Butterfly Winter (7 page)

The babies slept at the opposite ends of their crib, each in their accustomed positions: Julio as if he had just delivered a sidearm curve, Esteban as if he had just caught one.

By six months of age the twins were playing catch with passion fruit. Julio was long and lean with an oval face and forehead, while Esteban was stocky and wide-faced with a low hairline and teacup ears.

“
IF THEY ARE GOING TO BE FAMOUS
, they will require some education,” said Hector Alvarez Pimental.

“They must be able to do sums,” nodded Fernandella, who sometimes was drawn in by the bombast of the Wizard, and the furtiveness of her husband. She changed her tone and immediately became jocular.

“They will need adding and subtraction in order to count all the guilermos they will earn. You might give them practice carrying sugarcane so they will bear up well under the weight of their wealth.”

The Wizard agreed to become tutor to the twins.

“In America,” the Wizard pronounced, calling up distant memories, like a long arm reaching deep into a rain barrel, “in America baseball
players are more powerful than Bishops, more popular than the slyest politician, more revered than the greatest inventors.

“Every October, the best player in the American League is carried to the President of the United States. There is a monstrous golden scale in the White House palace of the President. The player is seated on the scale, and his weight—he is allowed to eat a huge breakfast first—is matched in golden coins and priceless gems. When the player and his booty are equally balanced, the president takes off his diamond ring and tosses it in among the coins and gems, sending the delicate balance …” at that point the Wizard lost his train of thought and had to change marvels.

“At least so the tabloid press tells me. I am also told the water faucets in the hotels where the baseball players are accommodated, are made of gold,” he went on.

The only faucet Hector and Fernandella had ever seen was the single water pipe in San Cristobel town square with its rough, hexagonal head that screwed up and down.

“Tell us about the food,” said Hector Alvarez Pimental.

“Ah, the food. Everything tastes as you wish it to. It doesn’t matter what you eat, it tastes exactly like what you crave at that moment.”

“My cornmeal would taste like chocolate?” said Hector.

“Indeed,” said the Wizard. “It is the American way.”

A
t two years of age Julio struck out his father, using two curve balls and a sinking slider. Almost immediately after their birth, Salvador Geraldo Alfredo Jorge Blanco, as the Wizard now called himself, had a special pitcher’s mound installed beside the stream where the blue fish darted like needles, the rubber stolen in the dead of night from Jesus, Joseph, and Mary Celestial Baseball Palace.

Hector Alvarez Pimental saw to it that Fernandella became pregnant again as quickly as possible, in fact she produced four more children at ten-month intervals, two boys and two girls. The Wizard made no further predictions over Fernandella’s belly, though her husband beseeched him to; the Wizard even declined to predict the sex of the unborn. To the great disappointment of Hector Alvarez Pimental all the children but one were born without abnormalities. The dwarf, Agurrie, might have had some magical appeal if she were male, but a female dwarf was merely bad luck in Courteguay, though even as a baby she had an ice-pick stare that was said to be able to spin the mobile that hung in the listless air above her crib. There was not a hint of magic about any of the others.

As the twins grew older Fernandella’s vigilance slackened. Overwhelmed with newer babies and perpetual pregnancy she eventually became relieved to see the twins troop off with their father and the Wizard in the direction of the baseball fields. By the time they were five they were playing in a league for teenagers and winning regularly. Their father became almost prosperous by betting on them, until bookmakers, especially the Wizard, refused to accept any more bets on the battery of Julio and Esteban.

Years later, at the height of their career, shortly before his untimely murder, Esteban Pimental would look on his major league career with mild amusement. Esteban was the more passive of the brothers. Stocky and round faced, he was slow to anger, slower to smile, while Julio on the other hand, was taller, with his father’s hooded eyes and sly smile, and a dangerous energy accompanied by a propensity to take chances.

