Blue Morpho Butterfly
When Jairo Mackenzie was little more than a toddler, his parents lived in Mabaruma, in Guyana’s North-West district, where his father was a government district officer. They lived in a large wooden house in the government compound, and for Jairo and his two brothers it was a perfect life. Jairo was five and a half years old and his two brothers –the twins—were almost four. The boys wandered at will around the small government compound—around and under the houses and other government buildings and, especially, among the fruit trees that grew behind the buildings and at the edge of the forest. They plundered mangoes and guavas and golden apples and whatever other fruit were in season. Adult relatives of the family who visited from time to time were put out by the fact that the youngsters were allowed to wander around freely on their own; but any children who visited thought it was wonderful and were happy to join the boys’ adventures.
When the boys’ Uncle Bertie came to visit for the first time, he woke early on the first morning and came down for breakfast, expecting to see the boys, who had gone to bed hours before him the night before, but there was no one there except their Mum, in the kitchen, brewing coffee and preparing breakfast.
--“Where are the boys?” Uncle Bertie asked, “Don’t tell me they’re still asleep!”
--“Oh no, they’re wandering around somewhere outside…they’ll soon be here for breakfast”—and when she glanced up and saw the look of surprise and apprehension on Bertie’s face, she added “Don’t let it worry you Bertie dear, they do this every morning: it’s quite safe in the backyards and among the fruit trees—and besides, there are probably a few older boys with them: there’s usually quite a gang of youngsters wandering around on mornings.”
Uncle Bertie was not sure that he felt entirely comfortable with this picture of his young nephews, but he helped his sister-in-law with the preparation of breakfast. Sure enough, at around ten to seven, the boys came noisily up the back stairs, shouting goodbye to other members of their morning gang. They entered the kitchen, arguing about who had the biggest mamie-apple, their shirts and faces yellow from the juice of mangoes. Uncle Bertie was happy to see them and to hear all about their morning adventures—although he did not quite understand all their references…such as Jairo’s complaint about Mrs Ramacindo’s noisy fowl-cock, who kept following them around (“like if we had chicken-feed in we pockets!).
--“So what did you do?” Uncle Bertie asked.
--“Well Alex throw—“
--“No it was Andy—“
--“OK Andy throw a rotten guava and hit the fowl-cock…and he make a lot of noise, but stop following we around.”
--“But”, Uncle Bertie asked, “aren’t you all afraid that some dangerous animal might come wandering out of the forest and attack you?
--“ Oh they know not to go close to the forest” their mum said, “but to stay on this side of the fruit trees…”
--“Talking ‘bout that”, Jairo said with a grin , “Attie Solomon was telling me: ‘Chase da noisy foul-cock over the other side—let some wild-boar or something come out and eat he rass!’ “
--“ Behave yourselves, all of you”, Mum said, as the twins began to laugh with their big brother—and even Uncle Bertie flashed a smile.
Shortly after that, the children’s dad came down and they all had breakfast, chatting about the creatures of the forest and the fruit trees. At one point Jairo said: “And don’ forget, Uncle Bertie, that I have a weapon”—and he waved a sturdy sling-shot before taking a stone from his pocket and shooting it through the open dining-room window and onto the roof of the iron shed behind the house…”If any wild boar was to come near me—“
--“That’s quite enough Jairo”, his father said sternly; “I’ve told you before not to shoot that thing in the house: you could have missed the open window and shattered one of the glass panes!”
--:Sorry, Dad, I forgot”
--“Don’t do it again.”
Shortly after all this the boys’ father said goodbye and walked over to his office in the building next door. Alex, one of the twins, then said: “come with us, Uncle Bertie, and we’ll show you the fruit trees and the places we go to in the mornings.”
--“Yes, come, Uncle Bertie” Andy, the other twin said, we’ll show you everything”.
And that’s what happened: they showed Uncle Bertie all the best fruit trees and identified for him all the bird-songs and other noises that they heard coming from the edge of the forest. Uncle Bertie thoroughly enjoyed it all; but the fruit tree that interested him the most was an avocado tree which had several large pears ready to be picked. His enthusiasm, as he collected three of them, was as great as that of the boys when they were picking ripe mangoes or guavas. The boys were happy to see him enjoying himself, although Jairo said: “I guess pears are OK, but they not sweet like mangoes or oranges or mamie-apples.
Uncle Bertie was also introduced to a bunch of older boys who were his nephews’ regular accomplices as they participated in the morning plunder of ripe fruit: there was Zack and Morris and Attie Solomon who was probably, at ten years old, the eldest of them all. Uncle Bertie thanked them for fruit-hunting with his nephews in the early mornings and asked them to make sure that the young ones kept safe and didn’t get into any trouble. Uncle Bertie and the boys had many more such morning adventures over the next couple of weeks.
