Kiss of the Butterfly

by James Lyon

  * * *

  Watching the fields rush by through the dirty window, Steven saw no Eucalyptus trees: instead a thick layer of low-lying winter clouds hid the sun. Nor were there any serpents: only snow and lines of telephone poles disappearing into the distance. As he watched the Pannonian plain stretch away until it merged seamlessly with the horizon, it reminded him somehow of looking out over the Pacific, watching the fog banks.

  He thought back to a warm sunny day in mid-October, sitting under the shade of a gnarled Torrey Pine tree on the sandstone cliffs above the beach, barefoot, Katarina forcing him to speak only Serbo-Croatian, refusing to answer in English. The sun, sea and Katarina’s closeness made concentration difficult and the parade of hang-gliders distracted him as they hovered in the updraft from the cliffs.

  ‘Make it easier, talk about yourself. Tell me where you are from and why you study Balkan history.’ She spoke brightly, the Vojvodina dialect gentle on her lips.

  ‘I’m an Air Force brat…. lived all over. My dad’s last post was Hill Air Force Base in Utah, and when he left the service he got a job at Morton-Thiokol working on space shuttle booster rockets.’

  ‘Isn’t that where Mormons live…in Utah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What are they like?’ her face was curious.

  ‘Just like anybody else,’ he grinned. ‘Except the men wear ties and the women wear big hair…think of 1950’s America.’

  ‘So why are you studying Balkan history?’

  ‘I went to the University of Utah on a wrestling scholarship and then to the University of Wisconsin. My history professor was a Serb, and he got me interested in Yugoslavia. I studied language in Zagreb and Dubrovnik for a year, then my professor recommended me to Professor Slatina for graduate work.’

  ‘You wrestled?’ her eyes widened. ‘Did you wear a mask and funny costume like on television?’

  ‘Nope, real wrestling. I was All-State in High School for two years.’

  ‘All-State? What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘It means I was the best in the entire state.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, thoroughly unimpressed.

  ‘So, do you believe in God?’ she changed the topic abruptly.

  ‘Well…you know…’ he looked at his feet, puzzled as to how the conversation had suddenly jumped from wrestling to religion. Why had she brought up religion? ‘I believe there’s a higher power… a god of some sort, but I’m not that big on organized religion.’ He shifted his gaze from his feet to her face and found her eyes, shining greenly. Sitting this close to her wasn’t conducive to contemplating religion. ‘What about you?’ he asked out of curiosity.

  ‘I’m Orthodox,’ she answered matter-of-factly. ‘But it’s my tradition. I don’t really believe in it. If you’re a Serb, you’re supposed to be Orthodox.’

  ‘So, what do you believe in?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmmm, that’s a good question. God. His love. My parents. Family. Marko.’

  ‘Marko? You mean the professor?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a good man. He would never let anything bad happen to me, and I know he has a good heart.’

  ‘What about me?’ Steven grinned, trying to lighten the subject. ‘Do I have a good heart?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘If you didn’t, Marko wouldn’t have chosen you for this trip.’

  He stared at her, puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Do you have faith?’ she asked.

  ‘Do I have faith?’ he repeated, puzzled why she kept steering the conversation towards religion. ‘Well, I mean…’

  He didn’t finish the sentence as he thought back to high school, his mother, a staunch Presbyterian, the arguments around the dinner table as she scolded his father, a relaxed Methodist, that they never should have settled in Utah. His father would respond by defending Mormons, arguing that there was good in everything, but each meal would finish with her angrily declaring: ‘I don’t want my children to become damn Mormons!’ And then in high school, Steven did the unthinkable and converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints against the explicit wishes of his mother. His mother didn’t speak to him for almost six months, while his father tried unsuccessfully to mediate.

  After his freshman year at college, Steven eagerly volunteered to serve a two-year mission for the Mormon Church, took a vow of celibacy for the duration, and was ordained a minister. After two months at the Missionary Training Center, a spiritual boot-camp located next to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, he stepped off the plane in Hamburg, Germany, eager to make converts. Yet two weeks later he was back in Utah, disgraced and shunned.

