Mortals

by Norman Rush

  Hissing and calling out “Koko,” Keletso was being persistent. Koko was the Tswana announcement that you were present and ready to come in, which, it occurred to Ray, Makoko might take aslant since it happened to constitute two-thirds of his surname. It might be taken as mockery. He thought he would retreat from this exercise. He was staying on his feet too much. He would retreat to the other side of the road and sit and wait and that would encourage Keletso to give this up and come to the vehicle.

  In fact, it was urgent for him to get off his feet. He wanted Keletso to stop. Suddenly what Keletso was doing was seeming foolhardy, fool-hardier than it had originally. His judgment is shit, he said to himself.

  “Itlhaganele,” he called over his shoulder. And he knew another way of saying to hurry up, so he said that too, “Dira ka bonako.”

  He leaned against the Land Cruiser, but that was still too arduous. He found a wooden crate next to the district council building and he turned it over and sat on it, not a moment too soon, he was collapsing.

  Yes, no question that he had been too cursory with Africa and had taken too instrumental an attitude toward it. He regretted it. Someone had said there was a Herero section in Nokaneng. And it hadn’t occurred to him to bother to find five minutes of time to walk around in it. It was exotic. It was a unique what, venue, but not venue, something else, milieu. Iris would have found a way to get a sense of it, scope it out, and in a way nobody would have objected to. The Herero women were something, with their stuffed bicorn headdresses, their patchwork copies of nineteenth-century gowns, their two front teeth knocked out to enable proper, as they saw it, pronunciation. It was an art to go among unusual people and see what you could and give no offense. He remembered now that Iris was interested in the Baherero. She had bought books about them from the Botswana Book Centre. Baherero were not to be found in the capital, the south, at all. He could have reported what he saw to her. It was too bad. No, he had never gotten to the marrow of Africa, and the termite mound visit of a few minutes ago was exemplary of how to be superficial about amazing Africa. No, because if you thought about it there was a kinship of sorts between manunkind and the termite nation or race in that they were the only two species whose main defining activity was producing hard hollow permanent structures. It was something to think about. Of course there were the coral reefs. He forgot whether they were created by some individual species or by congeries of fungi and bacteria and so on. He was very tired. He had known more when he was young. There were things he should have read. He had been given, twice, by people he respected, copies of The Soul of the White Ant, one of them by beloved Marion Resnick, and he had been told it was the book he had to read if he wanted to know the essence of the amazing termites of southern Africa, and they, both copies, were sitting unread in his bookshelf at St. James’s.

  He put his head between his knees, preemptively, for a moment. Yes, he was lightheaded, but no it was not going to be a problem. He would get strength. He looked up at the stars. They were strong. They were strong things. He felt that. There was astrology, there was Kipling, his poem, the something the something the something dum dum While the Stars in their courses / Do fight on our side. The stars were better, brighter, in Africa.

  Keletso would stop his agitating about now, if he had any sense. Everything was going to unfold. I am having a feeling, he thought. It was an intense thing he had had once or twice before, to the effect that everything that was happening had already happened but that the consciousness of beings like himself who were subject to living at a certain crawling rate were only discovering what had already happened, a minute at a time, something like that. That was the notion that we, man, were advancing through something that was already over, in some way, like his marriage. And what went with the feeling was an image. And the image was that everything was connected by invisible lines or pulsing lines something like the sequencing lights on the top and bottom edges of movie marquees and these connections were invisible except to the occasional seer, possibly, and they ran between every kind of object not excluding himself and his friend, good friend, Keletso. Ray went faint, but he recovered before he fell off the crate.

  Keletso was back, laughing.

  “Wa reng Moses?” Ray said. He had more Setswana in the midden of his mind than he gave himself credit for. Keletso liked it when he was addressed by Ray in Setswana. Wa reng Moses? was a faintly irreligious slang way of asking someone what was up. He could have picked up some additional Setswana from his friend if he’d thought of doing it.

