Lila of the Butterflies and Her Chronicler

Author(s): Zulfikar Ghose

Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 25, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Jan. - Jun.,
1985), pp. 151-157
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119396
Accessed: 02-07-2015 16:43 UTC

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LILA OF THE BUTTERFLIES AND HER CHRONICLER

ZULFIKAR GHOSE

In the central courtyard where

the famous acacia trees grew that
their
blossoms
every
years there lay in a
twenty-one
only
dropped
yellow
hammock
hung from two of the tallest trees Ang?lila whose dark brown
skin glowed amber in the light that filtered through the clusters of the acacia
The floor of the
blossoms
and who was known as Lila of the Butterflies.
courtyard was thick with short plants that grew leaves the size of elephants'
it were covered with a green moss
ears, and the four walls surrounding
streaked with purple and yellow. There was a well in one corner that had
dried up during the year that Juan Flores became the president of Ecuador.
Lila of the Butterflies was believed to have been in the central courtyard for
longer than that; some fanatical old men, whose eyes never blink as they
continue to stare at the fantastic nature of truth, even claim that Lila of the
was
de
the trees, long before Pedro
Butterflies
there,
lying between
into the kingdom of Quito.
Alvarado marched
I stood there, just behind the trunk of the acacia from which her
When
hammock was hung, I did not at first believe that the smooth dark brown
skin, lined here and there by yellow beads of light, was that of a woman
older than twenty years; she was quite wide at the hips and her thighs were
as if two acacia flowers
fat, but her breasts, with the nipples gold-colored
even desirable, young woman.
had fallen there, were that of an attractive,
But then something happened. The ghost of his father appearing to Hamlet
the presumed statue of
could not have more amazed him, Leontes watching
come down from the pedestal could not have been more startled
Hermione
than I was by what I observed.
events that I am about to describe took place on an
The extraordinary
in Quito the
1978.1 had been invited to a conference
in December
afternoon
writers were to be present.
month before at which several Spanish-language
It was a memorable
week. Borges came and sat in the Speaker's chair in the
from where he answered questions;
Juan Goytisolo,
chamber of Deputies
. . . the great international democracy
Alvaro Mutis, Angel Rama
compos
ed of the aristocrats of literature was well represented. But Garc?a M?rquez
I consciously went
did not come. I do not believe that inmy disappointment
in search of him; those events in one's life that appear mysterious,
incom
a
in
it
and
fantastic
is
very ordinary way:
simply the ac
happen
prehensible
in some remote bifurcation
of a labyrinth where
cident of finding oneself
one had never expected
to be; it is memory,
the recording of past events
with absolute fidelity, that places us in a retrospective amazement
and gives
us the impression that we have experienced
I think of
the incredible. When

