William Vollmann - Butterfly Stories

Noi, I don't have any money left.

No matter me. Mariée say you save your money come looking me; you have good heart -

I can't even buy you out of the bar. How much is it, three hundred bhat?

How much you have?

The journalist turned his pockets inside out. He gave her everything he had: a hundred fifty.

OK, she said. No problem. I love you. .

She paid fifty bhat for the drink he'd bought her. She paid another fifty for the tuk-tuk.

It was raining again. She was very little and frail; she barely came up to his waist. He took off his raincoat and gave it to her. She squeezed his hand. She draped the raincoat around her like a cloak. He put the hood over her.

You have raincoat at home? he said.

No. I am poor.

I give you.

Thank you. It rain Bangkok every day; sometimes I sick. .

They reached the Hotel 38, and Joy was standing on the balcony looking down. She called his name.

Pukki little angry you, she said. She see you. She say she love you. She cry little bit.

I don't think she really does love me, Joy. She hardly knows me.

Oh? OK.

Yep, said the photographer, his hand on Joy's ass, I get the feeling old Porky's used to disappointment.

Joy kept showing skin for the journalist, looking at him over the photographer's shoulder, making sure to herself that she could still cast her spell on him even when he had a new girl. She was only twenty-one (she said), but looked older, though she was still gorgeous. The smoking and drinking were working against her. - You like my girl, Joy? he said. - She shrugged. - You like her I like her OK no problem, she said. (Later she told the photographer that Noi was no good.) — Lying in bed with Noi, the light still on, the butterfly fluttered excitedly knowing that Noi's vulva was going to open up for him like one of those Ayutthaya-style gilded lacquer book cabinets: — gold leaves and birds and leaf-flames on black, every line in black; it was almost as tall and wide as a tomb; and like a tomb the doors could not be opened to just anyone; that was why it was so neutral and pretty like Joy's face, its birds bright and open-beaked, a tense-antennaed butterfly questing below, more leaf-flames, like swirling golden kelp, enclosing a lion, an elephant, dragons, horses dancing, their manes scaled like leaves and butterflies' wings; monkeys clutching at branches, a bird gobbling berries, a bird feeding her little ones; all gold on black, gold on black. . but on one side the gold had been worn half away, as if a black night-fog were streaming down poisonously; it was the same black that had been so beautiful elsewhere. That was her wizened old face, her wrinkled belly. He saw himself, though, as some old white palace with gilded lacquer doorways and windows, the courtyard still and green, his bamboo hearts curving up from a common hillock, his stonewalled pool rippling green. Inside him there was definitely room for Noi. Inside Noi there was room for him.

It was the best yet. Noi let him eat her out to his heart's content and didn't make him use a rubber. It felt so good inside her that he almost went crazy. When she left he was very sorry. - When Joy left, saying goodbye to him forever, she kissed him on the lips. (He'd told her to tell Pukki that he was sorry.) He said to the photographer: Joy really has class. I hope you do marry her. - Aw, yawned the photographer, I doubt I'll see her again. I never cared about her one way or the other.

THE END

The photographer had gone out with Joy, to buy her some shoes with bells on them that she craved; the madam could give the photographer a good price. Probably she was leaning up against his belly on the bar stool right now (supposed the journalist), his hand on her ass which was bathing-suited, hence multicolored like a baboon's, and there'd be a gleam on the shot glasses and the liquidlike ceiling, a shimmer on her silver bracelet and gold earrings; he knew; he'd seen a bar or two by now… He came to the Hotel 38 at the beginning of a rainstorm. The men at the first-floor landing gazed at him with contemptuous hate-filled faces. When he got the key from the office he said kap hum kap, and one of the men sneered kap hum kap falsetto. - Thank you, the journalist said to him wearily. Thank you very much. He climbed the two flights of stairs. When it was cool and damp like this, the sweat still dripped down the back of his neck; the only difference was that he didn't mind it because it wasn't hot sweat. Sometimes a breeze blew so softly that he could not feel any motion from the air, only a faint coolness where the sweat was. In the halls of the Hotel 38 there was never any breeze, of course. He let himself in, turned on the light, closed the door, and sat down on a chair. Giant red ants swarmed on him. He got up. The rain was coming down harder now. He turned off the air conditioner, unhooked the screen window over his bed, and pushed the shutter open. Then he stood there watching the rain spear down, rattling on tin roofs, splashing on streets, waxing and waning with gravel sounds beneath the thunder, making new unsteady vertical bars between the bars of windows, solid bars of rain nailing themselves down to concrete ledges and lower roofs from which they instantly ricocheted and then puddled like softnosed bullets, falling faster and faster now so that the air darkened; a flicker, then it thundered directly overhead. .

The rain continued long after dark. He closed the shutters finally and sat on the unmade bed. One of the photographer's used rubbers was on the floor. A fresh one waited on the bureau, like a fresh battery pack ready to be plugged in. The rain trickled on outside.

The bathroom door, a little ajar, was gripped by claws of humid darkness. The dirty walls, splattered with the blood of squashed bugs, seemed his own walls, his soul's skin and prison. How could he set his butterfly free?

Then he remembered the Benadryl, and smiled.

His balls ached.

Pukki had bought him another Singha beer, the 630 ml size. There was about an inch still left in the brown bottle. It would be warm and flat and thick with spit, but it would do to get the pills down. He lifted the bottle idly, and a cockroach crawled away.

He got up and began to search listlessly through the first aid kit. He felt neither happy nor sad. For a long time he could not even find the Benadryl, but in the end he saw that he was holding the jar in his hand.

After awhile he unscrewed the top and swallowed a capsule dry. It went down fairly easily, and so did the next, but the third one didn't, so he took his first swallow of beer, which was no better than he had expected, but if he could eat whore-pussy this was a cinch. The pills were sticking on the way down, but eventually the bottle was as empty as his heart. In the next room, someone coughed. He lay down on the bed feeling a little sick and stared at the ceiling for awhile; then he got up and turned the light out. It was very dark. He undressed down to his underwear and got under the covers.

Later, when the dark figures bent over him and he didn't know whether he was in hell or whether he'd simply flubbed it, he strained with all his force to utter the magic words: More Benadryl, muttered the journalist.

THE END

Ahem! — Benadryl, you know, is only an antihistam-.ine — not one of those profound and omnipotent benzodiazapines that can stop a man's heart even better than a pretty whore -

No, he didn't really know his drugs, just as he didn't know why all the Cambodian whores had taken Russian trick-names; but when he walked down Haight Street one foggy afternoon after he got back it was all buds? buds? indica buds? get you anything? wide-eyed faces wanting to help him get high; he'd never been offered drugs so many times at once his entire life! — and he thought: Has something about my face changed over there? Since I said yes to so many women, is my face somehow more open orpositive or special or weak?