In Search of Goliathus Hercules (2 page)

“Hmph,” said Dom, which Henri took to mean that the feeling was not shared.

“And his name?” asked Henri, pointing to the other fly on the windowpane.

“That is my nephew, one of my thousands of nephews actually. You can just call him Nephew. Not unlike you, he is anxious to get outside and get a breath of fresh air. I have told him to settle down and wait for the rain to pass, but…young people. Always so impatient.”

This last comment could have come straight out of the mouth of Great Aunt Georgie. “So you and Great Aunt Georgie are friends?”

“Yes, of course, boy! Why ever would we not be friends? We share this house, don’t we?”

“Oh yes. It’s just that most people don’t seem to like flies in their house,” Henri said reasonably.

“A common prejudice I fear to say, but Great Aunt Georgie is an enlightened woman, a great friend of the insect world, and really a very accomplished collector,” said Dom.

“Oh, the buttons? Are you interested in them?” asked Henri. “No, not particularly, although my friends and I have often posed for them,” Dom answered with a note of pride in his voice.

“What do you mean?” asked Henri.

“Well, haven’t you noticed? Most of the buttons in the library have been made by Great Aunt Georgie. She’s quite a marvelous painter and sculptor. Nearly all the buttons there have insect themes. From time to time she asks me to pose or to invite one of my six-legged associates in for a sitting.”

“Oh,” said Henri, making a mental note to look at the buttons in the library the first opportunity he got. He put his head down on the windowsill, and from this vantage point, he had a better view of Dom standing on the folded newspaper. Henri gazed at his immense fly eyes and asked again, “Dom, can you read?”

“Of course!” said Dom. “Quite a fascinating article this is too! It’s news from the Orient.”

“Oh, the tiger article?” asked Henri.

“No, no. Below that. Look at this. It’s news from the insect world.” Dom pointed with a leg to a small headline that read “Vicious New Species of Insect Reported.”

Dom read aloud: “From the highlands across Southeast Asia come numerous reports of a man-eating insect. The species, Latin name
Goliathus hercules
, is said to be nearly twelve inches long, with jaws capable of snapping off a man’s finger.”

“Barbaric!” exclaimed Dom. “This is the kind of individual that gives the rest of the insect world a bad name.”

“Funny, I read the tiger article. I don’t remember the one about the insect,” said Henri.

“Never underestimate a creature because of its size, Henri. Though this one is huge by six-legged standards!” said Dom. The fly sighed—or at least it sounded like a sigh—and looked up at the other fly buzzing at the glass. “The rain has stopped. Nephew! You’re getting on my nerves. Come along, you fool. You’ll never get out that way. Follow me!”

And with that, Dom launched himself in the air and headed for the door. Nephew quickly followed him. Henri jumped up to pursue them, but they flew so fast from Henri’s room, through the hallway, and down the stairs that it was quite impossible to keep up.

“Wait!” called Henri, but the flies paid him no heed.

Henri raced down the stairs in time to see the two black specks disappear down the hallway and toward the kitchen, where he knew the window was always open at least a crack.

“I’ll never find them outside!” said Henri to himself. He sat down on the bottom step dejectedly.
What a strange day
, he thought.

The longer Henri sat on the step, the less sure he was that his conversation with Dom had really happened. In stories, people talked to animals like rabbits and dormice. Or they conversed with the various fairy folk, but not flies!

Henri got up and walked into the library. On one side were shelves from floor to ceiling filled with leather-bound books. Henri had browsed through them during his first week there, but the titles had not tempted him at all; however, now he noticed a book entitled
Insect Transformations
. He pulled it out to take upstairs for bedtime reading.

On the other side of the room were Aunt Georgie’s many buttons. In fact, they covered all the walls of the rambling house from top to bottom, with only a few spaces left for painted portraits of long-dead relatives. However, Henri’s room didn’t have any buttons. He supposed that Great Aunt Georgie didn’t completely trust him with her precious collection of buttons—her darlings, as she called them. If a small child were to enter the house, he or she probably would have thought it was built of buttons!

Henri considered leaning back against the wall in the hall so that the buttons would leave round impressions on his back. He would be spotted like a leopard. However, Henri didn’t do it for two reasons: firstly, there was no one to see his leopard spots other than Great Aunt Georgie, and secondly, if she caught him, there would be big trouble.

There had already been trouble. She had found him one day in the living room touching a button that looked like it had a huge diamond in the middle.

“Look with your eyes, not your hands!” Great Aunt Georgie had said. His punishment was to sit and polish a half-dozen newly acquired cricket cage buttons. At first, cricket cage buttons sounded like fun. Henri thought he could go out, catch some crickets, then put them in the buttons and wear them on his coat. He would have friendly, chirping companions as he explored the fields of Woodland Farm.