151

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152

Latin American

Literary Review

was no more fantastic

than
it, my encounter with Lila of the Butterflies
another event of the previous week when in a ship of the Ecuadorian
navy
from one island to another
the visiting writers
in the
that transported
I sat with Goytisolo
and we talked of the fictions of Alain
Gal?pagos
Robbe-Grillet.
Someone had said: You should take a trip to Otavalo. How, doing so, I
in southern Colombia
is a complicated
little history of errors
found myself
and misunderstandings
that, though it is a perfect microscopic
example of
the way one's reality is shaped, is irrelevant here. A missed bus, my less than
rudimentary
Spanish, a convivial officer at the border who thought it very
that
the
holder of a British passport
should be brown-skinned
and
funny
reason to let him enter as a tourist, for
in itself a sufficient
that absurdity
mass of details, each one bizarre, trivial, mun
one joke leads to another?a
saw me finally arrive in the central courtyard and
dane, and yet improbable,
of Lila of the Butterflies.
witness
the miraculous
phenomenon
The bus had left the lower slopes, and the snow-covered
range of the
Andes
that had been visible much of the way from Quito had disappeared
out of sight. The bus creaked along tracks near narrow, crystalline
rivers,
in a steady
wound
about in the darkness of a forest, and then bounced
rhythm on a straight dirt road through a green and empty land. There were
old Indians, one of them a fat
wrinkled
half a dozen other passengers,
the plait of her grey hair fell below the black felt hat, a necklace of
woman;
beads clasped her throat, and a bright pink poncho was rumpl
gold-colored
I sat behind her and could not see her face, but her
ed around her shoulders.
each time she
head bobbed with the motion of the bus and shook vigorously
a
to
who
in
her
the
answered
driver,
low, moaning
voice,
yelled something
looking up at the rearview mirror each time he did so. Two of the men got
in sight. The others
off in the middle of open country with not a habitation
alighted in front of three huts on the bank of a river; not a face appeared at
but several dogs came running out, barking
any of the open windows
woman
to scream remarks at the driver as we pro
The
continued
feverishly.
ceeded.
land
We drove through hilly terrain and the motion over the undulating
must have rocked me to sleep, for suddenly we had come to stop outside a
huge wall made of granite boulders. The driver, no doubt exhausted, was
in a
and it was the Indian woman,
shrieking
slumped over the wheel,
I did
language entirely alien to me, who gestured that I should alight. When
so, I turned to look at her standing above the step at the door of the bus; she
was staring down at me, her body shaking with laughter. But I was not
itwas
amused. Not because I did not care to be the object of her merriment;
me
run
to
me
a
want
moment
from
for
and
then
made
face
that
froze
her
her: she must have had cheeks, a forehead, a nose, a chin; but what I saw
was a mass of green hairy caterpillars
that formed a circle from the curved
to the half-moon
line of the chin, all in constant mo
line of the forehead
tion. It was like an enlarged moving
picture of termites, and my own skin

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Lila of the Butterflies

and Her Chronicler

153

for a second before I turned round and saw that I stood

itched ferociously
an
enormous
before
open gate.
I supposed that had I been awake earlier while the bus was still some
distance from the building before whose entrance I now stood, Iwould have
seen what sort of castle or fort or simply a long wall had suddenly appeared
on the plain.
that I have spent so many years with
I have to confess
literature that I am easily confused by reality and sometimes have the very
to a
strong suspicion that the world of my perception has been transformed
a
a
in
of
mind
of
some
it
is
in
familiar
course,
delusion,
epic;
fragment
in
of
deficient
forms
of
the
life,
comprehending
witnessing
pristine
capable
that for which an imaginative
language has not already created an associa
the advantage of giving one unexpected
tion. Such na?vit? has, I believe,
I
circumstances. Well, Childe Roland,
courage in harrowing and oppressive
said, addressing myself with a jolly nudge, here we are at last; and then, I
although there
suppose because Iwas anxious not to appear too antiquated,
ex
was no one around to observe my absurd concern that a spontaneously
too
I
added
be
aloud:
reference
outdated,
Many years
might
pressed literary
this distant afternoon when you face the firing
later you will remember
squad.

the
in which
I observed
the central courtyard
I have mentioned
of Lila of the Butterflies.
miraculous
Yes, there were other
phenomenon
courtyards. The building I entered was immense, its long passages cunning
It contained a maze of apartments,
and
and mirrors.
ly lit by high windows
I had the impression of being in a walled city, for some of the
sometimes
passages had no roofs and thus seemed to be streets. Children played games
sat in doorways, men rode past on mules as if coming back
there, women
from a day in the fields.
There seemed nothing remarkable about these people until I came to
one of the outer courtyards and saw a group of women around a man who
lay on his side on the grass. His shirt had been removed, and the first thing
one saw on him was the wound on his chest. Blood should have been pour
ing out of the wound, but itwas not. There was indeed a stream of blood on
toward the man, wriggling
the ground but it was flowing
through the grass
itself into a thick rope, and entering the wound.
like a snake, gathering
but definitely
Slowly and imperceptibly,
entering the wound. The explana
I am
It was not the man's time to die. Now,
tion seemed simple to everyone.
not too easily amazed; Iwas raised in India and have seen a fakir?it was an
October day in 1943 in Bombay on the edge of the park where we played
himself in the sand for an hour and come out no
cricket on Sundays?bury
someone
from
after an hour's siesta,
different
hopping out of a hammock
for him to resurrect himself
another
fakir
and while we were waiting
sword down his throat and inviting
diverted us by thrusting a two-foot
everyone to poke his stomach with a forefinger to feel the steel blade behind
the skin just above his navel. So, why should I have been amazed that a
man's blood was returning to him?