Esteban even as a child in Courteguay was serious and studious, wanting to discuss with the Wizard questions of philosophical magnitude. Rather than discussing how to pick a runner off first base he was interested in questions of religious significance. Esteban often went to view the priests. Years earlier, the Old Dictator had, at great expense, imprisoned the priests by installing fourteen-foot chain-link fencing around every manse in Courteguay. When General Bravura overthrew the government and took power, he did nothing to remove the fences. Esteban would stand outside the frosty-bright metal fence, watching the old priests walk, hands behind backs, black cassocks sweeping the ground, their strides ungainly, lumbering like tall, mangy bears. The priests occasionally blessed a goat or a peasant who came too close to the fence. Esteban noted that the priest’s eyes were rheumy and their teeth bad.

“Why doesn’t God melt down the fence?” Esteban asked the Wizard.

“Why should he?” asked the Wizard.

“Because the priest is God’s representative. He does God’s work.”

“What can the priests do on the outside that they cannot do inside the fence, except graveside services? If they wished to they could lead prayers, perform marriages, administer the Eucharist, hear confessions;
the sick could be brought to visit them. Because these priests choose to decay before your eyes, to choose as their only duties the blessing of goats and lottery tickets, is not the fault of God. If I were God I would turn the fence to stone so the priests might disintegrate in private.”

“I have decided to be a priest,” said Esteban. “And I will do the same work no matter which side of the fence I am on.”

“You will go far,” said the Wizard. “I will see that you are allowed to bless each new balloon that I add to my fleet.” The Wizard, at the time, did not own even one balloon.

Word of the miraculous Baseball Playing Babies spread outward from Courteguay. In nearby Haiti, Papa Doc Duvalier, when he heard of the astonishing children, sent an emissary with golf-ball-sized diamonds on his ebony fingers, who offered to buy the babies from their father in return for a twenty-pound bar of gold and six virgins.

“In Haiti, women who have had sex only with Papa Doc Duvalier or a member of his cabinet are still considered virgins. The gold bar has a leaden center and the virgins have the pox,” said the Wizard, who had bigger plans for the battery. Hector Alvarez Pimental reluctantly turned down the offer. In America, he knew, baseball players were rich and worshipped. They were idolized more than generals, bullfighters, plantation owners, rock stars, or even Papa Doc Duvalier. Besides, what would Duvalier do with them, turn them into soccer players?

“They play soccer in Haiti,” said the Wizard, “soccer is for rowdies who are not yet smart enough to tie their own shoes. When I become President of the Republic of Courteguay I will have a baseball installed on our flag.” The Courteguayan flag was a solid green rectangle with a white cube at its center. The small square had no significance whatever, and the rumor was that the material for the first flag had had a flaw in its center that the flag-maker interpreted as a design.

B
y the time the boys were seven years old they were playing in the best league in Courteguay, and were virtually unbeatable. General Bravura, who was now El Presidente, disagreed with the Wizard about possibly negotiating to send the boys to America. The Wizard went ahead and laboriously wrote a letter that he addressed to: El Presidente, American State of Miami, United States of America, The World. Or so the Wizard claims.

Since he mistrusted the Courteguayan Postal Service, a very small operation because sixty percent of Courteguayans were illiterate, the Wizard sent the letter to America by Dominican rumrunner, which would drop it off somewhere in the Florida Keys. He signed the letter Umberto Salvador Geraldo Alfredo Jorge Blanco, wizard, El Presidente of Courteguay in Waiting.

The letter, by a highly circuitous route, found its way to the Governor of Florida who, having ambitions to become at least a senator, if not President, forwarded it to the owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South. If he was going to be a senator or President of the United States from the South he decided that
the South should have a competitive baseball team in the National League. The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South had always had a reputation for mediocrity, even though the owner probably knew something about television stations, of which he owned hundreds, though he apparently knew little about Major League baseball.

