Sound of Butterflies, The Read online

  ‘You’ll see, my love,’ he had said to Sophie. ‘It’s my true calling. Our lives will never be dull!’

  She had laughed then, stroking his forehead. ‘Well, if you put it like that, how can I let you stay here with me? You must go. Don’t you worry about me.’

  Now, in his imagination, Thomas held his breath as he stole towards it. The other butterflies rose towards the treetops, while his butterfly — his Papilio sophia as he had decided to call it — remained hovering just above the ground. He held out his net. The butterfly waited a moment, then dived forward into it. He felt the thrill of the catch deep inside him.

  He must have fallen asleep: the image was too perfect, too real. He woke up to find a stickiness between his legs, a chorus of birds screeching through the shutters.

  A loud grunt came from Ernie on the other side of the room. Evidently the good doctor’s interest in birds didn’t stretch to early mornings. ‘Can’t you shut them up?’ he moaned, before he pulled up his cover and buried his head beneath it.

  Thomas’s back ached. After the rigid berth on the ship, his spine protested at resting the whole night in curvature, but he was not going to let that dull throb interfere with his first day’s collecting.

  John and George already sat in silence at the breakfast table, eating bread rolls and drinking coffee, the smell of which enveloped them. George offered him the pot — more out of politeness than kindness, Thomas couldn’t help thinking — then went back to his book, holding it away from his body while peering through his glasses and turning the pages with clean white hands. He was dressed in his usual sombre black waistcoat, and his cufflinks shone in the patch of early morning sun that fell through the window. Thomas wondered how long he would remain so pressed and tidy, and whether his pomade would melt in the heat.

  Thomas cradled the cup of warm liquid in his hands and took a sip. It was thick and strong, not like the weak and muddy brew served at the Star and Garter in Richmond and by his maid at home; when he tasted it he made an involuntary garbled noise in his throat and lifted his eyes to find the others staring at him. John smiled and pushed the sugar towards him. Thomas gratefully dropped three lumps into his cup and stirred. It was now a heady sweet mixture and he finished the whole cup, then another.

  Ernie Harris arrived and sat down, rubbing at his face and yawning. His hair stuck up and he tried to smooth it down with his hands. Until now, nobody had spoken, but Ernie wasn’t one to let a gap in conversation go by without filling it.

  ‘Did anybody sleep with that racket going on all night?’ He had moved on to his moustache, twirling the ends before reaching for the coffee.

  The other men looked at each other. ‘What racket?’ asked George.

  ‘Bloody insects! And God knows what else. And those birds this morning. It was like being in the Cockney markets, all that shrieking!’

  George was smirking at him. A scream sounded, a haunting noise that Thomas felt down his spine.

  ‘Christ!’ said Ernie and nearly dropped the coffee pot. ‘See what I mean? What was that?’

  ‘Howler monkey,’ said John in his soft northern accent, so quiet for such a big man. Thomas remembered being surprised by it when he had first heard him speak. He had expected a booming burr, striated as if by tobacco and whiskey. Instead, John’s voice was that of a gentle soul — one who spends his life trying not to frighten children.

  The doctor looked at John in surprise, as if he’d forgotten he was there, though how, Thomas couldn’t imagine: the bearded man dwarfed the chair he sat on and leaned heavily on the table with his elbows.

  ‘You’d better get used to it pretty quickly, Ernie, or you’ll never get any sleep.’

  ‘I suppose you’d be accustomed to the noisy life, with your background,’ said Ernie. Thomas wasn’t quite sure what he meant by this, but while Ernie’s puffy eyes looked at George and winked, and George continued smirking, John just stared at the table and turned his coffee cup around twice in his big hands before getting up and loping from the room.

  After breakfast, the men gathered their equipment and set off in high spirits with a clatter of jars and collecting boxes. Their young guide, Paulo, had shown up on the doorstep that morning. The ever-efficient George Sebel had spoken with Santos’s man, Antonio, about obtaining a full-time guide who could assist in the catching of errant specimens and who could also carry equipment, and this boy seemed to please him. He was about sixteen, with bronze skin, downy hair on his face, and long thin legs, like a deer’s. His doe eyes looked at them shyly through long eyelashes.

