CHEAP
Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage, white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty, he always said without further inquiry, “It’s Henkel’s house you’re looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if God knew what went on under these trees, He’d have mercy on you. . . . .”
The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You won’t find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel, and in a season or two the forest swamped it as the sea swamps a child’s boat on the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose round it like a fog, too, and that’s why Henkel got it so cheap. No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of servants—Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down from accident or disease—wrecks that no one else would employ. He got them very cheap. When they died he got more.
Henkel was a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, “I don’t mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft, in reason, but when he shines too, I draw the line.” Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large brown eyes. He was a Hollander Jew, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn’t drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought things cheap.
He was very clever. He always knew the precise moment, the outmost low-water mark, of a bargain. His house was full of things he’d bought cheap from wrecked companies or dying men, from the mahogany logs in the patio to the coils of telegraph wire in the loft. His clothes never fitted for they belonged to men whom the fever had met on the way up the Mazzaron, and who had, therefore, no further use for clothes. The only things Henkel ever paid a fair price for were butterflies.
“I went to his house once,” said Ransome. “Had to. A lame Indian in a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old ‘Lily Grant,’ and I saw along the seams the smokemarks of the fire that had burnt her inwards out . . . . . Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand like a bundle of brown twigs, and the light shone through green leaves on the walls of the room. From ceiling to floor they flashed as if they were jewelled, only there are no jewels with just that soft bloom of colour. They were cases full of Henkel’s butterflies.
“The Indian limped out, and Henkel came in. He was limping, too. I looked at his feet, and I saw that they were in a pair of someone else’s tan shoes.
“That, and the whiff of the servants’ quarter, made me feel a bit sick. I wanted to say what I had to say, and get out as quick as I could. But Henkel would show me his butterflies. Most of us in that place were a little mad on some point. I was myself. Henkel, he was mad on his butterflies. He told me the troubles he’d had, getting them from Indians and negroes, and how his men cheated him. He took it very much to heart, and snuffled as he spoke. ‘And there’s one I haven’t got,’ he said, ‘one I’ve heard of, but can’t find, and my lazy hounds of hombres can’t find it either, it seems. It’s one of the clear-wings—transparent. Here’s a transparent silver one. But this new one is gold, transparent gold, and the spots are opaque gold.’ His mouth fairly watered. ‘I tell you, I will spend anything, anything, to get that gold butterfly. And if the natives can’t or won’t find it for me, my friend, I’ll send for someone who can and will.’
“I quite believed him, though I was no friend of his. I didn’t know much about butterflies, but I guessed that in Paris or London his collection would be beyond price. But I wasn’t prepared, two months later, for Scott and his friend. . . . .
“Derek Scott. Ever meet him? A very ordinary kind of young Northerner. He was only remarkable in having everything a little in excess of his type—a little squarer in jaw and shoulder, a little longer in nose and leg, a little keener of eye and slower of tongue. I’d never have looked at him twice as he landed from the dirty steamer with a lot of tin boxes, if it hadn’t been that he was hale and sound, with hope in his eyes. Health and hope, at Herares . . . .