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Latin American

Literary Review

was now a succession

of courtyards?linked
open spaces that
a
stone
with
low
formed
walls
off each par
large park
marking
together
If one did not look too
ticular square with its own peculiar characteristic.
of trees and flower
closely, there was nothing but an enchanting profusion
to be like those dreamers who go
ing bushes to be seen, and if one happened
through gardens with hooded eyes and dilated nostrils, receiving sensations
even dissolving
of merging,
colors, as in the paintings of Jules
overlapping,
as one does when entering
combinations
of
and
Olitski,
perfumes,
exquisite
the cosmetics
section of a store where one sees a beautiful young woman,
her shoulder length blond hair perfectly
straight, her large blue eyes clearly
marked with flawless
lines below the pale blue mascara
covering the eyelids,
of an older
her lips a thrilling liquid red as she works on the make-up
creams to her wrinkles,
and one walks past
woman,
applying moisturising
inhaling odors of an existence not one's own, receiving too, in the linked
the sounds of birds in the higher branches of the trees, like such
courtyards,
one remained oblivious
to the dramas that were here and there
dreamers,
one
In
male children, none more than three
several
grove,
being performed.
or four years old, played silently. They formed a circle on the ground and
crawled on their hands and knees in an infinite increasing and diminishing
of the great wheel of solitude. Two or three raised their eyes as they
crawled, and the large, black circular eyes were expressive of an infinite sad
ness as they looked up from the earth. And infinite too was the melancholy
of their silence. They were naked in their endless procession
and though
each was still in his infancy, the organ proclaiming
his sex was that of an
tense state of erection just prior to coitus. Another
adult in that desperately
marked
each
boy. Sticking up in a little curl above the buttocks
peculiarity
There

was

a pig's

tail.

part of the park, in an arbor made by a thickly intertwining

and on a floor covered by marguerites
lay the couple con
trumpet-vine
demned to join their bodies together in 3,567 distinctly different positions,
with each inadvertant
canceling out
repetition of a previous performance
with
them to commence
the sequence and obliging
again
position number
as human, and itwas scarcely
one. Their bodies were hardly distinguishable
to tell that the shrunk, flattened
of
slithering mass was composed
possible
two persons, and I was told by the man who had been passing by and had
given me information of the couple's fate that on some mornings
they were
to be seen as no more than two drops of dew on the edge of a marguerite
In another

petal.

One narrow room in a building was made up entirely of mirrors?small

like tiles on the floor and similar squares on the ceiling,
squares of mirrors
on the walls. Here lived a pair
with rectangular
sections like window-panes
and Hernando,
of identical twins, Fernando
and neither could ever be con
of themselves was an illusion because
vinced that the infinite multiplication
each had the other to touch and squeeze to prove that his own duplication
was real and therefore the millions
crowding the surface of the mirrors were