  Even John seemed to have forgotten his mood, and swung his machete as he stalked ahead of them, humming to himself. They made a racket as they entered the forest — probably scaring off any life forms within a mile — but Thomas knew they would settle down once they were deep inside. He surprised himself by chattering to the others; he couldn’t slow himself down. They must have made a curious sight — four white men and the darker-skinned guide. George Sebel and Ernie Harris each carried shotguns, and the bespectacled George’s waistcoat and immaculate shirt and collar looked stiff and out of place. In deference to the heat, Thomas wore a simple light cotton shirt, with his fishing vest over the top — useful for carrying pins and boxes — and a soft felt hat. The others carried bags filled with their equipment — in addition to jars and boxes, they had wads of cotton, different sizes of paper and shot, and pin-cushions. From experience Thomas knew pins could leap out of a cushion and prick the fingers of an unsuspecting collector, which was why he carried his pins rolled on a piece of cotton in one of his many pockets.

  ‘Are you not intending to catch any birds and bring them back alive, Ernie?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Good heavens, man, not yet! I can’t be bothered looking after the bloody things. Easier just to shoot them and skin them on the spot. I’m hoping our man here will help me carry them back.’

  Paulo walked on ahead, oblivious to the fact that they were talking about him.

  ‘I say,’ said Ernie, and he tapped the boy on the shoulder with the barrel of his gun. The boy spun around and dropped to the ground, shooting his leg out and knocking Ernie off his feet. He fell heavily.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he roared. ‘What did he do that for?’

  ‘He thought you were threatening him with your gun, you idiot,’ said George, adjusting his glasses to peer down at the prone doctor. ‘You can’t go around pointing it at people like that.’

  ‘It’s not even bloody loaded yet!’ said Ernie as he got to his feet, puffing — the wind was nearly knocked out of him. He stooped to pick up some paper that had fallen out of his bag.

  Paulo’s widened eyes were shrinking back to their normal size. He looked from one man to the other, saw that John had stopped and turned, and was suppressing a laugh. Paulo broke into a wide smile. ‘Ele não vai me matar?’ he said.

  ‘Não, o idiota não vai te matar,’ replied John, towering above the boy.

  The others looked at John in surprise.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ asked Ernie. But John had already turned his back and was trudging ahead of them swinging his machete with his long arms.

  ‘You didn’t tell us you could speak Portuguese, John,’ said Thomas.

  John paused for a moment and turned. ‘You didn’t ask,’ he said, and continued on his way. The young man ran to catch up with him, and Thomas could hear him chattering up at John, eliciting the odd low response.

  As they left the road, the forest became as dark as dusk, despite the clear morning. The sun fell only in thin chinks through the tops of the trees. The terrain undulated between low patches of swamp and drier ground. Small streams crossed their path but most of these they could leap with one step; others had one or two stones to guide their way across.

  George Sebel struggled with all of his equipment. He had no free hands to take his hat off and mop his brow, so he had to keep stopping.

  ‘Look,’ he said finally, ‘can somebody give me a hand?’
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br />   Thomas stepped forward to relieve him of his game bag.

  ‘You will carry a ridiculous amount of gear, Sebel,’ said Ernie. ‘What are you planning to catch?’

  ‘Everything. Insects, snakes, frogs. Lizards and whatnot. The more we catch, the more we get paid. I’m still going to study the Coleoptera, I’m just branching out in my collecting.’

  ‘But you’re not seriously going to try and collect all of these things on one day, are you? The first day?’

  ‘Never miss an opportunity, Ernest,’ said George. ‘You should know that by now. What if Thomas here were to find his butterfly out on a stroll and he had nothing with which to catch the thing? I didn’t come back from Africa with so many species by being unprepared, you know.’

  George’s face was fixed as if he could smell something distasteful, when the only odours present were the hot, sweet smell of the jungle and the sandy earth. Perhaps a thin wisp of cooking from the outskirts of the town. When George turned away from him, Ernie grunted and pulled a face behind his back, making Thomas smile.

