Kiss of the Butterfly

by James Lyon

  Steven stiffened as the cross brought back vivid memories of Katarina and filled him with conflicting emotions, uncertainty and guilt.

  ‘Do it. Hurry,’ she gasped between kisses, pulling him down on her.

  His head swirled in confusion as his body vibrated with passion. What about his feelings for Katarina? What about his past? Could he stand falling in love and losing again?

  ‘Stefan, please,’ she moaned breathlessly.

  A loud sound came from down the hallway and Steven jumped.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Vesna whispered, panting for air. ‘It’s only Tamara and Bear. She’s a screamer.’

  But the spell had been broken.

  Steven stood up. ‘I have to use the toilet,’ he said. He walked down the hall and locked himself in the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face and looked in the mirror. ‘Get a grip on yourself,’ he said to his reflection.

  When Steven returned to the living room Vesna was sitting on the sofa, nervously smoking a cigarette. She smiled awkwardly, and he smiled back. He walked up to her, reached out both hands and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘I like you Vesna. I like our friendship. But I’m not ready for anything else right now. Please understand. I don’t want to hurt you.’

  She nodded, looking down, unable to meet his gaze.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’

  She shook her head with a mixture of injured pride and unfulfilled passion, still not looking at him, her face shrouded by her long, dark hair.

  There followed an awkward silence.

  Then she looked at him, embarrassment and confusion evident in her moist eyes. She placed her finger to his lips and said ‘I’m sorry. I had too much to drink. Don’t be angry.’

  She then gently took his hand and pulled him down a darkened hallway towards the back bedrooms, treading quietly, holding her finger to her lips, smiling mischievously. Outside the bedroom doors she halted, and motioned for him to listen. From behind one door they heard the furious sounds of Bear and Tamara making love. Vesna smiled, pulled Steven down the hallway, out the front door and into the elevator. Only when the elevator door had closed and they were on their way down, did she begin laughing and didn’t stop until they were on the street.

  A decrepit diesel-spewing Mercedes taxi drove them home. Even though Steven lived in the center, he instructed the driver to take Vesna home first. They sat together awkwardly on the back seat. After a few minutes she turned to him, leaned over and whispered: ‘It’s a crazy world, Stefan. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, if we’ll be dead or alive, or what will happen to us, but I’m glad I met you. I’ll help you find your vampires and I won’t bother you about them anymore. Things are so crazy now that I feel as if the world is coming to an end, that the apocalypse is…’

  He pulled her to him, gave her a hug and held her tightly until they got to her home. Then she jumped out and walked through her gate into the doorway with the horseshoe without looking back.

  * * *

  Interlude V: The Labyrinth: Saturday, 12 January 1983

  The tourists squinted against the glare of the winter sun. They held flashlights in hand and cameras around their necks and chattered excitedly in Japanese as they followed the guide towards a gateway set in the snowy hillside. A long dead hand had engraved the word Minen – German for “Mines” – above the brick arch in precise Gothic letters on a stone tablet. The guide removed a key and unlocked an iron gate.

  ‘Turn on your lights and watch your heads,’ he ordered in accented English. The tourists giggled as they followed him down a dusty brick tunnel, then down steps to another level.

  ‘Today we visit the Great Labyrinth,’ the guide said. ‘Don’t wander off. Several years ago someone got lost and starved to death.’ The guide was uncertain how well they understood.

  He led them down stairwells, sloping corridors, through tunnel after tunnel, showing them the defenses, powder magazines, ventilation shafts, barracks and bunkers. Their questions annoyed him, but he answered them mechanically. They wanted to stop every few paces and take group pictures, which slowed them down. The deeper they descended, the damper it became.

  As they passed a tablet with carefully stenciled Gothic lettering, the guide stopped, turned and addressed them in a bored voice: ‘We are now on the fourth and lowest of the underground galleries, and I will share a mystery with you. This red stone cross embedded in the wall is the only Maltese cross found in the entire fortress – all others are either Latin or Orthodox – and it is the only cross of any type embedded in stone in a wall. As you can see by the letters carved underneath – MDCCXXXII – it dates to 1732. No one knows its purpose.’ After a group photograph he returned to the main passage and continued a few paces downward before stopping at a portion of the floor where the dirt had been scraped back to expose a layer of brick underneath.

