Death and the Butterfly, page 1
ALSO BY COLIN HESTER
Diamond Sutra
(reissued as Diamonds and the Ten Thousand Things)
Copyright © 2020 by Colin Hester
First hardcover edition: 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any and all historical inaccuracies are intentional.
“Death and the Butterfly” epigraph copyright © 2020 by Colin Hester and David Allan Cates
English-to-German translations courtesy Dr. Johanna Timm
English-to-Spanish translations courtesy David Allan Cates and Ms. Roselia Arellano-Sandoval
“Stand by Your Man.” Words and music by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill. Copyright © 1967 (renewed) EMI Al Gallico Music Corp. Exclusive print rights administered by Alfred Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.
“My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Words and music by Sharon Vaughn. Copyright © 1976, 1980 Universal—Polygram International Publishing, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hester, Colin, 1951– author.
Title: Death and the butterfly : a novel / Colin Hester.
Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019026332 | ISBN 9781640093256 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781640093263 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR6058.E725 D43 2020 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026332
Jacket design by Sarah Brody
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Above the battlefield,
Death and the butterfly
dance with the fallen.
—ANONYMOUS (translated from the Japanese)
Contents
I
Sunderland
Polo at Daybreak; Or, A Prayer in Snowfall
The Handsomest Man, On Earth
II
Castlegar
Polo in Gaza; Or, A Poem of Longing
Los Violines
III
Margaret, Lily, Lily, Rose
In Memoriam Est
Addendum
I
SUNDERLAND
One
Finned—like iron sharks—the bombs slid out of the belly of the plane and into the night, coursing downward in scent of the city beneath.
They did not take long to find the ground. And to the two Luftwaffe fliers in the cockpit of the twin-engined Dornier 17, the bombs caused several small gray eruptions on the landscape beneath, at this altitude no more significant than the plops of frogs in a pond. Nor did the fliers hear any sound: not from the bombs they had unleashed nor even the endless hammering of the Daimler-Benz engines, for the two had long ago ceased hearing anything in the cockpit save each other’s voices. They were clad in leather headgear and leather jackets, and now that the bombs had registered their seemingly inconsequential puffs, the pilot frowned and returned his attention to the task of flying. The other airman had unfolded navigational charts in a cascade across his lap, and with his gloved hands in the tight confines he began to somewhat awkwardly refold them.
After a moment the pilot turned to him. His face was solemn, and he said over the roar of the engines:
“Das ist London.”1
“Nein, Herr Major,” the navigator replied. He again unfolded the chart and lifted it slightly towards the pilot and pointed with a gloved finger to coordinates upon it, saying:
“Das sind die East End docks.”2 He then pointed to the instrument panel arrayed above their heads—to the gauge marked kompass.
The pilot ignored the gauge. “Die East End docks von wegen!”3 he said. He moved the rudder slightly to the left, and the plane dipped. Below, the gray eruptions caused by the bombs had crested and now began to settle. The plane leveled, and the pilot faced straight ahead. “Strikter Befehl vom Führer persönlich: eine Bombardierung von London ist verboten.”4
“Es ist nicht London, Herr Major.”5
“Lass uns das nur hoffen, Willy, sonst wird es uns nämlich sehr viel schlimmer ergehen als den armen Engländern!”6
Dipping a wing once more, the pilot managed a final look at the ground below. It had quiesced—as if in its stillness it had never been disturbed.
1. This is London.
2. No, Herr Major. This is the East End docks.
3. The East-End docks my arse.
4. The Fuhrer himself has strictly forbidden the bombing of London.
5. It is not London, Herr Major.
6. Let us both hope, Willy, otherwise our fate will be far worse than that of even the wretched English!
Two
“You mean, they bombed the City?” she heard her mother ask her father as the two of them came clop-clop down the staircase from upstairs.
“Not just in a bull’s-eye but a calf’s,” her father said. “And now I’ve five bloody schools to send packing.”
Her name was Susan, and she was in her slip in the kitchen rinsing her father’s beloved spoon that she always fancied and snuck for her own tea. Silver-handled. The silver engraved: ROYAL AIR CORPS, ’17–’18. She heard their shoe-heels drubbing the hallway floorboards.
“The Germans bombed people?”
They entered the kitchen. She looked up. Her mother, full-figured in her Sunday-best suede with her brown hair drawn back and pinned. Her father, in the gray weskit and pants of his pinstripe suit with starched collar and tie.
“Morning, love,” her father said to her.
“Morning, Mac.”
“Susan,” her mother scolded her, “would you please stop calling him ‘Mac.’”
“Phillip does,” she said, referring to her older brother.
“Phillip’s in the RAF,” her mother said. “And will you for God’s sake get some clothes on!”
“What’s wrong with this slip?” she said.
