Mortals

by Norman Rush

  He said, “We both want the best for Iris.” He put it as neutrally as he could, as much like an observation about the weather as he could.

  Morel nodded. Ray could tell he was back into wariness.

  “And also we both believe, you and I, believe in the truth. I mean, that’s what your mission is, here in Africa, basically, I believe … to get the truth out … the truth shall set you free, all that, the truth till it hurts.” He had botched the tone. He hated himself.

  Morel was annoyed. He replied sharply, “Why would you say you believe in the truth? Maybe you do. But I wonder why you think we’re in the same boat on this.”

  This was a gauntlet and Ray hadn’t been expecting it and here it was, take that, bang.

  Maybe it was all right. Maybe it was for the better, in a way, a contest framed that way. Morel would get war if that was what he wanted.

  “You’ve reached a conclusion on me, I see. Based on what?”

  “We don’t need to go into it. I’m sorry I said anything.”

  “Oh yes we do. You think you have the truth, some kind of truth about me. Go ahead.”

  “I know what you are. What you do.”

  “Oh and what am I?”

  “I don’t need to tell you what you are. You know what you are.”

  “You think you know more than you do.” Ray warned himself to slow down. He was talking too fast, agitated. He was on war footing. This was war.

  “What do you think I am?”

  “I know. Trust me.”

  “So Iris told you something.”

  “No, not a word. She didn’t have to. What a laugh.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think nobody knows who you work for. It’s a laugh. I was hardly off the plane and I knew.”

  “She told you.”

  “You’d like to think that. Wake up. Everybody knows who Boyle is, the consular officer you can never get hold of. That woman who works for him does everything in the office.”

  This was bad. It was impossible for Ray, the idea of presenting the complete picture of what he was and what he was doing and what he had done, justifying himself. It was the wrong moment. He had to get out of this. He was on the wrong tack. And now he had to deal with the new question of whether, in addition to everything else that had to be settled, whether Iris had revealed what he did. They had an iron agreement about that. Whatever happened, it was supposed to be honored.

  “Iris never said anything. That’s what you’re telling me.”

  “There was nothing to tell me. I told her what I knew. What was being said. It was common knowledge. She wouldn’t even confirm it. She talked around it.”

  “But finally she did confirm it to you.”

  “All right, after I hounded her. But she only confirmed it after she was convinced I knew.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this. She knows there are specially, specially approved doctors to go to if anybody connected to the agency needs to see somebody. There’s one in Pretoria. She shouldn’t have done it. She broke an oath.”

  “You seem unable to grasp that I knew already. She couldn’t keep denying it without being in an unproductive position. I knew …”

  “You didn’t know. You couldn’t prove it. You thought you knew.”

  “Have it your way. I thought I knew, okay, and I was right. I was right, wasn’t I? And it was material to her situation.”

  “To her depression.”

  “Yes.”

  “To her unhappiness.”

  Ray thought, I have to get off this route, give it up. He was outsmarting himself. He could see this leading into the story of his life, the justification for each step he had taken, the justification for the whole edifice he had created, something he was hardly in the right position to undertake since he was leaving the whole thing, he was gone, he was out of it. And he knew what Morel’s picture of the agency was going to be, the cartoon it was bound to be. And in a way he agreed with most of it, even though it was the sixties refusing to die that lay at the root of it, the sixties cartoons forever.

  Maybe what Iris wanted was the sixties, which she would get redivivus in Morel. What could he do? He was inhabiting a stupid paradox. He was through with the agency, for his own reasons and for other reasons that owed something to certain ideas of the sixties, to be entirely fair about it, but he was on the exit ramp. La guerre est finie, with the Russians, was one of the reasons, a large reason and one he was not about to go into with Morel, agreeing yes this and that and the agency, Guatemala, Indonesia, terrible, mistaken, bad, but did Morel know why the Taiwanese happened not to have the atom bomb to play around with? It would be ignominious. He was not going to declare himself a turning worm as a basis for the next level of discussion here.

  Under the right circumstances he would be happy to discuss the generic question of lives getting stuck and set in certain patterns. It was too large a subject right now. Somehow powerful personalities, hysterics among them, got to determine whole trains of events that innocent, less powerful personalities got caught up in. Who were these strong personalities and why were they so prevalent? Morel was a strong personality choosing to operate in a forceful way in narrower and narrower ponds, the United States, Cambridge, and now in the still, small pool Botswana constituted, the pond Ray had been happy enough in until this giant toad had flopped into it waving and croaking. We would all like to be great, if at all possible, Ray thought.

  Morel was waiting for him to say the next thing. Time was passing.

  If she wanted the sixties she was going to get the sixties in spades, so to speak, with Morel. The sixties annoyed him. The sixties said that if you knocked down certain well-meaning but imperfect institutions you would get something altogether more beautiful and wonderful flowering up to replace them. People never appreciated how touch and go it had been with the Russians at certain points, the ongoing possibility of a sociopath asshole getting into control of the magnificent death technologies science had created and that the Russians had brilliantly stolen.

  “Well, let’s leave what I do for a living out of this, if we can. Let’s say you’re right and let’s set it aside. For the sake of the argument, let’s do that.”