  ‘What is it?’ asked one person curiously.

  ‘No one knows, the guide responded. ‘Most of the floors on the fourth level are earthen. This was discovered just recently by accident. The dirt had worn away and a colleague of mine noticed these bricks. It could be a cistern for storing water, or the top of another tunnel. However, no one knows where the entrance is.’

  One of the tourists knelt on top of the bricks and tapped them with his knuckles, noting the gentle curve of the barrel vault. The rest took photographs of him.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ the guide said sternly. ‘The floor is…’

  A loud scraping sound interrupted him in mid-sentence, soft, raspy, as of bricks sliding together. Everyone froze and stopped talking. All shone their lights on the brickwork in the floor.

  At once the bricks collapsed from underneath the tourist, and he plummeted feet first into a gaping hole, crying out as he fell. He grabbed and caught hold of the bricks at the edge of the hole, hanging by both hands. One of the bricks began to dislodge, causing him to seek another handhold, and then that brick too began to come loose, just as the guide caught his arms and held him suspended above the void as more bricks fell away. ‘Help me,’ cried the guide, grunting to sustain the weight of the tourist. Several others rushed to his aid, and gradually they pulled him out of the hole. The rest stood back and took photographs. Yet the brickwork continued to collapse slowly beneath their feet, the hole gradually widening.

  ‘Everybody get back now, it might collapse further,’ the guide shouted. ‘Back! Get back!’ The tourists ran up the tunnel, but the guide stood looking at the hole, now nearly five feet across, shining his flashlight down into the darkness, trying to discern what it held. But he saw nothing. As he edged closer to see into the pit, he heard the scraping noise once again. A single brick fell downward into the darkness, causing him to jump back. For several seconds there was only silence, then the sound of the brick hitting wood, then a splash. And then once again, silence.

  ‘Stay back,’ the guide shouted to the others, who had gathered near the junction of the tunnel with the Maltese cross. ‘A barrel vault relies on the top bricks to hold it together. The entire vault may collapse with us on top of it. We must leave quickly before we’re trapped.’

  They ran through the passages and finally emerged into the crisp snow, breathing deeply, steam pouring from their mouths, expressions of excitement on their faces. The guide breathed a sigh of relief.

  And then they took a group photograph.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE WIDOW’S SUPPER

  Belgrade, Karlovci, Novi Sad: Sunday and Monday, 3-4 May 1992

  It was almost noon when a bleary-eyed Bear came for Steven in a battered red YUGO 45 that had known better days. ‘Is it yours?’ Steven asked as he loaded his suitcase in the trunk. ‘Yeah. I bought it used,’ Bear answered proudly. ‘But it’s registered under my cousin’s name…you know, the army and all that…’

  Steven squeezed into the small front passenger seat, while Tamara and Vesna sat scrunched in back. They smiled and waved lazily at Steven, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
Vesna leaned forward, hugged him passionately and kissed him on the cheek, deliberately grazing his lips with hers as she passed over them. She then leaned back against Tamara and closed her eyes. Steven wasn’t feeling particularly alert, although Vesna’s kiss and anticipation of the trip had energized him. But now they had to find gasoline, no easy task given that all the filling stations were closed because of fuel shortages.

  ‘Why the shortage?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Sanctions,’ Bear replied, rubbing his temples to clear his hangover.

  ‘Yeah, it’s sanctions, the war, the Croats, the Masons,’ Vesna yawned sarcastically from the back seat. ‘The Muslims, the space aliens, the Vatican, the CIA, because of everybody except us. It’s because Woody Woodpecker didn’t report us to the police on time. We never do anything wrong. We’re a heavenly people. Come on, the sanctions are a joke. Slobo is using them to hand out monopolies and enrich his cronies.’

  ‘Seriously, why isn’t there any gas?’ Steven pressed.

  ‘The government does it so that the politicians’ cronies can make money smuggling fuel.’ Vesna said. ‘Then they give kickbacks to the politicians. There’s always gas if you’re willing to pay. Look at all the cars. Does it seem to you there’s a shortage?’

