Sound of Butterflies, The (29 page)

Santos took tea religiously at eleven o’clock and four o’clock, whether they were inside waiting for the rain to stop, or wandering through the forest. Manuel was forced to light a fire to boil a kettle, and to carefully unwrap the precious china. The men felt obliged to take tea with him, and Santos used the opportunity to engage them in discussions about art and philosophy, particularly that of English poets. Thomas would sit and observe him: saucer balanced on outstretched palm, teacup raised daintily to his lips, his giant moustache coming away glistening with tea. Santos recited poems and George joined in, face shining over ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ or ‘Kubla Khan’. The two men then fell to discussing the poets, their lives and their work, while Thomas and John listened, and Ernie shuffled his feet and stifled yawns. Santos seemed particularly fond of William Blake. A visionary, he called him. Thomas had read Blake at school, but his masters considered the prophetic works too risqué to be studied.

‘But have you really
read
them, Mr Edgar?’ asked Santos when Thomas told him this.

‘I have, Mr Santos, and I must boldly conclude that the man was quite mad.’

‘Mad? What makes you say that?’

‘All that talk about heaven being a place where people lead a tortuous existence. His refutation of Swedenborg, who was surely a visionary.’

‘But do you understand what Blake was saying?’

‘He was saying that hell is a preferable place to heaven. That we should deliberately sin to get there.’

Santos laughed. ‘Oh dear, sir, you have had some priest or teacher beat that into you, I suppose.’

Thomas blushed. He had a picture for a moment of his old master hunched over a podium, denouncing Blake with spittle groping the corners of his mouth.

What was it Blake had said?
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desire.
Being in the presence of Clara filled him with desire; he finally admitted it to himself. It wasn’t that he found her beautiful, but rather the opposite. It was her plainness that excited him, her throaty voice that spoke too loudly for a lady, her huge appetite for food and drink. All reason told him he should have been repelled by her, but if he unharnessed his thoughts for even a moment he remembered their encounter in the alleyway, the sweet taste of her tongue, and he became aroused. He took to carrying one of his setting pins in his pocket at all times, and if any wicked thought crept into his mind, he pricked himself soundly on the finger. By the end of a week, his index finger was bruised and bloodied, and he had to write by pinching the pen between his thumb and middle finger.

At night he was hounded by erotic dreams of the butterfly and Clara. Ernie had warned him that taking quinine could provoke vivid dreams, so he ceased taking it in an effort to curb them. He stayed awake as long as possible, thinking of his life back home in England, of the cold and sterile rooms of the Natural History Museum. His thoughts wandered over the butterflies on display in the Insect Room; how he had pored over them in the dim light of the oil lamps and naked gas jets, shivering, never dreaming he would catch such foreign beauties himself one day. Until then, the most exotic specimen he had caught was a purple emperor, as a boy on holiday in Kent.

He had had an unlikely ally in the capture. His brother Cameron, who was two years older than him, was a fat and angry child. It wasn’t until they were adults that Thomas understood that Cameron had been teased mercilessly at boarding school. When he came home, especially when he brought a friend with him, he let out all his pent-up rage and frustration on Thomas. There were bruises from being pushed down, grass-stained knees rubbed raw and muddied, broken toys and torn books. But Thomas never told on him. For one thing, Cameron always threatened him with a beating if he did, but second, he detected in his brother’s soft belly and sloping shoulders a terrible sadness, which he felt an overwhelming urge to quell. Perhaps, he thought, by soaking up the punishment he would relieve his brother of some of his pain.

He was twelve years old when he and Cameron went to stay with their aunt one summer. She had a small lake on her estate, surrounded by a meadow with long, languid grass. Thomas spent all day stalking fritillaries while his brother swam in the lake and lay on the little jetty in the sun. Cameron had recently had a growth spurt: the soft belly had been stretched taut and his legs had grown dark and hairy.

‘Come on,’ he said to Thomas one afternoon. ‘Race you back to the house.’

Thomas reluctantly gathered his net and his jars, knowing he didn’t stand a chance against his brother. He was about to protest when a flick of colour caught his eye. He gave a shout when he saw what it was, though he had spent the morning trying to be as quiet as he could. The purple emperor seemed to weave in and out of the high branches of a yew tree, alternately flapping and coasting on a current twenty feet above them.

‘I can’t go yet,’ he told his brother. ‘I have to get that butterfly.’ The only time he had seen one in the meadow was two years before, when he had tried to coax it down with a decomposing rabbit he had found in a trap, but the butterfly had not caught the scent, or else was simply uninterested, and his aunt had smacked him for coming home stinking of rotten flesh.

He expected Cameron to pinch him and tell him to hurry up, or, worse, to wrestle his net from him and run off with it. Instead, he watched his brother find the butterfly with his eyes. A curious look fell over Cameron’s face, like a man who has made a scientific discovery. As the emperor swooped above them, his stance changed. Every new muscle went rigid in his body, like a big cat, and his eyes darted about with it. Finally, as the unsuspecting butterfly came tauntingly close, Cameron, quick as a spider, snapped his towel into the air and winged it. The butterfly fell to the ground, stunned.

Thomas gasped and fell on it. Thinking no, no, expecting its wings to be torn and its body mangled. He was ready to finally hate his brother.

