wizard.

  THE INTERVIEW WAS CONDUCTED in Spanish. It was difficult for her to tell how much English Julio understood. During English interviews, he answered questions in an arm-flailing combination of Spanish, English, and Courteguayan.

  “How aware are you that you are considered a sex symbol by young women everywhere baseball is loved?” the interviewer, a dark-skinned woman of unusual beauty, asked.

  “Everywhere I travel I appreciate the beauty of women,” said Julio enigmatically.

  “You must receive a great deal of attention from young, and not so young women. In the United States you were on the short list for the Sexiest Man Alive. Only the fact that you don’t speak much English probably kept you from winning.”

  “I speak more English than many people might imagine,” Julio said in Spanish.

  “Millions of women would like to know about your first sexual experience. How old were you?”

  Julio smiled his most charming smile, his dimples flashing, his teeth like polished marble.

  “It was in the nursery at the hospital. Not as rumored, did I hop into another crib at the nursery, accepting the invitation of a beautiful girl baby, but it was a nurse who picked me up, held me to her bosom, then to other appropriate places on her body, hence my passion for older women.”

  “I know nothing of your passion for older women, plus, I am told on good authority that you were born at home.”

  “So, you have caught me in a lie,” said Julio. “What is my punishment? What you do not know is that while my brother Esteban has had thousands of ladies, I have remained pure as rain water, saving myself for a beautiful and intelligent woman such as yourself.” He smiled again, meeting her eyes as he did so.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE WIZARD

  “Why in the world do you want to be a priest?” the Wizard asked Esteban, after it became apparent that the boy was serious about his choice of vocation.

  “I wish to bring comfort and solace to those in need,” said Esteban simply.

  “By reinforcing their superstitions?” said the Wizard, for the boy was only five years of age. “Teach them instead about reality. Tell them that there is no comfort in praying to an empty sky. Point out that their saints are frauds. Point out that the Stigmata of San Barnabas, the bleeding heart of the Virgin, was caused by the bishop hiding behind the statue and squeezing pig’s blood through the porous stone on high holidays.”

  “It is good for poor people to have something to believe in,” said Esteban. “A little folk magic makes the nerves glow, gives people hope.”

  “The statue has not bled since the priests have been imprisoned.”

  “It is in mourning for the captive sons and daughters of the church.”

  “We’ll talk another day,” said the Wizard.

  “YOU HAVE GREAT SKILL at baseball, that is close enough to religion,” said the Wizard.

  “Not for me.”

  “All right, what is a priest’s first duty?”

  “To God.”

  “I think not. Everyone’s duty is to man. A priest’s more than anyone’s. God is an excuse for not being able to perform, whether it’s bringing comfort to a troubled mind, or medicine to a sick body, or not keeping your glove on the ground when approaching a ground ball.

  “If priests must be, their duty is to comfort their charges, but to comfort them with truth, not with lies about pie in the sky bye and bye.

  “In America they have electric machines that blot out the unhappy part of the brain. Those machines are the true miracle workers. Priests need to provide forgetfulness. If I were a priest I would sell the stained glass from the windows and the pews from the floors. I would rent the church as a barn and use the money to acquire a wonderful electric machine that would deaden the part of the brain most full of grief or sorrow. Also, I would require my parishioners to attend baseball games on Sunday afternoons.…”

  “And you would require each one to bet ten centavos on the outcome of a game with you as the bookie.”

  “Forgetfulness is better than medicine or meditation, or false forgiveness. During a baseball game, for two or three hours whatever torment is raking the soul is put aside, forgotten. The spectator goes home refreshed; it is like he spent an afternoon beside a clear brook, birds singing, sun shining, flowers blooming. Baseball is redemption,” said the Wizard.

  Esteban occasionally sold p
eanuts in the parking lot of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary Celestial Baseball Palace, hoping to earn enough to buy a Bible printed in Latin. The girl who approached him wore a half dozen leis of waxen orchids about her neck. She wore a red gown and was barefoot. She bought every bag of peanuts Esteban had with him. She piled them up in a little mound and led Esteban away. He followed her as if she was a pied piper; she led him to her home on the beach of Courteguay’s only lake, a hut built of thick living vines and flowers; she fed him, undressed him, kept him for five days. She smelled of nutmeg, and live camellias grew along the headboard of her bed.

