Chapter One from the Iron Butterfly
By Richard Lutman
The Chinese philosopher Shooing Chou used the butterfly to illustrate more than one of his teachings. For example, in one story to describe the happiness which goes with marriage, he tells of a young student who, while pursuing a butterfly, unwittingly entered the garden of a retired magistrate. There he saw the daughter of the house. So enchanted was he by her grace and beauty that he left determined to make good and marry her. His zeal and hard work were rewarded for not only did he obtain everlasting happiness, he rose to high position.
1
Summer 2000
Did I knowingly choose to enter Gloria’s garden and the warm, dark, hollow spaces she offers? Or is it something else that draws me? She dances by my fingertips, free to swirl against the wind like a fragile butterfly. If I sit quietly, as it were holding out my hand, she may come and perch, hover, dip down and light, with a flutter of wings. I imagine I have finally caught her, body quivering between my fingers, her silent screams disappear into the late day shadows of bamboo. I must take her with me as I find my way back to the moment of entry, to discover the path where everything went wrong, if that is what really happened.
I am no longer sure of these words and the shifting memories that are the record of my soul and my time on Centipede Island.
****
The first time I came to Centipede Island, five years ago was late at night from the detention center dock on the neighboring island of Lantau. The last of the ferries had stopped running for the night and other arrangements had been made for me to be met and taken to the island.
The taxi driver didn’t want to bring me there because he was afraid that one of the prisoners might escape and attack him. I gave him an extra twenty U.S. dollars, which satisfied him. The lights were on in the stark white buildings, but I didn’t see anyone in the rooms. The main road was empty, very clean and well lighted. The driver dropped me off at the last building by a small sandy cove, quickly unloaded my bags and sped off as I made my way to the long cement pier that jutted out into the dark shimmer of water. I heard the throb of an engine and saw a boat, silhouetted by the center’s lights, glide toward me. A figure ran forward and tossed a line around a piling, then hurriedly motioned for me to board. A shadow grabbed my bags. I jumped on, nearly losing my balance. No one said anything. I found a place to stand near the stern.
The man in the bow pushed off and the water churned as the boat backed gracefully away. Plankton glowed and flashed like tiny jewels on the surface of the night sea as they tumbled eerily in the wake of the launch.
Leaning over the side it seemed to me that I was looking down into an endless pit. I stepped back into the shadows and felt my stomach knot. I wondered what lay ahead of me on the island I had never heard of before and about Leighton its overseer.
The launch picked up speed and passed several island villages, their lights reflecting off the flat black sea. Moths and stray butterflies all doomed because they had strayed too far from land, flickered across the deck and battered themselves against the launch’s lights.
One of the crewmen pointed and I saw the dark irregular mass of Centipede Island looming ahead at once both my future and my past seemed to merge. Whether or not I’d consciously meant for this to happen, this would be the place where I’d make my stand. Perhaps I could save the island and myself from a lifetime filled with failures and disappointments. I hadn’t realized until now as the boat thrust away from the pier how much was to be pinned on the wings of butterflies.
The launch slowed as it passed the marble statue of a Chinese woman in flowing robes that guarded the entrance of the small, rocky harbor. A large white porcelain vase full of joss sticks had been placed at the statue’s feet. In an island legend the statue was heard singing in a March fog to warn a passing fishing boat of the rocks ahead. One night after I’d arrived, Leighton told me he tried to record the strange moaning sounds that came from the harbor, but the tape machine jammed. He never attempted the taping again.
The launch made a long slow curve and thumped against the tires on the pier. Two men jumped out and secured it as the engine stopped.
A man stood by a yellow Land Rover watching me as I stepped onto the dock. He was lean and tanned in his sixties, wore dark glasses and leather sandals. His tan shorts and light colored shirt were crisply pressed like that of a military officer.
“I’m Leighton,” he said. “Did you have a good ride?”
“Uneventful.”
“That’s the best way. I apologize for the unusual way you were met. But, at least you are here now.”
He firmly shook my hand.
“I’ve heard of your father. Forensics is a new field for me, not exactly my cup of tea, but sounds like something I should know more about. You must tell me more about him, he never said much in his correspondence. You will be staying in the hill bungalow. It’s used for our special guests who like their privacy. I hope it will be all right.”
“I’m sure it will be just fine.”
“There are lots of butterflies here. Your father said you will sort them out. It’s important, you see. The bloody Hong Kong government has designated this as one of the islands to be destroyed and used as landfill. The records of the butterflies that you catch here will be very helpful. More evidence about the history of the island and why it should be left alone. I hope you are up to the task.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Come by for a drink later if you feel like it.”
“Thank you.”
In the darkness above the bungalow I heard crickets and the growls of dogs.
Summer 2000
****
As I sat at the large white table against the back wall of the bungalow’s main room I thought about the summers I’d spent on this island. Yet after five years of collecting all that mattered was Gloria and the image of her that haunted me wherever I went. My dreams of catching a butterfly no one else had and saving the island seemed far away. I felt the weight of my existence. I had failed at life, failed with the butterflies I no longer felt like cataloging and failed with Gloria because I couldn’t let her go. Alone in the Vermont winters I had searched the internet for the Asian correspondence organizations.