  “I loathe what you do,” Morel said. Ray was taken aback. Morel had presented his feeling very evenly, as a statement, not a cry or shout.

  “Okay, I understand. Maybe that can be on the record and we can get on with this. I … look. I agree with a lot of what I assume you think. You might be surprised at how much we agree on. But there is no way I can get this into the right perspective for you.”

  “I loathe that word.”

  “What word? Perspective? Then how about how about there’s no way I can enter all the germane facts into the discussion. You loathe everything.”

  Why was Morel being so absolute on this? Ray thought he knew why. He was suddenly seeing more deeply into the surroundings of his downfall. He thought, How better than perfect could it be for a seducer if by seducing the fair maiden he was saving her from association with an enemy of the good? Of course that was assuming that Morel was the seducer, something he had no evidence on as yet. He had his ideas and that was all he had.

  There was no time for a seminar on the proper attitude to take toward the triumph of the pretty good over the utterly abominable that was roughly a fair summary of the Cold War, roughly but of course incompletely. He granted that. And Morel couldn’t help it that he hated imperial America. That was a truth about America that had to be lived with, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

  His cover had been a laugh, clearly. The idea that the suspicion might be out circulating was not something alien to him. But it had been comfortable keeping the possibility there in a pallid way, not in boldface.

  He was making life difficult for himself by carrying on two dialogues at the same time, one with Morel and one with himself. He had to concentrate, to get away from the extraneous. There were certain words he needed Morel to say and he
was going to extract them. He was close to getting them. When he got them he would be able to breathe normally.

  Ray said, “Okay, you have your own opinion of me and of my relationship, such as it is, to the truth. I don’t have the time to prove to you how misguided you are. But maybe someday.

  “So. So, pushing the reset button, let’s agree that you have a shall we say certain relationship to the truth that’s superior to mine. Truth blows away the night and fog and makes you free. Everybody says so.

  “In a way you might say you’ve devoted yourself to being against lying, institutional lying but not only that kind, that form of lying, untruth. You hate that.”

  Morel said, “Make your point. Stop the overture. End it.”

  “Very good.”

  Ray decided to skip some absurd introductory piety about how much he respected what Morel was doing. He was not in superb control of himself, his voice. It would show in his voice that he resented that Morel was able to do what he wanted to do because he had the money to allow it, support it. Even if it didn’t show in his voice, there was the danger he would bring it up as a discrete item, just mention it glancingly, mention how nice it was to have inherited the money that would let you be a certain kind of moral paragon, how nice indeed. And he also knew that it wasn’t Morel’s fault that he was rich. That was another thing.

  Ray said, “I want to know if you love my wife and also if you’re fucking her.”

  Waiting for the answer was too hard. He went on. He said, “Yes, go ahead, here’s your chance. Truth can speak to untruth, in the person of myself, yours untruly.” He needed to stop being antic.

  “This isn’t funny,” Morel said.

  “No indeed.” Being antic was stupid. It created byways for Morel to duck away into. But Ray was having to struggle with the temptation to be reckless. Because he felt reckless. He felt reckless because of the extremity of the scene he was in.

  He shouldn’t crowd Morel, but the man was taking too long. You have to have patience, Ray thought. Demonstrating the patience to wait for the truth to be spoken gave the sign that the truth was already there and that he knew Morel was going to have to yield it.

  “Take your time,” Ray said.

  Sounds of a disturbance reached them. Morel held his hand up for silence. He wanted them to listen together. Ray held down a surge of grief and irritation. The disturbance had to go away. Morel would use it for a diversion. In Morel’s place, Ray knew he would do the same thing, buy time. I am going to pray to God and Jesus if this doesn’t stop, Ray thought.

  And then it did stop. The shouting trailed off. The banging sounds ended.

  He let Morel continue waiting.

  Morel broke. He said, “I don’t think this is the best time to have this discussion.”

  “On the contrary I beg to differ,” Ray answered, stumblingly. He persisted. “In fact I can’t think of a better time and I’ll tell you why. And why is because the hammer of death could come down on us, either one of us, anytime.

  “And I’m not saying it will. We have certain things going for us. But nothing is guaranteed. These bastards are high on Mandrax. You smelled the dagga out there. And we have a right, or not a right, precisely, but it would be, what should we call it, it would be morally preferable to go into death in full possession of the truth on this subject matter at least.”

  “The subject matter being …”

  “Oh quite simply the truth about you and Iris, my wife. Which I already know, in any case.”

  Morel was thinking about it. The truth was coming. Ray tried to feel self-congratulatory. He was going to get what he wanted.

  “Why are we going through this if you already know?”

  He will do anything not to answer, not to have to lie, Ray thought.

  “Believe me, I do know. But that doesn’t change anything. Because you owe me the truth. As a man, you owe me the truth. You may as well tell me. Oh, and another consideration. We have to cooperate if we’re going to get out of here and that means I need to trust you. We need to see into each other …”

  “This is wrong, God damn you. It is.”

