Mortals

by Norman Rush

  And all this had been packed around a splendid thing, a virtuoso reading, not a reading, a rendition, because the performance had been from memory, of a poem by Tennyson, a fairly long one, “The Golden Year.” Tennyson was not a poet Ray considered interesting, but during the rendition he’d kept thinking Bravo. Somehow Kerekang had penetrated Tennyson and found something splendid there. And although the Tennyson had been just one ingredient in the eulogy, it had been the heart of it, for Ray. It was what had rapt him away. He was sorry to say that this didn’t happen to him much anymore. It could still happen with Milton, if he got rolling, reading late, alone, on an empty stomach, oddly enough. Or if he was tired. Then it could happen. It had happened the first time he’d touched Milton. It was the whole point of literature, or one of them, anyway. Absent awhile from my designs was a line from somewhere that described that feeling of being extricated from yourself in a flash, in a liquid way, without struggle. Movies lacked the power to do it for him, certainly never movies on tape. He felt in his breast pocket for a handkerchief and in the process switched off the microcassette recorder he carried there. Kerekang was on tape, if he wanted to hear this again. The quality would be poor, probably, due to distance, although this was a new machine and the damned things were getting more miraculous all the time. Gerard Manley Hopkins had been a revelation, a jolt, the first time through. But Hopkins was too rich, unlike Milton, who was just rich enough, just bejeweled enough. Knowing how to distribute his effects was a great secret Milton had, one of many.

  “What was that thing he read?” Iris asked. Ray wanted to keep thinking about it, not talk about it.

  “Tennyson,” he answered, “ ‘The Golden Year,’ ” letting her see that he didn’t want to talk.

  She didn’t see it. “Get me some Tennyson, then. That was wonderful.”

  “You won’t like it,” he said.

  “Well, what if I do? I think I might.”

  “I don’t think you will. What we just heard was exceptional because of the performance part of it.”

  “I liked Milton and you were certain I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, I was selective. Also I don’t think you liked Milton a lot, did you?”

  “I did. I loved Areopagitica.”

  “That isn’t poetry, of course.”

  “It’s Milton.”

  “Okay! I’ll get Tennyson for you, I will, I will.”

  “If I wasn’t up to Milton, I wonder if there was anybody around qualified to remedy that pathetic situation.”

  “You mean I should have been your tutor.”

  “Who better?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. We could try again, I guess.”

  “Please don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm.”

  He didn’t want to get into the vexed question of her literary education and what, exactly, his responsibilities in this area were. The ideal observer would say that since he taught Milton at work, he had a right not to have to teach it again when he got home. Or was it that, in not bringing Milton to Iris, he was trying to protect himself from a declaration from Iris that Milton was … less than she expected?

  Also, he didn’t like the way one thing led to another when the subject came up of what she should be reading. For example, since he claimed to love the novel, why didn’t he read more of them, and why, when he did read them, did it seem he read so few novels by women? Did his interest end with Jane Austen? The problem was that they had a fundamental difference over reading, revolving around the proposition, her proposition, implicit, that whatever you read should be discussed and dissected with your mate, which created a certain pressure to read works of a certain caliber and to read with a certain mindfulness you might be in the mood to escape from. Right now he didn’t want to think about it.

  The gravamen, roughly, of the poem Kerekang had recited was that those who strove for the coming of universal justice should never be downhearted, because, as Ray was reconstructing the sentiment, in the act of virtuous struggle you are somehow partaking of the Golden Year even though it hasn’t temporally arrived yet. He would have to listen to it again, or read it, but that was about right. It sounded lame in summary, yet it had been thrilling, especially during Kerekang’s complete, heroic embrace of the Welsh accent in which the heroic member of the hiking group expressed his defiant positiveness about the future. Sections of the poem were still with him.

  When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,

  But smit with freer light shall slowly melt

  In many streams to fatten lower lands,

  And light shall spread,

  and man be liker man

  Thro’ all the season of the golden year …

  And then the windup, in the voice of the old, indomitable do-gooding Welshman in rebuttal to the pessimism of the younger men in the party about the possibility, ever, of justice, general justice, being achieved.