However, it turned out that cricket cage buttons were singers. It would have been quite impossible to fit a fly in one, let alone a cricket. So it was indeed a punishment to sit with the tin of Brasso, meticulously polishing each of the six buttons to Great Aunt Georgie’s satisfaction.

It may sound like Great Aunt Georgie was a mean old lady. She was not at all, and Henri knew that. The problem was that when someone is a hundred years old—or at least looks like she is—and another person is ten years old, they don’t have a lot in common.

Great Aunt Georgie felt sorry for Henri, so far from home and all by himself. The reason he was staying with Great Aunt Georgie was quite serious and sad. More than a year had passed since Henri’s father had been heard from. No letters, no postcards, no telegrams and no news. Henri’s mother’s inquiries to the offices of the East India Company produced no results beyond this reply:

Dear Madam,

Due to the limited shipping traffic between British Malaya and England, it is not uncommon to have several months without communication from agents stationed in the colony. We are confident that everything is fine and that in time you will receive news. At present, it is best if you remain calm and patient.

Yours truly,

Richard Huntington

Manager, London Office

British East India Company

This was hardly a satisfactory response, and Henri’s mother could remain neither calm nor patient. She’d become more distraught with each passing week, and although Henri tried to assure her that everything was fine, he didn’t believe it himself. When they had not heard from his father for more than a year, Henri’s mother announced with forced gaiety in her voice that Henri would be taking an exciting holiday to America.

“America?” Henri had replied. “I don’t want to go to America!”

“Didn’t you say that you would like to travel and see the world?” asked Henri’s mother.

“Yes, but by myself? And only to stay with an aged great aunt I don’t even know?”

“Well, don’t you think it will be fun to live on a farm?”

“Well, yes, but…why don’t you come along too?”

“No. I must stay in London and wait for news from Father.”

Despite all his pleading, a steamer trunk was purchased. In addition, his mother bought him a diary to keep a record of his adventure. It was blue with gilt decoration and lettering that said
Five-Year Diary
. Five years! Was he to be away for five years?

“No, no,” said his mother. It just
happened
to be a five-year diary. “When will I come home?” Henri pleaded. “When we have news from your father,” she replied, and

Henri could not bear to say anything, for it seemed quite possible that they would never hear from his father again, and he didn’t want to cry. He threw the diary in his trunk and vowed that he would not write a single word in it because he knew that if he did, it would be like counting the days, and time always goes slower when you do that.

So that is how Henri came to stay with an aged great aunt that he didn’t even know at Woodland Farm in the house of buttons. Henri never developed more than a passing interest in buttons, but what he did like about them was that each came with a story. He liked to sit by the fire at night and listen to Great Aunt Georgie tell him about how she came to acquire a particular button or the exotic place the button came from. It was at this time that Henri and Great Aunt Georgie had perfect understanding, for she was the storyteller and he was the eager listener.

One of Great Aunt Georgie’s most precious buttons was from the coat worn by the Duke of Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo.

“Henri, are you familiar with the Battle of Waterloo?” she asked him one night at dinner.

“Yes, Great Aunt Georgie. We studied it at school.”

“Tell me about it, please.”

Henri gulped. He felt like he was taking an oral history exam. What would happen if he failed? “The Duke of Wellington was the commander of the English forces that battled Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops. Um…the French suffered a humiliating defeat, and that brought an end to Bonaparte’s career.” Henri hoped she didn’t want more detail because at the moment he could think of nothing to add.

“Indeed,” said Great Aunt Georgie with a pleased look upon her face. “It just so happens that my godfather was a friend of the Duke of Wellington, and upon the Duke’s death, the button came into his possession. He very graciously presented it to me on my sixteenth birthday. I already had quite a collection back then. Collecting is a passion, Henri. It can be a passion that connects a person with history and adventure!”

As Henri now gazed at the buttons upon the library wall, he saw they were just as Dom had said; they all had insects upon them—painted, sculpted, and embossed. There was even one that appeared to be a portrait of Dom himself (although it was hard to be sure since, to the average person, most flies look alike). All in all, he had no reason to doubt he’d had a conversation with Dom.

Henri headed to his room with
Insect Transformations
tucked under his arm. He lay on his bed and leafed through the book, taking special interest in a section titled “Order
Diptera.
”

Henri learned that an order is like a family. Everything in nature is ordered. Well, not exactly. It was ordered by a man named Carl Linnaeus so that minerals, plants, animals, and insects could be identified by certain signs. Flies are in the order
Diptera
. In Latin
di
means “two” and
ptera
means “wing.” Two wings! Flies have two wings! Finally those boring old Latin lessons were useful! At school everyone hated Latin class but now Henri had a real use, and he applied it to Dom’s name. Dom had introduced himself as
Musca domestica
.
Domestica
means “house” in Latin, so Dom was a housefly!