“Anchee. Twenty-one. Catholic. College educated. Likes music. Am loving and caring. Seek correspondence with man over twenty-five.”
In the picture she was smiling.
“Aimee. Eighteen. Studies composition. Wants Christian gentleman.”
“Li An. Twenty-four. Divorced. Catholic. One child.”
“Blossom.”
What would their love be like? Would they wash my feet before I took to the island’s trails and give me sticky rice to take with me?
What will their fingers be like across my skin?
Do they have her laugh? Her eyes? Her skin?
The Filipino I looked at had her head tilted, hair covering one eye.
“Marli. Eighteen.”
“Vivi. Twenty-three. College graduate. Hairdresser.
The perfume of the island rose like her ghost. How many times had I called out her name from the depths of my sleep? Only the darkness knew. I closed my eyes.
For a moment she was there, hair spread fragrant across the pillow. I reached out my hands for her like someone in quicksand. She knelt arms outstretched, the words she said lost to me as I sank into the sandy depths.
Gloria. Gloria. Gloria.
Lover, friend, or enemy nothing was special or unique when it came to love. Yet we would do it all again for that certain attraction a woman had. For each the attraction was different. For some it was laughter, the voice, the smell of cigarettes, or the way a woman’s perfume mingled pungent and sour sweet with her sweat. For others it was the eyes, the hair, or the portent of a shape leaning from a darkened doorway. Such simple things to stake one’s soul on.
For me, it had been Gloria’s high cheekbones, her long black hair, the patch over her right eye, and the way she always stood or sat erect with that half a smile on her pink lips as if hinting of something she wanted to tell me, but never would. Or perhaps it was her small silky hands seeking me out across the bed, or her smell like a rich and redolent decay that made me drunk. Leighton knew how she lost the eye, but refused to tell me. Perhaps it was the only way for him to stay connected to her. I knew they had slept together, perhaps more than once. What happened between them was none of my business, Gloria made that clear.
I first met her in 1995 when she was fifteen and I was forty-seven. I’d been on the island less than a day when she burst into the bungalow unannounced, her dark hair swinging wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and smelling like a freshly broken stalk.
“I bring this,” she had said.
She opened her hands and a Grassy Yellow shot upwards, then bounced off the tall screen doors.
She stood looking at me with a gentle curiosity, her head tilted.
“American?”
“Yes,” I said.
“New York?”
“Vermont.”
She frowned.
I tore a page from my journal and drew two Xs, one near the top of the page, the other in the middle.
“Vermont. New York,” I said, pointing at the marks I’d made.
“Vermon’.” She shook her head. “Disneyland?”
I put another X on the paper below the first two. She studied the paper. Then satisfied, she turned back to me.
“Gloria,” she said, extending her hand. “You are Wilson. Wife?”
“My wife left me.”
“You beat?”
“No,” I said.
“Why leave?”
“I don’t know. It was one of those things that happens.”
“Stupid. Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“That good. Maybe I be girlfriend. Show off. You feel good. Gloria know.”
“You look like a pirate,” I said.
She laughed.
“Very bad pirate,” she said. “Kill and rob.”
I smiled.
“I kill and rob you, too.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“You stupid.”
“Do you live here?” I said.
“Too many snakes.”
“Thank you for the butterfly.”
“Leeton said to give you butterfly. Maybe much alone. I bring more. Leeton say it OK. OK bring much butterfly. Save island. Be famous man.”
She turned and walked quickly out the door.
The room felt empty. That night I’d dreamt the scene over and over.
The next morning her traces were still there and I knew that I had fallen in love. For the first time in years I felt numbing stabs of excitement when I thought about her. I would open my heart for whatever she offered not caring about what might happen.
Gloria’s family first came to the New Territories to escape the Communist regime. After that, her family moved frequently until they settled in Sai Kung. That much Leighton told me.
Every Wednesday, Han, a gold merchant from Hong Kong, sent them a bag of rice and some sugar sticks. She first met Han when she was thirteen.
Gloria had been sent to the Catholic school on a nearby island where she was teased mercilessly about her dead eye. She left after one month. I’d been there four years ago. After Gloria disappeared one morning and didn’t come back the next day I was desperate without her and decided to go to a place I knew she had been. Perhaps she had left more of her traces.
The yellow church next to her school visible from the main pathway through the mangrove swamps, seemed out of place in the nearly deserted village where for two weeks every summer the Girl Guides camped in the brick barracks half a mile away. During bad weather the inlet was full of colored junks seeking shelter. At low tide old women scurried like crabs across the rippled flats to gather shellfish.
The peaks of the mountains to the west seemed to be forever covered in a thick gray mist. Dogs on the nearby fish farm barked and fought incessantly. How their screams must have shattered the quiet of the classrooms.
2
Summer 2000
I couldn’t be on the island or in the bungalow without thinking about Gloria. If she was here now I would explain to her how the sea smelled and looked different than I remembered it, a sickly blue-brown with oily yellow waves that rushed outward from the blunt green bow of the motor launch. I used to joke that the longest part of my journey was the short twenty minute ride to Centipede Island which looked barren and imposing, unfit for the life that resonated there.
A few feet away a dead sea snake rolled like a fat white rope on the glassy slopes of the waves. South toward the Soko islands a black kite hovered tentatively over the surface as if undecided whether to break the crust for the pale and bloated carrion that floated just underneath.
