The Butterfly Plague (41 page)

Ruth wanted to talk to someone but everyone else was busy. B.J. had organized the children into work gangs and they went about doing odd jobs along the beach, and at the houses nearby, or back in the fields. Even as far away as the canyon. They taped up people’s windows with adhesive, they cleaned butterflies out of eaves troughs, they filtered them with long-handled nets from swimming pools. They burned them in carefully supervised fires. Marilyn cut the wings from four thousand carcasses. This was for Noah. He wanted to experiment with butterfly-mâché. All day, every day for weeks, he boiled his mixture at the back of the house, in various little pots, adding the wings to these glues in varying quantities and making up different textures. He developed some very interesting pastes which he applied to various bits and pieces of plastics and woods. He also made several butterfly “skeletons” out of wire and applied the mâché to these. He felt that the Butterfly Plague should be interpreted and preserved. He made them in copy; he drew them on different shapes and size of paper; he sculpted them. (It is impossible to sculpt a butterfly, he had thought. He fought with this statement and found that like most things, it did not remain true if you persevered.)

B.J. herself was newly pregnant (end of January) and this meant redecorating the nursery (butterfly motif) and reorganizing the children’s wardrobes. When each new child arrived (or was prepared for) the wardrobes shifted along by one. The one-year-old got the two-year-old’s clothes. The two-year-old got the three-year-old’s. Etc. Mary Baker Eddy (the eldest) was reclothed from the underwear out. She was seen everywhere (a gay and lovely child of fourteen) resplendent in bright new polka dots or stripes. She wore shoes with bows on them and had her first grownup skirt and blouse. (Four years later, in January of 1943, she died in this same blouse when a car she rode in fell from a cliff in Mexico.)

At any rate, all of this activity, revolving around babies and butterflies, meant that there was no one for Ruth to talk to. She was in a state of constant somnambulism. Miss Bonkers hovered over her (rather like a grotesque butterfly herself) with a pill in one hand and a swatter in the other. Sometimes, when Ruth sat absolutely still, the butterflies would collect on her figure until she looked like one of those Buddhas, overgrown with vines and insects in the jungles of Siam. She had miscarried. She believed that. Nothing could shake her faith in dreams.

She hung about at the far end of the beach, childlike and bereaved.

“Octavius?”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Raking.”

“Are you going to have a fire?”

“Yes. Later.”

A long look at the seals. A long listen to the silence. “Octavius?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to go swimming?”

“No. Not now, Ruth.”

Ruth quietly killed some butterflies which had been sitting quietly on the board fence. They fell with little thuds to the ground.

“Octavius?”

“Yes, Ruth?”

“Let’s go up to the Maine and have a drink.”

“Oh, no. It will just be full of people.”

“No it won’t. Not now.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know. I only know it’s morning.”

“You shouldn’t drink before noon, Ruth.”

The sound of raking, of the rake passing over stones.

“Octavius?”

“What?”

“Come out and talk to me.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Then let me come in.”

“No, Ruth. I’m thinking.”

A massed screen of monarchs, flying quite high, passed between Ruth and the sun. It wheeled like a slow-moving flock of birds and headed inland. They were everywhere now. Soon they would all be gone.

“Octavius?”

“For God’s sake, what?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Adolphus.”

“Don’t think about Adolphus. You musn’t.”

“I can’t help it. I didn’t know him.”

Ruth thought of her son.

“Nobody knew him,” she said.

Octavius raked.

Ruth said, “I met a dead man once. Walking around dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like Adolphus. His name was Mr. Seuss. This was in Paris in 1936. He will be dead now. But he might as well have been dead—even before I met him.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“I can’t explain. But he carried his death with him in his pocket. He called it his star.”

“Hunh.”

“The condemned, you see? Born that way.”

She killed another butterfly. Her method was direct and swift. She pressed down on their heads with her thumb.

“Like Adolphus.”