“You’re thirteen,” her mother said. “That’s what’s wrong with it.”
“Oh, Cless,” her father countered, “thirteen by only a day or two.” He crossed the few steps to her. “She’s still a child.” He kissed her on the cheek. “How’s me spoon?” he asked her.
“I’m wearing it away,” she said.
“Like the Cliffs of Dover,” her father said.
“Mac, you—you said five schools?” her mother asked her father.
Just above the sink was a window that gave out to the house of their neighbors—the Tranters—and in that windowglass Susan caught the palest of her own reflections: large dark eyes—almost chocolate—a classic English nose, and ample lips so thick and lush they might have bestowed a kiss on Providence itself. On her head, a beautiful entanglement of blackening hair. Shoulder-length. Beside her reflection in the windowglass, a white linen towel hung from a wall hook and Susan whipped the towel off the hook and gave the spoon a quick once-over.
“Five schools?” her mother repeated. “But that’s, what, fifteen hundred children?”
“Fifty buses,” her father corrected. She handed her father his spoon. “Ta,” he whispered and gave her another quick peck on the cheek. “How’s the tea coming along?” he asked her.
“Tar sands,” she said.
“Grand,” he said. He paused, mock frowning. “At least I think so,” he said. He turned to her mother. “Anyroad, let’s have a cup, Cless,” he said. “And any biscuits?”
Susan had minutes before cobbled out the teacups and the saucers on the kitchen table, all arrayed around the cozied teapot. Now, her mother unhooded the cozy and one-handed hoisted the pot and tipped it and spooled the dark amber into her father’s cup and then she set the cozy back atop the teapot and did so with the reverence of one performing the investiture of a raj. Done, her mother stepped to the pantry and clicked on the light.
“And any cheese, Cless?” her father said.
“So they bombed people?” her mother said.
“I already told you. And you can rest assured the Old Lion will give them back a taste of their own. Tonight, if I’m not surprised.”
“Maybe it’ll be Phillip,” Susan suggested.
“Phillip doesn’t fly bombers,” her father said.
“Phillip doesn’t fly anything yet,” her mother said.
“A week or two away from his wings,” her father said. He sipped his tea. “So, any cheese, Cless?”
“There’s Stilton.”
“Oh, Christ, no,” her father said. “It’ll give me gas.”
“You’ve always got gas,” her mother said. She ducked out of the pantry and clicked off the light and closed the pantry door. She handed the cake-tin of biscuits to her husband.
“Angels,” Susan said, not quite to herself.
“Angels don’t get gas,” her mother said.
“They would if they ate Stilton,” her father said.
With his two thumbs her father popped the lid of the biscuit tin and peered inside—seriously so, as if the individual biscuits therein might be of widely varying quality.
“It may indeed be bloody Sunday,” her father said, “but it’s not my bloody day of rest, is it?” He snapped shut the biscuit tin without making any particular decision. Thoughtful for a moment. Her father looked at her. “Angels?” he repeated to her. “Don’t you get religious on me too. One’s enough.”
“No. What you said about Phillip getting his wings. The way angels supposedly earn theirs.”
“Indeed,” he said, “indeed,” a wave of worry now quickening his face. He frowned at some distant space.
“What, Dad?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Susan,” her mother said. “Go upstairs, please.”
“Let—let her stay, Cless.”
“Susan!”
“For God’s sake—”
“Susan!”
“Cless, let her stay. It’s—it’s about Phillip and his wings.”
“What—what about them? About Phillip, I mean.”
“If he gets them—when he gets them . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, he—he earns leave.”
Her mother trembled for a moment then made a fist and stood it on the hip of her skirt. “Leave?” she said. “Leave? And you kept this from me?”
“He kept it from you.”
“But he’d never.”
“Yes, Cless. He did. In case there’s a snag and, well, you’re disappointed.”
“But when?” Susan asked.
“Susan!” her mother said. “Know your place.”
“He gets leave somewhere over the next fortnight,” her father told her mother, “if—if he gets his—” her father glanced at her then returned his attention to her mother, “—the chance.”
“Leave,” her mother repeated softly. She shook her head in disbelief. She kept a small handkerchief stowed under the sleeve of her Sunday jacket and she plicked it out and dabbed the corner of each of her eyes. “Let’s pray he gets the chance,” she said.
“Finally,” her father said, “one prayer I’m all in favor for.”
Three
Through this second-story window, you could see the tall iron palings of the palace’s fence and then the twin columns of the North-End gate. Beyond the gate a double-decker bus, freighted and tippy with waving youngsters and belongings, tacked like a high red dory around the stone of the Victoria Memorial and headed northeast, leaving the Mall. A man stood at the window watching the bus. He was stocky, his facial features at once blunt and fierce, and watching the bus’s departure he frowned, then after a moment reconsidered and smiled. Behind him a door opened and he turned to find a servant—his head bowed—holding it open as a slim man with weary eyes entered. The slim man was attired in the olive-cloth uniform of a British Army officer and he began to speak—or rather attempted to do so, for the words seemed elusive to him like a rainbow in an aviary.
