13
Audrey got to smell the lions. And, thanks to her disability and the kindness of the zoo staff, she also got to hold an orphaned wombat, feed the baby giraffe and pat an elephant’s trunk. But the highlight of the day, and Wolfgang’s main reason for bringing Audrey to the zoo, was their visit to the Butterfly House.
He didn’t tell her where they were as they entered the exhibit. They followed a group of foreign-speaking tourists through the quarantine chamber with its spring-loaded outer door and its inner barrier of heavy plastic strips, then into the enormous tropical hothouse.
‘My God it’s hot!’ Audrey gasped. ‘I can hardly breathe. What is this place?’
Wolfgang drew in his breath as a female birdwing, as big as his hand, spun a silent pirouette around them. He had been here perhaps twenty times, but the magic never dimmed.
‘You know how you said the other day that you weren’t sure if butterflies really existed?’ he said. ‘Today I’ve brought you to meet some.’
Audrey let go of his arm and stopped on the wooden walkway. ‘I’ve heard about this. Are there butterflies here?’
‘All around us. There’s one flying between us right now. And there’s a big blue Ulysses circling your head. I think it’s got its eye on your hat.’
A wide childlike smile broke across Audrey’s face. She stood transfixed, a party of elderly zoo-goers threading their way past on either side. ‘Is it going to land?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t think so.’ Wolfgang watched it dance off into the simulated rainforest behind her. He realised now what gave the exhibit its aura of unreality – it was the silence. Butterflies swirled around them in a dizzying kaleidoscope of colour, movement, life, yet they didn’t make a sound. If you were blind, they might not have been there. He took hold of Audrey’s hand.
‘We’re in the way here,’ he said softly. ‘Come with me.’
Wolfgang led her to an out-of-the-way corner, where the walkway broadened and made a ninety degree turn to the right. Standing her in the angle of the railing beneath the dew-dropped foliage of a six-metre bangalow palm, he dug a small plastic bottle from his backpack.
‘Hold your hand out.’
‘What is it?’ asked Audrey, grimacing as he smeared a sticky paste on her wrist.
‘My secret love potion,’ Wolfgang said, then blushed when he realised how that must have sounded. ‘For butterflies,’ he added quickly. ‘It’s a mixture of beer, rum and jam. They find it pretty much irresistible.’
Audrey raised her wrist and sniffed it. She screwed up her nose. ‘Smells rank,’ she said.
‘Butterflies love it, trust me. Hold your arm up a bit. That’s it. It shouldn’t take too long.’
The first butterfly arrived within thirty seconds. It darted twice around Audrey’s hand, then landed on the base of her thumb. She tensed.
‘I can feel something,’ she whispered.
‘Feet,’ Wolfgang told her. ‘It’s an Australian lurcher. Orange and brown. Quite pretty.’
‘It tickles!’
‘Butterflies taste with their feet, did you know that?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want to touch it?’
Audrey shook her head again, her face tight with concentration. ‘Tell me what it’s doing.’
‘It’s feeding. You don’t have to whisper.’
‘Can’t they hear?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Wolfgang, watching a female orange lacewing flicker overhead, a smaller male dancing attendance around her. ‘But noise doesn’t seem to bother them.’
‘This is so cool!’ Audrey said.
A green triangle came next, then another lurcher, then a big blue Ulysses. Wolfgang named and described each butterfly as it arrived. Soon, six insects had settled on Audrey’s hand and wrist; several more circled. A man with a small boy on his shoulders stopped to watch.
‘Here,’ Wolfgang said, and gently took some of the weight of Audrey’s raised arm. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
With his other hand he bent her elbow, bringing her scented wrist within centimetres of her face. When a big male birdwing flew down, its flashing green and yellow wings brushed across Audrey’s eyelashes and cheek.
She drew in her breath. ‘Was that –?’
‘Wings,’ Wolfgang told her.
Audrey’s mouth quivered and two tears gathered on the lower lids of her sightless blue eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I’m just happy.’
Twenty or twenty-five minutes later, when finally Wolfgang was able to coax her away from the butterflies, Audrey stopped him in the middle of the road outside the Elephant Village, felt along his arm for his hand and gently turned him towards her.
‘Thank you, Wolfgang,’ she said up into his face. ‘That was the loveliest thing anybody’s ever done for me.’