  ‘Slobo keeps prices low so people won’t complain,’ Bear explained. ‘It’s okay if we don’t have gas, just so the gas we don’t have is cheap. Gas costs about 10 cents a liter…that’s all people can afford, but you can’t find it at that price because Slobo can’t afford to subsidize it, so the gas stations run out really fast. I heard there might be some at Autokomanda.’

  A mile-long line of cars at Autokomanda signaled that everyone else in Belgrade had heard the same rumor. Bear asked a man at the head of the line what was going on.

  ‘A fuel truck’s supposed to come today…maybe this evening,’ he said.

  ‘Where do we get gas?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Anywhere.’ Bear answered. ‘But it’ll cost more.’

  They crossed the Danube to the outskirts of Zemun and stopped at the roadside next to a battered old Volkswagen Golf hatchback, its roof lined with plastic jugs and soda bottles of gasoline. The seller stood with a hand-lettered cardboard sign advertising the fuel being sold while puffing on a cigarette, oblivious to the fire hazard. Bear reached an agreement with the man, Steven paid for the gas in Deutsche Marks, and calculated it had cost more than 500 times the official price and at least four times the price in the U.S.

  The girls fell asleep as they drove down a two-lane country road, lined with massive Chestnut trees planted long ago when an emperor had ruled the entire Pannonian Plain from Vienna. Flecks of sparkling sunlight trickled through the leaves, creating a cozy tunnel of shadow and light, green and brown, asphalt and leaves, mixed with white wisps of floating pollen. It made Steven drowsy, and he noticed Bear also seemed to struggle to stay awake. ‘Are you all right? Would you like me to drive?’

  ‘I’m tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’ Bear yawned loudly, his mouth gaping open so wide his head almost disappeared.

  ‘I heard,’ Steven yawned.

  ‘Yeah? Well, loud equals good!’ Bear grinned. The road passed through small towns, each with an old church in the center and Habsburg-era buildings on the main square, and then the trees ended and fields stretched away on either side. It reminded Steven of Iowa: the smell of freshly plowed soil and fertilizer mingling to make the world simple and alive, as earth rejoiced under the rays of a warming sun.

  ‘Is all of Vojvodina flat like this?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Yeah except for Fruska Gora.’ Another town passed as fields turned into rolling hills, and off to the left Steven could see a range of low mountains.

  From the back seat came the sound of snoring. ‘It’s Tamara,’ Bear said. ‘She snores, but so do I, so we cancel each other out.’

  The car puttered gently up and down the hills, insects occasionally splattering against the windshield. Driving dreamily, the old Yugo rattled along at a gentle pace that defied time. ‘Now we’re in the Fruska Gora foothills,’ Bear said. ‘There’s lots of monasteries here.’

  They passed a long column of drab green army trucks towing artillery pieces, nervous-looking recruits looking out the back. ‘That could be me,’ Bear muttered half under his breath. ‘They’re going to fight Slobo’s wars and kill their own brothers. Madness…’

  Vesna had woken up and began to caress Steven’s head with her fingers. She tickled the back of his neck and wrapped both arms around him from behind. He reached up to caress her arms and smiled happily. The countryside became enchanted, each blade of grass, each tree weaving its magic spell just for him. Somehow the war and sanctions disappeared.

  They descended a long slope and found themselves with the Danube on their right and the skeletal spires of a church ahead on their left. ‘That’s unusual,’ Steven commented to Bear.

  ‘Yeah. It’s the cathedral in Sremski Karlovci.’

  Bear gently guided the car off the main road into Sremski Karlovci. They entered the old town center to find time slip backwards as a decaying Austro-Hungarian provincial town arose around them, untouched by modernity, its 18th and 19th century Baroque and neoclassical buildings forming a ring of crumbling neglect around the main square.

  Tamara read from a guidebook and explained the town’s history, its role as the seat of the Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop, the cradle of Serbian learning and the site of the first Serbian Gymnasium, the rough equivalent of a US High School.

