Butterfly Winter (15 page)

They paused again, contemplating.

“Love!” the old war horses cried together. “If skill at baseball makes our women feel loved, if a moving fast ball or a .300+ batting average earns a woman’s love, we will have to advocate no further.”

“We have overlooked one thing.”

“What is that?”

“What is it that a woman values more than love?” said General Bravura.

“Certainly not sex.”

“Certainly not.”

“I give up.”

“Marriage,” said General Bravura.

“Of course,” said El Presidente, grasping the significance of the moment. “In order to be married a woman must have demonstrable skills as a baseball player.”

“We will not even have to take credit for making the changes in the law,” cried El Presidente, pacing rapidly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. “We will blame it on the church. While I am still in power I will, in exchange for a box of Cuban cigars and a flagon of French brandy, have the Bishop of Courteguay notify all the priests that Rome has decreed,” and here he paused a long while, composing the encyclical.

“Before a wedding can take place in Courteguay,” he began, “there shall take place a baseball game, in which one team shall be composed entirely of women, among the women must be included the prospective bride, her sisters, married or single, also the bride’s mother and grandmother, if living. The mother of the groom may be included but only if she is in favor of the wedding.”

“You know this could backfire,” said General Bravura. “What if the unmarried women were to withhold their sexual favors until their baseball skills improve, something that could take years. This
could produce a whole generation of frustrated men who might turn to Haiti for wives and in so doing corrupt our pure Courteguayan blood.”

“My friend,” said El Presidente, smiling, “how many virtuous women do you know?”

“I concede,” said General Bravura. “Now, please continue.”

“The other team may be composed of whatever make-up the groom deems advisable, or affordable, amateur or professional. The women must make a responsible showing against the groom’s team. We will leave that wording intentionally vague.…”

“Good, for a responsible showing might mean that the bride came to bat three times and fouled off at least one pitch in each at-bat. But not for long. If women are going to be forced to play baseball they must also be forced to be good at it.”

“Perhaps a panel of three judges in each village to determine when a prospective bride has performed adequately. The groom must not be allowed to vote,” said El Presidente.

“True. All grooms suffer from temporary insanity. We will have the priests deliver the encyclical next Sunday from behind their chain-link fences. Speaking of which, you know of course that I have been very lax with the priests, in fact I offered them the option of coming out from behind their fences. They refused. We even took down one or two fences and laid them flat on the ground, but the priests choose to be restrained by flat fences.”

“Their lives are so much easier behind the fences, it is obvious why they stay there,” said El Presidente.

“There is one other matter I find grave and distressing,” said General Bravura.

“And that is?”

“Your assistant, your Head of Secret Police, Colonel Lucius Noir.”

“Colonel Noir is overly ambitious, but he is a loner, and loners seldom overthrow governments. He is obsequious, malevolent, unscrupulous, seems to have eyes in the back of his head, qualities I do not find entirely displeasing. Dr. Noir, as he prefers to be called, can sniff out
even a hint of disloyalty. He radiates evil, but as long as it is directed towards my enemies.…”

“Still, I worry for you, old comrade. As wise men say, Mine enemy grows older. As do we. Be vigilant, my friend. I have attended too many wakes for departed companions.”

T
he carnival was only a block square; the air was full of the smell of cedar shavings, frying onions, hot grease, and French fries. The noise of the compressor generator was deafening. The rides were rattling and dangerous; many of the green neon bars that outlined the circle that was the Ferris wheel were burned out.

There were canvas banners bellying out in the wind, each printed in garish colors, advertising the midway shows. One featured the hairy face of a bearded lady, while another showed a torso with seal-like flippers substituted for arms and legs. The head on the torso was that of a boy with slicked-back hair, balancing a ball on his nose. The banner read
GERALDO THE HUMAN SEAL
.

Though she was made up like an old woman the Gypsy fortune-teller was young. Her wrists were circled by tinkling silver bangles; she wore a green bandanna tied about her head pirate-style.

