Mortals

by Norman Rush

  Kerekang ushered Ray in, conducting him to a place near the fire. Ray squatted down. He had done it with bearable discomfort, which was an improvement. He began shivering. He had been holding his reaction to the cold in abeyance. Now he was letting himself be cold and at the same time letting his bites itch and sting to their heart’s content.

  Mokopa was skillful with his knife. He was able to maneuver the whole tangle of snake flesh with just the one blade, one or two thrusts, turning it. Mokopa was salting the ribbons of flesh. Three large snakes had been killed. There was a good bit of meat. Two Basarwa were there, to the back, eating. Mokopa put a pot, mouth down, over the snake meat. The meat would be smoky. He would eat it however it tasted. He was getting the impression that to Mokopa grilling snake meat was a commonplace, a skill he happened to have. An eye patch would make a nice gift for Mokopa.

  He found a tin mug full of hot tea in his hands. Sugar was being poured into it, too much sugar. But the calories would be good for him. It was black tea, very strong.

  He looked around. He didn’t know who to thank.

  He thanked Kerekang, who was reclining now and smoking a rude cigarette, hand-rolled cigarette, and not smoking tobacco. It was dagga. Ray knew the odor, and that was dagga, he was sorry to say. It was very upsetting. No doubt Kerekang had a right to take a drug to calm down, the way, when he himself had been a drinker, he had taken a belt of scotch. But the problem was that he had to talk privately and seriously to Kerekang, to a Kerekang in a clear state of mind. But first he had to eat some snake meat.

  Mokopa, lifting the pot, furled a darkish ribbon of snake meat onto his knife and held it out to Ray before repositioning the pot.

  Ray sought to accept the furled ribbon in an insouciant way corresponding to the manner in which it had been offered. He pinched it off the knife without cutting himself and crushed the coil into his mouth. It was salty and delicious but inedible, unfortunately. Or at first blush, it was inedible. He smiled in thanks. He chewed steadfastly. He continued to smile.

  He had a new vocation, chewing. There were nutrients in this protein and he would get them. And he would go and get Morel so that he could have some of this feast. And at the same time he would retrieve his parcel and bring it into the faux cave with him. But first he would get Morel and praise the delicacy he was going to get.

  He got up. He thanked God he had all his teeth. That was one more thing he owed to his fanatically flossing beloved. The spines that grew on the branches of thorn trees ought to make passable toothpicks. He would collect some.

  He had to talk to Morel. He wanted him to eat, if he hadn’t already. They had work to do together. They had to talk sense to Kerekang. Morel knew Kerekang better than he did. And he wanted Morel to say something about dagga. They had to get Kerekang aside and lean on him, save him from this war he had lost control of. And what about Kevin? The dagga was a bad sign that had to be addressed and Morel was a physician.

  There was other food to eat. Mokopa was opening cans with his knife while the smoking of the snake meat continued. Mokopa could do anything with a knife, apparently. He was very deft.

  The collation, laid out on the ground, on a sheet of newspaper, was still developing. There was a stack of irregular pieces of crispbread. There was a can of peach halves. There were four cans of Vienna sausage. He had to get Morel right away, so that he could have a decent choice of what was on offer. He ate some crispbread and was delighted when Kevin produced a clutch of massive chocolate bars, Cadbury, Hazelneute, and handed one of them to Ray, who began eating it immediately. He finished his tea and asked for more.

  He went to find Morel, carrying his tea with him. Morel was sitting on Wemberg’s headstone. He had a penlight and it was on and it was being used to illuminate a small notepad he had open on his knee and was writing in. Hearing Ray’s approach, Morel snapped the penlight off.

  Ray didn’t like it. There was something secretive about it he didn’t like. He needed to escape his fixation on warnings and notes and fore-warnings from Morel preceding Ray to his meeting with Iris, contaminating that moment, but this wasn’t helping.

  “What’re you writing?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, really, what?”

  “My will.”

  “It’s none of my business. But really, what were you writing?”