  What stuff is this!

  Old writers push’d the happy season back,

  The more fools they, we forward: dreamers both …

  Then something he’d lost, then something ending with

  That unto him who works, and feels he works,

  This same grand year is ever at the doors …

  Ah yes, and just before that, Leonard, the old man, has broken his walking staff in fury at the younger man’s pessimism … and then came the conclusion to the whole thing with that blast in the slate quarry, for emphasis, how great! … Now tell me literature is dead … Look around! … The true voice of feeling, exhilarating! … Okay it was Victorian, but in the best way … Splendid man, and I rest my case, and Boyle must have seen it, he had to see it, how could he not see it? Victorian, but fine stuff … the best kind of Victorian, here by time machine … You’re a better man than I am, Kerekang … So bravo, that’s all.

  And then, crowning the already perfect climax, Kerekang had turned to his tatterdemalions and, like a maestro, summoned from them a great shout of, of what, of defiance, the shout standing for the quarry blast, Ray supposed. The poem had described it and the children had embodied it. And the shout had expressed farewell, too, as the children had raised their right arms in a mass salute aimed at Wemberg, the fascist salute actually, although that was obviously a completely accidental resemblance not affecting the impact of the thing. He thought, Anyway the fact is that there are a limited number of physical gestures available for the expression of the emotion of solidarity, which is why dance, thanks to the limitations of the silent, lumbering body as a means of articulating anything, constitutes the lowest rung on the ladder of art, in his humble opinion, dance with its grabbing motions to signify desire and its pushing motions to signify aversion and its grabbing then pushing then grabbing again to show ambivalence, for crying out loud. Iris missed the ballet. He didn’t. The cry of the children had been the perfect opposite of the pinched, supplicating noise of the Anglican girls’ choir.

  And then there had come the terrible, perfect conclusion, the answering cry of sorrow and ruin their act had torn from Wemberg, at the end.

  Iris was gone. She had been affected too. He shouldn’t have been annoyed with her over Milton. He was too selfish. If God were a reader he would have brought the shade of Tennyson back for this moment. But it was time to find Iris.

  He hesitated. He would find Iris shortly. But he wanted to say something personal to Wemberg, not that he had any particular history with him, but the impulse was there. What he wanted to say came down to something like We’re all dying, don’t worry, an impossibility, but something. It wasn’t just a cliché about universal mortality he wanted to impart. What he wanted to do was acknowledge that something he feared himself, dying in Africa and leaving a mate to figure everything out, had somehow cruelly happened to this unfortunate man, in spades. It was the fear of being left alone in Africa, where nobody loved you. Iris was afraid of it too. And she was going to leave him in Africa so she could visit her sister, not the same thing but it had a certain relationship
to the real thing. She was definitely going. She had her ticket. He was divided. He also wanted to say something to Kerekang, pat those children, register something, which was not a good idea because he knew better than to give Boyle any opening to think of him as aligned with Kerekang. The crowd bulged toward the buffet.

  Wemberg seemed to be gone. Ray couldn’t find him.

  More late arrivers were appearing. It appeared that the embassy had lost control of the gate long enough for this to happen. The strong cooking smells that had afflicted the end of the ceremony had come from frantic lastminute deep-fat frying of extra samoosas, as he had conjectured.

  Someone had compiled a tape loop of various largo movements from the classical symphonic repertoire. Between repeats of the loop the Moldau played. The sound coming through the public-address system was too loud, but no one was paying attention. It was the kind of thing Iris would take care of, but where was she?

  When he found Iris letting herself out of one of the Portosans set up in the back drive her eyes were red.

  This was bad. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Come look at this. Someone urinated on the wall of the Portosan while I was in there, can you believe it? I guess the same guy who tried so hard to get the door open while I was in there. I was terrified. He went around to the back and peed on the Portosan. I heard every drop.”