“Puh—Prime Minister,” the uniformed man finally managed.
“Your Majesty,” the man at the window—Winston Churchill of course—said and he bowed and the servant stepped back and out into the hallway and closed the door.
The room the two men inhabited was small, decorated white with Victorian chairs, a high but shallow Rumford fireplace and a large portrait in oil of Admiral Nelson above the mantel. From the ceiling hung a modest chandelier that glittered even in the late-afternoon light and by the fireplace was a tall mahogany cart on wheels. On the cart awaited cut-crystal glasses and varicolored bottles and a trio of swan-necked crystal decanters, and the man in the uniform—George, king of England, emperor of India—gestured expansively towards the tray and said, “Cognac?”
“If Your Majesty is having one.”
“I am.”
The king crossed the cashmere of the carpet as soundlessly as a shadow and slid forth two large snifters. He selected a black long-necked bottle—its base stout as a Dickensian squire—and he poured first one then another drachm then repeated it so they had doubles. He set the bottle back in its slot and picked up the snifters, holding them where the scoop of their large bowls met their stems and with one in each palm he walked to the man by the window and said with effort yet with slow and careful clarity, “If we had a fire, my dear Winston, we might warm them.”
The king handed Churchill his brandy. They both swirled their drinks, the liquid snatching in dark orange flames at the flawless crystal glass.
“There is warmth enough in this great palace, Your Majesty,” Churchill told the king, “to anneal a thousand such glasses.”
Standing there by the window, they lifted their glasses and drank.
“I’ve been watching the buses of children drive by,” the king said.
“And?”
“And, they wave.”
“And does Your Majesty wave back?”
“Yes. Though doing so troubles me.”
“Why is that, Majesty?”
“Hmmm? Oh.” The king placed his brandy snifter on the windowsill and dug into his trouser pockets for his silver cigarette case. Withdrawing it, he used his thumb to press its release and it unfolded in his palm. The cigarettes were Turkish plain ends—that is, unfiltered—and were initialed G. R. He selected one and with the lighter built into the spine of the case lit it. He took a deep pull from his cigarette allowing, as he took it from between his lips, the release of a small fist of smoke that he immediately re-inhaled. Once held deeply in his lungs, he blew out the smoke slowly in a long dancing fringe that in the window’s embrasure lingered, a shimmering isthmus.
Churchill remained quiet.
The king now addressed Churchill’s earlier question:
“Why does the children’s waving, and my own, bother me, you asked?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
The king looked away from the window and looked tiredly at Churchill. “Because I—I can’t decide if they’re waving hello or—” (and here he groped for the enunciation) “—or guh—goodbye.”
“I’d prefer to think they are waving both their loyalty and their love, Your Majesty.”
The king considered this, then said:
“I need an ashtray.” He walked to the fireplace and fetched one and returned, taking another deep drag on his cigarette. He set the ashtray onto the windowsill beside his snifter of cognac. He exhaled in precisely the same way he had done moments before, and he scooped up his snifter and drank. Churchill did likewise.
The king said:
“The bombing of London last night.”
“Yes?”
“You think it unintended?”
“I think it an error,” Churchill said. “Navigational perhaps—let the historians wrangle and gather clues—but a grave error, an error that will cost the Germans dearly.”
“The bombing of Berlin?”
“The loss of the war, Your Majesty.”
The king very slowly placed his snifter back on the windowsill. He straightened and looked directly at Churchill and asked, “How?”
“I intend,” Churchill told him, “to retaliate not just once, tit for tat as they say, but repeatedly.”
“Repeatedly?”
“Every night, Your Majesty, and of Berlin.”
“But—but why?”
“Your Majesty, our Number Eleven Fighter Group has received extensive damage at five of their forward airfields, not to mention the six sector stations. On the Kentish coast, Majesty, Lympne and Manston—well, for days, unfit for our fighters to operate from. As for our field south of London—”
“Biggin Hill?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“What of it?”
“For the past week, it’s been so damaged that only one fighter squadron could operate from it.” Churchill paused, then continued. “Your Majesty, we have lost—lost the Battle of Britain.”
“Lost?”
“Yes. But we shall win—win the War of London.”
“How?”
“By our incessant retaliation of last night’s mistake. And, in doing so, by goading Hitler and his strutting Air Marshal Goering into changing their plan of attack from England’s military targets—our air defense targets, our precious and heavily damaged air fields—change their attacks from those targets to—to England herself.”