  “Now you know,” the woman said to him, though exactly what it was he knew, Esteban was not sure. “From now until forever, wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you love, you will never be able to forget me. I will live within you like that pinpoint of green in the brown iris of your eye.”

  Esteban had never noticed the green dot the size of a pinprick in his right eye.

  This happened during Dr. Noir’s tenure as dictator, and Esteban had to journey outside the San Cristobel city limits—Dr. Noir’s image now appeared in all the mirrors of Courteguay’s two major cities—in order to view himself in a mirror. He took the green dot as a good luck sign, and he hit over .600 in the first twenty games of his next baseball season.

  “Your chronology appears to be wrong,” said the Gringo Journalist, suddenly paying closer attention to the Wizard’s ramblings.

  “Have you forgotten you are in Courteguay?” replied the Wizard.

  NINETEEN

  THE WIZARD

  “Forgive me Father for I have not sinned,” said Esteban, as he entered the makeshift confessional, which consisted of a guava box wired to the outside of the chain-link fence. The bottom of the box had been removed and the open top was covered with black cloth. Those who wished to confess walked up to the fence, ducked down, and poked their head into the cloth-covered guava box; the priest, eventually noticing that there was a hooded body standing outside the fence, approached and listened.

  “If you have not sinned, why are you here?” asked the flea-ridden priest, who knew full well who was in the confessional. Not only could he recognize the stocky body, but he knew the pious young Esteban’s voice from having talked with him almost every day.

  “I commit no sins, Father. I am an observer of human nature. It is no sin to observe.”

  “Perhaps not,” said the priest, “but why come to confession if you are sinless?”

  “I come to ask forgiveness for the sins of others, the sins I observe in my nightly meanderings and daily conversations and observations.”

  “What makes you think the sinners do not confess their own sins to me?”

  “One of the things I know from observing is who comes to confessional and who does not.”

  “So what is it you wish to confess and for whom?”

  “Li, the Korean greengrocer, cheats his customers by pressing a thumb on the scale. He also cheats you, Father, for you have been behind this fence so long you’ve lost touch with prices. The mangos delivered to you here are twice as expensive as in his store.”

  “What else?” The priest sighed wearily.

  “Reynoldo Javier beats his wife, flogging her with the wide leather belt he wears in the cane fields. He also whips his daughters, and does unspeakable things to them before, sometimes during, and after the whippings.”

  “Ah,” muttered the priest.

  “Mrs. Conchita Fernandez, your faithful housekeeper and treasurer of the bingo funds, has been stealing 20 guilermos every bingo night for years, but she gives the stolen money only to the whores on Calle El Divisionado to keep them from degrading themselves for a few hours. The whores consider her gifts a bonus and continue plying their trade.”

  The priest sighed again.

  “There is much more, Padre. Why my own father, Hector.…”

  “No. No. No,” cried the priest. “I hear quite enough of the misery of this town from my own sinners. Sin needs no spies, Esteban.”

  The priest was immediately sorry that he had named the man in the confessional, but Esteban didn’t seem to hear.

  “My own brother, my twin, engages in immoral acts with young women.”

  “I don’t want to hear,” shouted the priest, covering his ears and turning away from the fence.

  ESTEBAN LEARNED TO READ from a Bible supplied by one of the elderly priests who lived behind the chain-link fences at the edge of town. Esteban taught Julio to read.

  “I am more interested in mathematics,” said Julio. “I will need math in order to count the millions I will earn as a pitcher. Being Courteguayan, I will need math to count the women who will fall into my bed.”

  Esteban rolled his eyes toward heaven. He was reading Immanuel Kant. Each afternoon for an hour or so he would question the priests.

  “I feel that the value of Kant’s work, as an instrument of mental discipline, cannot easily be overrated,” he said, quoting from Critique of Pure Reason. He had been reading a faded, falling-apart copy of the book that one of the priests had hidden away from Dr. Noir’s book burners long after the churches had been closed. “I believe today I would like to ask a few questions concerning pure reason as the seat of transcendental illusory appearance.”

