The Killing of Butterfly Joe

by Rhidian Brook

  My picture of the father was a distorted, identikit image, like the face on a Wanted Dead or Alive poster made up of blockish segments. Joe’s crazy energy and hope. Isabelle’s cerebral seriousness and calm. Mary’s fire. My idea of him had largely been informed by Edith’s one-eyed rants and Joe’s fantastic pitches. Of course, all were exaggerations; the versions they needed to live with, and I expected the reality to be somewhere between Joe’s fantasy and Edith’s bitter prism. But neither quite worked for the man who stepped up to the lectern. I knew it was Joe’s father before he’d said a word. He had Joe’s scale. He was tanned in a deep way, in a ‘been in the sun for long periods’ way. He had long silver-streaked yellow hair. And for a man who spent his days closely examining the cinnabar-spotted jackets, emerald dew-dropped socks and lily-white striped coats of nature’s best-dressed creatures, the professor had little regard for his own apparel. It looked as though he’d been to a thrift store in the 1970s and bought his entire outfit so as not to have to think about it ever again. No doubt his disregard for human interaction was down to his busy and beautiful inner life. His physical presence was given added intrigue by his limply hanging left arm (the result he’d later explain of rheumatism from sleeping rough in the field too long). He was clearly not only admired, but loved; the applause was not far off rapturous.

  All this induced a nervous foot-tapping in Isabelle. I looked at her looking at her father and thought I could read several diametrically opposed feelings in her expression: pride, regret, possessiveness and loss. Anger, too.

  Like his daughter, the father didn’t seem to need or want approval. He made the clapping stop with three little karate chops and started his talk. He spoke with an unfailing fluidity; no fat on any of it. Unlike his son. There was nothing homey, or hick about him. You immediately got that he was a man of precision. And pedantry. Every word uttered was being weighed, sifted for irregularities. Where Joe was a great big bulldozer of words, churning up the earth of anything that might be used for vocabulary, his father used words like precious drops. He was as precise and cold as a snow crystal. He was serious about what he had to say and there was not sufficient time, you sensed, for him to say what he needed to say. He spoke without notes or stopping for breath for an hour. I was attracted to him from off the bat.

  ‘I was fifty-eight last month. For over half of my fifty-eight years I have been overseas, looking for butterflies. For ten of those fifty-eight years I have been in my study, studying. Or writing. Writing books is a far harder job than crashing through jungle in the foothills of the Andes looking for butterflies. And much less enjoyable. I like to travel and spend as little time in this country as I can. Our culture is hazardous to concentration. We have more entertainers, drug companies, food manufacturers, cars, brands of dogfood than we need. Too many businessmen. Too many preachers. Not enough scientists. However, science is reliant on capitalism’s crumbs. Without its patronage, I’d be unable to do my work and institutions like this would not exist. Perhaps, one day, wealth and learning will not be co-dependent, but until that day we must be grateful. You may think the title of my talk a bit of hyperbole. It’s true that I usually get to write papers with titles like “Milkweed butterflies and their reproduction”. But the title comes from a conviction that these days we are living in what could well be our last – this generation’s last. And sometimes you need to get people’s attention. I wasn’t looking for signs when I became an entomologist. I wanted to find, to collate, to compare. Not predict the future. I am not a star-gazer or sign-reader in any superstitious sense. I was not looking for signs indicating the end of any age. But, as is often the case, it’s when we’re not looking for something that we make a discovery. People looking for signs usually find them. And it’s never just one. And it was while I was busy going about my usual business of studying butterflies that I noticed things. People, that is Homo sapiens, have always looked at butterflies and seen them as signs. A lonely butterfly on the slopes of Mount Fuji is a geisha. Two butterflies signify marital happiness in Java. In Costa Rica, four butterflies are bad luck. In Eastern Congo, butterflies are witches. To the Ancient Greek, a butterfly is psyche – or a spirit. In Madagascar, the butterfly is the creator who flies over the world searching for a place people could live. Butterflies bring dreams in Corsica. In Umbria they come from the tears of the Virgin Mary. Migrating sulphurs are pilgrims on their way to Mecca. In England butterflies steal butter. In Sudan the dye of a butterfly wings make your pubic hair grow strong. A black butterfly signifies death. Hordes of butterflies signify famine in India. White butterflies foretell rainy summers in Maine. Someone in love has butterflies in their belly.’

  I could feel the bench shaking. Isabelle could not sit still, her tension tapped itself out through her foot which I had to stop with my own. All right? I asked with my eyes. But she didn’t reply.