  “That’s disgusting. But that’s not why you’re upset.”

  “Nothing is organized here. They should have the toilets gendered, but they just set them up and it’s a free-for-all.”

  “I know. But what’s wrong? Do we need to leave?”

  “This will go away if you stop asking me about it. Can you do that?”

  She was never like this.

  She relented. “I guess it’s nothing. I was very moved and then … then just stupidly started thinking about, this is so stupid, my own death. But not even that. My own funeral service or memorial or whatever I get when I die, what that would be like.”

  He guided her to a more private spot beside the garage.

  She was continuing. “And what I was thinking was what a joke it’s going to be. I have done nothing. There will be absolutely nothing to say. Nothing.

  “But of course people will say things. They have no choice. But it will be lies and it will be nothing like what that man just did, that wonderful thing we just saw for Alice Wemberg. No one will feel that way and why should they, for God’s sake?

  “Everything will be lies except for what you have to say.

  “This is pointless. I can’t be doing this. It’s idiotic.”

  “My darling girl, everyone has something like this at memorial services.”

  Something was making it worse for her. She was distraught. She was weeping and not trying to contain it, now.

  She said, “And look at you. Half of everything you do is secret …”

  He shook her lightly, alarmed. He pointed back in the direction of the Portosans, to remind her that she had to quiet down, that there might be listeners.

  “I know. But what would I say about you? I only know half of your life. Even I don’t know about your other involvements, your what, your other accomplishments, Ray. I’m sorry …”

  “Maybe we should go home.”

  “No.” She was vehement. He reached out to hold her, but she stood away from him. She fought to compose herself.

  “We don’t have to stay beyond this,” he said.

  She was adamant. “No, I want you to meet my doctor, meet Davis, like a normal human being, like my normal husband.”

  He groaned. “Is this the best moment, Iris? My God.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. She was recovering. It was okay if she looked like she had been crying here. The rapidity with which women could recompose themselves was something.

  “You know nothing about him, Ray.”

  “I’m happy to meet him,” he made himself say. Look bright, he thought.

  She said, “I want you to be normal when you meet him. Don’t be formal. Don’t be frozen, the way you can.”

  “I hear and obey,” he said, not as lightly as he’d meant to.

  They found Morel standing under a silver oak, his back against its spindly trunk, batting now and then at the parched dead leaves that occasionally drifted down past him. Feet spread apart, he was truculently posed, Ray thought. Morel folded his arms across his chest as Ray and Iris came up. He was undergoing a harangue, but managing to radiate goodnatured skepticism for the benefit of the small miscellaneous crowd loosely gathered around him.

  Morel was jaunty, which for some reason surprised Ray. And he was definitely in the handsome dog category, alas. His safari suit, which was black, with a shortsleeved jacket-shirt, was custom-tailored and clearly expensive. His arms-folded pose nicely presented his cultivated biceps and the ponderous wristwatch he wore. The man looked solid as a horse. He had the kind of overdone upper body development paraplegics determined to overcome their disabilities have, and undoubtedly the motive for it was to compensate for his short-leg condition, undetectable as that was, thanks to the genius of his bootmaker. Ray knew charm when he saw it. But charm goes with vanity, he thought. Vanity was there. The cut of Morel’s attire was toward formfitting. Wrists as thick as those could only come from hours of boringly squeezing grip-builders, a pair of which Iris had given him several years ago, Ray now remembered, and which he had never used.

  “Say hello,” Iris muttered to Ray.

  He was going to.

  He disliked Morel, genuinely, which came as a relief since up to now his attitude toward him had been based on assumptions. Morel was lighter-skinned than he had appeared to be in his ID photograph. Plenty of Batswana would interact with him as a lakhoa. He would have something to work against. American blacks could be the most disappointed people you came across in Africa. I hate arrogance, Ray thought, and inward arrogance like his I hate the worst. Ray judged himself to be marginally taller than Morel, although it was hard to see why he bothered to care about it since he knew that in fact Morel’s height was a function of his orthopedic footwear. He felt stupid for caring about it, but he couldn’t help it. And only one of Morel’s shoes was built up anyway. He put his hand out. He kept his gaze up, not to show any interest in something he was supposed to know nothing about, Morel’s invisible disability.

