Raincoats in August
By Luisa María García Velasco
Translated from Spanish by Ian Watson

farm?  What are you talking about?”

I knew about rabbit farms, pig farms, poultry farms.  Dairy farms for cows, stud-farms for horses.  Filthy duck ponds, feeding troughs, the smell of fodder and manure.   The commonplace creatures we make use of.  I couldn’t believe I was being invited to visit a butterfly farm.  Apart from the moths that make silk, butterflies don’t produce anything.  Who would interest themselves in something like that?  More to the point, what would the place be like?  I couldn’t imagine.

Ignoring my question, Pablo just carried on talking.  “It could be positively soporific--”

I was used to this.  His next five or six phrases would already be in his head.  He wasn’t going to interrupt his lucidly considered flow, no way sir, not till he’d finished his little speech, studied and impeccable, even brilliant.

“--though on the other hand it could be a unique experience, truly interesting.  So long as you don’t get scared, of course.”

“What do you mean?”  Did they do experiments?  Were we going to come across mutant butterflies?

“This isn’t fluffy little chicks, dear.”  How damned condescending he sounded.  “The butterflies are loose, flying around the visitors.   Some might come too close.  I believe other creatures are there as well, iguanas and I don’t know what else.  I’m telling you because you have hysteria if you see a cockroach.  I don’t want a scene.  Anna and Victor are definitely coming.”

How could he compare a cockroach to a butterfly?  That was the main trouble with Pablo, over-generalisation.  He classified everything far too broadly.  Cockroach equals butterfly equals beast.  Kandinsky equals Goya equals art.  Kids equal little monsters equal problems.

This wasn’t a farm, this was a place conceived in Paradise.

No, you couldn’t call this beautiful miniature jungle a farm: the light, the moist heat that clung to the body, the waters, the sun streaming despite or precisely because of the great glazed vault which, bubble-like, isolated and protected this Eden from the world, the mundane, the concrete.

And the butterflies. 

Of all sizes, all colours and shapes.  At liberty, posing upon plants and rocks, or lightly fanning the air as they cut impossible capers. 

Suddenly it seemed sacrilege to be here.  This place was too innocent, too unsophisticated, too virgin.  Our species had no right to burst in upon this redoubt of nature in its pure state.  Pablo had gone ahead with Anna and Victor.  If I walked away now, for sure Pablo would think I’d taken fright.  I’d have to endure his teasing all day.  You didn’t even get past the doorway, et cetera.   I’d be shown up before the others.  Well, what the shit.  I had my reasons. 

So I was on the point of tiptoeing away, like one who fears to sully sacred ground.  Then it happened. 

I still don’t know why you chose me.  Perhaps it was I who summoned you -- consciously or unconsciously.  A couple of circuits around my head, so close!  I stayed motionless, waiting.  I didn’t dare believe it.

My handbag claimed your attention first.  A light beige, so I thought you might have taken it for some type of tree or peculiar log.  Timidly to begin with, then more confidently with time, you devoted a good while to examining the leather, the strap, the zip.  Mute and marvelling, I refrained from moving. 

Very slowly, extremely slowly, I took a few steps towards a nearby bench.  Passenger upon my bag, you let me do so.

Sitting down took me almost half a minute.  Once seated, bag on my knees, I could observe better.  The undersides of your folded wings, dun and dismal, enclosed a bonfire which blazed when unfurled – touches of velvet black upon burning oranges and yellows – to take you on a couple more circuits around me.

* * * * *

You’re off, I thought.

You were only daring yourself to explore further.  Now the object of your curiosity was my blouse: black and tight, long sleeves buttoned to the elbows.  How strange -- black wasn’t exactly a lively colour to attract your kind.

My shoulder was your starting place.  Lightly you travelled the path to my half-open neckline, your feet as elegant and fragile as a ballerina’s.  A black button? -- you gave that no more than a few seconds.  So you passed to my skin.

Your feet tickled slightly.  I felt you descending from the base of my neck, a rare explorer of the narrow strip which the blouse exposed.   I don’t know if it was because my skin was exuding tiny drops of sweat, or because of course my skin was warmer than the bag, or because of my smell…  Never until then had I seen the tongue of a butterfly.  Of a sudden there was yours – why did that not surprise me? – drinking from the moisture of my cleavage.  Then seeking out places more secret, hidden nooks.

Of what happened presently only vague and disconnected images remain, as when we remember a dream.  As if in a state of hypnosis I undid my blouse, and watched you lick the skin between my breasts.  Not much time passed before you’d climbed the little hill of my left breast.  Once again you used your tongue, sticking it into my nipple, crowning the hillock with a flag so beautiful.  I couldn’t stop shaking while all this was happening.  I felt I was an open flower, lovely and sweet, from which you sucked trustingly, blithely.

I’ll never know how long my trance lasted, although I remember the fragile ecstasy which possessed me during it.  And the images – the colours, the vivid flashes of butterfly wings.

* * * * *

I didn’t realise until months later.  Sitting in my room in front of the mirror, I was studying the reflection of my naked body trying to discover why I’d been feeling so peculiar lately.  At first, a mere shiver ran down my back.  Presently I heard a slight sound like the rustle of silk, and I had a sensation as if my skin was separating from my body.  In a matter of seconds my smooth soft skin, of a woman still young, began to look dry and wrinkled.

