{"id":215,"date":"2024-11-14T17:49:25","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T17:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/?page_id=215"},"modified":"2024-12-09T17:46:42","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T17:46:42","slug":"catching-butterflies","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/catching-butterflies\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching Butterflies"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Anthony Roesch<\/span><\/p>\n

They ran out the doors with stolen mason jars in hand. Dressed identically: white-collared blouses and navy-pleated skirts, they ran around the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. They were best friends and roommates at the Ecoles Des Capucines on the Rue de la Mairie located just outside of Pairs in Charenton le Pont. And like a couple of gazelles, they raced out of the iron gates and around the Place de Valois.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heading to the park, one of the girls, Ren\u00e9e, suddenly stopped. A pushcart of brightly colored flowers with the redolence sweet fragrances, she called out, \u201cYou must look at all the pretty flowers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The other girl, Eva, panting out of breath, insisted that they not waste any time.\u00a0 That morning, the girls skipped class to do a science project on butterflies. And not only were they leaving the school without permission, but they had also stolen the mason jars from the kitchen panty.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was little time to waste. If Sister Monique catches them, they\u2019d have to recite a litany of Our Fathers and Hail Mary\u2019s while she\u2019d count off.\u00a0 However, Ren\u00e9e could not resist. The vendor held out a paper cone of red carnations. She thought how much her mother would have loved their sweet aroma. Which triggered how much Ren\u00e9e missed her mother. How she\u2019d loved the springtime with its brightly colored flowers, and in Rouen, the birthplace of Gustave Flaubert, and where Ren\u00e9e had grown up, would be blanketed in marsh orchids, water crowfoots, and pondweed, and even after her mother passed, Ren\u00e9e and her father would stroll the fields for hours. He\u2019d make her name all the flowers just with her with nose. She\u2019d learned to name them all and pluck the brightest colors for her mother\u2019s grave. At the headstone, she\u2019d place them, and whisper their names: Corcus, Hyacinth, Iris, as if whispering the names of children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once in the park, there seemed to be thousands of the speckle-winged creatures. Pinks and blues, yellows and oranges, spotted white, black, purple with stripes and circles, all bouncing and fluttering to a ragtime playing inside their heads.<\/span><\/p>\n

The girls would have to sneak up on the butterflies, lolloping rose-to-rose, flower-to-flower. With lids removed, they\u2019d chase the speckled creatures through the grassy arboretum of goldenrod and cattail. On the park benches, old people, les vieux gens<\/em>, watched with soured dispositions and aging hands propped on canes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then when a brightly spotted Peacock landed on Ren\u00e9e\u2019s hand she quickly trapped it in her jar. After each had finally caught an adult specimen, they headed back to school, perspiring under the lining of their muslin blouses.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the way back, Eva began schooling Ren\u00e9e on the plight of the butterfly. Metamorphosis, she called it and started rattling off the names of species. \u201cThere are Blues, Fritillaries, and Pyrgus, which look like moths,\u201d and looking nearly cross-eyed at her butterfly inside the jar, she added, \u201cAnd this one is a Marble, no, a Two-point Blue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva was of four siblings and wanted to be a nun like an aunt of hers in Italy.\u00a0 She was smart: thin, lanky limbs, faint red hair, fair skin, with the smallest freckles pinpricked across her nose and cheeks. She wore round, thick eyeglasses, and kept pebbles in her shoes to remind her of sacrifice, and, holding up her mason jar, while tapping on the glass, she said, \u201cWe must get back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Ren\u00e9e, she wanted to strip off all her sweaty clothing and bathe in the coolness of the\u00a0 breeze.\u00a0 At fourteen years old and an only child, she could never match the knowledge or devotion displayed by Eva. Then suddenly, a cool breeze lit up her skirt and cooled her flesh. She was aroused by more than the thought of him and could not hold back something as wonderful as the feelings she\u2019d felt at that moment. \u201cHave you ever been in love?\u201d Ren\u00e9e asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva stopped. \u201cOf course. God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I mean a real man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e hadn\u2019t told anyone. But she\u2019d met a man in Rouen, an acquaintance of her father\u2019s. He was twice her age. Handsome. A slender man with long, black sideburns and an elegant top hat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a sin,\u201d said Eva, gazing at her specimen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow can love be a sin?\u201d Ren\u00e9e countered and she went on telling Eva how she met this man in Rouen, how he looked at her, how she felt, leaving out the fantasies, which were the reasons for her prolonging her confession, which were also the reasons why she\u2019d felt that way she did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva turned abruptly, and in doing so, her jar slipped out of her hands. Shattering into pieces, she shrieked as her butterfly escaped, fluttering around her head until landing in her hair. Eva, still shrieking, shouted at Ren\u00e9e, \u201cLook what you made me do.