Becoming The Full Butterfly

by Brian W. Aldiss

The Great Dream was a wild success, far beyond anyone’s imagining. Afterwards, no one recalled exactly who had chosenMonument Valley for its staging. The organisers claimed most of the credit. No one mentioned Casper Trestle. Trestle had disappeared again.

So had much else.

Trestle was always disappearing. Three years earlier, he had been wandering in Rajasthan. In that bleak and beautiful territory, where once deer had lain down with rajahs, he came through a rainless area where the land was denuded of trees and animals; here, huts were collapsing and the people were dying of drought. Men, aged at thirty, stood motionless as scarecrows of bone, watching with sick disinterest asCasper trudged by; butCasper was accustomed to disinterest. Only termites flourished, termites and the scavenger birds wheeling overhead.

Afflicted by the parched land,Casper found his way through to a mountainous area where, miraculously, trees still grew and rivers flowed. He continued onwards, where the rugged countryside began to rise to meet the distant grandeur of theHimalayas . Plants blossomed with pendulous mauve and pink flowers like Victorian lampshades. There he met the mysterious Leigh; Leigh Tireno. Leigh was watching goats and lounging on a rock under the dappled shade of a baobab, while the bees made a low song that seemed to fill the little valley with sleep.

‘Hi,’Casper said.

‘Likewise,’ Leigh said. He lay back on his rock, one hand stretched above his forehead shading his eyes, which were as brown as fresh honey. The nearest goat was a cloudy white like milk, and carried a little battered bell about its neck. The bell clattered in B flat as the animal rubbed its haunches against Leigh’s rock.

That was all that was said. It was a hot day.

But that night,Casper dreamed a delicious dream. He found a magic guava fruit and took it into his hand. The fruit opened for him and he plunged his face into it, seeking with his tongue, sucking the seeds into his mouth, swallowing them.

Casperfound a place to doss in Kameredi.Casper was lost, really a lost urchin, snub-nosed, pasty of face, with hair growing out in straggly fashion from a neglected crew-cut. Although he had never learnt manners, he maintained the docility of the defeated. And he instinctively liked Kameredi. It was a humble version of paradise. After a few days, he began to see it was orderly and sane.

Kameredi was what some of the villagers called the Place of the Law. Others denied it had or needed a name: it was simply where they lived. Their houses stood on either side of a paved street which ended as it began, in earth. Other huts stood further up the hill, their decrease in size being more than a matter of perspective. A stream ran nearby, a little gossipy flow of water which chased among boulders on its way to the valley. Watercress grew in its side pools.

The children of Kameredi were surprisingly few in number. They flew kites, wrestled with each other, caught small silver fish in the stream, tried to ride the placid goats.

The women of Kameredi washed their clothes in the stream, beating them mercilessly against rocks. The children bathed beside them, screaming with the delight of being children. Dogs roamed the area like down-and-outs, pausing to scratch or looking up at the kite-hawks which soared above the thatched roofs.

Not much work was done in Kameredi, at least as far as the men were concerned. They squatted together in their dhotis, smoking and talking, gesticulating with their slender brown arms. Where they usually met, by V.K. Bannerji’s house, the ground was stained red by betel juice.

Mr Bannerji was a kind of headman of the village. Once a month, he and his two daughters walked down into the valley to trade. They went loaded with honeycombs and cheeses and returned with kerosene and sticking plaster.Casper stayed at Mr Bannerji’s house, sleeping on a battered charpoy beneath the colourful clay figure of Shiva, god of destruction and personal salvation.

Casperwas a dead-beat. He was now off drugs. All he wanted at present was to be left alone and sit in the sun. Every day he sat on an outcropping rock, looking down along the village street, past the lingam carved from stone, into the distance, shimmering with Indian heat. It suited him that he had found a place where men were not expected to do anything much. Boys tended goats, women fetched water.

At first, an old nervousness attended him. Wherever he walked, people smiled at him. He could not understand why.

Nor did he understand why there was no drought, no starvation in Kameredi.

He had a sort of hankering for Mr Bannerji’s daughters, both of whom were beautiful. He relied on their cunctative services for food. They tittered at him behind their spread fingers, showing their white teeth. Since he could not decide which young lady he would most like to embrace upon his rope charpoy, he made no advances to either. It was easier that way.

His thoughts tended towards Leigh Tireno. WhenCasper got round to thinking about it, he told himself that a kind of magic hung over Kameredi. And over the barelegged Leigh. He watched from his rock the bare-legged Leigh going about his day. Not that Leigh was much more active than anyone else; but occasionally he would climb up into the tree-clad heights above the village and disappear for several days. Or he would sit in the lotus position on his favourite boulder, holding the pose for hours at a time, eyes staring sightlessly ahead. In the evening, he would remove his dhoti and swim naked in one of the pools fed by the stream.

As it happened,Casper took it into his head to stroll along by the pool where Leigh swam.

‘Hi,’ he called as he passed.

‘Likewise,’ replied Leigh, perfecting his breast stroke.Casper could not help noticing that Leigh had a white behind, and was otherwise burnt as dark as an Indian. The daughters of Mr Bannerji moulded with their slender fingers goat’s cheeses as white as Leigh’s behind. It was very mysterious and a little discomfiting.

Mr Bannerji had visited the outside world. Twice in his life he had been as far asDelhi . He was the only person in Kameredi who spoke any English, apart fromCasper and Leigh.Casper picked up a few words of Urdu, mainly those to do with eating and drinking. He learned from Mr Bannerji that Leigh Tireno had lived for three years in the village. He came, said Mr Bannerji, fromEurope , but was of no nation. He was a magical person and must not be touched.

‘You are not to be touching,’ repeated Mr Bannerji, studyingCasper intently with his short-sighted eyes. ‘Novhere.’

The two young Bannerji ladies giggled and peeled back their skins of plantains in very slinky ways before inserting the tips into their red mouths.

A magical person. In what way could Leigh be magical?Casper asked. Mr Bannerji wobbled his head wisely, but could not or would not explain.

The people who flocked toMonumentValley , who had booked seats on the top of mesas or stood with camcorders on the roofs of coaches, had some doubts about Leigh Tireno’s magical properties. It was the publicity that got to them. They had been infected by the hype fromNew York andCalifornia . They believed that Leigh was a messiah.

Or else they didn’t care either way.

They went toMonumentValley because the notion of a sex change turned them on.

Or because the neighbours were going. ‘Hell of a place to go,’ they said.

When the sun went down, darkness embraced Kameredi like an old friend, with that particular mountain darkness which is a rare variant of light. The lizards go in, the geckos come out. The night-jar trills of ancient romance. The huts and houses hold in their strawy palms the dizzy golden smell of kerosene lamps. There are roti smells too, matched with the scent of boiled rice teased with strands of curried goat. The perfumes of the night are warm and chill by turns, registering on the skin like moist fingertips. The tiny world of Kameredi becomes for an hour a place of sensuality, secret from the sun. Then everyone falls asleep: to exist in another world until cock crow.

In that hidden hour, Leigh came to Casper Trestle.

Casper could hardly speak. He was half reclining on his charpoy, a hand supporting his untidy head. There stood Leigh looking down at him, with a smile as enigmatic as the most abstruse Buddha.

‘Hi,’Casper said.

Leigh said, ‘Likewise.’

Casperstruggled into a sitting position. He clutched his toes and gazed up at his beautiful visitor, unable to produce a further word.

Without preliminary, Leigh said, ‘You have been in the universe long enough to understand a little of its workings.’

Supposing this to be a question,Casper nodded his head.

‘You have been ...

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