Like so many of the other islands I knew the thick, tangled foliage of Centipede Island stopped abruptly just above the steep and gnarled granite cliffs. The island’s two main roads twisted past small valleys and steep ravines. A small radar installation had been built just below the island’s highest point. The island’s peculiar festering, greenhouse heat reached me and I felt my strength ebb. For a moment I wanted to return to Middle Island behind me where I could lose myself in its bustling stalls, restaurants, bicycles and narrow criss-crossing streets not having to face her.
Each time I saw her again was like the first time we’d met in the bungalow. Only this year I felt differently. After the excitement I became tired of the way she would disappear for a few days at a time then reappear as if nothing had happened. I was tiring of her secrets that had once made her so mysterious and desirable.
The launch’s odorless yellow waves left a ragged trail of soapy foam. I took a last look at the buildings as they disappeared behind the massive stone breakwater where the lone figure of a woman fished from a small skiff. Her head was bent low over the side as she stared into the water. The launch rolled sluggishly and I felt the vinegary aftertaste of the fish and chips I had for lunch coat the back of my throat. I liked the chips because they dissolved all earthy and hot, the way that Gloria tasted and the way I imagined the soil of Centipede Island would feel against my tongue.
Li, the thinnest of the crew, who always carried an extra pack of Marlboros tucked into the back of his tight green bathing suit, took the butterfly net from me, swooshed it in the air, and then dropped it over the head of Charlie O, who knew better than to resist. He fell to his knees as if captured.
I laughed with them, Charlie O with his toothless grin and coughing splutter, and the others because it was expected and I was to be a guest on their island. Last year one of them gave me a large blue and green swallowtail I’d never seen before. The occasion had been very solemn. The group of three, each wearing a different colored bathing suit, stood silently in front of the bungalow. The man in the center who identified himself as Mr. Mack, held out a large jar with air holes punched in the top of the lid. In it the butterfly lay on its side. I took the jar and nodded my head in a gesture of thanks. I wanted to know where it had been caught. The three men chattered quickly for a moment then one gestured for me to follow. They headed down the hill toward the abandoned soccer field. At one end of it was a basketball backboard with a tattered net. The man pointed at a bush swollen with yellow lantana. Had anyone seen anymore like this I asked? Mr. Mack told me that three years ago one had landed on the rim of a juice glass to suck at the sticky residue. The fruit grown on the island that year had been the most plentiful and sweetest ever.
Several butterflies danced intricately over the blossoms ahead of us. Sensing our arrival they leaped into the air and disappeared into the trees. I turned back to thank the men and saw that they were already climbing the steep stairs to the main road.
I stood for a moment in the fierce sun, smelling the stagnant damp of the muddy field under my feet. Somewhere up the hill I heard excited voices. Then there was silence and I was alone with a butterfly net in the universe of the soccer field.
The distinctive rustle of the colored wings whirling about the flowers was like delicate paper in the light, warm wind. I crouched low inhaled the perfume of the flowers and the spicy dust of the tapestried wings. Two butterflies chased each other toward the sun, then dove back to hover once more over the petals, oblivious of my bent and ugly shape.
****
As the launch approached Centipede Island, I smelled rotting fish and the familiar hot cement of the crumbling dock. Piles of trash were being burned on the beach, which was littered with white shell-like bits of flotsam. Two figures drifted in and out of the blue smoke that rose up from the sinewy ribbons of yellow flame. The smoke, caught by the thick bulge of a hill, spread through the bushes. Two years ago Leighton, very drunk and lucid, had pushed his way through a similar smoky fog to show me four square holes in the rock below his apartment.
“Now there was a life,” he said as he poked at the holes with his carved bamboo walking stick. “Just imagine the patience and dedication of that race of people who made those holes. A civilization poignantly summed forever in four holes in a hard, hot rock that faces a gray sea. Were they the remains of a navigation aid for the pirates who terrorized the coast? Or perhaps something beyond our understanding. No one seems to know, or wants to know.
“When I showed them to Gloria she was terrified and hid her face. I didn’t see her again for several weeks. The day she returned it was very hot and the generators failed. It took five hours to restore power. Later, we had fish, rice and wine to celebrate. She seemed to be very happy and asked for more. She said the fish was cooked just the way it should be.”
For a moment his body slumped back into the fog. Then he shook himself free of the fog and grabbed my arm.
“But what do I know? I’m nothing but an ex-pat with over a 1,000 case studies on file in my office. I can tell you all you need to know about how drugs and alcohol affect the mind, but to find the truth behind those holes would fill more cabinets than I have.”
I knew that when we met later for a drink, he would refuse to listen to anything I said, preferring to continue his meandering, which sometimes ended with him lying on the ground staring at the stars with a CD of Chinese music from the 1930’s blaring from his stereo.
“The stars are like the eyes of a dolphin,” he said one night as he lay with a gin and tonic resting on his chest. “So beautiful and innocent they are terrifying. Sometimes I think Gloria’s eyes might have been the same before.…”
A wave chunked against the side of the launch and for a moment I lost my footing where I stood against the railing. The peppery smell of the broken water filled my nose and I felt like sneezing. To avoid the eyes of the passengers and crew which I knew were on me I turned to look again at the island. I saw the sharp patterns of the hot gray-black rocks and the distinct line of the bushes where I knew the butterflies hovered and the cobras and bamboo vipers awaited a careless step.