  ‘Now, I confess I once looked down upon such things, with an anthropological smugness, as mere wives’ tales. Indeed, it was because the creature I study lends itself to poetry, to fancy, to metaphor – that I was cautious. But I have in time learned not to dismiss the poetry. Not all folklore is garbage. Indeed, I have found so-called local superstitions to contain highly accurate prediction. When there is a red sky in the morning there is an eighty-seven per cent chance that it will be a wet and stormy day. When hordes of butterflies flock to the Ganges plain it’s because there is a lack of water further south, which suggests precipitation is down. Poetry is after all a deeper seeing. And whilst I am no poet, and I would gladly rid the planet of superstition, I confess that I have come to recognize the deeper seeing in some of these observations. Butterflies, as any leppar will tell you, have always given us clues as to the state of the environment, and if you were to denote a weather report based on current data you’d have to conclude that the world is in a critical condition. Perhaps terminal. In my lifetime I have discovered a hundred and seventy-four new species of butterfly. And moth. Let’s not forget them. But I have witnessed the extinction of two hundred and thirty-five – as of last month. This year the Palos Verdes blue was declared extinct. And although creatures come and go, always have, the extinction rate is increasing. And it’s clear that Homo sapiens are responsible. Butterflies in the Neotropical zones are moving northwards in great numbers, seemingly seeking cooler temperatures. Butterflies are emerging in spring earlier than usual. In the Sierra Nevada in California butterflies are fleeing to a higher elevation to escape warmer temperatures. Those already on the mountain tops had nowhere to go but heaven. So, whilst you might feel that the title of this lecture is a trifle over-dramatic, I’d suggest to you that it’s an understatement. If the butterflies are telling us anything, it is that “we are not long for this world”.’

  I was mesmerized. And not just because I was looking at Joe’s more intellectual precursor. His father held your attention in almost the opposite way Joe held your attention. He spoke with an authoritative gloom underpinned by a vast, glacial knowledge of which you felt sure you were merely seeing the tip. Edith – to be fair – had said he was brilliant; she had grudgingly described him as having a brain too big for his head; but she’d said nothing of him being engaging, charming, witty, humane even. And still less of him being – in a grizzly unkempt way – quite beautiful. Was ever a monster so attractive in both physique and intelligence?

  The audience listened with rapt attentiveness. Joe would have appreciated the delivery of this preacher, if not the theology. I read Isabelle’s fidgeting as stimulation and agitation – and probably antagonism. This was a vision in which man was not the centre of the world, or even its keeper. That the very notion of being the planet’s husband, or having dominion, was a distortion that had led man to think he could do what he wanted with it. The world didn’t need us, he said. It was an icy, clear and brilliantly convincing pitch. When he was done he simply said, ‘Questions?’

  Whilst he fielded these with verve and wit, I thought about Joe. What would he have made of it? What
question would Joe have asked? Of course, I had many. Not many of them entomological in the strictest sense. I was desperate to ask him: why did you leave your wife and children? What really happened twenty years ago?

  Isabelle held the pew in front of her as though about to faint. She had the same nervous tic as her brother, folding one hand into a fist and scratching the back of it with her other hand. What must she be thinking? Was she thinking what I was thinking: look at the man, listen to the man, behold the man? He’s brilliant and he’s your father!

  After the fifth or sixth question, she got up and walked out.

  I found her sitting in Chuick. Her tears could have been for any number of reasons, of course: the shock of seeing her father, the shock of him being magnificent, the shock of the what-might-have-been encounter and having to recalibrate so much of what she had known. To have discovered her father to be so interesting, so beguiling, and leading an interesting and fulfilled life – without her. To realize that her mother had proved to be a false witness.

  ‘I see where you get your good looks and your intelligence,’ I said, unable to find the right thing to say.

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But . . . You should be glad, Iz: your dad is a brilliant man who is great at what he does.’

  ‘Don’t call him that.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I can’t meet him like this.’ Isabelle looked panicked.

  ‘But. I need you to come, Iz. He can’t turn you away if you’re there.’

  Isabelle reached into her bag and produced one of the Freaks. She’d removed it from the main display case and laid it in a glassine envelope along with the original card upon which her father had scrawled the date, name and place some twenty years ago. 03. 11. 67. Morpho wolffii. Los Perdos. Col.

  ‘Do I tell him you’re with me?’

  ‘I’m not ready to meet him.’

  ‘What if he wants to meet you?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘How could he not?’

  ‘I just know, he won’t.’

  ‘OK. I’ll go.’

  * * *

  In the visualization of my heroic mission to lure Shelby Wolff from his lair, I pictured a long drive into the Far North, followed by a canoe ride, a treacherous hike through bear-infested forest to a lonesome lodge where I would find the reclusive, genius scientist, hirsute with hermitry, cantankerous from contactless-ness, his life wrecked by an obsession and unfulfilled ambition, raining abuse at me and chasing me off his land. But the Big Bad Wolff lived a twenty-minute drive from Princeton, in an easily accessed suburban house set back from a manicured lawn, hedged in by rhododendron bushes. The house resembled a house Celeste might have drawn: three windows up, two windows either side of the front door. His car was the car of someone who didn’t care about cars, an oxidized red Datsun Cherry. To get to this monster’s gates, this hero had to cross the road. With its speed bumps and pedestrian crossings, the odds of an unexpected death had been narrowed. There was no impenetrable swamp to cross, and no disorientating mist descended. The greatest danger this hero faced was getting sprayed by a sprinkler on a lawn that someone – perhaps he – had mown. He had a mail box with ‘Wolff. S.’ written in black square lettering on the side. The tidiness of everything was suggestive of someone who lived alone. A lone but contented Wolff.