But the butterfly was still perfect. He was able to scoop it up in disbelief and put it in a jar. He looked up from where he crouched on the ground, and Cameron, with the sun behind him, looked down with the kindest expression Thomas had ever seen: pride mingled with sympathy. Thomas knew that from then on things would be different between them, but at school the following autumn, Cameron pushed him into the freezing pond to entertain Bertie Whitehead, the school bully.

Santos announced one morning that he was travelling back to Manaus to conduct business.

‘I have spent too much time in the forest,’ he said. ‘I have enjoyed your company immensely, but duty calls. I have spoken to my wife, and she is reluctant to leave while she is learning so much. I hope you do not mind, sirs, if I leave her to your protection. Just for a few days, in which time I will return to collect her.’

Santos left with Antonio and the pilot of the boat, with Antonio promising to return immediately with fresh supplies. They had already been forced to eat agouti, a sort of guinea pig, which was dry and chewy, and the cook was threatening to serve them sloth.

Clara disappeared with John for the remainder of the day.

‘Maybe our John is teaching her about biology as well as botany,’ suggested Ernie as they rested in the afternoon.

‘Shut up, Harris,’ said Thomas as he slapped at a line of ants crawling up his boot.

‘Yes, shut up,’ said George. ‘Even John’s got better manners than to fool about with the host’s things.’ Thomas had felt a momentary flutter of camaraderie with him, but it evaporated quickly. His face grew hot, so he stood and busied himself looking in his bag, his back to his companions.

Clara took her supper in her hut. Thomas wished he could make her feel more welcome to join them, but knew that Ernie and George would make little effort with her. Ernie had let slip when they were out collecting that he found her particularly unattractive, and Thomas had come to realise that this was as good a reason as any for Ernie to not speak to her, as he had no desire to flirt with her. George, on the other hand, showed her the same complacency that he showed all women. Actually, Thomas was more than a little relieved that she didn’t join them, and that he could blame his companions; in the absence of her husband he was worried she would start paying him attention and he could not predict how he would behave. Even an accidental touch from her under the table was likely to make his face burn and his skin tingle.

After supper, Ernie produced a bottle of brandy Santos had given him, and some cards. The men played rummy into the night, perched on crates in Ernie’s hut, while insects hurled themselves at the lamp. Even John joined them to make a fourth and they huddled in the small room under a cloud of cigarette smoke.

‘So what do you make of our esteemed host?’ asked Ernie as he shuffled the deck expertly. Thomas was starting to have trouble focusing on the numbers and the suits.

‘A very intelligent man,’ volunteered George. ‘It was as I suspected earlier — he
is
an educated man. In fact he studied in England, which explains his love for all things English, I suppose.’ He accepted the cards Ernie dealt him and began to fan them out. ‘I can’t make out whether he’s well bred or not. I suspect he is of the nouveau riche. As are most of the rubber barons.
Baron
is a bit misleading, I suppose.’

‘Well, where did he get the money from to start the business?’ asked Ernie.

George shook his head and Thomas shrugged as he arranged his cards into neat suits.

‘His wife,’ said John. He had taken to smoking a pipe in the forest, and he sucked on it thoughtfully before speaking, while the others looked at him in surprise. Even in games, he was a silent presence, seemingly there out of politeness to make up the numbers rather than for the social occasion.

‘She told you this?’ asked George.

‘Yes. We have to talk about something while we’re wandering around the jungle, don’t we?’

Ernie snorted and John shot him a lethal look, which shut him up completely.

‘He really was a hat merchant for a while,’ said John. ‘Just like he said he was that day up the Tapajós. He went to Portugal to make his fortune and he insinuated himself with Senhora Santos’s father in Oporto. The old man died soon after he married her and she inherited the family port wine business. It sold for a mint to an Englishman, and Santos used the money to buy his land.’

‘Rags to riches, eh?’ said Ernie.

‘Not quite. I think he comes from a comfortably middle-class home. As does Mrs Santos. They just got lucky in business, both port and rubber.’

‘Well, I for one find him quite charming,’ said George. ‘So nice to find someone in a colony with whom to discuss the important things in life. I don’t care what class he is.’

Thomas couldn’t help himself. ‘That’s a first.’

George looked at him in surprise and Ernie began to laugh.

‘But I suppose he’s got money,’ Thomas continued, ‘so he’s all right?’

‘And he is an
educated
man,’ said George. ‘That counts for something.’

Thomas wished he’d kept his mouth shut. John dropped his cards on the table and strode off, banging his head on the low doorframe as he left.

‘Steady on, you two,’ said Ernie. ‘Play nice. Bugger if we haven’t lost our fourth.’

Thomas couldn’t sleep and lay on his hammock with his clothes still on. Every time he closed his eyes, the room spun mildly, but at least he didn’t feel sick. He needed something to focus on, so he rose and sat in his doorway, where he could look at the lamp they kept lit at all times in the middle of the yard. It flickered with the shifting haze of night insects driven to a frenzy by the light. He rolled himself a cigarette with fingers dulled by alcohol. For the first time in days he was able to use his wounded index finger, whether because it was healing, which meant he had managed to keep his thoughts in control, or because it was anaesthetised, he couldn’t be sure.

The usual chattering filled the night. It’s a wonder we can ever get to sleep, he thought, with that racket. The air was oppressively moist; even now, after all these months, he wasn’t used to it.