The island’s stucco houses were hidden under a dense creeping canopy of dull and mottled green. To my right above the dirty sand of the beach, I saw the wounded sea eagle on its perch above the fish pools. The broken wing of the bird angled awkwardly below the talons of one leg. The narrow yellow eyes were full of hate. The first time I’d seen the eagle, I felt its sharp piercing gaze like electricity up my spine. When I turned to look at the bird, his yellow eyes blinked, and then he spat at me.
“No. No.” said the man who came out to watch me. He smelled like the pigpens he cleaned. Then he motioned to me, “Go away. Go away. Never come back. Better for all.”
The launch slowed, reversed, and thumped into the pilings of the cement pier. For a moment no one moved. Then the old man with half a dozen gold teeth and a shopping bag full of green and white vegetables hopped into the blazing sun. He began to talk hurriedly to a younger man who laughed loudly, and then lighted a cigarette.
Leighton’s yellow Land Rover was parked by the vine-covered archway with its distinct oval windows. Behind it was the temple where the island’s fierce and crouching war god, dressed in a red and gold robe stood sword drawn as if ready to spring into battle. The driver nodded to me as he tossed my bags into the back.
“Butterfly,” he said and linked his hands together like knotted wings. “Butterfly come.”
“Gloria?” I said.
He looked at me.
“No Gloa today.”
“Are you sure?”
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Then he climbed in and we started up the steep hill.
As we passed the island’s hospital a shimmering cloud of Glassy Blue Tigers rose above the small vegetable paddy by the stairs next to a bamboo grove where the shy brown and spotted Nymphalidae hid. I remembered the only time I had ever caught one was at night when it banged against a lighted window at the hospital. I cupped my hands and felt the silky wings tickle my skin. Then I walked back into the dark and set it free in the bamboo. Circling once it had headed back to the window. The next morning it was gone.
The driver put the Land Rover noisily into low gear, and it lurched into a patch of sun at the top of the hill by the bungalow.
The Land Rover jerked to a stop. Leighton stood in front of the bungalow.
“How are you, mate?” he said and extended his hand. His large hands never seemed to match the proportions of the rest of his body. They were basketball player’s hands I had told him once.
He had laughed and lighted his pipe. “So you, too, think that I’m in the wrong profession. Gloria said I should have been a monk because I could have held two rice bowls in my hand instead of one. She thought it was quite funny.”
“When did she say that?”
“At a hotel in Mong Kok. We shook hands. Her palm was unusually warm and sweaty as if she was excited about something. Before I could say anything she disappeared. Sometimes I wonder if it really happened at all.
“Even with the eye patch she looked quite stunning in a tight red skirt with an embroidered yellow blouse,” said Leighton. “You are very lucky to have such a beauty for a lover. She talks a lot about you. Sometimes I think she might even be in love with you. She might even want your baby. It would have two eyes and make you proud. Get her away from here. She deserves it. You’re the only one who can save her and she knows it. But then again, maybe you can’t. So much of what we do is out of our control. Especially here.”
“Why hasn’t she said anything?”
“That’s not her way,” he said.
“Then what am I meant to do?”
He shrugged.
Leighton’s eyes, hidden behind dark glasses, sought me out where I stood next to the Land rover by the bungalow. Then he smiled.
“We must have a bit of a do soon. It looks like we aren’t going to be landfill this year. But next year could be a different story. I hope you have brought all your records. You may have to increase the number of cigarettes you give out for the butterflies that were caught while you were away,” he said. “They’ve been scarce. It’s not like it was last year. Perhaps it’s this island? Perhaps the weather. Perhaps something else. You know how it can be.”
The driver dropped my bags beside the door.
“I’ve had the place fixed up a bit since you were here last,” said Leighton. “I think Gloria will like it. She picked out the paint.
“Last week the generator failed twice. The second time we were without power for six hours. The snakes loved it and came into the houses, nature taking over again. Fortunately, no one was bitten. Perhaps it’s a sign to remind us of our frailties, to show us our place on the earth as you are searching for yours on this island.”
He climbed into the Land Rover.
“By the way,” he said. “Gloria will be here later. There was a message.”
“Did she say when she would be here?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t take the call myself. Someone in the office did. They know the sound of her voice by now. Bring her over for a drink. I’d like to see her again.”
He banged on the side of the Land Rover and it sped off.
Sun filled the main room of the bungalow. The walls had been repainted in a beige that reminded me of a classroom. A new white fan hung from the ceiling. I tossed my bags onto the floor next to the old pink sofa. I turned on the overhead fan and watched the blades push the air.
If the bungalow had belonged to me, I would have cleared the snaky twists of brush and grass by the wall that ran along the edge of the overgrown lawn, then I could sit on the patio in a rickety chair and look out on the sea that thumped against the cliffs below with a muffled sound. But like everything else on this island, caught in a slow unkempt decay, the brush hiding its inhabitants from all but the butterflies and birds.
For a moment I thought I saw Gloria’s shadow block the sun. The image shook its hair and I smelled her dirty sweet odor. When I looked outside again, I saw half a dozen butterflies resting on the carcass of a dog by the wall.