  Rail, Liar! Ray thought. That could be an addition to Rex’s little collection of palindromes in Strange News, but of course that would make it a collaboration. Rex had been fascinated with palindromes from an absurdly young age. In all their early life together Ray hadn’t come up with a decent one of his own, none that wasn’t marginal. Rex had … I moan, Maori … I mean, Naomi … and they were in Strange News. Of course now computers would take over the whole process and this would never be an issue between two brothers again. Goodbye, he thought. Madam I’m Adam was something he could say to Iris, not that it qualified for anything in any way.

  Ray said, “One other thing you need to consider. We’re not even. You know everything about me, to your satisfaction, which I’m sure you think is fine. So an element of balance comes into it. You know what I mean.”

  Morel said, “I don’t have to say anything to you.”

  “Of course you don’t. But that would be a basis for a conclusion of some kind, wouldn’t you say?”

  Morel said, “You say you already know something. That’s interesting. If there was something there, some secret, why would Iris send me up here after you, exposing me to all this, your suspicions? Would that make sense?”

  “Hey, she had no choice, did she, Frank Buck? Do you know who that is? She had no choice, you were it. She has a conscience and so do you and so do I. She needs me to come back alive. And she needs me back in town so we can burn everything down we ever had, us, there, settle everything so you guys can go on sweetly. Oh well. You know, I am not a troglodyte like some people. I can give my blessing to this if I have to, but I can’t give my blessing to a liar for my girl, for her next husband, because as you know she was married to a liar and it wasn’t good, was it? What a mistake she made, not realizing that. Frank Buck went to Africa and brought back lions and tigers for zoos and circuses so delicately and always alive. Frank Buck never hurt Africa …”

  “You’re hyperventilating.”

  “I am fucking not.”

  “You need to stop this.”

  “I won’t and I can’t. Why should I?”

  “Because it’s too much. I’m hypertensive. I am. I can take a lot. But they have my medication. I need that.” He was taking his own pulse.

  “Does Iris know this? About you?”

  “No.”

  “Well why the fuck not, my man. Here we go. I have perfect blood pressure.”

  But slow down, Ray thought. It would be one thing for Morel to come to a bloody end through the stupid actions of their captors and something else for him to end up having a stroke and lying there like a log for the rest of his life, grateful if he could blink once for yes and twice for no.

  “Let’s go slower,” Ray said. The man is less than perfect, he thought.

  “Slower is better,” Morel said.

  Ray nodded. “Fine. I don’t want to give you a stroke. And in any case I consider the question answered already, and I’m not referring to what I know separately about this subject matter. But even leaving that aside, the question is answered by the sheer volume of resistance I’m getting from you.

  “I’m sorry for you. You’re condemned by your own what, scruples, ideology about lying. You could have lied outright, fast, in an absolute way, when the question first came out. It wouldn’t have done any good, in the long run. But you didn’t do that. You began circumambulating.” I have him, Ray thought.

  “Excuse me,” Morel said. Now what? Ray thought. The man was an eel.

  “What?”

  “I have to use the bucket.” So there would be another interruption so the man could defecate. It was going to be defecation. If he had just had to urinate he would do what both of them had done, he would have gone over and done it without missing a beat. No one could argue with defecation. And what a prodigy he was. Even in captivity his bowels functioned like a Swiss watc
h. Defecation demanded silence. Momentum would be lost.

  Ray went to stand by the door, keeping his back to Morel and his business.

  There was some significant flatus. Ray wondered if silence might not be less kind than doing some patter.

  He said, “Your bowels shall sound as an harp. Coleridge.”

  Morel was not having his easiest evacuation, Ray couldn’t help but gather. This was going to be a little embarrassing for a man whose religion was regularity. He had gotten that impression from Iris, who could be raffish and funny about the lower self and its discontents. “Must you fart so?” was something she had said to him in mock pique. It was hard to say exactly why that had seemed so funny. It still did.

  He said, “I’ll tell you something. This is in the category of trivia from my history with Iris, our life. I just mention it. Most of the places we lived in had the tub and the toilet in the same room, not like here in Botswana. So when it would happen that Iris needed to go and I happened to be in the tub, we developed a protocol. I would sing some nonsense to overwhelm any sounds that conflicted with her … her darlingness. And of course I would keep my eyes closed throughout.”

  “Do you want to sing something? Go right ahead.”

  Ray thought of doing “Carrickfergus,” and then of doing the national anthem. He had to make a quick choice, if he was going to do something so antic. There was a feeling of sacrilege about the proposition of doing one of the songs he had actually sung when Iris was on the pot. “Greensleeves” was one of them. Singing it had been a jocular sort of choice, a sequel to conversations they’d had about whether that was the most beautiful song in the world or whether “Amazing Grace,” Iris’s choice, was, or whether “Down by the Salley Gardens,” his candidate, was. All at once any impulse to sing was gone. There was nothing he could think of that would help, that would get him anything, in this situation, his wife’s lover on the pot.

  Morel was straining. Briefly Ray wondered if a flight-or-fight reaction had played some part in Morel’s urgency, the urge to evacuate being one of the accompaniments of the physical mobilization for panic flight. I would like to think that, so it’s probably wrong, Ray thought.