  “You are only eight years old,” said the priest.

  “Which means you are not able to answer my questions. How about a simple discussion of opinion, knowledge, and belief? I will ask no questions, we will only speculate.”

  “At your age you should be playing baseball instead of worrying about such weighty matters.”

  “I am about finished with Kant. If you please I would next like the book of Descartes that you have buried beside the outhouse. I wish to meditate on this business of thinking in concepts.”

  The priest shrugged. “What do you think opinion, knowledge and belief have in common?”

  Esteban gave a fifteen-minute answer that left the priest shaking his head in admiration. The priest dug up other hidden books: Science and Moral Priority, The Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Esteban devoured them. He always read between innings at the baseball ground. Julio, on the other hand, watched the stands, the crowds. His followers consisted of little girls his age in communion dresses, teenagers shrieking at his every pitch, to groupies three times his age. The adult women frightened off the first two groups; there were sometimes hair-pulling matches, and occasionally a beribboned woman with a wasp’s waist and overflowing breasts would pull a knife and send her opponent scuttling underneath the stands. The winner would wait, smiling redly, her arm extended to Julio as he appeared in his street clothes after a game.

  “I HAVE A VERY RICH INNER LIFE,” said Esteban. “I do not claim to be clever, but I am methodical and questioning. Always questioning. When, before we were born, Julio and I resided in that gauzy hinterland where I was eternally in the catcher’s crouch, clothed in the tools of ignorance, the ethereal game of catch we played did not entirely hold my interest. I speculated about the world we inhabited, and the other world we would soon inhabit. If Julio had thrown the sidearm curve four times in a row, I would rouse myself from my reveries long enough to demand a fastball, then drift away again.

  “Julio had no such spiritual inclinations. In that way we have always had of communicating, telepathy some would call it, we simply read each other’s thoughts. I did not always understand Julio’s thoughts, though I could read them clearly. He joked with me about sexual things that I would not comprehend for many years, and even then would not find them essential to my life.

  “I must have been five the first time I wandered down the hill to the compound where two or three moth-eaten priests were caged like old bears in a dilapidated zoo.

  “ ‘What do you believe in?’ I asked the priest who approached the fence, where I clung to the chain-link with my small, dirty fingers.

  “ ‘I believe in the salvation of the soul,’ he answered, as if the question had come from a literate adult and not
a peasant child with no religious experience.

  “ ‘Do you read?’ the priest asked.

  “ ‘No one in my family has ever learned to read,’ I replied honestly.

  “ ‘Come here, my child,’ the priest said, himself moving closer to the fence, taking from under his ratty cassock a flat, floppy bible, worn with age, the edges of the pages curled with use.

  “ ‘I will teach you the two most important words in the mortal world. Hereafter you will always be able to say you are capable of reading.’ ”

  “The words I learned that day were Jesus wept.

  “Later on that same priest, Father Leopold, taught me to read, and I taught Julio, sometimes with the help of the Bible, but mostly by what I would call transplants of knowledge. I would think of the knowledge I had acquired and Julio would learn. Julio would do the same for me, pass telepathically to me the word and stories and rumors and gossip he picked up on the streets of San Barnabas. They were not always stories I wanted to hear. Nevertheless, they helped me understand and accept my brother.

  “I remember the first time I held a book in my hands. I remember it the way someone else might recall the first breast they touched, their first kiss.

  “Father Leopold had taken nothing in the way of personal effects with him when he was about to be interned in the compound. He was allowed only one bag, and he chose instead of clothing or food or religious accouterments, to carry a dozen books into exile.

  “ ‘Oh, dear, some of these books are in Latin,’ Father Leopold said, glancing distractedly as them. ‘Well, I will teach you Latin, after you master English, and Spanish.’ Father Leopold was from a place called Poland, where he says the hills and forests are often covered in a kind of frozen rain he calls snow. I knew Father Leopold dealt in miracles, and I left myself open to such things, but waist-high drifts of frozen water were too strange for me to comprehend.