More butterflies pushed and shoved in the currents of air above the carcass. The colored wings hissed, and the powdery odor of their scales stung my nose.
I had to get out and back and out on the island’s trails once more. I took one of the bottles of water that had been left for me from the refrigerator and placed it in my pack, then started off along the winding cliff trail toward the administration buildings. The trail ended at the top of the island near the radar installation and helicopter landing pad.
Eurema hecabe.
Papilio demoleus.
Catospsilia pyranthe.
The Latin names of the butterflies were the only foreign language I ever really tried to learn. I remembered how Gloria laughed when I said them, then kneeling over me she recited what she thought the names were; Rema macabite, papoo demon, catopia pirate. The one eye intent on my face was like a hard green jewel, yet it was the dead eye that searched my soul before she drove herself onto me.
The butterfly. About sixty million years ago shale deposits yielded fossils showing wing veins. What would Gloria’s deposits show? Head. Thorax. Abdomen. Her sex? —imprints left to the ages to classify.
If I hadn’t brought the shortwave radio with me I would have gone mad in the festering dark. Many times the London Symphony Orchestra helped me through the sounds and smells that were magnified by Gloria’s absence. I feared those nights ahead without her and often went to the cupboard for the whiskey I bought on the plane. I didn’t like the taste, but knew that after the first mouthful, it would make no difference.
Gloria. Gloria. Gloria.
When she was excited her smell was like the hot sun over the stale mud the butterflies liked to suckle for minerals. Her moans against the humid press of the heat were answered by a dark, thick, and pungent silence. She liked to watch me chase butterflies with my crackling net. Her excited laughter echoed against the statues and abandoned buildings along the trail. When I first gave her the net she was quick and daring in her capture, once leaning far out over a cliff after a Great Orange Tip. The specimen caught, she pointed at the next butterfly with the eagerness of a child, then darted after it. In my journal I marked those butterflies as hers. “When I come to America I see my butterflies. My fortune teller say it so. You take me. I say they mine, no one else. Caught very far away. Gloria’s forever butterflies.”
I looked at her and my heart shattered. The light that touched her skin made her glow until she became indistinct and part of the sky that spread north into China, and I hated her because she was part of something I could never be. Perhaps it was time to finally let her go and end the pain and hurt so I could get back to my butterflies.
Leighton said that she still might be the mistress of Han, but I wasn’t to worry about it because it meant nothing. Or it might mean something I alone would know. Han was short and hunched over with few teeth. He always smelled of gold dust and noodles.
Two years ago, while walking the alleys of Middle Island in search of a new restaurant Brock told me about, I felt a tug at my sleeve. The man’s face was hidden under a large straw hat.
“I Han,” he said. Where Gloria?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
The grip on my sleeve tightened.
“She must come. You must make her come. It is wrong for her to be like one who has no home. Her sister is sad and miss her.”
I shook my head. He backed off then disappeared.
****
I continued along the main trail of Centipede Island to the stagnant brown pool in the narrow valley that was surrounded by three white marble statues of women, heads uplifted over open books. Above them were the dried-up water gardens with cracked bridges and empty marble pools.
Leighton had shown me a picture of what it had been like when he first came to the island. The pools were full of clear water and fish, and the bridges free of brush. He said they had become impractical to maintain because there was always a shortage of water and the fish were always caught and eaten.
I started up the hill under a tent of trees that muffled all sound.
“Yat, I, saam, sei, ng, luk, tsat,” I stopped counting my steps when I ran out of all the numbers I knew.
Ahead a cobra ssssssd across the path and dropped into the weeds below the road. I stopped looked down at the abandoned soccer field and the black pond beyond it.
I took several more steps and broke from the shade into the furnace-like sunlight. The trees below me hid the soccer field from my view. Voices floated upward and I imagined the trees were talking to me. The voices ended in laughter. Then I heard the sound of the Land Rover charging along the road below me.
“Yat, I, saam, sei, ng, luk, tsat.” How many steps to the top would it take me to get to the top of the island today?
Ahead, three Grass Yellows hovered over a tight cluster of pink flowers. I dropped my pack, angled my net, and then stalked forward.
One of them landed, tilting a thin stalk ever so slightly, then gently pushing off, it drifted away up the hill, followed by another. The third hovered as if unsure of itself. My net broke the currents of air around it, and the butterfly darted toward the sea.
Two men in tight bathing suits came toward me. One smoked a cigarette. The other held his hands close to his sides, a white towel around his neck.
“Good afternoon,” I said.
They answered with a nod of their heads, then stopped to watch me lift my pack and resume my journey. The one smoking a cigarette made a butterfly with his hands and pointed up the hill.
I nodded.
I heard the flip-flop of their sandals, then silence as if they had been swallowed up by the hot shade that closed behind me. The trail curved onto a rocky cliff. Below the sea churned and frothed in silence. I touched my unshaven face. Was this how I felt to her? Rough, unclean, and loins tingling. Gloria. Gloria. Gloria. What have I done? What? I must cleanse myself of her once and for all.