Then there was ‘steamer day’, when the passenger steamer arrived from Georgetown—and Uncle Bertie was due to leave the following day on its return trip to the city. For Jairo and the twins steamer day was no different from the others: they were gone on their fruit-hunting ramble before six that morning—although Uncle Bertie didn’t accompany them this time as he was preparing for his trip home the next day.
It wasn’t yet seven o’clock when the boys could be heard coming up the back stairs—and from the sounds they made both their mum and Bertie sensed that there was something wrong. The twins burst into the kitchen, followed by Attie Solomon—but there was no sign of Jairo.
--“What’s going on? Where’s your big brother? Young Solomon, isn’t it? She continued, what’s happened to Jairo?”
The twins burst into tears and shouted “Oh Mum—he’s lost!”—and that seemed to be the signal for everyone to start talking at once…It was just at that point that the children’s father came into the room: he managed to settle everyone down and asked Attie to tell what happened. The ten-year-old explained that, as they were all picking ripe guavas, they suddenly saw Jairo pull out of his pocket a small butterfly net and was shouting: :A blue Morpho! A blue Morpho! And he took off behind the butterfly.
As the story unfolded, it became clear that the large blue butterfly (which has always fascinated the young Jairo) had fluttered into the forest, with Jairo in hot pursuit—despite the shouts and warnings of his brothers and the three older boys who were with them at the time. “I followed him into the bush”, Attie said, “but it hard to see anything inside there, and although I keep calling out his name, he never answer…He mussee gone in real deep…I din want there to be two boys lost in the bush, so before I went in too far I just stan up and holler ‘Jairo! Jairo! A few times, and when I ent hear no reply I run back out and we hurried back here to tell you all”
“Come and show us where he went into the bush, the boys’ dad said, and soon there was a large search party at the edge of the forest.
“Now, lets not all rush wildly into bush, or there will be more people lost!” Let us spread out here along the edge of the forest and each make our way in slowly calling Jairo’s name and looking for signs such as broken branches, etc. And don’t spread out too far—we have to be in shouting distance of each other.”
It was Attie who found him, and whose shouting voice was heard by all the others: “I find him! I find Jairo! I find him!” They all hurried to the source of the shouting and saw Jairo sitting on a rock and trying to smile through his tears. It turned out he had actually caught the butterfly in his net, but that was the beginning of his troubles because he had no clue where he was nor how to get out of the forest. He wandered around for a while, shouting at the top of his voice but when there was no response, he sat on a rock and cried… until he heard Attie in the distance.
Everyone in Mabaruma—and beyond—heard the story of Jairo’s adventure: he became famous as ‘the boy who loss away in the bush wid a butterfly’; and indeed the blue morpho butterfly was his prize although it was already half-dead. He knew it would not live long in captivity, so he was resigned to having it mounted and enclosed in glass—as it turned out he ended up with two blue morpho butterflies mounted, because old Mr Hernandez who had a shop down by the steamer stelling, heard the story and gave Jairo another blue butterfly that he had had mounted some time ago. The child was overjoyed and has ever since identified himself with and by the two blue Morpho butterflies.
You can conclude from all of this that Uncle Bertie was able to pack that evening and take the steamer safely back to town on the next day. As for the boys? They carried on as usual: hunting ripe fruit every morning. Jairo and the twins became great friends with—and indeed inseparable from Attie and Zack and Morris for the rest of their childhoods….
The story resumes fifty-four years later, In Guyana…
Screaming Piha trail at Iwokrama
Jairo is pushing sixty and finds himself back in his native Guyana. He left to attend the University of Toronto when he was eighteen and, apart from a few brief visits over the years, has not lived in Guyana since. After Graduation he moved to Florida and got married and raised his two children there. He kept in sporadic touch with Attie Solomon, who remained a loyal friend over the years. Jairo’s two children are now grown-up and have families of their own.
This has been a bleak and tragic year for all of them: the Corona Virus arrived and they all hated having to stay home. Jairo’s wife, Louise, came down with the virus and died horribly, hooked up to a machine that breathed for her in a hospital in Florida. Around the same time Jairo learned that Alex, one of his two twin brothers who lived in New York, also succumbed to the virus. All this affected Jairo deeply, but he was the kind of person who kept it all bottled up inside and put on a brave face. Now retired from his job, he would have been happy to help with his grand-children, but they too were all adults now and coping with their strangely cramped lives—given the raging pandemic.
Thus Jairo was alone and found it hard to cope without wife and family and became careless about the Covid 19 pandemic—perhaps hoping to catch it and be gone from a strange and unfriendly world. He decided that, if he was going to die, he’d prefer to do so in his native Guyana, so he wrote his Friend Attie and told him about his plans to return “home”. Attie encouraged him and told him that he must come up to Iwokrama, the forest station in which he worked as a guide, though his age directed that he should retire later in the year.
