A Yellow Butterfly

As usual I was hunting for a book. A slender booklet. And there was this story of a yellow butterfly. Pont-Aven. A seaside town in the Brittany region of France, the haunt of artists such as Gaugin. But what I wanted to find was a brief essay where a saffron yellow butterfly was the leading protagonist. Indeed the title of the booklet in Italian was la farfalle di dinard color zafferano. And the book itself was yellowish in color. I vaguely remembered that it was by an important Italian writer. Oh yes. That’s who it was. Eugenio Montale, a Nobel Prize winner for poetry.

Now that I knew what to look for, it was a question of finding it. Must be somewhere in all those books on the shelves under the window by my bed. There weren’t many of that color. Camilleri’s mystery stories published by Sellerio were all dark colored, quite recognizable,  and I had succeeded in keeping them all together. On the top shelf Judi Dench on Shakespeare was light blue and kept the many books on Shakespeare and his times, and whether he really existed and had travelled to Italy or not, from falling out. Also there,  on the top shelf, the rather slight book by Clive James that I had bought because I was intrigued by the title, A River in the Sky, and its cover that did look  like a river of stars. A sort of milky way. It was a good purchase, for I really liked the poem that rambled on and on, like a river, remembrances of a lifetime, mostly in Australia, as he was nearing the end.

However just where was Montale’s essay mentioning Pont-Aven, the charming French town where the poet  was vacationing? It was not only about a butterfly, but also had an enticing list of typical recipes of the region, many with the mussels Montale could see men and women gathering when the tide was low. He also exhorted fellow guests of the pensione to keep an eye on what was in their neighbor’s plate. “Tell me what they are eating and I will tell you what they are like. “

Back to the story of the butterfly and the charming French town where the poet was vacationing.  Every morning he would take his coffee on the terrace and every day a lemon-yellow butterfly appeared to keep him company, settling on one of the terracotta urns close by. It had been a lovely vacation and was about over. Watching the butterfly flit in every morning, Montale wondered if, after he had left, the butterfly would come back and perhaps even miss him.  He tried to call the attention of the girl who brought his morning coffee to the butterfly, asking her to let him know if it came back, but strangely enough she said she had never seen any butterfly. And the pre-stamped notes he had left with her were never used.