  I rang the doorbell and set my gaze up, anticipating height. The Freak heavy in my pocket, my calling card if all else failed. Maybe I’d save time and just show it to him straight away – like a police badge. The door opened and a short, dark, oriental face looked up at me. The woman was wearing a black pinafore like a maid in a large, smart hotel.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘May I speak with Professor Wolff?’

  ‘Professor warking.’

  ‘Walking?’

  ‘Warking. Always warking afternoon.’

  ‘Will you tell him it’s urgent. Please.’

  ‘Not disturb.’

  I pulled the Freak from my pocket and held it out to her.

  ‘Please show him this. He will understand. Very important.’

  She looked at the butterfly and shrugged. What was so special about this butterfly, she was thinking.

  ‘You wait.’

  She went inside, closing the door on me, and I stood there thinking that I should have not handed such a precious thing to a total stranger. The minute I waited felt like ten.

  Then Joe’s father appeared. I was temporarily struck dumb. Close up, he was the same scale as his son. Same height, same wingspan. I could see his weathered lines, and the grey peppery flecks in his beard. His reading glasses were pushed up against his hair like an Alice band. He held the freak out in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Isabelle, your daughter.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Rip Van Jones. I apologize for turning up unsolicited but I need to speak to you as a matter of great urgency. It concerns your son, Joe. And the butterflies you caught twenty years ago.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  I almost laughed. ‘No. No he’s very much alive. But . . . he’s in trouble.’

  ‘And why should that be a concern of mine?’

  I did laugh this time. ‘Well. He’s . . . your son. Although . . . I understand the history. No. He’s been arrested for selling some butterflies that you caught – before it was illegal to catch them.’

  The professor had a brain that seemed to be able to think about a number of things at the same time. He looked at the morpho. He looked at his watch. He seemed to be waiting for the second hand to get to the twelve.

  ‘Very well.’

  Inside the house was the distilled essence of neatness and order. Every single object in the room, from the paper knife to the books on the shelves, was in its right place. Even the curtains hung in their predestined folds. If this was an indication of the man’s character, it was superficially easy to see how incompatible he and Edith were. The place would have been an open goal for Joe. Given the choice between Joe’s chaos and his father’s order I know what I’d have taken. The ultra-perfection made me want to flip everything over. I followed him through to a study which had a different kind of order to it, an order perhaps only the professor understood. There were reference books opened and marked – with postcards. Curiously, I couldn’t see a single butterfly anywhere.

  ‘Take a seat unless you prefer to stand.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The professor set the Freak on the desk, moving it an inch to the side. Then back to the spot he’d first set it. He then flipped the hour glass.

  ‘It’s a thirty-minute timer, if you’re wondering. I am currently a hundred and forty-six writing hours in deficit, thanks to speaking engagements, lectures and a three-month trip to Papua New Guinea. Add to that social intercourse and unexpected interruptions, and it all adds up, eating into my precious time, like worms.’

  ‘Or carpet beetles. Arrivenum sarnicus?’

  The professor seemed impressed. ‘Precisely.’

  ‘I’ll not waste another second of it, Professor.’

  ‘It’s Mr. I was stripped of my tenure. But it’s too embarrassing to explain it every time I speak. The world of entomology has more Torquemadas in it than the Catholic Church. And I am a heretic, Mr Jones. A burnable heretic.’

  ‘You have . . . controversial views?’

  ‘I have discovered and described many new species in my life – including this fellow.’ He poked the morpho. ‘Paradoxically, I have discovered many more being destroyed because of the ruthless destruction of the ecosystem. Contemporary man is too besotted with economic trivia to comprehend the consequences of his avarice. In short, we are destroying the planet.’

  ‘Why would you lose your professorship for suggesting that?’

  ‘I boycotted the institution that paid my salary. But let’s stick to the point.’
>
  The timer and the fact that I was looking at a man whose visage contained the imprints of at least two people I knew and who had a lot more than twenty minutes of questions to answer for made it hard for me to get to the point. I had already used up half a teaspoon of sand before I got there.

  ‘I am a friend of your son, Joseph Bosco, and your daughter Isabelle. I have been working for the family business for a few months.’

  ‘What is the business?’

  ‘Um, well, they sell, we sell, common butterflies in glass cases, to gift shops and florists.’

  He widened his eyes.

  I then found myself pitching Joe to his father: ‘Joe’s dream is to make this country into a nation of butterfly lovers. He’s evangelical about it, turning the most indifferent hearts – mine included – into enthusiastic believers. His ambition is to get a butterfly in every home in America. To popularize an interest that has become . . . well, academic. He wants be a kind of Henry Ford of entomology.’

  Shelby Wolff wasn’t buying it.

  ‘I realize that me coming to you may seem inappropriate after all that has gone before.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well. The separation. You know, the . . . upset.’

  ‘What does it have to do with anything?’

  ‘Right. Well. Joe tried to sell some specimens to a collector. They were butterflies that you caught. Rare – Appendix I butterflies. The FWA arrested him. And he has to prove their provenance or go to prison. I understand – from your book – that you keep a written record of every butterfly you’ve ever caught. And I am hoping – for Joe’s sake – that you might have the records of the butterflies in question.’