  Iris said hello, tentatively.

  Morel’s hair was close-cropped and dense. In general he was as represented by his photograph, if just that much softer at the edges that a couple of years of passing time would guarantee. Ray thought, Age operates in one of two modes, it either withers you, or it puffs you out … I am withering.

  Morel shook Ray’s hand with average force and smiled at him and Iris. There had been nothing to notice in the moment of acknowledgment, which had been casual and quick because Morel was busy being upbraided in Setswana and English by someone Ray knew about, a character, the head of the Star and Arm of David group, one of the thousand offshoots of the Zionist Christian Church.

  Unless he was a superb actor, Morel had had no particular reaction to seeing Ray for the first time. It looked as though Ray could relax a little. Of course he had been impossibly positioned to pick up anything in Iris’s expression that might have been there when Morel greeted them, because she had been almost behind Ray as they approached, hanging back, which was unlike her.

  The harangue stopped as a young woman, someone associated with the moruti’s group, arrived presenting a plate of food gathered from the buffet. Morel declined, saying he was fasting. Probably this was an evasion. The food was as usual—leaden-looking samoosas, fried chicken … drumsticks only. There were small paper cups of oily bean salad, but no forks, so that eating the beans involved a maneuver more like drinking. Only Morel and the moruti were offered anything. The young woman attended her moruti, wiping his hands for him with a paper towel when he was through. He asked her to find him some tea and she went off to do that.

  Ray moved forward, intend
ing to say something more to Morel, but the moruti subtly blocked him. He was a heavy man, all in black, in his late fifties, Ray judged. On a ribbon around his neck hung a medallion of some kind, which he kissed brusquely before resuming with Morel.

  “Should we go?” Iris whispered.

  Ray was definite that they shouldn’t.

  The moruti was proceeding in Setswana. The harangue part one had been mostly in English with short deviations into Setswana, or so Ray had gathered as he’d approached the group. Morel was listening, with his head down, respectfully, and then, startling Ray, he replied to the moruti in Setswana. Woodenly, maybe, but in Setswana. This was new information. It changed the profile. Even Boyle would surely see that.

  Not learning Setswana was something Ray held against himself. His original rationalization, because that was what it was, for not learning any particular African language had been that there was no telling where in the continent he might be posted next. He had known it was a rationalization but he had never been able to make himself go beyond learning the basic necessities in the local language anywhere, and in a certain way it had been useful, because host-country nationals would say things to one another in frankness in front of him in their own languages and feel comfortable doing that, and sometimes he had had the option of taping them and securing material somebody else could translate, useful material, often enough. He was normally set up to tape at the drop of a hat. He was today. So over time the original rationalization had gotten stronger. Also, foreign languages had always been difficult for him, a subject outside his best aptitudes. Working in foreign languages, for him, had been like working underwater. He was thinking of his struggle with Latin, which he had been forced to master out of fealty to great Milton, fealty and love. And had been unnatural and difficult for him and he had discovered in himself a mental tendency to forget what he’d learned, like the body expelling a foreign object. And that had led to a defect in his embrace, his total embrace, of the body of Milton, as compared to that of the show-off Latinists in the field, the others. Certain things were not in him, and he had paid for it. Some of his resistance to learning other languages could be attributed to chauvinism about English, some hard relic of his upbringing. Undoubtedly there were other relics as bad or worse he had never had the time to fix. Iris would know. She might have a list. There were seven hundred thousand words available in the English language and in the next closest, German, only four hundred thousand. Someone had written a very funny poem saying that German was originally the language that gargoyles spoke. And as for French, he couldn’t wait for it to become a dead language, since no nation, a nation of peacocks, had ever deserved it more. It was coming, they knew it and were hysterical about it, but adieu, adieu. But still he should have learned Setswana.