  They came to a faint fork in the path, and John turned around and called out to them. ‘Here, you three take Paulo. I’m going on by myself.’ He veered off through the trees.

  ‘Are you sure, John?’ called Thomas, but the man was gone, into the shadows. Paulo fell into silence again, robbed of the one person who could speak his language. Even the boisterous Ernie was quiet, listening instead to the calls of the birds high in the trees.

  Soon they came upon a small clearing. A brick well stood in the middle, strangled by creepers. Thomas tripped and reached out to steady himself on the slim trunk of a tree. Immediately his hand was covered with huge ants, tracing ticklish circles on his skin, advancing up his sleeve.

  ‘Ants!’ he cried to anyone who would listen. He jerked his hand away, cursed and shook his hands as if they were wet. Ants fell to the ground like shiny gemstones.

  Ernie stood by and laughed. ‘I’m sure George could tell you exactly what kind of ant that is, Tom.’ But George had stopped behind them a distance and was crouching on the ground, trying to catch something.

  A sudden sting under his cuff told Thomas he hadn’t rid himself of all of the insects. An angry red mark was blooming already on his wrist. Paulo came and took his hand and Thomas allowed himself to be examined.

  ‘Não foi nada,’ said the boy, and dropped the hand, looking bored.

  ‘What?’ said Thomas. ‘Ernie, what did he say? Will I be all right?’

  ‘He doesn’t look too concerned. I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ Ernie took his turn looking at it. ‘Just a little sting. Nothing to worry about. If it itches I can give you something for it later.’

  The ants had taken all of Thomas’s attention, but he soon realised that the little clearing swarmed with butterflies. With the extra light, he could make out individual facets of the forest. In the gloom the tree trunks had been columns of shadows, but now each stood out with its own shape and texture; bark by turns scaly, smooth and grey, or with lethal spikes. Their roots — one of which he had tripped on — snaked out around the ground and climbing plants wound up the trees like boa constrictors. High above them, past the bushy wigs of epiphytes, the roof of the forest soared like the green stained-glass ceiling of a cathedral. The outlines were sharp. Thomas laid a hand on his chest to calm the quickening beat of his heart.

  He became acutely aware of the sounds around him: hisses, whistles and cries; every few seconds the distant crack of a falling branch. The floor was alive with ants and he glimpsed beetles threading themselves through the tree roots and pieces of rotting fruit. A brown snake slunk away from them in the direction they had come.

  A cackling birdcall sounded and Ernie snapped his head up, attentive, tilting his head to determine its direction.

  ‘Can you wait here for me for a moment?’ He ducked off at a run into the trees.

  Thomas took his hat off and fanned himself, suddenly overwhelmed by the humidity. His shirt clung to his back. Paulo was looking at him quizzically.

  ‘Yes, go with him,’ said Thomas. He flicked his fingers in Ernie’s direction. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The boy understood and jogged after him. George, deprived of his guide, stood and, after brushing off his still tidy clothes, followed, with barely a glance in Thomas’s direction.

  Thomas wiped his brow. He felt strangely awake. His heart was still beating quickly in his chest — too quickly for the leisurely walk it had taken to get there. His limbs felt restless and he shook them one by one, shaking out the kinks of a short night’s sleep on a bowed bed.

  He crossed to the well and, after checking for ants, leaned against it to see which of the butterflies would come to him. One or two flittered past — a bold blue morpho and a brown skipper, whose mushroom wings flashed purple every now and then as they caught the light. They made no sound. He couldn’t bring himself to study chirping crickets or cicadas — great winged beetles that buzzed past his ear. It was the butterfly that sneaked up on him; its soft wings produced not even a rush of air as it passed. He could pluck one out of his net and hold out his hand; it would sit still for a moment, dazed, then launch itself with barely a tickle from his hand to the nearest flower.

  Then there was the excitement of the chase — waiting for its descent if out of reach, the creeping walk, net ready as it settles on a flower. He must become as silent as the butterfly in order not to startle it.