  At the end of his first week in Hamburg, a woman’s hushed giggles had awoken him during the night. Peering into the sitting room he had seen his half-clad mission companion locked in the embrace of the girl from across the hallway. Steven reported the conduct to the mission president, who ex-communicated Steven’s companion and, uncertain whether to believe Steven’s protestations of innocence, released him from his mission and sent him home. Returning to Utah in disgrace he was shunned at Church, an outcast in the predominantly Mormon community. He soon stopped attending weekly meetings, angered at the hypocrisy and injustice, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, relieved to be in a place with few Mormons. Over time he abandoned the outward trappings of his religion and began drinking coffee, tea and alcohol, taboos for Mormons. He was finished with organized religion.

  Katarina studied Steven’s face with empathy, sensed she had hit a raw nerve, then picked a pine cone from the ground, gently placed it in his palm, startling him from his reverie. As she tenderly closed his fingers around it, one at a time, a current of energy flowed slowly from her fingers to his, through his hand, up his arm to his heart, causing it to skip a beat.

  ‘Stefan, you will find faith. Here is its seed. Nurture it and it will grow. Perhaps you may not have faith in God now, but He has faith in you. I have faith in you and I know you’ll find your own faith.’

  ‘You’re quite the philosopher,’ he grinned at her. She smiled back, he talked about his glory days of high school football, and then she read his palm, which sent tingles up his arm and made him blush.

  As they stood to leave, she reached out, ran her fingers across his left cheek, and then kissed the spot where her fingers had been. He left exhilarated at the increasing closeness between them, and troubled by her questions about faith.

  * * *

  But faith eluded him throughout the autumn and early winter, even though he kept the pine cone on his nightstand. Steven couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed or what it was he said, except that his words had been angry and defiant. Now he was journeying into a strange country gripped in war and madness, and suddenly questions of God and faith seemed more important. ‘Do I have faith?’ he asked his faint reflection in the train window.

  ‘At least it’s stopped snowing,’ he thought as he gazed through the glass at the darkening landscape. He had spent the previous four days in Budapest, and it had snowed much of the time, a contrast to the rain of La Jolla.

  It had been a rainy Saturday back in November when Steven visited Slatina’s house for dinner. The professor’s Spanish style art deco home sat in a pricey La Jolla neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes, with a stunning view of the Pacific, now obscured by the pouring rain. As he parked his ten-year old Toyota Tercel, Steven wondered how Slatina could afford the view and address on a professor’s salary. He ran through torrential rain and wind that lashed the Palm and Torrey Pine trees in the front yard, catching his sleeve on the thorns of a red-berried Hawthorne. Katarina answered the door with a smile, as breathtakingly beautiful as when first they’d met.

  She invited him in, and throughout the rest of the day she and Slatina spoke Serbo-Croatian, forcing Steven to practice the language, encouraging him when he made errors. The three of them prepared the meal, a simple Adriatic dish of large prawns cooked in a spiced tomato sauce
served over pasta, along with a refreshing salad of mozzarella cheese, rucola and sliced tomatoes, mixed with fresh basil leaves, olive oil and a smattering of pesto. They washed it down with a pitcher of juice Steven had squeezed from blood oranges and a bottle of Dalmatian wine. For dessert Slatina had prepared Tiramisu.

  After the meal, Steven and Katarina volunteered to do dishes, while Slatina excused himself to make telephone calls in the study. As the two of them washed the dishes they made small talk, which was difficult for him in Serbo-Croatian, so she ended up doing much of the talking. ‘You only know academic words,’ she said with an accusing look that made her even prettier than usual.

  ‘You must learn more. Today I will teach you some new vocabulary. Serpa - pan. Lonac - pot,’ she held each one up in turn. He dutifully repeated each word after her. As he listened to her pronounce the words, first in Serbo-Croatian, then in English, he watched her lips move and imagined them brushing against his. Her slender fingers and hands dipped the plates in the dishwater, and then she would hand him a dish to dry. He watched her hair fall over her face as she bent over the sink and thought he had never seen a more beautiful girl in his entire life. He stood and stared, only to be startled out of his trance by her words: ‘Daj mi krpu.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Krpa - dishcloth. I am finished. Give me dishcloth so I can dry my hands.’ Her strangely accented English made the words somehow magical. ‘Daj mi viljuske - give me forks,’ she motioned. He watched as she began to dry each one and put them in the silverware drawer. She noticed him staring at her hands and said ‘deterdzent za pranje posudja - dishwashing liquid,’ which caused his heart to skip. Yet he said nothing and kept on drying. ‘Deterdzent za pranje posudja,’ he repeated softly to himself as he looked in her eyes and saw a flicker of something he thought he recognized.