The thick air clung uncomfortably to me. I stepped back into the underbrush once again. Sweat soaked my shirt. Dark trees and vines hid the sky. I stopped and listened to the sounds. The sea against the cliffs, the throb of a boat, dogs barking up the hill, cicadas, and her steps as they moved away on the path below the bungalow. I closed my eyes and felt the earth tug. I stood my ground, fist raised, face tilted to the leafy sky.
Below me through the trees I saw huge decaying statue of an iron butterfly in the ruins of the old Vietnamese detention center. Ten years ago it had been dedicated by Leighton to beauty, harmony, and long life. When the rusting wings were lit by the afternoon sun, the floor quivered with yellow patches that looked like shattered lozenges. The different tribes of the Vietnamese fought all the time and the building had been abandoned along with the statue. Their blood, which had dried on the floor, looked like the oily patches left by a great machine.
A loudspeaker snapped on and I found myself trying to identify the booming American rock and roll song that sung with great energy by the Chinese singer.
I turned from where I stood at the top of Centipede Island and saw the launch being secured against the pier. Seven small figures spread across the cement, then disappeared into the trees. A Papilio polytes landed. I scooped it off the flowers and brought the net to rest on the hard, warm earth. I closed the bottom of the mesh with my hand forcing the butterfly upwards until its wings could no longer move. I squeezed the throbbing thorax, then shook it from my net and placed it gently into an envelope with a pair of tweezers and put it into a plastic box.
The catch completed, I followed the north trail past the spring where blue laurel-like flowers were abundant, yet drew no butterflies to their nectar only thin bodied black wasps that landed briefly.
“Gloria.”
My voice ricocheted off the clotted greenery. Sweat tumbled from my eyebrows and stung my eyes. I shook my head. Prisms of light shattered the heavy air. I breathed deeply. The hot air tightened my lungs.
The sky above the Lantau peaks across the strait looked like a soft black bruise and I heard the hiss of the approaching rain as it pockmarked the quiet sea. There was little shelter from the large pounding drops under the branches that covered the trail. My clothes became a thick, wet skin. The rain stopped and I stepped into a steamy rain smoke that filled the small valley below. I was soaked, but didn’t mind after the first heavy drops hit my skin. A new and innocent beauty tugged at me. I had become part of a place where the only substance I felt was damp, white rain smoke.
What would my father have thought of this island he had chosen for me? Was it like the island he’d been on before he was married? He sought out beetles among the island’s ruins to learn what had happened there while I sought out butterflies among the ruins of my life.
His specialty had been forensic entomology. The books and articles he wrote became definitive resources for those who followed. My manuscripts remained unfinished. “There should be more,” I remembered my father saying as he studied my latest effort. “Much more.”
“I did the best I could.”
“That’s not enough,” he said.
“What else is there to say?”
He handed me back the manuscript.
“There is always more. Is a straight line simply a line or something else? Where does it begin? Where does it end? Is it really a line? What is your life? Is it a line, too? You must find the answer if you are to survive. You failed in your marriage to Francine and your teaching. You were careless with your protocols and expectations. Maybe that island will hold the answer you need. Everything has all been arranged.”
In the bushes below a cat screamed.
I crept toward a bush brimming with small red flowers. Their odor reminded me of the thick mustiness of Gloria as she lay back satiated in the damp bed pit of the bungalow. I crushed a petal in my hand. The smell stung my nostrils.
On the other side of the trail, a spring tumbled into a deep, brush-choked chasm that someday I knew I must explore for the butterflies that hid there. I’d hack my way through the bamboo vipers and choking vines to the brown sea and stand in the warm wind that made me shiver, then strip down like the gods of old and dive into the tepid water and swim back to the cement pier. I’d rise from the water all silver glitter, while dogs barked at my feet as I climbed the steps and the island’s inhabitants ran and hid, peering back at me through the branches and vines.
I looked up at the sky and saw the silver-white of a 747 against the blue as it dropped from the clouds to the airport. Every time I flew here I prayed for the plane to crash, to tumble out of the sky like a broken metal butterfly. Then I would no longer have to face Gloria or the failure of my life.
I started forward again. Ahead the trail steepened and ended suddenly on a well-paved road. Below me, I saw North Farm surrounded by vegetable paddies and the fierce brown dogs that spent their nights growling in the brush around the bungalow and chasing intruders. Someday I would have to face those dogs and visit the clearing below the house that was full of butterflies I’d never catalogued before. Face them and be torn apart, or return to the mewing of Gloria where she lay on the bed like a small and innocent child.
I stepped onto the road, which looped above the zigzagging cliffs. From there I looked across at Sea Meadows, the futuristic steel and glass hotel which had been designed to fit into the semi-circular curve of the cliffs above the always-deserted beach.
Gloria told me it was a place for the very rich. Those who had nothing better to do than to spend their money and sit in air-conditioned rooms, looking out over the silent beach and listening to Chinese opera and playing mahjong. Accessible only by water or over a long mountainous trail, the resort had maids dressed in traditional costume and a gift shop that sold cheap Chinese souvenirs and postcards. Leighton told me that once, a conference on tissue implant had been held in the main conference room where important papers had been read and discussed over cuttlefish and tea. On the third day of the conference the power failed and the supply boat arrived half full with food, medicine, and small machinery for which there was no use. Although the conference had been a great success, it was never been held there again.
