Butterfly

 I was woken up by the faintest sound, like a fluttering of wings. It was about noon. I was taking my preprandial nap. It was a butterfly. I was astonished. I said so. “My, there's a butterfly stuck in the room.” That's what I said, word for word. Out of the few days or weeks this butterfly had to live in this physical world, he was doomed to spend a few hours here with me, banging and crashing on the windowpanes, circling the wooden beam in the middle of the room. I did open the doors. Wide open. A full-grown baby elephant could have manoeuvred in there without but brushing past a hinge. The lepidoptera didn't find the way out, though. I couldn't leave the door open too long – it was getting cold, you see. November can be cold after a cool summer. So it remained in the room – I still wonder how it entered it in the first place – until I saw it not. It was perhaps laying flat in some nook or cranny amid the junk and miscellany stored in here, waiting for something we can't understand the value of. I wish I had been a butterfly, or I wish I could be one, as much as metempsychosis would allow me, so that I could understand what it meant by that.

I understood then that much of men's behaviour could find an equivalent in the animals' behaviour. I was a butterfly. Some were snakes. Some were bulls or sheep or fish or worms. Some were giraffes and others elephants. The desert mole rat's behaviour might mirror that of Indians'. Europe is full of black-backed jackals. Some species are sedentary, some are nomadic. People who live on their own are a bloody pain. They never know what they want, pass it by without blinking and, being offered something else, discard it with a cantankerous wave of the hand. Perhaps a snicker. And then I knew the butterfly in me was dying. It was one of those nights when you could almost see the links between the stars, drawing the constellations for the naked eye. I decided to leave.

I took the first ship out of the continent, then learnt to ride a horse, learnt the rules of the desert and became aware of thirst and hunger. I rode and rode. I went to Samarkand. Mingled with the merchants for seasons unaccounted. On being attacked by a swarm of bandits, I left the caravan and joined the thieves. We roamed the deserts of Persia, assailed, plundered, haggled the stolen goods, caroused, slept with the glossy, tenebrious dome over our heads and bought whores and drank tea.

One night I stole the captain's horse and rode for ten days and ten nights. The stallion died and I pursued on foot. I arrived at dawn, dusty and tired, in Merv, in Turkmenistan. There I hid in the suburbs, stole fruits and vegetables from the back of stalls, washed downstream in the river, bidding my time. One day, I spotted the palanquin of a prince. I knew of him through legends and hearsays. He would ride in his palanquin, all curtains drawn. No one had ever seen his face for he constantly concealed it under a shawl. He was all mystery. I sneaked in his palace under the cover of darkness and hid under his bed for two full weeks, stealing occasionally from the various fruit bowls laying here and there. There I eavesdropped his every habit. He was a man of few words. He received no visitors. One night, I stabbed him in his sleep, pierced his heart with my dagger and unveiled his visage. Amidst tormented flesh and disfiguring scars were set a pair of pale green eyes.

This is how I became the Mysterious Prince of Turkmenistan. I found the name myself. I spent lavishly in parties I didn't attend at first. I offered exquisite jewels to splendiferous princesses. I donated money to the city council, erected orphanages and schools. I made love to princes and princesses alike, always making a point not to reveal my figure. Never. Not to anyone, under no circumstances. I was served in gold dishes, I shat in gold buckets. A slave wiped my buttocks clean. My scam could have gone on for ever were it not for the sudden appearance of the real prince's brother who, hearing on the coming out of the prince, thought his brother had recovered from whatever demons assaulted him and was finally blending with his peer. He was too sharp and suspicious a fellow not to die at my dagger's tip. I fled at once, only with the gold and jewels I could carry on my person.

I travelled on horseback without stopping to sleep or feed, took shelter in caves, slipped into caravans and ships. However cautious I was not to leave traces of my passage, I was chased after. I had to kill to live. I had to steal food to live, I was forced to pinch horses and mules and carts. On occasions I couldn't but ransack, despoil, embezzle and burn to the ground to save my skin. I was hunted again and again, relentlessly. I remembered the Erinyes in times long gone. Reward posters were pasted in every city I reached, forcing me to seek refuge in deserted areas. I was probably the most wanted man in the whole silk road, perhaps in the entire Ariana. I fed on roots and drank dew. Rats were my only companions and meals in the last ship I took.

I ultimately attained Sevilla. There I set up a shop as an alchemist cum banker cum general goods store. The knowledge I had acquired and the little gold and jewels I could save allowed me only this. But business was good, for I was not known. I experimented on various metals, obtained gold after much fumbling, tried my hand at dissecting living things, subjecting them to the absorption of the various gases I was using and multitudes of plants and medicinal herbs. Fire gave good results too. I compiled all my results in books with titles such as: “The Black Boke of Magick Spelles”, “The Boke of Torture and Various Methodes of Inflickting Pain”, “Anatomie of Man” and such like. They sold so many copies and people asked for so many more that I had to hire scribes.

I soon met my future wife because she kept on coming to my shop under various pretexts, started to help me, doing menial tasks at first, then entrusted herself to seeking out herbs on her own and gradually made herself invaluable. We were married a week later. She became heavy with child almost at once.

We now live in a comfortable house in the new part of town. Notables and princes from Spain, Morocco and such countries come to seek my advice or my potions. I count a handsome number of kings and queens as my clients. My chest is filled with gold and jewels and precious stones. My children receive a good education for I insist on the tutors to come every day. I trade silk and spices, carpets and saffron from the very cities that vowed to put me to death. A young gentleman whom I befriended recently wants to write a book on my adventures. He comes every evening after dinner, and I exchange wine and dates against an hour or two of conversation, a handful of words he conscientiously pens on dirty pieces of parchment. He is not the only one to revere me, I usually marvel at my being here, alive, in one piece and sane enough not to put my eggs in the same basket.

All of this happened because a butterfly was stuck in my room, and wouldn't come out. Funny.