\u201d She then started picking up the pieces of broken glass. And in her haste, cut her finger. \u201cI\u2019m bleeding,\u201d she screamed, and crying so hard, she nearly knocked her eyeglasses off her nose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet me see,\u201d Ren\u00e9e said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, you\u2019ve done enough,\u201d Eva sounded, and bleeding from her finger, she cried, \u201cAnd you\u2019ve completely ruined our experiment.\u201d She then ran back to school, hobbling in anguish from the pebbles in her shoes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The glass fragments, in the bright sunlight, looked to Ren\u00e9e like a kind of jigsaw puzzle, pieces once part of something, but now, incomprehensible. After throwing them all away, she returned to the field to release her butterfly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Afternoon tea, young debutantes stirred their cream and sugar into their demitasse cups with a synchronicity of clocks. When Ren\u00e9e entered, they all stopped. Eva sat with a troupe of girls. Her arms folded and finger bandaged, and once the stirring resumed, Eva smirked as if on the mend. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The school was divided into two factions: the Edwardians, which consisted of the purists, like Eva; and the Elizabethans, which consisted of the romantics, like Ren\u00e9e. But there was one other girl\u2014a tall girl neither Edwardian or Elizabethan, a girl more likely from Pigelle than Auteuil, a girl all respected and hated because they all knew that they were inferior to her\u2014and despite all the gossip that surrounded her\u2014Ren\u00e9e found this girl, Emma de Fontenelle, to be as honest as the day\u2019s long.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e asked Emma if she could sit with her. Emma nodded. \u201cMerci,\u201d Renee said taking a seat across from Emma. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sister Monique, unbeknownst to what was going on, carried a tray with tea cakes. There were secrets. Forbidden poems. And books of promiscuity carried beneath large square collars and passed around girl-to-girl; Shelley or Byron slid under doors like desperate messages; and clearly, a girl like Emma was straight from Flaubert\u2019s, Madame Bovary, sublime and erotic.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ecoles Des Capucines<\/em> was an all-girl school with a reputation of being stern, but not overly ecclesiastic. Next to the Gospels the girls read the likes of Voltaire and Dickens, along with Isaac Newton and St. Augustine, and each morning, recite the Lord\u2019s Prayer in both Latin and French. In class they\u2019d discuss the morals of the war and the faith of Devine Revelation; in the chapel they\u2019d pray in unison the Morning Prayer, and in the afternoons they\u2019d discuss literary readings from Troyes to Poe, and put on plays, like Les Burgraves<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

After tea, Ren\u00e9e stopped Emma in the hallway. She asked her what is it like? \u201cWhat\u2019s what like?\u201d Emma asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was beautiful. A beauty with little innocence, though; her eyes dark and attentive; her light hair cut short to a modified boy\u2019s cut, but soft, powder skin, and long, curling eyelashes whose tips she\u2019d accentuate with a smear of petroleum jelly.\u00a0 Taller than most of the girls, she wore rouge on her lips and somehow would get away with it. Even on weekends when Emma would pack a small bag of toiletries, and with all nuns and girls secretively watching from cracks in doors or bedroom windows, get into a car and drive off with a man that wasn\u2019t her father or brother or even an uncle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e had befriended Emma not because of curiosity, but because Ren\u00e9e wanted to her\u2014to experience all that Emma had experienced\u2014and in particular, men. She replied, \u201cTo be the way you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma replied, \u201cYou just have to know how to swank it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cQu’est-ce que c’est, \u2018Swank\u2019?\u201d asked Ren\u00e9e.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma raised her skirt and stuck out her white, silken behind. Then slapped it. \u201cSwank,\u201d she laughed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, a knock came on Ren\u00e9e\u2019s door. Emma, cautiously entering, asked \u201cWhere is the little fake?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s cleaning the rectory,\u201d Ren\u00e9e replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGood,\u201d Emma said, \u201cI have something for you to read,\u201d and she handed Ren\u00e9e a book. It was Baudelaire\u2019s erotic love poems, Les Fleurs du mal<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s banished almost everywhere, but it was given to me as a gift.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e didn\u2019t know what to say feeling a trembling sensation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut I warn you,\u201d Emma said, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t let anyone see you reading it.\u201d Still skeptical that Eva wasn\u2019t hiding somewhere such as under the bed, Emma lowered her voice. \u201cCertainly, anyone with this book would be expelled from here.\u201d Ren\u00e9e rippled through the pages. Emma sat on the edge of Eva\u2019s bed, crossing her shapely legs. \u201cI needn\u2019t tell you,\u201d Emma said, \u201cbut when someone becomes obsessed with love, scrutiny follows.