The Butterfly Plague Read Free Page A

proclaiming light. She moved and sat like one who expects attack. And she had good reason.
    Now he sat directly behind her, occupying a small table for one, at which he ate every day. He had followed her all the way from Hamburg. He had never for an instant not been close at hand. Yet he had never menaced her, touched her, or spoken. He was merely constant. At her back.
    He was blond from top to toe, probably German, and he smelled of leather. He was extraordinary to look at. He could have been an advertisement for racial perfection. His eyes were blue; his hair was golden; his teeth were white and even. Every bone was perfection itself. He radiated strength, health, and stamina. Yet, he never seemed to sleep.
    Then there was the woman.
    Ruth knew her, or was certain that if she could see her she would recognize her, perhaps even as someone close and well known. But this woman, who had been on board only since Chicago, never presented her face. Over it she wore a wide, dark—perhaps a widow’s—veil. Her clothing was expensive and beautifully tailored, and the coloring of the fabrics was autumnal—browns, golds, and indescribable reds. She inevitably wore gloves—long gloves, kid, calf, or pigskin, which were worn to the elbow and occasionally above. Her hats were small and seemed designed merely to hold the veiling in place. She was small herself, very finely made, and she moved efficiently, as though given to command an immediate respect. Her gestures were significantly brief.
    It was the unswerving set of this woman’s head that told Ruth she was being stared at. The gaze was leveled through the veiling, pronounced and definite as a pair of lights. In fact, this was a quality that pervaded the whole figure—the quality of light—of something metallic that shone. Insect-like, the woman’s brilliantly clouded head would turn to follow Ruth’s every move. Or it would lock, like the head of a mantis, into one poised and trance-like position. Ruth wondered if there were lids on the eyes or if they ever closed.
    The woman was accompanied by a large, uniformed servant, who followed her everywhere, sat her down with quiet ceremonious gestures into chairs, opened doors for her, lifted baggage from her path, and shaded her by placing his bulk between her and bright light. He was a Negro. They never spoke. He did these things with inbred reactionary calm. It was his life, it seemed, to make a path for her wherever she went and to close it behind them after their passage. At mealtimes the Negro stood near the doorway of the dining car, watching the trays pass by shoulder-high beneath his nose. Ruth was certain that he was fed with the dogs in the baggage car. He had an eye for food not natural to human beings.
    Ruth lit a cigarette. She practiced poise. She placed her free hand on her presentation copy of Mein Kampf, which rested on the table beside her half-emptied dishes. She gave the woman a stare of her own. She began to make up her mind—using a recipe of one part courage, two parts reason, and seven parts desperation—that she would accost this woman, pleasantly, and ask for her name. Perhaps the woman could not for some reason make the advance herself. Perhaps she was shy—or ill. Perhaps the Negro was her guardian. She might even be a prisoner…
    It had crossed Ruth’s mind a day after Chicago there might be some connection between the blond man and the staring woman. But since they never met and seemed not even to see each other, Ruth had decided they were, after all, separate watchers, nothing at all to do with one another.
    Ruth poured a second cup of coffee, staining the whiteness of the tablecloth. Her composure, born of years of training as an athlete, gave way, and instead of righting the pot and redirecting its flow, she experienced a small, ridiculous moment of indecision and just went on pouring, watching the large brown mark grow larger and larger. A waiter approached, his mouth open, certain he was