Eduardo had talked to me about them and shortly after I’d looked them up, but there was nothing to be found anywhere, in books or in travel journals or in manuals. But Eduardo’s imagination is serious stuff. Galeano has the depths of time in his veins, he knows how to embrace with his lips. His migratory butterflies come back to mind, they deserve other stories and so this is how I see them. White and not orange, voyagers, gens vera, creatures of the sea.
They weigh hardly more than air. They live fewer than eighty days: they’ll see the sun rise fewer than eighty time, they may be univoltine, to use the technical term.
But this isn’t important: it is their voyage over the sea that counts.
They hardly weigh more than air, if you creep up close and blow, ffffhhhh…...they go off-track, they lose their balance, and if you have deep eyesight you can see the irritated look of a nervous butterfly.
They, the white butterflies, sense it, they know it by its smell. From a thousand kilometres arrive aromas and particles with an irresistible smell. What carries these scents and particles is a single taut wind, the only one that is a divine courier. As it crossed the sea it took on a load of humidity, each microscopic particle of scent was wrapped in a microscopic drop of salt sea water. Before it falls as a thin rain on the earth it dries off a bit, it shrinks and frees the marvellous scent that only the nostril-antennas of those white butterflies can smell while others remain indifferent. With the right eyesight you see it through the transparent air, lighter than fog, more subtle than the most refined cosmetic vapour, less than a cloud, the breath of angels.
The white butterflies have the right nose for receiving that scent.
Receptors. Scientists use this mechanical name for the part of the body of white butterflies that transmits delight and lust for departure to their whole body, to all their bodies. It seems that when the wind that arrives from the sea blows a siren sounds, or better a Homeric siren sings. But our butterflies have light, white wings: they have no thick ropes to help them resist the bewitchment of that siren song. They answer. They call each other with their thin butterfly voice, they gather and feed on the carpet of buttercups one last time and then they fly off over the sea.
For a thousand kilometres over the sea. The butterflies come from a million-year long life, they know what to do. They live fewer than eighty days but they speak to each other continually, they speak in a way we never can. They communicate all the life, all the experience of millions of years, so that they can make that thousand kilometre sea-voyage. Each of them knows it will not return; every voyage is made for one generation only. Each butterfly will have to tell the story, explain the voyage, the preparations, the scent, death, the wind, each one to the others, a totally feminine affair.
And they know well how to do it. The voyage turns out well.
Their end, the end of all their million-year-long life, the end of them all, depends on that voyage. If for only one season the wind did not carry that siren-scent, if only once, during a flight of a thousand kilometres over the sea a storm were to destroy them all, it would be finished forever.
They don’t only feed in the buttercups before the flight: they immerse themselves in the buttercups, they spread nourishment over their whole body, they double their weight. They will be emaciated upon arrival, exhausted... over there, where the siren scent has its origin.
They’ve resisted for two days, they’ve made all their calculations, they’ve called and greeted each other – hallo! you’re here, too? Good, it’s time! Let’s go.
A white stripe rises up in flight before the swallows do, to avoid the swallows.
The butterflies are a sizable group, a long cloud, light and compact for now.
The ear of the wise man who knows the sound of silence listens to the stories that travel together tightly… bbbrrrrhhhbbrrhhhh, fffffhhhhbbrrrhhh, vvrrhhvvrrhh.
Wings beat happily, departures are always like this, joyful, there’s a world to discover out there, this is the journey. The sea below is darker than the sky, lovely, deep blue and so close, with its good odour, its sweat that smells of salt. The sea has its sound, too. The more motionless it is the deeper it is... sssscchh, sssscchh, a soft ssscchh, just right to accompany the light flight of the butterflies without covering their chatter... bbbrrrrhhhbbrrhhhh fffffhhhhbbrrrhhh. They are elegant the butterflies are, they fly all day long, they feed upon one another, sucking on each other, licking delicately. They use their small proboscis to suck a bit of pollen and water from the wings and body of their neighbour in flight. Each one offers its own body. At sunset they rest, tired, on the still water, but before stopping… another two wing beats, another small piece of the voyage.
They know, the can feel it from vibrations on the surface, their enemies the fish are arriving swiftly from the ocean bottom. Thousands upon thousands of butterflies are sucked in and swallowed by ghost fish, silver blades from below, from the black ocean depths, silently pull them under. Their white wings fold and roll up to fit into the mouths of the fish, this is how thousands are sucked in. Each night a part of the white cloud disappears and each morning a carpet of white confetti is still on the ocean, slowly waving. There are thousands and thousands of butterflies that will not fly again. They’ve been the support, the trampoline for their sisters’ take-off; they’ve served to keep their sisters’ wings dry.
The white cloud is stratified, like a swollen book with a thousand live pages: each page will make only a part of the voyage, it must make a part of the voyage so that the other can continue to fly, because only a thousand butterflies can arrive. Sea swallows come from on high to break up the cloud, too, but the torn white wave reforms immediately.
And even the wind seems determined to reduce their number: it pushes, blows, pulls, wreaks havoc in the group, makes them wet their wings and die from the water.
A thousand kilometres, six days like this to lose the way, to recognize and reach the source of the siren scent. Six days to arrive in a field of gloriously-coloured flowers that none of them had ever seen and that repose will allow them to enjoy.
It is over, the voyage is over. A long, cold season will see the birth of new white butterflies and… next year, when the scent arrives, millions and millions of butterflies will begin their long voyage…