\u201d She then added, \u201cThis man that brings you so much grief, is he good to you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e swallowed hard. \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou must then confront your lover,\u201d she said, \u201cIt\u2019s too important.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut how?\u201d Ren\u00e9e eagerly asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma stood up. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve learned,\u201d she said, \u201cWhen you\u2019re crossing the tight rope, you don\u2019t look down.\u201d She went to the door, peaked out, then, looking back, said, \u201cEnjoy the book, ma ch\u00e9rie<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e, settling in bed, opened the book. Inside the cover there was a note from Emma. It was a sentiment written as if she\u2019d dedicated the book to her: You are a sky autumn, pale and rose.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e shut the book. She asked herself, \u201cWhat latitudes are given to her own touch. . . What rock of virtue would crumple if she didn\u2019t lie down with her arms straight to her side? Could love to be a terrible sin, not only against her body but all of society? Didn\u2019t young Queen Elizabeth brandish a sword over her laced petticoats? Didn\u2019t Victor Hugo write, the dawn is smiling on the dew that covers the tearful rose?\u201d She opened the book and the more she\u2019d read, the more confused she\u2019d become. \u201cIs virtue better seen through the mournful eyes of the Virgin Mary or the hopeful ones of Mary Magdalene? Is there a difference? If so, what? And is there nothing more contentious than hearing the word virtue repeated seven or seventy-seven times?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Then when Eva opened the door, Ren\u00e9e quickly hid the book under her mattress. Not speaking, Eva began to undress for bed. There was the quite rustle of Eva removing her clothing, only followed by the methodical buttoning of her nightgown high up her neck.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e was still not sure if she was right or wrong to read the book, yet, to ignore her feelings was to put all the world into question.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva, crawling into bed had finally broken her silence. Her voice was a faint yet clear, and within the first few sentences, she had reiterated God\u2019s love at least twice. As if she\u2019d rehearsed this moment, Eva proclaimed against all the poets and writers. Particularly, she said, all the Emma Le Fontenelles of the world. Then, with a wide yawn, she prophetically proclaimed that God\u2019s love wasn\u2019t a choice but a commandment.\u00a0 She then turned off her nightlight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e had believed in Charlemagne. In men in shining armor who carried swords of fate and shields of chivalry. And now, she questioned that belief. In truth, men wore wool suits and tall hats and carried bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next morning, like clockwork, all the girls were at their bedroom windows. Ren\u00e9e watched on her knees from bed, and Eva, on her bed, stretched her neck, straining to see out her window.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon Emma appeared. A silk toiletry bag hung from her wrist. All eyes were upon her. She looked up, but her bonnet shaded her face. She got into a car that drove once around the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. Then out the gate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva, with her back against her headboard, sighed heavily. \u201cShe will not come back this time,\u201d she said, unwrapping the gauze around her finger.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d Ren\u00e9e asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause,\u201d Eva said, examining the scab of her cut. \u201cI just know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sensing Eva\u2019s reticence, Ren\u00e9e wondered aloud, \u201cDid you ever confess to Father Pietro of breaking the jar?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eva looked at her stressfully. Then said that she must tend to her cut and left the room. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9e folded her knees to her chest. She didn\u2019t hold it against Eva. She was no different than any of them. And Ren\u00e9e remembered what Emma had told her: \u201cWhen you\u2019re crossing the tight rope, you don\u2019t look down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The sun rose higher. Shadows receded. Ren\u00e9e, getting out of bed, removed the Baudelaire from under her mattress. Voices in the hallway began to carry through the door, and she quickly dashed over to Eva\u2019s bed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Voices grew louder. The knob jiggled. Ren\u00e9e on her knees.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014And quickly, she slipped the book under the mattress.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Anthony Roesch They ran out the doors with stolen mason jars in hand. Dressed identically: white-collared blouses and navy-pleated skirts, they ran around the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. They were best friends and roommates at the Ecoles Des Capucines on the Rue de la Mairie located just outside of Pairs Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":23,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-left-sidebar.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-215","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/215\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}