William Vollmann - Butterfly Stories

Once they'd left, he told the photographer he didn't want to see her again. Why, she hadn't wanted to do anything! — and she'd seemed so sorrowful he'd felt like a rapist. What did she expect anyway? — But as soon as he'd conveyed these well-reasoned sentiments, his heart started to ache. He didn't tell the photographer, of course. They rarely talked about those things. But he remembered how she'd hung his trousers neatly over the chair, how she'd ordered his money in neat piles without stealing any, how before leaving she'd taken each of his fingers and pulled it until it made a cracking noise, then bent it back; this was her way of pleasing him, taking care of him.

At the disco that night he didn't see her. He sat and waited while the crowd stridulated. Finally her friend, the photographer's girl, came to the table. She was slick with sweat; she must have been dancing. He asked the English teacher who didn't speak English to ask her where his girl was. The man said: She don't come here today. - Already they were bringing him another girl. He said not right now, thank you. He tried::o find out more, and then there was another girl sitting down by him and he figured he had to buy her a drink so she wouldn't be hurt, and the photographer's girl was biting her lip and stamping her foot, and then his girl came and stood looking on at him and the other girl silently.

He pointed to his girl and traced the usual imaginary bracelet around his wrist. (He didn't even know his girl's name. He'd asked the photographer's girl and she said something that sounded like Pala. He'd tried calling her Pala and she looked at him without recognition.) Finally the other girl got up, carrying her drink, and began to trudge away. He patted her shoulder to let her know that he was sorry, but that seemed to be the wrong thing to do, too. His girl sat down in her place, and he could feel her anger, steady and flame-white in the darkness, almost impersonal.

But that night when he put his closed lips gently on her closed lips, not trying to do anything more because he knew how much Thai and Cambodian women hated kissing, her mouth slowly opened and the tip of her tongue came out.

You got her to french you? laughed the photographer, as the two chauvinists lay at ease, discussing their conquests. - Oh, good! She must have been really repulsed.

Sliding piles of fish empyred the dock, bleeding mouths where heads used to be, heads white and goggle-eyed and wheel-gilled at their new red termini like the undersides of menstruating mushrooms. The heads went into a big aluminum bowl; then the squatting girl with bloody hands and feet started picking through yellow tripe-piles, getting the yellow snakes inside; the dock was red with blood. - Another pile (smooth skinny silver fish) still flapped; the flies were crawling on them before they were even dead.

The rickety boards, which bent underfoot, were laid over a framework of wet knobby peeled sticks. Big fish and small fish flashed in the water-spaces. They were from Siem Reap. The fishers had been feeding them corn for four months. If all went well, they'd make more than a hundred million riels' profit. A big basket of live fish gaped up as sweetly as angels, winged with gills, their lips mumbling a last few water-breaths as their eyes dulled. They stopped shining. The flies were thick on them like clusters of black grapes.

A man tied two live fishes together through the gills with withes. Then he lifted them away.

Boys in dirty white shirts and pants scuttled on the planks. Then they leaped into the water. They began to draw in their nets. A gorgeous leopard-butterfly crowned them. - Why do butterflies love blood? the journalist wondered. The beauty of the butterfly seemed a sort of revenge that left him uncompre-hendingly incredulous.

The glistening brown boys came up from the brown water, squatting on the frames. Fish splashed in the nets. The boys raised the nets a little more. The splashing was loud and furious now. The fish were fighting for their lives. The boys began their work. They grabbed each fish by the tail. If it was still too small they threw it back. That didn't happen often. Usually they whacked it on top of the skull with a fat stick. Then they beat its head against a beam until it was still, and blood came out of its mouth.

The butterfly had settled in a drop of blood, and was drinking.

A man with a notebook wrote numbers. He had a stack of money in his shirt pocket. Another man stood by pressing buttons on his calculator. It was like the Stock Exchange.

The dead fish were in a big basket. Two men slid a pole through, and lifted the pole onto their shoulders, carrying it away down the long wagging double planks onto the land, past the photographer who stood scowling like an evil dream, past the sweating journalist, past the people scraping earth into broad half-shell baskets which they dumped up onto the levée so that the pickman could tamp it down. (Everyone was worried about flooding.) The two men walked on and finally set the basket down in the back of a truck.

In the square wood-walled cells of water, the boys raised their nets until fins broke water. The squatting girl was already chopping off the heads of the other fish with a big cleaver. Her toes were scarlet with blood.

The disco was stifling hot, and everybody mopped their faces with the chemical towelettes that the hostess brought. Waves of stupid light rusted across the walls.

You happy? he asked the English teacher who couldn't speak English.

Good! the other replied. I'm berry excited. .

It was long and low in there with occasional light bulbs. Girls said aaah and ooh and aiee while the crowd swarmed slowly and sweatily. Semen-colored light flickered on men's blue-white shirts and women's baggy silk pajama-pants or dresses; the accustomed smell of a cheap barbershop choked him like the weary Christmas lights. The barmaid brought a tall can of Tiger beer. Hands clutched all around, as if in some drunken dream -

She almost never smiled. Once again that night she traced an invisible bracelet around her wrist, then his. He watched her sleeping. In the middle of the night he pulled her on top of him just to hug her more tightly, and she seemed no heavier than the blanket.

She lay hardly breathing. He could barely hear her heartbeat. Her hands lay folded between her breasts. Her nipples were very long, brown and thin.

In the morning she cracked his finger-joints and toe-joints for him; she stretched and twisted his arms and legs; she slapped him gently all over. Then she made her rendezvous with the mirror, where she stood painting her eyebrows in slow silence. When she was finished he sat her down with his guidebook, which contained a few dictionary pages. He pointed to all the different words for food, pointed to her and then to him. She just sat there. He made motions to indicate the two of them going off together. She followed soundlessly. He locked the door. She came downstairs with him, into the lobby's world of eyes which shot the weak smirk off his face, and the eyes watched in silence. She was behind him on the stairs, creeping slowly down. He dropped the key onto the front desk and she was far behind him. He let her catch up to him a little, not too much because she might not want that, and went out into the street that was filled with even more spies, spectators, jeerers and hostile enviers, and she was farther behind than before. It must be difficult for her to be seen beside him. He concluded that the best thing to do was to walk without looking, which he did for half a block, then sat down at an outdoor restaurant where they brought him tea and bread. She had not come. He drank a few sips of his tea, paid, and walked wearily back. He said to the cigarette vendeuse: You see my friend?