Thus it was that Jairo found himself at Iwokrama, staying in one of the cabins facing the Essequibo river. It was serene and wonderful, and since there were very few others staying there at the time,, it was very casual and easy-going. Attie, in his role as guide, took Jairo all over the river, into creeks and up to a mountain-top overlooking the Essequibo. He also took him several miles by road up to an impressive “Forest Canopy Walk”, built some years ago by the Canadians. Jairo was able to relax and enjoy the company of his friend from childhood.
Then they began to get news about people in Georgetown and along the Guyana coast who had succumbed to the Corona Virus: many of them had died. As the reported number of deaths crept up towards 50, Jairo became uncomfortable and moody, although Attie tried to calm him down. He began to wish once more that the virus would claim his life, for he would be happy to die in the forests of his homeland.
Meanwhile a small party of guests from Europe had arrived at Iwokrama, and, much as Attie would have preferred to stay at the forest station and comfort his friend, he had to take these newcomers on the various tours. When the party returned at night from a trip to the canopy walk, Attie could see no light on in Jairo’s hut and concludrd that he must be sleeping. Next morning there was still no sign of Jairo, and when he enquired, Attie was told by one of the gardeners that Jairo had been seen taking walks in and around the property, and had probably gone on an early morning exploration of one of the paths into the forest. Attie didn’t like the sound of this but was busy with the tourists all day and again came home late that night to find Jairo’s cabin dark and there was no response when he knocked on the door.
Next day, when he returned around noon from a river tour with the European visitors, he was handed a letter which was found on the pillow in Jairo’s hut. The unopened envelope said “Please give this to Attie Solomon” and was signed by Jairo and dated three days before. As soon as he could, Attie sat in his room and, with a certain amount of dread, he opened the envelope. Inside was a letter;
Dear Attie,
I still can’t get over renewing our friendship after all the years! I’m sure you will remember that incident from Mabaruma in the old days, when I got lost chasing a blue morpho butterfly and you and the others eventually found me—in tears—and with the butterfly almost dead in a little net. I was only five at the time, but I remember it mainly because of you: it was you who first found me—and you who, a year later, told about it to our whole Mabaruma school, when it was your turn to stand on the stage and tell a story to the whole school.
Anyway, I’m writing this because I don’t want you wasting your time all these years later searching for me again—this time in the forests around Iwokrama. I say this because if you are reading this letter, it means that I have “disappeared” again. This time I am not chasing blue butterflies, and you won’t find me in tears sitting on a rock—in fact you just won’t find me, because I don’t want to be found. The other evening, when we were catching up on each other’s life-stories, I told you when we chatted how happy I was to be back in my country Guyana, especially after my wife and brother had died…what I didn’t tell you is how much I hate this fucking Covid 19 Virus that has taken over my—and everyone else’s—world
Ironically it seems to have completely ignored me: God knows I have tried to catch it and die like the others—but no, it will not come to me! So now I intend to die somewhere in the forests of my beloved Guyana, leaving no debts nor burdens for anyone. So…see you on the other side—whenever it is your time to come. I thank you for everything.
I love you,
Jairo
Attie wiped the tears from his eyes and felt so glad that he was retiring in a month’s time. He knew it would be a month of sorrow and mourning and he hoped that visitors to Iwokrama would keep him busy until then. However there were no visitors that day nor the next. On the third day after he had read the letter there were shouts in the yard and people calling his name. He walked outside to see a grimy, wet and dishevelled Jairo walking towards the building, trailed by several curious workers. Attie was overjoyed.
--“Oh God, Jairo, I so glad to see that you ent kill yourself in the bush after all: The first time you run in the bush after blue butterflies—you get lost and you kill the butterfly. This time you run in the bush looking to die, and you find your way out alive! Your letter had me so sad! Wha’ make you change you mind?
--“Boy Attie, it aint that easy to die, hear. It especially not easy to die in peace in this forest. Wha mek me change my mind was those fucking Screaming Pihas! They scream their terrible screams all day—and don’t let you think ‘bout anything else! That Piha is the worst creature God ever create!”
Attie hugged him and laughed. “If you had stayed and lived in Guyana you would have got accustomed to them—to the point where you don’t really hear them no more!...But I so glad they screamed some sense into your head. I just want you to know that I love you, Jairo, you are my best friend and when I retire from here in a month’s time, I want you to come and live with me for as long as you want. I have a nice, comfortable little house on the river—not far from the Mabaruma of our childhood. So say “Yes”, you’ll come”.
Jairo put his arm around Attie’s neck and they walked back to the main building…