Strangely, it was Esteban the cautious, who was drawn to her. Julio was more intrigued by a girlie show farther down the crooked midway, and in a large, barrel-like construction where, inside, motorcycle daredevils, many of them female, rode in circles
defying gravity, coming within inches of the top of the barrel and compound fractures.

The Gypsy girl stood behind a narrow counter. On the midway side of the counter a single maroon-topped, chrome-shafted restaurant stool sat unevenly among the shavings, appearing to be mysteriously bolted to the earth.

The girl crooked a finger at the twins as they sauntered by. Esteban angled slowly toward her, as if he were a fish, hooked, and the Gypsy girl held the pole, slowly reeling him in.

“For twenty centavos I will reveal the future, analyze the past, delve into the unknown.…”

Esteban perched his stocky form on the single stool. He dug the money from his pocket and presented it to her.

Julio stood fifty feet behind Esteban, rocking on his heels, grinning at his brother’s gullibility.

“You are not all here,” the Gypsy girl said, then seeing that Esteban misunderstood, added quickly, “I don’t mean you are stupid, but something about you is strange.”

She closed her eyes, seizing one of Esteban’s heavy hands with her own long, brown fingers.

Esteban saw that her eyelids were a frosty red. He wondered if the color was achieved with paint or if it was produced by sheer concentration.

“Your aura is big as a circus tent. I can’t quite comprehend it. It reaches all the way to where your friend loiters, scuffling.”

“He is my twin,” said Esteban.

“Ah,” said the Gypsy, opening her eyes. “That explains it. You two share more than you realize.”

“We know,” said Esteban.

“She’s a fraud,” shouted Julio. “Come on! Let’s go see the dancing girls.”

“Your future is like your body,” the Gypsy girl said.

“How is it like my body?” asked Esteban.

Julio was edging closer to the booth. A few passersby were stopping to watch the fortunetelling.

“You will live long, become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, and die happy in your own bed,” said Julio to his brother, his smile wide and infectious.

“Perhaps I should pay you,” said the Gypsy girl without a trace of humor.

“Perhaps you should,” said Julio, “for my prognostications are as reliable as yours.”

The Gypsy girl stared at him, a half smile on her gaudily painted face. “Your brother’s life will be like his body,” she repeated, her eyes fastened to Julio’s face like insects. “Short and compact,” she added.

“Fortune-tellers are not supposed to be crepe hangers,” said Julio, “you are supposed to lead customers on, entice them to spend more money.”

“Short and compact,” the Gypsy girl repeated. “If I wished to leech money from you I would stop now and demand more payment.” She held Julio’s eyes with hers.

Julio, though he certainly didn’t wish to admit it, or even think it, felt as though steel rods connected him with the Gypsy girl.

Esteban turned uncomfortably back and forth on the red-topped restaurant stool.

“I like to persuade skeptics of my worth,” the girl continued. “You may pay only what you think the information is worth.”

Looking straight at Julio she went on. “Your brother will be murdered. By a woman. A mysterious woman who will still his heart with a thin silver knife. The deed will be done far away, in another country, but in the foreseeable future.”

“How can we prevent it?” asked Julio, surprised to hear his voice, surprised at the concern it registered.

“You cannot,” she replied. “I see what is going to happen. The future cannot be changed.”

“Charlatan!” cried Julio.

“I sympathize,” said the girl.

“That’s all you have to say?” said Julio, his arms raised in exasperation. “You tell me my brother will be murdered and all you offer
is sympathy? You are not only a fraud, but a cruel fraud.”

“It’s all right,” said Esteban, standing suddenly. “I am here, remember. And I do not like being talked about in the third person. I am not afraid of death, no matter what its form. We are all going to die, what does it matter if my time is shorter than someone else’s?”

“Philosophical rubbish,” stormed Julio. “My brother has no sense concerning the urgency of life,” he shouted at the fortune-teller.

“And you have,” she said, smiling darkly. “What if his future had been yours?”

“If I believed the edict, I would fight it.”

“You don’t believe it?” said the Gypsy girl.

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you so upset?”

Realizing he had been taken in, Julio glowered. The crowd continued to gather. Several people had their money out, hands extended, ready to pay for a prophecy.