  Morel was silent. This is all wrong, Ray thought. They had tasks to complete together. But he needed to know what Morel had been writing. They had to find more stones for Wemberg’s resting place, for one thing. He couldn’t help himself.

  Morel pointed his penlight at Ray and turned it on for an instant. He saw something in Ray’s expression that softened him.

  “Okay, I’ll let you read it. And you’ll see it’s nothing, it’s about a piece I was writing before I came looking for you.”

  Ray was ashamed of himself.

  Morel said, “And now I’ll show you the page itself.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Of course what Ray really wanted was for Morel to hand the notepad over so that he could read everything in it.

  Morel said, “What have you got in your mouth?” Ray kept doggedly chewing, but he was nearing the end of his ability to continue.

  “This is snake,” Ray said, spitting out the irreducible wad he had in his mouth.

  “Jesus,” Morel said.

  “It’s protein. But there’s other stuff to eat.”

  “I had something earlier, those little sausages with the red insides and some tea and some applesauce.”

  “There’s crispbread. And they have chocolate. And just to be polite you can try the snake.”

  “I’ll eat anything they let me.”

  Kerekang was standing off by himself, outside the faux cave, like a fireman without a hose, which was Iris’s phrase for people in hapless solitude, or appearing to be.

  “We have to work on him, the two of us,” Ray said.

  “We also have to get ourselves out of this at the earliest.”

  “I know, but first we have to prevail on Kerekang.”

  “No, first we have to get our own asses out. I can’t take too much more. I’ve got to get back to Gaborone. I mean it.” Morel spoke with sudden fierceness, an unfamiliar fierceness.

  “Well, but—”

  “I’m telling you, I have to get back.”

  Something was happening with Morel. He was vibrating.

  “Let’s go back and sit down. We can talk to Kerekang later,” Ray said. They could go back to Wemberg’s grave and the other graves and he could bring tea and food from the collation. They could eat with their fingers. He hadn’t seen any silverware in the faux cave, any napkins, but they could still have a sort of picnic. He would make it a picnic.

  He said to Morel, “Let’s eat something before we do anything. Go back and sit down. I’ll bring us more stuff to eat.”

  Morel nodded and moved off in the right direction. Ray was very worried. Morel had been fine. Possibly it was the effect of being out of the immediate zone of danger, in fact it had to be that, all the high-mobilization processes coming down suddenly, in a heap.

  He looked over the collation. The Vienna sausages were gone. There was no sign of chocolate. There were peach halves, a couple of them. There was some crispbread left. There was an open can of something that looked like pigeon peas. They were untouched.

  Ray drained the last syrup out of the peach can into his tea mug. That would be the main vessel. He lifted up a few strings of snake meat, as a courtesy to Mokopa, who was watching what he was doing. He dropped them onto the peaches. He was dubious about the pigeon peas, but he shook most of them into the peach can. You never know what another person loves, he thought. He had a vague notion that pigeon peas were like black-eyed peas, which were favorites of black people, but not the black people around the fire, it had to be said. And he refilled his cup with the last of the tea.

  Morel had gone back to Wemberg’s grave and was sitting wher
e he had been sitting before. Ray shone the torch briefly on him. This time Morel was sitting on his hands. At first Ray was bemused by it, but then he realized Morel was trying to conceal the degree of shaking he was suffering. It was severe.

  “What is it?” Ray asked.

  “I have to get to Gaborone,” Morel answered.

  “Me, too, but what’s going on? Are you cold?”

  “No I have to get to Gaborone. That’s it. I have to figure it out.”

  He pressed the tea on Morel, who accepted it, but set the cup down on the ground and returned his hand to its prior place under his buttock.

  “Do you like pigeon peas?” he asked Morel.

  “What are they?”

  “Well then I guess you won’t like them. They’re a legume. They’re like black-eyed peas. If you don’t know what they are you won’t like them. They have a strong odor.” He felt it was important to make Morel talk more, keep talking, get off the subject of going back to Gaborone, which was something nothing could be done about.

