William Vollmann - Butterfly Stories

There was a Peruvian lady who was working with the flying court while her divorce pended (the notion of a flying court always made the husband think of red-buttocked gibbous judges leaping through rings of fire, landing perilously on legal tightropes which they clenched between their hairy toes to pivot their bodies three hundred and sixty degrees through the air, to the accompaniment of stormy cheers; from this conception it was an easy progression to imagining sexual trapeze acts with the court stenographers, which the Peruvian lady was), and just for amusement's sake he started calling her his wife. She was warm and plump; how good it would be to snuggle her while the wind slavered outside. .

But I am married! she cried in indignation.

Exactly, he said. To me.

Everyone else laughed, and she pretended to pout. - Eh, what will you give me, if I am to be your wife?

He still had oodles of Cambodian money, which he carried around with him everywhere. He started swirling the almost worthless notes down around her by the handfuls, and everyone had a good time. .

On the day he had to leave he went into her room to say goodbye and she said: Wait! I have no clothes! I am undressed for the shower!

Well, that's perfect, he said.

She laughed, but kept the door closed until she'd put her dress on.

Can I kiss you goodbye?

Kiss me where?

On the mouth.

Her roommate came in just then, and the Peruvian lady said: He wants to kiss me on the mouth!

Pig! laughed the other girl.

Okay, okay, just one time on the mouth. You sure you don't have herpes?

I'm sure.

They kissed a few times. The husband was really enjoying himself.

But you know I am really married, said the Peruvian girl. I am not yet divorced. And you?

The same.

Why is it no good with your wife? I think you are very intelligent. Is that true?

I guess so.

And your wife, is she intelligent?

Very intelligent.

Ah, then that is why. You are intelligent, so you need a stupid girl.

Maybe you're right, said the husband thoughtfully. Maybe that's what I need.

I think so — husband, she laughed.

Well, wife, you're always right.

And now I must get undressed again. No, you can't stay. But here is my telephone number in Jeune-Lorette. Call me sometime. . when my husband isn't around.

At the co-op hotel in Grise Fiord he met a white man who was almost bald; what hair he had left was bluish-white like the snow outside. The man said little at dinner, but from what he did say the husband began to understand that he was wise and good. The husband believed in wise men because he had to. He was desperate for someone to explain to him what he should do, and why. Having advanced beyond any picayune hopes of those paid mirrors, psychiatrists, he'd been torturing his friends with questions for years every time any of them showed signs of wisdom. (That was when he still allowed himself to mention Vanna directly to others; now the most he could do would be to mention the Inuk girl.) A year or two ago, he'd nerved himself up to go to a priest, thinking that if he could only be made to BELIEVE he'd gladly COMMIT or RENOUNCE; he was with his other wife then and they were so unhappy together because he'd done everything possible and she'd done the same and they'd both given until they were exhausted and couldn't give anymore and were screaming at each other hating each other so much; these arguments had always come out of the blue, so at first he'd been stunned by them, and then after awhile he was continually waiting for them — oh, how he needed wise men! — maybe the priest could help… but just as he walked into the church he saw a newsletter with photos of the priest's henchmen blockading abortion clinics, and he came to his senses. After that he'd given up on wise men for awhile. But as he spoke with the old man, he began to feel a thrilling sense that this had been meant to happen, that this person had been sent to him to help him, if he had the courage and intelligence to ask the right questions. Once he'd told a French-Canadian friend how he'd been lost and hallucinating in the snow and had seen angels and the woman said: Mon Dieu! and he said: But I think they were all one angel who was meant to help me; I think maybe I saw my guardian angel, because she told me what to do and I did it and I lived! — and she said in a low voice of utter belief: Yes, I think so. - This wise man, then, was his guardian angel. The husband knew it. And he knew that this time he'd not be tested cruelly beyond his faith; the answers he'd receive would make sense in and of themselves.

The wise man said that he had an Inuk wife who was twenty years younger than he. They were ecstatic together. She was the granddaughter of one of Baffin Island's last shamans. The shaman had never said anything against his enemies, and never seemed to do anything against them, but by some coincidence they all came to horrible ends. The wise man's wife had inherited some of his power. Whenever the wise man started thinking about how he was ready for a cigarette or a cup of coffee, before he'd even said anything or started to move, his dear wife would be handing it to him. One night he was dreaming beside her and he felt her somewhere very near and when he opened his eyes he was speaking Inuktitut to her even though he didn't know that language. Another time he was dreaming of sailing and his wife shook him awake quite angrily and said: Get out of my dreams! and he said: What was I dreaming of? and she said: Sailing. . and he shivered because she was so very special and strange. Whenever he went anywhere on a trip, the phone would be ringing when he walked into the hotel; somehow she'd know that he had just arrived and would be calling to say she loved him.

I almost married an Inuk girl, too, the husband said. But she kept sniffing too much gasoline. It never would have worked.

The wise man smiled gently and said to him in the voice of truth: You made a mistake.

After that he was on assignment in Hall Beach — which is to say eight million frozen tussocks away from the wise man — and it was exactly as cold as Phnom Penh had been hot and his friend Jeremy started swearing because the pilot light had gone off; they felt the winter instantly even through the triple thick walls. They sat drinking Scotch. Jeremy said that the first time he'd been unfaithful to his Inuk wife he'd gone to a dance and picked up a Greenlandic girl, a friend of his wife's. He'd done it with her once and then she called him and so he did it with her again. Then she called him a second time, and he said he wasn't interested. Jeremy told the husband proudly that he'd never enjoyed it, had only done it for revenge against his wife; therefore he'd been extremely moral. The husband nodded and drank his Scotch.

Well, Jeremy, what was the reason you did it?

My wife, you see — I still don't like to talk about it. I'd moved in with her, aye? And we were getting married; everything looked good. Then I found this letter she'd been hiding. Something about it, just the way those hooks and symbols lay on the page, well, I didn't like the look of it. So I got it translated. And it was a love letter. It talked about all the things he did with her. And I'd been drinking with the bastard the same night! I went over to his house and he was asleep. I told him that I was going to kill him. I smashed a few things in there and whacked him a couple of times, and then he apologized, aye? But I never could quite make up with the wife. She's such a witch sometimes! That was around the time she'd started getting cold to me, you know what I mean? At night she always brought one of the kids into bed between us so she wouldn't have to do anything. That was when I started screwing around. And I've done it with ten or twenty girls now — some real young ones, too, I'll tell you! — and I am proud to tell you that I've never enjoyed it once! I'm a man of principle! But I don't know what to do about this new AIDS business. .