Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire. José Manuel prieto

desert in central Asia); and red mercury, a mineral no one had seen before, worth hundreds of times its weight in gold. On one occasion I was contacted in Tallinn by a potential buyer, a Scotsman, redheaded and red-blooded, with a dagger in the bag he wore over his kilt, not a knife, but a dirk, which he pulled to intimidate me: he wasn’t going to fall into a trap in Russia, so far from Scotland. It’s not so much whether you deal (obey the laws) as what you deal (maximum gain with minimum risk).

      My list—the preceding one—is considerably shorter than Amerigo Vespucci’s. Did V. know (no, of course not, I’d just learned it myself) that the continent where I was born owed its name to a letter, one Amerigo Vespucci sent to Lorenzo de Medici in 1501? I’ll copy his list, Amerigo’s merchandise, for the sake of comparison. Here is what the Italian wrote, his mouth watering: “The aforementioned ships carry the following: They are laden with immeasurable cinnamon, fresh and dried ginger, abundant pepper and cloves, nutmeg, mace, musk, civet, liquidambar, benjamin, purslane, mastic, incense, myrrh, red and white sandalwood, aloe wood, camphor, ambergris, sugar cane, much lacquer-gum, mumia, indigo, tutty, opium, aloe hepatica, cassia and many other drugs that would take too much time to record … I do not wish to go on because the ship does not allow me to write.” You see, behind every voyage of discovery is hidden (that’s it! hidden!) some low motive, a little spice and “immeasurable cinnamon!” All I had wanted was to make a little money, a small fortune, just enough for a modest palace, a couple of balconies, some grandly appointed rooms, where I could live in style. At night, as I passed through my billiards room, I would pick up the cue, idly run a few balls, then go out to the balcony and stare off at the horizon, penetrating the darkness, cutting through it smoothly, like a warm knife through butter, or those night-vision goggles, the kind helicopter pilots use, with a thousand-meter range, which would also come in handy for observing the flight of certain nocturnal butterflies, their iridescent wings.

      “In total darkness, Herren, the lenses in these goggles pick up the very lowest rays, invisible to the naked eye, a wavelength below infrared. Behind the lens the photons are focused and then accelerated by a high-voltage current. Hear that faint buzzing? Same principle as a television, cathode ray tubes. The photons are propelled onto a phosphorescent screen, agitating it, creating the image on it. Like this. You look through here, through this opening. No, you can’t see anything, because it’s not dark yet. It’s turned off. No. Impossible. It would burn out. The photon current is very strong this time of day, bright as it is. Your eyes would be burned out, permanently damaged, like a man who’s been in prison for years. Gets blinded when he’s let out, his retinas ruined. Actually, that’s what I just explained … A steal like this and you stand here trying to make up your mind!”

      “With these goggles you could go out on the Baltic, the high seas, in the dark of night, keep watch for the coast guard, sail to some designated spot, some buoys marked with paint, only visible through these goggles, my cargo floating safe and sound in a watertight container …” He was thinking out loud, the smuggler who bought the first pair from me, a Pole, pushing a lock of blond hair off his face, a gesture that would allow me to identify him later, in case of trouble, a grilling from customs agents.

      “Or you could spend as much time as you like spinning the dial on a safe, again in perfect darkness, your ears tuned to the click of the correct combination, or else stand and watch your prey, man or animal, through this scope, attached to a high-powered rifle, using this silent lantern to light the scene with infrared rays, invisible to the naked eye …”

      I was pointing at a battery of gunsights made for the assault troops of the Russian army. But the Red Army was now completely bankrupt, infantry, motorized, aerotransport units all liquidated, selling their privori nochnovo videnia (night-vision equipment), top quality but ten times cheaper than Western stuff, a price difference that gave me a nice profit margin.