  “I can’t do anything here,” Morel said.

  “Sure you can. What do you mean?”

  “I have nothing to work with. I have zinc oxide, what can I do with that? I have petroleum jelly. I have a headache. I don’t even have any aspirin.”

  “Look, eat something and you’ll feel better. You have low blood sugar. Drink some tea.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s wrong with me.”

  “No, that’s just, I don’t know, it’s what Iris says to me when I get ragged and crab at her and I eat something and I …”

  “It isn’t that. I have to get back to Gaborone.”

  “You keep saying that. Why do you have to get back more than I do? Why is it so urgent? We’re in a mess, here.”

  Morel murmured an answer.

  “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “I have to see Iris,” Morel said loudly and brokenly. Ray felt a rage of emotion, outrage, fury mixed with injury and indignation at the breaking of rules between men. He could hardly breathe.

  He trained the light on Morel’s face. It was an aggression. Morel was about to cry. Tears were coming. He was distraught. Ray wished that the beam of the torch could be scorching, hot enough to burn Morel, make him cry out, apologize, apologize, apologize with a scream, a begging scream. He turned the torch off. He was reeling.

  Who do you think you are? Ray wanted to say, except that it was so feeble. He wanted to attack Morel. Morel needed to see Iris so much he would do something insane. It was love. He wanted to say that he hated Morel, but he couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” Morel said, reaching for the cup of tea.

  Ray emptied the cup on the ground. My hand did it, he thought. It had happened without his intending to do it. He was surprised at himself. There was no more tea. More could be heated up, but there was no tea right now, nothing to put in Morel’s trembling, reaching hand, here in the desert.

  Ray didn’t want to see Morel’s reaction to his act. He was ashamed.

  Both of them said something about being sorry at the same time.

  But Ray was in a state of blood-red rage, still. He wanted to say things that were wrong, couldn’t be said. He was wanting to go into the whole stupid whatever oath there was about doctors not screwing their women patients. There had to be something like that.

  “I’ll get some more tea,” Ray said. He hoped there was more. There would be. It was possible Morel thought that the tea had been spilled accidentally.

  “No, don’t. I have to talk to you,” Morel said.

  “What?”

  “I’m worried about her.”

  It isn’t effrontery, it’s worse, it’s weakness, Ray thought. Effrontery would be better.

  “Say what you mean,” Ray said.

  “This isn’t the way she wanted it. She’s going to blame herself. She’s going to blame herself for sending me into this. She …”

  That was effrontery. It was astounding effrontery. Morel was obsessed with the need to go back and comfort Iris and reassure her that he was fine, he the doctor was fine.

  “Get hold of yourself. You don’t even know what you’re saying. I can’t believe you. Didn’t she send you off to find me, if you recall?”

  “She’s not so strong.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “I do. She’s not that strong.”

  “You don’t know anything. She’s strong as a horse. Look how long she put up with me.” Get some levity into this, he thought. Because he was feeling violent.

  “I want to tell you I’m sorry about it, with Iris, but I can’t. I have to be truthful.”

  “You’re not sorry because it’s so wonderful, with my wife. You want her. You love her.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll see if there’s more tea.” There was nothing to do with his feelings of fury and betrayal and inadequacy. Ray had been preoccupied with confrontation, with inducing the truth by allowing her the chance to be shameful and lie to him. Morel was thinking about how she might be doing, thinking more about how she might be doing without her new lover than without her old lover, it had to be said, but still.

  Kevin was keeping the fire going.

  Ray asked, “Can we make some more tea?”

  Kevin leapt up to attend to it. Ray thought, He would make a nice son. But of course he already was somebody’s son, somebody else’s. There was nothing he could do to protect Kevin from the hazards of war. He would die bloodily. What can I do? Ray thought. It was late in the day. He could hardly put himself in the position of trying to make special provisions, arrangements, for everybody he liked among the witdoeke and not for the others, the ones he barely knew. And there was the further fact that he was not in a position to do anything, alter anything, provide any kind of alternative. And when it came to alternatives, he wasn’t clear what his comrades and friends were planning to do next, what he would be trying to think of an alternative to. He had to talk to Kerekang. Every food can in the faux cave was empty. Fighters were already asleep or preparing to sleep. Some had sleeping bags and some had scabrous, filthy blankets and quilts. No pillows were in evidence. Kerekang was still outside somewhere, off on his own.