  Keletso said, “I am just laughing, rra. He sayed to me, ‘Matlho me a bokaletsemy,’ two times. So then I was knocking his house even more.

  “But then whilst I am knocking the most, he says out, very loud, ‘Ke otsela, Ke otsela.’ Time and again! I am asleep, I am asleep.

  “Rra, we can do nothing with this donkey.”

  “Yes, but what was the first thing he said to you? I didn’t get it.”

  “He sayed, My eyes are heavy with sleep.”

  “Oh, right.” He wanted to finish up with more Setswana, but he was fading and sinking.

  Keletso held his hand down to him and he took it and rose out of himself, his weakness. Deep breaths would help. He considered the pinpricks of firelight strewn thinly through the dark. Some of them represented happy marriages, some fraction of them. How many, though, was a question only an anthropologist could answer. Some should be invited to take up the question, get out there and find the answer. He would like to know. It was germane to a feeling he was having, a sort of swelling desire to give some advice to Keletso. Tomorrow his opportunity to advise the man would be gone.

  He was not entirely himself, which he knew. But if he could deliver some advice he would feel better and sleep better. It was a generic desire to give advice that he was suffering from, but he could narrow it down. And he had to be careful to be sure that what he said was all right, not unusual. It was some consolation if the mistakes that added up to a particular life could be crushed to yield a vial or two of advice.

  He was going to concentrate on advice henceforth. That was an idea. He would find Kerekang and give him advice too, if he could find him. We should be kind. The world is a terrible machine, he thought.

  Wait, he thought. Because he wanted to shout something before he began advising, to the effect that he was older. He had turned forty-nine. Two days ago he had turned forty-nine and not noticed. There had always been a strain with Iris over birthdays, which she loved and that was fine, but which he considered celebrations of what, sheer duration. She had always prevailed on the question of doing something, a little something, dinner with what, he couldn’t remember what, something extra, some wine they had had at someone’s house that he had said was delicious and that she had remembered and gotten for him, always something. And then always, no matter what he said, some sort of giftlet, always. Or a real gift, a book he wanted, something.

  Ray said, “Rra, I want to give you some advice before you go, which is tomorrow.”

  “I am listening, rra.”

  “It’s about a wife, when you come to find a wife, what you should do. One and number one, you should be true to her. Yes, be true, but that is not enough. Okay, I was true, and … But nevertheless it is number one.”

  Keletso groaned, Ray thought.

  He said, “What is it?”

  “Nowhere am I finding my wife, I …”

  Ray interrupted. “But you will, my friend, and let me tell you what you must do, according to me, you see, when you do. Number one you must forget this testing of women by taking only one who can make a child. No, my friend. I know all about this.”

  “I am old, rra,” Keletso said.

  “No you’re not, Keletso.”

  “Yah, I am forty years. So I must find a young woman for a wife. You can see.”

  “Well, I understand. You want children. I understand. But you have to think of other things, too, when you look at women … and you have time, in your life. Do you kno
w how old I am?”

  “Nyah, rra.”

  “I am forty-nine, just.”

  “Is it? As from what day, rra.”

  “Sunday, it was.”

  “Ai. You sayed nothing. Yah, cheers. Cheers, rra.”

  “Cheers. Thanks.”

  “So we are two monna mogolo.”

  “No, I am. You’re not.”

  “You have a wife. I cannot catch you up.”

  “You can. And you can keep her.

  “You will find someone and, Keletso, listen, when you touch her with love the first time, you must find words to say how you love to touch her, how much. Say, This is heaven, to touch you. If you see what I’m saying. You find some way to make her feel your love like a knife going in, so it is different from any touch before. You can say anything, Your flesh is God, strong words, anything you like. And every day hold her hard against you. And say the same thing or anything similar, but strong. Your breath is like water, and so on.

  “Because, rra … women are very decent. They can drown us with sweetness and love, if we let them …”

  “Ehe,” Keletso said, uneasily, Ray sensed.

  I’m saying too much but I have to, Ray thought.