“Since you don’t believe,” said the Gypsy girl to Julio, “then you won’t mind hearing what your future holds?”

Before Julio could speak out—his mouth was already open to do so, his tongue touching his top teeth—the fortune-teller silenced him by holding up her hand like a police officer.

“No money,” the Gypsy girl said loudly. “A free prophecy for the skeptic.”

She beckoned Julio closer, crooking her long, brown fingers, smiling enigmatically.

Reluctantly, Julio took her hand. As he did so he felt as if his body were generating electricity. As the Gypsy girl drew him up beside Esteban, he put his free arm about Esteban’s shoulders and the sensation increased as he did so.

“If the generator fails, we can use the power of your combined aura to light the midway,” the girl said. She then continued, speaking directly to Julio. “You, my friend, will fly.”

She remained silent for several seconds to give the prophecy dramatic effect.

“Like a myth, with the beauty of a rainbow, with the breath of a
dragon and a beating of wings, the hissing of a trillion geometrically patterned snakes.”

The people in the crowd sighed collectively at the wonder of her words.

“I often travel by airplane; there is nothing miraculous about it,” said Julio dispassionately.

The crowd murmured.

“You have so little imagination,” said the Gypsy girl. “You do not wonder how a million pounds of metal soars through the air with the grace of a condor. But never mind. You will fly beyond the metal wings of man. You will
FLY
!”

The crowd squeezed closer, offering their money, eager to be deceived.

“Go in peace,” the Gypsy girl said. She leaned across the counter and kissed first Esteban, then Julio on the cheek. Esteban turned away and was squished through the crowd like an orange seed. Julio remained where he was.

“It is both a pleasure and a sadness to be allowed to speak the truth,” the Gypsy girl whispered to Julio, kissing him again, this time on the lips, her mouth open, her tongue inflamed.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“I am whatever you choose to call me,” said the girl.

“In that case,” said Julio, “we will christen you Celestina.”

“We? I see only you speaking.”

“My brother knew your name before I did. We read each other’s minds.”

As her lips crushed his mouth Julio could smell cinnamon, and sun-warm earth, and he saw that the girl, behind her garish makeup, was probably no older than he was.

He slipped a one hundred guilermo note into her hand. “I will see you in the sky,” he said.

Only Esteban, standing stolidly in the background knew that the girl was the same one who had taken him into the jungle years before. A girl named Celestina.

A
s they walked through the streets of San Cristobel the Gringo Journalist swiveled his head about, his body reluctantly following. What he had seen was, he thought at first, a movie poster, a cardboard cut-out of a middle-aged peasant wearing baggy black slacks and a loose white cotton shirt. Then the cut-out moved, turned to face the Gringo Journalist and the Wizard as they passed. To the Gringo Journalist’s eyes he was no more than half an inch thick.

“What?” said the Wizard. He had smiled at the man; they exchanged a brief greeting.

“What’s going on? That man looks like a cut-out. He’s less than an inch thick.”

The Wizard shrugged.

“You saw it,” said the Gringo Journalist.

“Indeed,” said the Wizard.

“Do you have anything to do with the way he looks?”

“Hermitio Aquarian was born without a sense of depth perception. Only the most primitive of medicine was known and practiced in his remote village, where, instead of growing up handicapped, Hermitio was considered enchanted,” the Wizard began.

“To Hermitio the earth is flat. Trees are flat, rocks are flat, the house of his mother is flat.

“As a child Hermitio Aquarian was in a perpetual state of shock and surprise from bumping into objects that he perceived as flat, that he was about to walk over. To Hermitio a chair looked like a chair that had been stepped into the earth by a giant. But he adjusted, as children with handicaps do. He learned to pull himself up onto things that to him were as flat and uni-dimensional as a crushed cockroach. He learned slowly that his friends and family, each of whom appeared to him like the glossy models on the pages of catalogs, were really upright as he. He is a gardener, to him a lawn looks like a lawn. He has found his place in life, though it took some time to adjust to the fact that a lawn mower was.…”