“Yes. Like Dolly. Only a different death. Do you see that Mother was different? Mother wasn’t condemned…”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Adolphus…Mr. Seuss…the butterflies…these other people—it’s in their pocket. It’s in their blood. It’s with them all the time. Whereas…”

“Yes?”

“Whereas we…”

“What?”

“Whereas we are killers.”

“You and me?”

“Yes. And everyone else. Like my blood—that’s my weapon. Like your lack of interest in women—that’s your weapon. Like father’s selfishness and Bruno’s Master Race. Weapons.”

“What about Noah and B.J.?”

“I don’t know. They’ll probably survive all this.”

They were both silent.

“Did anyone ever love you, Octavius?”

“No.”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you care?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

“I’ve never known anyone.”

More silence.

“Do you know something?” said Ruth.

“What?”

“There isn’t anyone I know who loves…”

They thought about it.

“It depends on what you think love is,” said Octavius, finally.

Ruth gauged his tone of voice.

She recognized the hidden meaning.

She went home and opened a long unopened drawer in her bureau.

Underneath the clothes she found a little paper packet. She drew it out and looked at it. Then she opened it.

Then she kissed the contents and pinned them to her shirt.

Mr. Seuss’s Star of David.

She knew, now, how it felt to be a dreamer.

Afternoon

It had been announced first in the trade papers. Then it had been announced in the public press:

TUESDAY, MARCH 31ST, 1939,

THE PREMIERE SHOWING OF LETITIA VIRDEN’S

RETURN TO THE SCREEN!

SEE THE LITTLE VIRGIN’S TRIUMPHANT

PORTRAYAL OF

VIRGINIA MARY WASHINGTON

IN

AMERICA—I LOVE YOU
!

ALSO STARRING PETER ST. PAUL

:::: A VIR-CAR PRODUCTION

8:00 P.M. :::: GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATER

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

###PLUS A PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF THE STAR###

It was the event of the season.

Everyone would be there.

Tomorrow.

Ruth glanced at the photographs. There were pictures of Letitia and Cooper, of Peter St. Paul and the supporting players. The photos of Letitia had been outrageously retouched. She looked like something carved in marble.

There were also photographs of her in her old films and in one of these she was paired with “the late Naomi Nola.”

Ruth threw the paper down on the floor.

The juxtaposition had never occurred to her. She did not like it.

Evening

Ruth stood looking at the water.

It was a gray evening; it might even rain.

She tried to immerse her mind in the thought of the sea. How vast it was.

She counted off the strokes.

One. Two. Three. Four.

The sun splashed down, knifing open a wound in the clouds, spilling its blood onto the distant waters—vital and tremendously red.

Ruth clenched and unclenched her hands.

A string of butterflies flew north.

They were going now. The antimigration had begun in earnest.

No more butterflies to kick.

They had fallen like leaves from desiccated trees.

They were leaving, tens of millions of dead remaining behind them. Little corpses, easily brushed aside with brooms. They had left dusty red stains on the sidewalks, which people washed down with hose water.

Far away in her mind, as she watched the departing strings and tails, the dreamers shifted to and fro, lined up in silence against their walls, swaying in unison as though there must be music.

Ruth touched her star.

She began to rock, as a mother rocks with her child.

The ocean fell—swelled up and fell—swelled up and fell—touching her toes with its tongue.

The whole world was in motion, rising and falling—a gentle motion. Compassionate.

Yes. Then there must be music.

Or was it counting.

The butterfly strings—the dreamers in a row—the ocean in its shell of earth—the birds drifting on homeward wings—the cadence of the first stars—and Ruth…

Counting.

Rising.

Falling.

Being one.

Forming one.

With the music and the flowering of numbers in their beautiful sequence. The easy sequence man had devised for his passage through time.

Nightfall.

Monday, March 27th, 1939:

Topanga Beach Canyon

2:30 p.m.

Octavius read all the papers, too, and in one it mentioned that Letitia Virden would attend her premiere in blue, white, and silver—the colors of her tradition.

He made a phone call.

Blue, white, and silver. Good. In the form of a sari. Thank you.