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Lila of the Butterflies

and Her Chronicler

155

the window-panes
and could not be
real too, only they were outside
touched. In another room, a man spent his days tying and untying an end
less succession of bow ties. The room was heaped with two piles of bow ties,
was sometimes only a length of
from one of which he took a bow tie?which
it
string or a piece of straw that had blown in through the window?put
the material
that transformed
the deft movement
around his collar, worked
to a perfectly shaped bow, his fingers moving as in the sign language of the
dumb, then quickly pulled it apart, snapped it away from the collar and
discarded it on the second heap. A thin long snake had coiled itself in one of
of his automatic movements,
in the performance
the heaps, and the man,
to
it
tie
around
his throat. The snake's two
it
and
up
proceeded
plucked
ends hung loosely in front of the man's chest for a second, and then were
pulled apart just as if it were one long silk bow tie and thrown to the side.
I came to a room whose high walls were covered with old leather-bound
volumes and in which books were scattered all over the floor. A man sat at a
desk. His head was completely hairless and he had small black eyes. It was
that comprise my
enough for me to use two of the half a dozen words
to
not
him
for
that
detect
of
my accent was one of
only
knowledge
Spanish
an English-speaking
also
that
its
but
person
particular nuance had its origin
to show off his virtuosity,
he answered
in the late British Empire. Perhaps
to people from the Indian sub
me in fluent English
in the accent common
for fifteen minutes. He knew every language in the
continent. He discoursed
and grammars, and he was
world. The books in the room were dictionaries
on
of
most
at work
the
the invention
complete language known to man. But
it was not to be simply a language capable of articulating
every knowable
was
a
the
noblest
minds could
to
of
that
it
such
be
fact;
purity
only
language
or
a
a
Goethe
would even
that
of
such
only
Shakespeare
subtlety
acquire it,
that the majority
think that he could write poetry in it, of such complexity
to remain illiterate, which, he added
of human beings would be obliged
without
sarcasm, was the true state of most people who believed themselves
to be educated. When his invention was completed,
only he would be able to
the day his great work
much
its
but
he
that
grammar;
hoped very
explain
reached its conclusion would also be the day of his death, for he did not
of his creation, and he
believe that humanity was worthy of the perfection
was certainly not going to leave any clues behind to an easy understanding
I was about to leave him, he quoted Caliban's
of his language. When
famous words, and added with a maniacal
laugh, ?That's all the profit I
have to offer too!?
The thought did cross my mind, as itmust have the reader's, that I had
stumbled into a lunatic asylum, but it was soon dispelled when I came to an
a small palace of pleasure, decked out in
that was unmistakably
apartment
with
But I
music
and
laughter coming from its windows.
peacock colors,
was distracted
from it by a brilliant golden light coming from the outside.
An open door seemed a solid block of gold. I went and stood in it and was
for a moment
I had arrived at the central
blinded by the golden dazzle.

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156

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sun was falling through the bright yellow