I wanted to take Gloria there and get away from the bungalow because it was close, but she would have none of it.
“Not welcome to place like that.” She turned away from me on the bed.
“Why not?”
“Dirty. Too dirty.”
The island’s main road angled back up toward its center where the ruins of a small stone house stood on a small hill among the bushes swollen with bougainvillea and lantana. Scattered among the broken walls were the remains of huge, broken ochre-colored pots. It was there I first made love to Gloria on the rough cement floor. Both of us ended up bruised and bleeding. The broken pots were home to snakes, which oblivious of the blood, continued their life in the cement desert of dead vines and shattered walls. I imagined my knife that I always wore plunged deep into the muscular body of a snake as it twisted over our faces, dripping blood and poison into the black pit between her legs.
I reached the top of the island where I was the God of all that spread below me; God of the iron butterfly hidden away in the damp decay of the old detention center; God of Centipede Island; Gloria God; What would it be like if I were really god of this island? Could my destiny be mine for the choosing? Or would I join the other ruins the jungle took back for its own? The Butterfly God once lived here, wingless, white skinned. The lover of the one-eye, stinking of sweat and perfume, legs wrapped around my body, as we tasted the thick smother that hummed above us like a great generator.
The ragged-hilled islands. The gun metal sea. The oppressive milky sky. These were mine in the wondrous moment I stood facing the sun, net held high as if to capture the heavy white clouds and drag them down to where I stood. I felt my fingers tear at their substance until there was nothing left. Tears flooded my eyes.
I tossed the net to the ground and lay down on the hot road. The sun seared my brain and accelerated my blood until I no longer wanted to exist except in the pulsing flow I imagined rushing down the road, bouncing off the bushes and rocks on its way to the sea and scattering the butterflies.
I saw a gray curtain of rain to the west and prayed that the monsoon front wouldn’t appear and force me be back to the bungalow where Gloria might be, hungry once again. I rose, speared the air with my net and surprised a sea eagle that had paused near the ruins. The bird swooped close, wings roaring, then took to the sky once more.
The cicadas stopped, as if waiting for me to react, then started once more, even louder until my ears hurt, then once again faded. The silence startled me.
****
One late summer three years ago I stood very drunk outside the bungalow in the cool evening and heard the singing of a male chorus from below the hill. Although I didn’t understand the words I felt a part of the gray light, the cicadas, and the strange Chinese words.
Then a crackling announcement over the PA system broke the peace and drove me back into the bungalow, where I made myself record the specimens I’d caught the day before. The Latin of their names was beautiful and foreboding like the holy scripture of the island.
Eurema hecabe.
Danaus ieodepis.
Ariadne ariadne.
Euploea midamus.
Faunus eumeus.
Papilio polytes.
Zizerria kynsna.
Astictopterus jama.
Saustis gremins.
Notocrypta curvifascia.
Mycalesis mineus.
Summer 2000
On the hillside above the bungalow were small open arch-like tombs made of marble. Each faced the sea and some had crosses on top and pictures of ancestors inside. Half-burned joss sticks and broken pottery littered the floors in front of the pictures. Gloria didn’t like it there— too many ghosts. I had frightened her when I stood on top of one of the slanting roofs. I wanted to touch the sky to show her that I wasn’t afraid, and imagined the clouds twirled on my fingers like the cobwebs I wanted to wrap her in.
“No.” she said. “You must not. Bad luck will come and I die. My fortuneteller has told me.” Her voice was high and full of fear. Her one good eye rolled back into her head and she backed away, then turned and ran down the path to the bungalow. She didn’t look back.
In the distance beyond the tombs I saw a boat laden with Styrofoam land on a small deserted island. Two men hopped out and piled the Styrofoam on the sand and set it on fire. Thick black acrid smoke rose straight up into the clear sky. That night she had turned away from me in bed.
Summer 2000
Brock had arranged to meet at the Bahama for a drink. The aqua-colored hotel, that loomed at the far end of the beach above a huge cracked concrete wall, was a popular meeting place because no one seemed to care what you did there and the prices of rooms and drinks were cheap. Brock, whose background never quite seemed to be what he said it was, looked like a gerbil and sometimes smelled like one. When I first came here he introduced me to the English of the island who had large flower gardens where I could collect butterflies and where I met Johanna, the blond daughter of one of the families. I felt I owed him and sometimes he was good company. I first encountered him two years ago while I’d been waiting for the launch back to Centipede Island.
“Going to Centipede are you, mate?” I remembered he said in a loud, excited voice.
I didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question. You’re taking your bloody time answering.”
“I heard you,” I said. “It’s none of your business why I go there.”
“But it is, you see. I’m an observer. That’s my place in the great scheme of things. What’s yours? I like to know what is going on, particularly on that island. Sometimes such information can be valuable. It’s rare to see a gweilo waiting on the launch.”
“I don’t like being called a gweilo. I’m not a dead white ghost man.”
“Then what the bloody hell am I to call you?” he said.
“Wilson. Who are you?”
“What I appear to be, which is more than some can say. Don’t you think?”
He rocked back and forth on his heels as he spoke and I remembered that I smelled whiskey on his breath, very much like other English I’d met who seemed to approach their life in Hong Kong by appearing to always be harmlessly drunk and seemingly very sure of themselves.