Mother looked in the mirror and was happy.

She played around with her wig and makeup and they were good, too.

Octavius made another phone call.

One Negro. Thank you.

Good.

Mother was now extremely happy.

She had everything she needed.

She took off all her clothes.

She stood there looking at herself.

“This,” she said, “is the best of all possible worlds.”

Octavius wondered if the Negro, like Harold Herald, would have a hungry look.

He hoped so.

Mother hoped so, too.

They went and took a bath.

They were both so happy.

Soon they would separate. Soon they would be free. In fact, freedom would come at about 8:00 p.m. the following Friday.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

They sang.

Friday, March 31st, 1939:

Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Hollywood

7:30 p.m.

In deference to the Virgin’s popularity and the likelihood of riots, three times the normal contingent of police had been dispatched to the area of the premiere.

They stretched, leather arm linked in leather arm, five blocks either side of the theater, on both the north and south curbs of Hollywood Boulevard.

Traffic was rerouted. No motorcars were allowed to enter the area save those transporting celebrities—and these must enter singly, deposit their royalty, and be gone at two minute intervals.

A marquee of silver and blue silks had been erected at the theater entrance. It sheltered a gold carpet.

Police on horseback trotted officiously one way and then the other up and down the cleared pavement of the road.

Above the theater, prodded and poked at by twelve varicolored searchlights, the Virgin, thirty feet high from twinkle toes to tinsel veil, raised her galvanized, gaudy arms in a blessing that seemed to extend across the whole of Los Angeles.

A band was playing, “Hail, Columbia,” “America,” “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in close order, repeating the first when the last was concluded.

Across the road from the theater, a choir, stationed in surpliced ranks on the roof of a hardware store, bellowed other hymns and anthems—and once even sang a Christmas carol (thought to be appropriate), “
Adeste Fideles
.”

By 7:45 most of the celebrities were already inside the theater. An order had been issued from a mysterious (no one would claim it) source, stating that absolutely no one—not even Clark Gable—was to arrive following the entrance of the Virgin. This order was meticulously obeyed. At 7:57 Clark Gable arrived.

There was then a three-minute hiatus.

7:58 p.m.

George Damarosch, in faded serge, unshaven, smelling of gin and body odor, muttering obscenities to himself, so tense that he might have been on the verge of a heart attack, made his way eight difficult, forceful paces forward through the crowd. He achieved a position diagonally opposed to the edge of the gold carpet. He was exactly three hundred feet from the marquee.

He roughly gauged the distance between the raised, extended arms of the two nearest policemen, touched with great care the ribbed handle of his .38 automatic Webster, and blew his nose.

7:59 p.m.

Six blocks from the theater, a custom-built, heavily armored Rolls-Royce motorcar, driven by a massive black man, made its way at a snail’s pace to the stop light.

On the far side of the intersection began a police cordon.

A hush fell upon the crowd.

A motorcycle police escort, red lights blinking and flashing, rode beside and fore and aft of the automobile.

Inside, illuminated from a mysterious source, Letitia Virden sat frozen with poise on two extra cushions and a board—in order to be seen by the crowd.

Cooper Carter sat diagonally opposite, on a jump seat.

As had been advertised, the Virgin was dressed in blue and white, with silver veiling. She was tense but regal. There was no outward hint of her inner fear and distrust of mobs. Neither she nor Cooper Carter spoke.

As the light changed and the motorcycle sirens were thrown into high pitch, and only seconds before they were to proceed forward, an identical motorcar, carrying an identical passenger—identically lit and regal—pulled around the corner, cutting them off.

Those near enough to catch glimpses of both interiors had ample cause to think they were losing track of their reason.

Both cars contained the person—the very incarnation of the Little Virgin—Letitia Virden.

8:00 p.m.

The first car jolted to a stop.

The second car—the intervening one—picked up speed to assure itself of the lead place and proceeded to the position marked by white paint at which each arriving limousine was to stop. This white mark brought the rear passenger door exactly opposite the gold carpet beneath the marquee.