  “And you must be willing to seem a fool, when you tell your feelings. You must be extreme. You must be what they say in West Africa, fou. I don’t know what the Setswana is … mad is what it is in English …”

  “Setsenwa,” Keletso said.

  “Good. You want her to think this chap is setsenwa. And you want her to say to herself, No other man will feel like this toward me. He does not exist.

  “And as to finding a wife and having children, it will happen.”

  He was finding it impossible to get out the image that was filling him, to release it and plant it. He wanted Keletso to have it. It was that women are what, that the right woman is a locket or not a locket a jewel box, a jewel box full of something so beautiful and rich and rare, and yet men fixate on opening the catch, the lock, the word wedlock was wrong, but opening the lid and leaving the lid just open, failing to throw back the lid, turning to something else, satisfied. It was poesy and it was true, wasn’t it? But it was useless. It was too ornate. It was too ornate.

  “You are right,” Keletso said.

  “About what?”

  “I am too much with chasing up these young girls.”

  “Yes, if that’s what you’re doing. There are fine women, widows, women with children already. No, it’s a question of finding that one, that one, the correct one.”

  “And rra, what do you say as to presents, because I am always too soon with presents, it seems. And I see I have just put my money to burn away to smoke. They are looking for presents, rra.”

  “Well, you have to be careful about that, I would say.”

  It was time to stop. He had gotten out as much of the essence of his great conclusion as he could. On the details of courting, he had nothing to offer, he was ignorant, a self-taught ignoramus as Iris had described herself in one of her modes, funnily self-deprecating modes. And he was an ignoramus on the subject because he had only seriously ever courted one woman in his entire life. Now she was turning to smoke.

  Ray wanted to be useful. He would try.

  “Keletso, I know you want to have children. But I can tell you something about it.

  “I would not put it first. You see me. I can swear to you before God that I am the happiest husband in the world. I have no children with my wife. No man was ever happier with a woman.”

  It was all true, but he felt he should have gotten at least the shadow of the past tense into it.

  He got to his feet. He was sorry for the unmarried. He was as sorry for the unmarried as he was for himself, in his situation.

  Keletso said, “You are happy in your home, rra. So you must ask God for nothing more.”

  Ray’s eyes were filling up. He doubted Keletso could see that they were, but he turned his face away.

  “Keletso, do you know where the aspirin is?”

  “Ehe, rra. But is it your knee?”

  “A headache.”

  He needed to sleep. It was urgent.

  28. He Was Not Going to Be Allowed to Remain in the Shade

  He was driving cautiously and so far successfully. He was keeping himself hydrated. He had two water bottles. He had Weetabix crackers to munch. He was going to keep his blood sugar up and compensate for the fact that it had been Keletso who had reminded them it was time to snack, have a meal, not go too long without eating.

  The sky was overcast, a burning white. The landscape was flat and blank and yellow tending to white on the left, also burning. And the landscape was the same but then dark green in the near distance to the right, where the delta was. The road had swung closer to the delta. The road was more sinuous. He wondered if he would ever see the delta, where it was exotic, exotic Africa. He was uninterested in tourism except as a form of shared fun. He had done too little of it during his wifetime. He had to smile. His accidents were amusing and that had been one.

  He bit into a cracker. He had learned things from Keletso he needed to remember. Driving at night, if you felt sleepy, a good thing to do was to take an apple and make yourself eat the entire thing, chew it slowly, down to the bitter seeds. It would keep you awake. He might need to.

  He estimated that he had covered twenty of the fifty kilometers between Nokaneng and the next even smaller and more negligible hamlet, Gumare, which he would transit hoping to reach Etsha by nightfall. The road surface was passable, a little grittier, the grit consisting of bits of ancient shells from the time when all this had been deep underwater. He knew about the shell bits from someone in Gaborone, a geologist.