  ‘Karlovci has the nickname “Serbian Athens”,’ Tamara said proudly. ‘Our first educated people studied here, our first printing press was here, and it was a cultural center for Habsburg Serbs. When Serbia threw off the Turkish yoke in 1817 educated Serbs left the comfort of the Habsburg Empire, crossed the Sava River and became the first teachers, scribes, clerks and government officials. They wanted to bring our people out of darkness.’

  ‘Tamara, think of all the money you’d make as a tour guide,’ Bear joked. ‘Especially with all the foreign tourists we have now.’ They all laughed.

  They walked up the hill towards the Karlovci Gymnasium, its faded orange and red façade hidden behind tall trees on the west side of the main square. Vesna held Steven’s arm as they walked. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at a square window jutting out from the front of a private home.

  ‘That’s a kibbitz-fenster,’ Vesna answered. ‘It’s unique to Vojvodina. They’re mostly on old German homes, but Serbs also built them. They’re made so you can sit in your house when it’s cold, but look out and see what’s going on in the neighborhood. It’s great for neighborhood gossips.’ Suddenly a mischievous look came over her face. ‘It was also used to search for vampires. When word spread that a vampire was in town, people could stay in the safety of their homes and look up and down the street to see if it was safe to go outside.’

  ‘Really? That’s cool.’ Steven failed to notice the expression on her face. ‘Is there some way to find out more about this? I could use this in my…’

  He turned at the sound of the others laughing. ‘Ha, ha, very funny,’ he said, finally catching the joke.

  Vesna put her arm under his, looked up, gave him an innocent look and batted her eyelashes. ‘I was just teasing, don’t get angry.’

  He mumbled something incoherent, she stuck her tongue out at him and smiled, then hugged him.

  ‘We need to find the bookstore,’ Steven said, pulling the address Ljubovic had given him from his pocket.

  They discovered it behind the Gymnasium in an old Baroque building with a large portal. As they entered, the unfinished bare-wood floors creaked loudly underfoot to announce their presence. As the girls shivered at the sudden drop in temperature, Bear sneezed from the strong smell of maple-flavored tobacco. A small silver-haired man in a sweater closed a book, removed a pipe from his mouth and stood up from behind a desk, squinting at them through wire-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Good day. May I help
you?’ His wizened smile was ageless and could have been anywhere between 40 and 70.

  ‘Yes, I am looking for Danko Niedermeier, the proprietor. Is he here?’ inquired Steven.

  ‘At your service,’ he smiled politely and bowed his head.

  Niedermeier showed them around the bookstore, its shelves crammed with books in every language of Eastern Europe, from Slovak to Russian, Hungarian to German, and Latin to Ancient Greek, arranged haphazardly. Bear and the girls browsed through the titles while Steven introduced himself and mentioned Professor Ljubovic.

  ‘Ah, and how is Miroslav these days? He used to come here frequently and buy books from me. But now with the war, petrol and books are expensive, and Sremski Karlovci is ever farther from Belgrade.’ The proprietor sighed deeply. ‘Now, how may I help you?’

  Steven told him his difficulties finding the Djordjevic book.

  ‘Restricted you say?’ A smile crept over Niedermeier’s face as he stirred the tobacco in his pipe bowl. ‘Hmmm… I didn’t know they still kept books on restricted lists. Well, that will make it interesting. There has never been a book I have not been able to find. I will see what I can do for you.’ He picked up a notebook and scribbled down information about the book. ‘Please leave me your telephone number and I will call you as soon as I come up with something.’ He puffed furiously on the pipe as he attempted to relight it.

  ‘That’s not safe,’ Steven told him. ‘The DB is interested. I’ll call you in a couple of days.’

  ‘The DB and vampires…oh ho ho ho. How strangely appropriate.’ he chuckled softly, blowing large rings of smoke from the pipe. ‘I love a good challenge. A bibliophile’s life is sedate, and there’s nothing like a good search to liven it up. This will be great fun indeed.’ He peered out the window, thought for a while, and then turned to Steven. ‘You have presented me a challenge. Thank you very much.’ He turned away and reached behind the cash register. ‘Perhaps I could interest you in a glass of some lovely Karlovacki Bermet. It is a locally produced wine we are quite proud of.’