The late afternoon
courtyard.
blossoms of the acacia trees and itwas not until Iwent and stood next to the
trunk of one that I came out of the slanting rods of golden
light. I was
grateful to the tree's shadow for restoring my perception
although a pale
still hung about my eyelids.
yellow luminosity
as of dragonflies
A movement
darting up from a dark stream into the
was
a
It
concentrated
spot of light on a dark brown
sunlight caught my eyes.
a
to lift itself and disap
into
that
broke
seemed
background
shimmering,
me
a
as a rather
It
moment
to
took
the
brown
pear.
distinguish
background
in
massive
human thigh, and then to see the woman
the
hammock
lying
whose motion had created the initial sensation. After all that I had seen dur
two hours, I was neither surprised nor shocked to see that
ing the previous
at the time was to observe
the woman was naked. My only astonishment
that although her legs were disproportionately
large, they did not violate my
sense of beauty but, on the contrary,
to be what was re
seemed precisely
to
of
nature
in
moment
I imagined her
make
her
and
that
beautiful,
quired
with slender legs and thought the effect decidedly
incongruous.
Standing
behind her, I could not see her face, but only the fine, long black hair that
fell from her head to her shoulders,
curved over them and then seemed to
it hung halfway
to the
from where
leap over the sides of the hammock
ground. Her pointed breasts, rising in front of her, were also visible from
where I stood, and that moment's
of two beams of
particular coincidence
two
her
created
the
that
soft
acacia flowers
light striking
nipples
impression
had settled there.
I was about to leave when a shiver seemed to run through her body and
so as to be able to fling her head
she slipped lower down in the hammock
back, arching her throat. Her forehead and nose appeared to my vision and
the pink lips fleshy and swollen. She held her mouth open
then her mouth,
as if trying
for two or three long minutes,
her tongue flickering desperately,
to force out of her throat some obstruction
that had been lodged there.
Then I saw a little blob of yellow appear on her lower lip as though it were
spittle; but itmoved rapidly, and even as Iwas thinking of it as spittle it had
itself into a butterfly and begun its ascent to the sky. I had no
transformed
to reflect upon this event, for Iwas overwhelmed
by what suc
opportunity
ceeded it. The woman kept her mouth open and breathed heavily and within
a minute a swarm of butterflies
had risen into the air, coming out of her
in a rush of yellow wings. But this was not all. Soon she seemed to go
mouth
into a swoon, as though exhausted. A film of perspiration
covered her
on
was
to
I
of
the
dark
brown
mistaken
but
skin;
light
body, tiny points
for the points of light rapidly began to enlarge
think it was perspiration,
of butterflies
themselves
and in another minute
thousands
began to rise
from every pore of her flesh. A thick yellow cloud hung in the air, clamor
ing for the upper light. A little later, the acacia blossoms began to fall. At
in the great aerial press,
first I thought some of the butterflies,
suffocated
were falling dead, but then saw it was the little flowers
that were tumbling

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Lila of the Butterflies

and Her Chronicler

157

overflowed
the hammock,
down and in a few minutes
having buried the
woman under their soft, almost weightless mass.
I did not need anyone to tell me, though the facts were later related to
the miracle of Lila of the Butterflies.
The acacia
me, that I had witnessed
blossoms
that covered her exhausted body, falling once every twenty-one
years, were, Iwas informed, the secret of her eternal youth. Iwould certain
this last notion as a piece of nonsense but it occurred to
ly have dismissed
me that nature had an infinite capacity to restore its living creatures; and the
real wonder was how a creater, trapped in an eternal solitude, could ever get
a combination
of disparate substances to come together to form a new life.
I walked quickly through the maze of passages and courtyards.
But
seeing the most startling image of
suddenly I stopped in front of a doorway,
all. A man sat at a small desk, his right elbow on some papers on the desk,
con
his head of thick black hair resting against the hand; his forehead,
was marked by two or three wavy lines and a small
tracted in concentration,
formed a dent between
his left
the eyebrows;
strong vertical depression
forearm rested along the edge of the desk, with some papers in front of him
which he read through the half-moon
lenses of his spectacles, his mouth
closed behind a rather heavy mustache;
the desk's two legs nearest him had
and his
pieces of paper folded under them to keep the desk from wobbling,
legs could be seen under the table, the left one crossed over the right, the
feet bare, the right foot resting on the polished tiled surface on which it was
reflected; the blue jeans he wore must have been about six inches too long
for him, for they had been folded up so that the reverse of the denim formed
a wide band between his ankles and shins; on the floor to his right was a
basket and a few crumpled sheets of paper could be seen
plastic wastepaper
discarded
through the basket's diagonal mesh.
What
startled me was that I had seen the image before. It was as if the
man were only just posing for a photograph
that already existed, and that I
man
while
in his reading, as the one ap
the
absorbed
remembered,
seeing
pearing on the back of the English translation of a book called El oto?o del
was in
patriarca,
published by Harper & Row in 1976. But no photographer
and I went on my way, reciting, for no reason at all that I have
attendance,
since been able to determine,
these lines from The Winter's
Tale:
But here it is: prepare
as ever
To see the life as lively mocked,
Still sleep mocked
death: behold, and say 'tis well....

?ends?

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