  He would overnight in Etsha and the next day creep along Route 14 and somehow find the spur road that led off to Toromole, the Jerusalem of ISA, the site of Ichokela Bokhutlon or what was left of it. He liked Endure to the End as a motto or name for something. It was a good motto for what he was doing. And when he got there he might find nothing or he might find a mound of ashes. He thought, The past is a bucket of ashes but so is the near future sometimes. The past is a bucket of fishhooks, would be more like it. His mind was tending to aphorism because he was dipping into Strange News from time to time, during stops to pee or stretch, and he was extending his breaks for the purpose of meeting his obligation to finish reading his brother’s last will and testament. It was important for him to get through Strange News and it had been right of Rex to struggle to get it to him. He seemed to be saying to him something like I hope you like this better than you liked me. It was something like that. He could endure that, liking his brother’s best efforts. Rex was supplying entertainment, in this solitude he was being propelled through, or dragged through.

  There was something wrong ahead. He had just come around a sharp curve and there was something black in the straight stretch of road directly ahead. The road was sinuous above Nokaneng because it moved over to follow the irregular perimeter of the floodplain of the Okavango River, snaking its way around salients of saw grass and reeds, beds of dry reeds, patches of elephant grass. The road straightened out and then curved east just beyond the black thing in the road. He wondered when the last time was that floodwater had come this far inland. It had been many years. These days the Okavango River was a shriveled thing. When the wind went through the grasses and reeds it made a sound more like clattering than something normal and sibilant.

  There was a person in the road. And something was doing in the field of elephant grass. The grass was very high. Something about the texture of the scene was wrong. There could be tents or netting half showing. He would know soon enough.

  The figure in the road was a man, just one, a black man standing blocking the way with his arms held out at his sides like Christ on the cross. He was certain that that was what he was seeing, but of course in Botswana you could see in the middle distance or on the skyline what was clearly a bush twitch and strut away, becoming an ostrich. But the imit
ation of Christ he was seeing was a man. He looked civilian enough. Ray needed to get closer. This assignment had been hard on his eyesight, the constant brightness had. His sunglasses were dark as night. He thought his night vision was a little worse than it had been when he started out. It had been helpful to have Keletso handle night driving. And now his distance vision was seeming a little lacking. Glasses were coming in the next segment of his life. He had gotten Iris when his face had been naked and unencumbered. Even so, he had always been amazed that someone so much beyond his reach had wanted him. In the future any search to be made for a new companion would be undertaken by a bespectacled man, not that that should make a giant difference. But still it was interesting. The design of glasses had improved. Iris always said that when the subject of his possibly needing glasses came up. He would get the best glasses he could. But how would he know which ones were the best? He would figure it out. Morel was a little younger, of course, but as he remembered it, Morel needed reading glasses. We all need glasses, ultimately, he thought, feeling stupid. Because obviously what he was doing was trying to tally up ways, however trivial, in which he was the better man than Gunga Din. It was as though he was preparing for an event, a debate or argument that would decide who Iris would cleave to on the basis of one of them getting a higher score in enumerated qualities.

  There was still time to stop, reverse, and turn back to Nokaneng, if he acted immediately. He had been driving with great circumspection and deliberation, out of consideration for his knee. Reversing and swinging around and getting the hell out of there would demand some vigorous moves. And it would conflict with what he thought of as his Trajectory. It would truncate everything. He would discover one of three things, up ahead, or of four things. One would be that this was lifti lifti, a random hitchhiker, innocent. One would be that the person blocking the road was goromente, legitimate. Another was that the man was one of the counterinsurgency specialists from koevoet over in SouthWest. They were killers. He knew that they were present and operating against his friend Kerekang and Kerekang’s friends. And he knew in his bones that Boyle was involved with bringing these teams on board. It would be their job to do the cupping. Mercenaries were scum. They would be setting up cups where they were the only power. Of course the final discovery possible would be that this would be someone from ISA he could communicate with and who would get him to Kerekang. The odds on that were small. But that was what he wanted more than life because he had advice for Kerekang. He was full of important advice. It was keeping him awake at night. He drove forward, at a crawl. You are in the rapids, he thought.