  The dishes done, Katarina grabbed both Steven’s hands, looked in his eyes and kissed him gently on his cheek, smiled and pulled him towards Slatina’s study. ‘Come, the professor’s waiting.’

  They entered a cozy room with overstuffed leather furniture and glass doors looking out on a rain-swept terrace facing the Pacific, its smell of old leather and mildew presenting a sharp contrast with the newness in Slatina’s office. Steven rushed to the bookshelves lining the walls and gaped in awe at the treasure trove of rare Slavic literature: Juraj Krizanic’s 17th century treatise Politika; Mauro Orbini’s 1601 Il regno degli Slavi; Vinko Pribojevic’s 1532 work De origine successionibusque Slavorum; Petar Hektorovic’s 1568 edition of Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje; and Ivan Gundulic’s 1626 edition of Osman.

  ‘Professor, are all these original?’ Steven asked in amazement, envious of the priceless collection of Balkan literature.

  ‘Of course. Family heirlooms,’ Slatina answered with a smile. ‘Our family brought them with us when we fled the communists. Please use care when you handle them.’

  Steven approached a darkened oil portrait of a gaunt monarch with a blonde goatee in a dark green cloak, a St. George cross at his neck. He examined the painting and saw the words O quam misericors est Deus ran from the top of the cross, while the cross-piece bore the words Justus et Pius. A dragon pin fastened the monarch’s cloak, its tail looping underneath its body to wrap back around its neck, forming a circle. The monarch’s sword was sheathed in a scabbard emblazoned with six golden dragons. Steven silently counted the coats of arms painted in the background: twenty one.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Steven asked. ‘I don’t recognize him.’

  ‘Sigismund, King of Hungary, from 1408.’

  ‘Another heirloom?’ Steven asked.

  ‘But of course.’

  Next to it hung a small, oval portrait of an attractive noble woman with high cheekbones, a high forehead and dark eyes, posing in front of a landscape. Steven guessed it to be from the late 17th century.

  The professor watched Steven carefully as he moved excitedly from the bookshelf to the paintings, then back to the bookshelf. He noted Steven’s care and reverence handling the old volumes. He nodded his head in satisfaction at Steven’s enthusiasm and pointed towards a large yellowed map that filled the wall above his desk, a cryptic smile on his face.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked. A hilltop fortress guarded galleys in the harbor of a walled port city next to Latin inscriptions, a winged lion and the word Pharos, 1714. ‘It is my home town, the city of Hvar on the island of Hvar in Dalmatia. Perhaps someday you will visit…but it looks a bit different now…no more galleys…just yachts and tourist hotels.’

  Slatina smiled, then walked to a shelf and removed a bottle filled with dark liquid containing sprigs, grasses and leaves. He opened the cap, sniffed it and took three small shot glasses: ‘May I interest you in a glass of homemade rakija? It is purely medicinal…made from herbs to assist digestion.’ He smiled and filled the glasses, handed one to Katarina and Steven, and then raised his in a toast.

  ‘My friends, thank you for coming and making this meal so pleasant. May there be many more meals such as this one, and may we live to see them in good health and happiness, and with the joy that comes from being surrounded by those we love. And may we also drink to those whom we have loved and who loved us and who cannot be here.’ He looked them each in the eyes as they touched glasses.

  ‘Steven, I have been in contact with the Balkan Ethnographic Trust. They have asked that you conduct research on witches, fairies, and other mythical creatures in what is increasingly becoming the former Yugoslavia. They have asked that I supervise your research, so you will report to me.’