      I lost count of the trips I made carrying this illegal military equipment, traveling to Hamburg, Vienna, Amsterdam, Stockholm, so many other northern European cities, feigning sleep during customs checks at 3 A.M., enduring dozens of searches that didn’t get to the bottom of my deep bags. I had passed through the smoking ruins of the Eastern Empire, from Varsovia to Cracovia, from Buda to Pest. And in the best plazas of those capitals, I had learned how to spot a buyer a long way off, to pick one out of the slow parade of passersby inspecting the merchandise suspiciously. The Swede I saw come around the corner one afternoon, walking toward me, smoothly slicing through the sea of heads—his walk, his bearing, gave him away. I broke off my pitch, wasting no more time on cash-poor gawkers, I practically pushed them aside, clearing the ground for this man with a pile of crowns in the bank, a BMW owner, but not flashy, dressed in a worn overcoat and cloth cap. After just a couple of questions, he picked up the goggles to take a look (but didn’t get one), a ring inexplicably dancing on his finger (thick as a Viennese sausage), which told me right away that his overcoat held a checkbook, and that he was going to buy them.

      He took his eyes off the goggles and raised his eyebrows, sure my answer would be close to the sum he was secretly willing to pay. No fear of a trick: the price I asked for the goggles eliminated that possibility. I told him how the goggles worked, in no hurry—not pressured like those hawkers who tell nothing but lies—explaining it in detail (sometimes I even draw a diagram if I suspect the buyer knows anything about the Second Industrial Revolution). I told him about their military origins and brought up the problem of darkness, the very problem the goggles were designed to solve. The man in the cap, a large heavy gentleman (like a Viking), interrupted me: “Will you take a check?” and before I said yes—with no doubt in my mind he could cover it—he started to reach toward the inside pocket of his overcoat, only to have his hand pulled away, by two mastiffs tugging on a leash. No problem, the deal was far enough along. I was feeling relaxed, almost friendly toward him—he had shown confidence in me and I in him. How sweet it is to close a deal, watching the fountain pen smoothly inscribing the specified amount (no small sum, that’s all I’ll say) and figuring how much more it is than the price I paid just a few weeks ago, not too far from here, at the dark edge of that garrison, at the hour I had chosen for testing the goggles, quickly focusing them on a little patch of woods across the highway, afraid of getting collared, and then ripped off, by second lieutenant Vinogradov, an official who was making a killing on the illegal sale of Red Army equipment. A man with a pack was coming toward me through the woods. Suddenly I saw him stop and look up, staring right at me, standing outside the garrison wall. I lowered the goggles and couldn’t see a thing; it was pitch black; the man couldn’t have seen me either.

      The Swede, Stockis was his name, wrote his phone number on the back of the check, so I could call if I had problems at the bank, if the teller pressed the alarm button surreptitiously because of the incongruence between the clarity of the figure stamped on it and the opacity of my non-Nordic eyes. It may have been a mistake, but I trusted this man who was walking off with my goggles under his arm, pulled along by his dogs. So I brushed off a curious guy, one of those browsers with nothing but questions: “Could you do me a favor and keep your hands off?” I bellowed. Tyrannical as any Moscow shopkeeper, I was already gathering up my merchandise, sure there’d be no more buyers today. One more lesson: always leave after a big sale, there’s never more than one a day.

      I still hadn’t cashed the check two days later. The paper lent a certain immateriality to my sale, a certain flash of intellectual effort that would fade when it was exchanged for cash, reduced to the singularity of a few bank notes, the biggest ones they have in Sweden, it’s true, the same bills, I thought, that King Gustav got paid in, if a king would bother … Well, haven’t we all learned the surprising fact that Olof Palme goes to the movies just like any ordinary citizen? Those bills with Selma Lagerlöf on them—Gustav could well have held them in his hands.

      Five days later, when he came back to the same spot on the plaza, I showed him the check. He liked that.

      I had decided suddenly to change the course of my life, to take to the sea. I had spent nights in railway stations, covered thousands of kilometers by train, made five plane trips in a week.