“I collect butterflies there.”
“Butterflies? Are there many?”
“A few,” I said.
“Anything of interest?” he said.
“There might be.”
“Don’t you know?”
“It’s too early to tell,” I said.
“Scientist?”
“Teacher.”
“Ah. Do your students like you?” he said.
“I think so.”
“I taught once. The students asked too many bloody questions.”
“They can do that.”
“I freelance now,” he said. “It’s more profitable and I can work when I want. You should try it. Stay here become a tutor and get yourself a nice little Chinese girl for a lover. They expect little. It’s a good life.”
He lighted a cigarette. “What’s Leighton like? I’ve heard many things.”
“He’s been a good friend.”
“Has he?” said Brock.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. But one hears things. I’m Brock, by the way. Next time you’re here, let’s get good and pissed. I like you. You seem like a good chap, Wilson. I think we can do all right together. We might even shake things up a bit.”
After that he’d been interested in butterflies as he had been interested in many other things. Most of the time though his interests were to impress his latest girl friend.
“All I found from my reading were idle insects, industrious insects,” said Brock. “war like insects, robber insects, dead-beat insects, the stupid insects, intelligent insects. There are also among them the low degraded insects, dirty insects, clean insects, sluggish slow moving insects, bright lively insects, the useful insects. They have too many of our traits. How can you stand it?”
“I never looked at things that way,” I said.
“You should,” he said. “Life is too complicated for me sometimes.
I saw him slouched in a chair at one of the outside tables. A large pitcher of beer in front of him. He rose when he saw me approach.
“Good to see you, old man? I hope you’ve been doing fine?”
“Well enough.”
“A little slow here today. Usually there are more women. But how is Gloria? Tell her I saw the most beautiful dress in Hong Kong. An antique cheung saam in silver and blue. It would have been just perfect for her. She would have looked like one of those Chinese girls you see on tourist posters. She should think about becoming a model. I know someone who might help her.”
He jiggled his glass and stared at me.
“You think about her too much,” he said. “It’s not good for your butterflies or your life. Girls like her are everywhere and only want one thing—to go to America and fill their stomachs with babies. Then when they return for a visit, they will be like a queen and you will soon be forgotten. You will be bled dry. Let me introduce you to some of the English women. They don’t believe in the local customs and are far more practical. You could do well among them.”
“I thought you said I should get myself a Chinese lover.”
The beer was flat and thin tasting.
“Come with me to the Ling Dings,” he said. “It’s China at its most enigmatic. Whores on a deserted island for the sole purpose of giving ultimate pleasure and is easily arranged. Who knows who’ll meet there? A mother, sister, lover. That’s part of the experience. There’s a fifty-dollar minimum, which is good enough for most. But I heard of one businessman who spent $50,000 in one night. The girls still talk about it. “
I shook my head.
“I must be going,” he said. “I have a meeting. We’ll do this again soon.”
I watched him walk into the hotel lobby then got up and wandered into a narrow street between the beach and the harbor. The balconies that jutted out were cluttered with laundry, bicycles and mongrel dogs that never stopped barking. I wondered what it would be like to stay in one of the small dark rooms above the constant flow of sandaled feet and bicycles where the sun never reached these close, tight buildings. Gloria would like that. The sinewy half-light would make our words and bodies indistinct and unknown. We would be indistinguishable from each other, caught forever in a dark womb stink of our sex.
I turned a corner and came upon rotten fish smells and a mangy dog frantically scratching itself. A bell rang twice and I stepped quickly aside to let a bicycle rush past. The building I pushed against was warm and smelled of urine. I turned back. The dog’s scratching had increased.
The small, brown, half-formed waves that broke gently on the island’s public beach were choked with the white foam of Styrofoam cups and bits of plastic. The coarse sand was the color of butterscotch. The great dance hall above the balustrade was now a gallery of silent tables and chairs. I stood and watched a small child sitting on the sand, hand in its mouth, staring at the horizon where a kite soared low over the sea. The breeze I sought was hot and brought little relief.
Summer 2000
The monsoon front was stalled over the coast and the cool spice-sweet, wet air made me feel good as I walked the trail. I brushed away a spider web full of the dangling bits of the night’s catch. I found a spot on a boulder and looked across at the other islands and a sea full of boats, some of which were dragging nets from thin spider-like rigging. I looked for the sea eagle and saw it far out between the boats to the south.
Another butterfly had landed. I dropped to my knees, brushed my finger across a sweaty eyebrow and slowly, gently extended it toward the butterfly. Finished with the flower, it stepped onto my skin. I bent my head close. The butterfly cocked its wings, walked to the end of my finger, then turned and faced me. The eyes that stared back at me were immensely dark and beautiful, the way I imagined Gloria’s dead eye once might have been. The butterfly cocked its wings once more and darted up, brushing my face as it passed. My skin felt electric and I fell to the ground, head spinning.
A large cobra twisted across the road and disappeared into the brush above me. I rose, body alive, and grabbed my bag and net. Then I began to walk back to the bungalow like someone awakened from a heavy sleep knowing what I had to do.
Author’s Note:
This is the first of three chapters from a short novella that morphed from a field journal that I kept when I was in Hong Kong collecting butterflies. The complete novella is available from TheWriteDeal Publishers.