  ‘I may also ask you to undertake some tasks of a personal nature for me. As you know, it has been difficult for me to return with the communists in power. Perhaps time shall change that, but in the meantime I may seek your assistance. I shall give you letters of introduction to professors in Budapest and Belgrade and for the archives in Novi Sad and Belgrade. I have asked my old friend Dr. Ferenc Nagy to do the same for the Budapest archives.’

  ‘Professor, you forget, I don’t know Hungarian.’

  ‘Now Steven, you know that Latin was the official court language throughout most of medieval Europe.’

  I hate Latin, Steven thought. He had struggled with the History program’s Latin requirement.

  Afterwards Slatina had put on a video and Steven sat next to Katarina on a large overstuffed sofa, watching a film about three friends who had fled communist Yugoslavia by rowing across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. During the film Katarina placed her hand in his, gradually leaned against his shoulder and fell asleep. It felt pleasant, and he put his arm around her, letting her head fall against his chest, enjoying an intimacy he had long denied himself. As he did so, recent memories returned to haunt his new feelings.

  From the armchair, Slatina watched from the corner of his eyes, a slight smile on his lips.

  * * *

  Steven shifted uncomfortably against the hard-backed train seat. Professor Slatina’s leather sofa had been far more comfortable. As the telephone poles rushed hypnotically past, Steven wondered if he might find answers here, away from everything that was familiar to him.

  He thought back to his departure from the US and his arrival at the Budapest airport only six days ago. Katarina and Professor Slatina had both seen him off at the San Diego airport the day after Christmas. The departure terminal was crowded with lightly-clad vacationers enjoying San Diego’s winter sun: Steven carried a heavy winter coat and a fur hat in his arms. As he left Professor Slatina hugged him, kissed him once on each cheek and wished him luck. ‘And watch your temper. You’ll be in a strange country that is at war. Injustice will be everywhere. Discipline your emotions’.

  Katarina kissed him three times, once on the right, left and again the right cheek. ‘Serbs kiss three times,’ she whispered to him. And then she kissed him a fourth time, long, passionate, squarely on the lips, sending an electric charge through his body.

  She then fished in the pocket of her jeans and brought out a small wooden cross aff
ixed to a piece of rough twine. Reaching up she placed it around Steven’s neck. ‘This is to you from me and it is for your protection. It’s made from the Hawthorne tree and was blessed at the monastery church of Zica, the blood red church where a piece of the true cross lies. You must wear it around your neck at all times: it’ll protect you from whatever evil you encounter.’

  Overcome by the kiss, Steven spluttered: ‘but…its just superstition…’

  ‘Please do it. For me.’ Her look was earnest. ‘It would mean a lot to me. And maybe one day it may mean something to you. Think of it as a good luck charm, not a religious symbol.’

  He nodded, looking into her eyes, now a dark impenetrable green, wondering what the kiss had meant.

  ‘Hurry, you’ll miss your plane.’ She shoved an envelope in his hand, kissed him again once on the cheek, turned around and walked away. ‘And remember me when you wear it,’ she added as she glanced over her shoulder. Slatina smiled and nodded silently.

  As Steven walked away he realized that his feelings towards Katarina had grown stronger than he wished to admit. Confused, he tenderly touched the cross around his neck as he boarded the airplane.

  Due to the war, flights into Yugoslavia were sporadic, so Steven flew into Budapest, from whence he planned to take a train to Belgrade. He disembarked from the Malev airliner down a metal stairway onto the tarmac – the wind driving snow into his face – and was then herded with the other passengers into a decrepit communist-era terminal labeled Ferihegy, where the centrally-planned heating made him sweat, and the stench of tobacco brought on nausea.

  The border guards had not yet heard that Hungary had cast off the dual yoke of Marx and Moscow and was making its uncertain way towards democracy. Irritated that they had to work between Christmas and New Years, they acted out their aggression on the arriving passengers. Steven noticed that those with Yugoslav passports received the worst treatment. By the time he cleared customs, his head was swimming from cigarette smoke and exhaustion. He took a taxi through the decaying center of Budapest, sucked dry by 45 years of Marxism, to a cheap hotel on the Buda side of the river near Moskva Ter, where he collapsed into a deep sleep.