Insect.

-pedia

Hugh Raffles

Vintage Books

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York
Beauty

"What's going on? What is it?" I called out to Seu Benedito as we

put-putted along the Rio Guariba in the afternoon sunshine. "What's
happening?"
A hundred yards away on the far bank, under the heavy trees, which
just yesterday had sheltered a broken wooden house, the poorest on the
river, was a shimmering jewel, a glittering vision of fluttering yellow,
canary yellow, corn silk yellow, golden yellow. Flecks of gold were spin-
ning from it like cinders high into the dark forest. Sparkling sunbursts
were spiraling out from it over the river. "What is it?"
"Oh," Seu Benedito laughed, "the borboletas de verao, the butterflies of
summer. They're back. You've never seen them?"
That day they were everywhere. An explosion exploding the world,
dressing it in strange new color, tripping it out with unexpected beauty.
As we chugged along the river, we saw that each house we passed had
surrendered to the transformation. Thousands of yellow butterflies had
settled on roofs and walls, occupied wooden porches, finally turned
Amazonia into El Dorado, encrusted this quiet village in layers of gold.
When we reached home, there were golden-yellow summer butter-
flies dancing around our house too. High in the eaves, all around the
porch, low in the muddy yard where the pigs rooted under the floor-
boards. They floated and soared, and I took a picture to hold on to that
day and the few that followed before the insects left.
This is the kitchen at the back of Seu Benedito's house, near the
mouth of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Amapa. I lived here for
fifteen months in 1995 and 1996, and this is what it looked like in the
late-afternoon sun on the day the butterflies arrived. Sometimes now it
14 Insectopedia

seems like a dream, someone else's story, so I take out this picture and
think back to that day. See the sleepy hunting dog in the foreground? See
the al(ai palms, with their heavy bunches ofblack fruit? See the two giant
tires that little Helton and Rosiane filled every morning with water from
the creek, just out of view to the right? See the fenced-off vegetable
patch? The thick wire clothesline? See the borboletas de veriio caught in
time and space like mini UFOs, just visiting, just stopping by, entering
our lives, transforming everything just for a moment, showing us a
glimmer of a different world, then passing on?