  Kevin had put too much water in the pot. It was going to take too long to boil, especially now that the fire was in decline. Water was precious in the desert. He couldn’t tip water out of the pot and onto the earth. He knew he couldn’t. He waited until Kevin’s attention was elsewhere and poured the excess water into a can and drank it down. Shortly, the water boiled.

  Ray went to Morel. “Here’s tea,” he said.

  “I was out of line,” Morel said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “I was. And there’s another thing I want to say.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “No, I want to say this, then that should do it. I didn’t know you. I didn’t like you. I knew you were in the agency. So there was that. It put you in a category I’m not proud about. I had my objections to the agency and what it represents, and you know what, I still do. And I don’t want to make an excuse out of it, but it did go on the scale. It added to the feeling I had that you didn’t deserve her. Everybody knows you’re in the agency …”

  “I think you told me that once before. I had the pleasure of hearing that when we were locked up.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you. That’s all I want to say.”

  “Now you love me. You think I’m great.”

  “I’ll just say I’m sorry I didn’t know you better. It’s cold.”

  If what he was hearing was an apology, it was only making Ray feel worse. What was he supposed to do with this information? He couldn’t think of a thing.

  “If you’re cold, come on. We have to figure out where to sleep. I’m not going back into that cave. I don’t know what’s in there, and I notice nobody is fighting to use the space. Come on, doctor.”

  “You’re supposed to keep a fire going as a preventive against lions a
nd jackals, aren’t you?” Morel asked.

  “Yes, and leopards.”

  Ray noticed something. There were five stones on Wemberg’s grave. Morel had been active, doing that, waiting for his tea. Ray was grateful. It was a gesture. To make a serious cairn that would pose some kind of real barrier to carrion eaters, energy would be required that neither of them had.

  They went back to the fire. Someone had gathered stacks of wood, for the night. Probably it had been the exemplary Kevin, who was now lying down, sharing a blanket with someone Ray had not been introduced to. There were so many of them. He counted ten sleepers by this fire.

  Kerekang was away. Kevin was asleep. Ray didn’t want to call the disorganized or unorganized state of things at the center of the band of fighters dysfunctional. He had to believe that there were organizing templates that were expressing themselves in this casual scene, people sleeping, smoking dagga, that made sense. Meetings must have taken place earlier, when he was out of it, and decisions reached that left everyone in a relaxed, recreational mood. But things looked askew, lax.

  “Stay by the fire, doctor,” Ray said.

  Morel sat down and mechanically began to feed branches into the fire, bending them in the attempt to break them into shorter lengths but giving up when they didn’t break because they were too green and setting them across the fire anyway.

  “I’m going to get Setime,” Ray said.

  “Who?” Morel asked.

  “Kerekang. Don’t use too much wood. Don’t use too much at once.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “I know you are. But still don’t.”

  At first he couldn’t find Kerekang anywhere. Ray went entirely around the monadnock without finding him. And then it occurred to him that Kerekang might be up on the monadnock itself. And, probing with the torch, he located him, at the summit, sitting and smoking.

  Ray hailed him. Kerekang signaled vaguely back. Ray decided to take it as an invitation.

  Everything is too much, he thought. He had to find a route through and over a mound of boulders ranging in size from medicine balls to very large refrigerators. And he had to do it with one hand, because he had to keep the torch in use, and one good leg. And he had to avoid various thorn-bearing types of vegetation. And he had to be alert for whatever animal menaces there might be, scorpions, snakes, although they had eaten whatever snakes the monadnock hosted that they could find, presumably. There was a way up, obviously, because Kerekang had found it.