  He enjoyed his moment of solitude — without the boisterous ramblings of Ernie or the terse, tight-lipped replies of George. Only John seemed to share his love of silence — amazing, really, that a man so big could move through the jungle barely snapping a twig.

  The sun was climbing higher in the sky; he could see it winking through the tall palms. It was getting hotter. His wet shirt clung to his back now and he took a sip of water from his bottle. It tasted like metal. From somewhere nearby came the boom of a shotgun — Ernie’s collection had begun.

  A delicate, creamy butterfly — possibly an endymion but he couldn’t be sure — flapped lazily past him, with its stardust wings catching the light. He pushed himself off the well and crept after it. When it alighted on a curved flower with clinging moisture pooled inside it, he readied his net. He swiped; the net opened out and received the butterfly.

  ‘Come here, little thing,’ said Thomas. He carefully turned it out into one of his killing jars, lined with plaster of Paris imbued with a few drops of cyanide. The butterfly flicked around inside the jar. He knew it would soon be dead and hoped it didn’t damage itself in the meantime. When it was still, he carefully opened the jar and drew it out with tweezers, his cork-lined collecting box at the ready. He settled the thorax into the groove cut in the cork and pinned it. For a moment the butterfly seem to rise and fall in a sigh and he let his little fingertip linger on its soft wing.

  He always felt a pang of guilt when he killed a butterfly, but he hoped it wasn’t a painful death. There was no other way to study them, really. He could keep them in jars until they died of their own accord, but he then ran the risk of the butterflies being damaged, of age wearing tears into the delicate wings. This way, when he mounted it, then identified it properly, labelled it and sent it back to England, the specimen would be perfect.

  Before long, he had collected ten butterflies, including two more Helicopis endymion, which he had found clinging to the underside of a heart-shaped leaf, and a swallow-tailed papilio. He sat back on the well and gazed up at the giant Morpho rhetenor gliding in the treetops. As they flapped occasionally, their wings gave off a wild blue flash that Thomas was sure he would spot half a mile away if the forest wasn’t so dense. He felt a small sense of loss; a feeling that they would never come down and he would never be able to reach them.

  A crashing sound alerted him to George and Ernie’s return. Harris carried several paper-wrapped parcels in his arms. Blood was smeared across them like ink. Paulo, whose face was solemn, held out a cone of paper to Thomas, who pee
red inside. Tiny dead birds — hummingbirds — were piled inside it like sweet treats, their colours sharp. The shot that Ernie had used was so fine there was barely a mark on them.

  ‘Estão mortos.’ Paulo looked mournfully at his little package.

  ‘He couldn’t understand why I was skinning them,’ said Ernie. ‘I think he wanted me to take the meaty carcasses with us, for food. He got quite upset when I dumped them on the ground. A waste, I suppose. Those ants will make short work of them. I bet if we went back they’d all be picked clean.’ He stopped. ‘I say, old boy,’ he said. ‘Are you that pleased to see us?’

  Thomas realised with a shudder that Ernie was staring at his groin, a look of amusement on his face. He snatched his hat off his head and held it in front of him. George looked away, blushing, and found something interesting to look at a few paces away in the undergrowth. He beckoned Paulo to squat with him.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Thomas. He took the opportunity to change the subject. ‘But I’ve been feeling a bit peculiar since that ant bite.’

  ‘In what way?’ Ernie was standing in front of him now, piling the birds into his bag and adjusting his shotgun over his shoulder.

  ‘Everything seems to be louder, sharper. I feel restless and —’

  ‘And your heart seems to be beating faster?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas. ‘What is it? Some kind of poison?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what it has to do with the activity downstairs, Tom, but I’d say you’ve had too much coffee! Not to mention — how many lumps of sugar did you put in it?’

  ‘About three. Well, it was bitter!’

  ‘Ha!’ Ernie slapped Thomas’s back and sent him forward a pace to steady himself. ‘There’s your answer, Tom. You don’t have coffee very often, I take it? Never mind, keep it up and you soon won’t notice much change. I suggest you have another dose tomorrow. It wasn’t unpleasant, was it?’

  ‘No, I guess not. Just strange.’