The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South sent a scout to San Barnabas. The scout was a famous baseball star of the forties, who had had more losing battles with the bottle than Babe Ruth had home runs. After seeing the battery of Esteban and Julio in action he stayed sober for two full weeks, just to be certain that what he was witnessing was not alcohol induced.

“Julio Pimental is the best baseball pitcher I have ever seen,” he wrote back to the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South, “but he is only eight years old. What do I do? Can I sign him? Can I sign his father? He has an agent of sorts, a man in blue silk dress that has silver stars, crescents, triangles, and hammers all over it. How soon do you think we can introduce this boy to organized baseball? Aren’t there child labor laws to contend with? Would something like this fall under the Coogan Law? By the way, Julio pitches to his twin brother, who is an average catcher but who couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. I understand they come as a pair, because the pitcher won’t let anyone else catch him.”

The owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South was on intimate terms with the President of the United States. In fact, the President had once suggested to the Leader of the House, in a not altogether joking manner, that the leader of the House should introduce a bill to break up the New York Yankees. The President indicated that he would be happy to sign such a bill into law.

The President and the owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South conferred deep into the night.

The alcoholic scout signed Hector Alvarez Pimental to a two-year contract as a scout. Though the father of the twins never realized it, he was paid more as a scout than the manager of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South. Of course, the manager worked very cheaply.

The ball club also offered to rent the family a comfortable home in a pleasant district in San Barnabas. However, Fernandella refused to leave the cool stream full of flashing fish, the shady mango and guava trees, and the yard full of docile pheasants who did everything but pluck and eviscerate themselves so anxious were they to grace Fernandella’s table. Reluctantly, and at great cost, for the Wizard somehow managed to become general contractor, the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South completely remodeled the home built on the side hill, adding a full basement holding an electric furnace. The plans for the house had been drawn up by a Minneapolis firm with a Federal Consulting Contract. When finished the renovated house looked like a cross between a Southern plantation house and a nouveau riche Albanian immigrant’s idea of how a wealthy family should live. There were gold faucets, chrome lighting fixtures, garish carpets, and velvet paintings on the brightly hued walls.

The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South, in consultation with the President of the United States, decided they would wait until Julio was ten years old before signing him. Deep in the bowels of the Capitol, the U.S. Government Printing office manufactured birth certificates for Esteban and Julio showing each to be sixteen years of age.

The bonus Julio’s father demanded for signing was a hot air balloon. The baseball club complied, for their negotiators were vaguely intimidated by the sinister demeanor of the Wizard, who always seemed present, his silks swishing malevolently in the background. They knew the hot air balloon was for the Wizard and they hoped it would encourage him to travel extensively.

The Wizard, though he did not actually take part in the deal-making, was inclined to take the negotiators for a walk along the now-yard-wide, crystal stream full of blue fish sparking like quicksilver; the Wizard made the negotiators aware that the stream began from nothing and diminished to nothing, and while he never claimed responsibility, he intimated strongly that he had something to do with its emergence.

T
he twins, the day after their tenth birthday, armed with official birth certificates stating them to be sixteen, left San Cristobel bound for the mysterious United States, where, they had been told, baseball players were revered as idols.

They had first to be smuggled out of Courteguay, for there was no reliable airline in the country. The aging scout took it upon himself to do the job. Baseball management didn’t understand the situation in these primitive countries.

“Be sure and get the proper visas,” was their advice. They didn’t know that if the boys applied for visas they and the scout might never be seen again. They also didn’t know that Dr. Noir, the head of the Secret Police, was taking more and more responsibility for running the Government of Courteguay, some of which the Old Dictator knew about, some of which he didn’t.

The baseball scout bought a bicycle, an elderly, cumbersome thing with balloon tires, and a metal basket that weighed more than the vehicle itself. The three of them appeared at the border to the Dominican Republic, the scout squat, insect-bitten, with a three-day growth of
beard. The boys were carrying the scout’s equipment: the battery-powered speed gun, a sack of balls. The bats were in a canvas sack balanced across the black metal basket.