It’s a nightmare was the first idea that came into my head.  Wake up, damn it!  This isn’t my body, this isn’t me.

But the skin continued to wrinkle and dry.  Horrified, I noticed what’s more that it was turning whitish.  The worst thing of all was the cause: my skin was beginning to slough off completely.  God, it was on the verge of falling to pieces!

My arms and legs, first.  Then my belly and my chest, finally my face.  On the floor lay what looked like snakeskin.  In the mirror, my image anew -- my visage, my body, me – new skin, exquisitely delicate, perfect.

The last fragment finally fell from my nape with an almost inaudible whisper.

What the -- ?

Then, still wet, I saw them emerging slowly from my back – unfolding for the first time ever with slow awkward movements like those of a new-born puppy.  Huge, a transparent blue, with fine black lines.  Wings of a butterfly. 
To move them was like opening and closing the fingers of a hand.  They were part of me.  It’s no nightmare, I mused, it’s a marvellous dream.

It was no dream either, not when it went on for so long. During the following months I learned to fold and unfold my wings correctly – obviously I must accustom myself to hiding them appropriately in public -- but most importantly I learned to fly.  Or else I remembered how to, for from the very first I had the feeling that I’d known how.    

It was months since Pablo and I had separated.  The debate about whether or not to have children –- above all I wanted to be a mother! –- that was just the final straw.  My new state as butterfly woman produced many changes in me, more mental changes than physical ones oddly enough.  I realized how I’d spent years being a larva, a caterpillar, tied to a man who had constantly made me feel like a worm.  Such an attractive, cultivated, clever man, so aware of being all those things and more.  All the business of working as a professor at the university, whereas I merely gave classes in a secondary school: that was the least of it.  Why must he be so perfect?  Above all, why must he forever remind me how imperfect I was? 

Although I wasn’t yet aware of what would happen, I left Pablo -- I stopped being a larva in order to transform myself into a chrysalis.  That’s the Greek khrysallis, derived from khrysos, gold.   Those weren’t exactly golden months.   A chrysalis drastically cuts down all its vital functions, including feeding, and that’s what I did.  Anorexia almost finished me off.  I didn’t go out, wanted to see nobody.  Nothing at all interested me.  From one extreme, deplorably (or not?) I went to the other.  I began to go out every night, to drink too much, to lead a sex life far too promiscuous according to some people, enviable according to others.  You can be sure that chrysalises are also known as nymphs – and nymphs were goddesses of fertility in Ancient Greece.  So in the nightly urban rivers and seas and hills of pleasure I was the naiad, the oread, the nereid.  I acted thus without knowing what I was, and that this was the path to follow to change myself into imago or butterfly – leading to that morning when I first spread my wings.

* * * * *

"So you changed into a fairy.”

They were sitting at a table on a café terrace in summer.  He took her hand, and she began to tremble.  She couldn’t help it -- this happened each time he touched her.  Before him lay the sheets of paper on to which she had poured out all her story.  “It’s a diary of sorts,” she’d said when she gave them to him, “not exactly a letter.”

“A fairy.”

“Well, I’m not sure,” she said.  “Hybrids of humans and animals are fantastic magical beings.  Centaurs and sirens, for example -– I found out all the information I could.  I suppose,” she went on, “a butterfly woman bears most resemblance to a fairy.  But I can’t do magic.”

“You are magic.”

She fixed her gaze upon the dark eyes of the man.  Tall and slim, his features elegant, his look clever and gentle.  She was still trembling.

“I never imagined I would meet you.”

“Well,” and he smiled, “I too needed time.”

“That’s for sure.”  She returned his smile and took a sip of coffee, lifting the cup with her free hand, still without losing contact with his hand -– electrifying, irresistible sensation.

“Do you know,” she went on, “when we met I thought what you were up to was -– to take something from me.  Now I know that you’re a giver, not a taker.”

“Are you sure?”  Of a sudden he looked grave.  “There’s something you will lose.”

“I know, my love, I know.  You told me a hundred times.  Larvae can live for years, but a butterfly’s life is very short.  I don’t want the long life of a worm!  I’d swap that for a moment with you.  This one today, you holding my hand, or any other moment -- when we walk together, when you kiss me, when you make love to me.   A moment with you is always magical, unrepeatable.  It’s worth a whole life.”  And complete death, she added within herself though she dared not say the words.

He smiled, without taking his eyes off her.  How remarkable that anyone with such blonde hair could have such dark eyes, velvet-black.

“That’s why I chose you.”  His voice surprised her with its passionate intensity.  Everything about him was intense.  “That’s why I decided it should be you.  Tell me, did it hurt you to grow your wings?”

“No, the process wasn’t painful, just,” and she laughed shyly, “well, weird.  And you?  Did the change hurt you?”

“Not exactly.  But it cost me a bit to walk solo on two legs,” he joked.  “Waiter, can I have the bill?”

After paying they rose and went for a stroll, linking at the waist, carefully so.  Although this was a big city where anything might be seen, some people still eyed them with astonishment.  Four in the afternoon, in the middle of August, sun beating down, and both were wearing raincoats.

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