Mortals

by Norman Rush

  There were a couple of things he had to know about. He said to Kevin, “Tell me about the staff at Ngami Bird Lodge, what happened to them?” He needed to know. Because they hadn’t come out into the bush with the witdoeke.

  “They are fine. We sent them back to Route 14. We took them there. They were slaves, rra, in that place. We saw that they were picked up. We waited to see that they had transport. Phalatse was in hiding, watching, and so he tells us it went.”

  “That’s good,” Ray said. He forgot what the other thing he wanted to know about was.

  Morel, full of eagerness but trying to be delicate, measured, said, “And the idea is definitely that Ray and I would be the ones to take the Land Cruiser down to the south, to Mabuasehube?”

  “He will tell you when he comes to talk to you, Setime will.”

  “When would we leave?” Ray asked.

  Ray repeated his question. “When would we have to leave? Because I want to tell you something. If they say we have to drive by night, go now, drive tonight, I’m sorry. I’m too tired. I can’t.”

  “Sure we can. I can,” Morel said. He stood up and strode around a little, showing his readiness, Ray supposed. It was a little amusing.

  Ray said, “We can’t do it in the dark, I don’t think. You have to find these tracks that barely exist. I know. I’ve been out in the bush more than you. It takes two people, one to navigate and one to drive, even during the daylight. I am telling you. Even then you barely creep along, unless you hit a well-defined stretch. I mean, we are going to be on rough terrain. You have to go around things. You have to keep getting out to set the front hubs for four-wheel drive. When I had a driver, one of us was always doing that. You can’t stay in four-wheel drive all the time because it uses up gas too fast. Listen to me, man. You never got off government roads when you came up here, so you don’t know.”

  Morel wanted him to be quiet. Ray understood why. Morel wanted to seize the moment because the situation could change in a second, for any reason. Ray could imagine a dozen things that could happen to kill this particular plan. Morel wanted to go while he could. He wanted to get to Iris. He was blocking out any possibility that the comrades who were certain that helicopters would come for them were right. Morel was looking past that. That was fine. Ray considered it as unlikely as Morel did. But if a helicopter did show up in the air above them and started firing at them it would be over in the blink of an eye, they would inhabit a fireball and turn into smoke and bits of bone and that would be the end of the affair.

  “Do you think he wants us to go tonight?” Ray asked Kevin.

  “He will tell you himself.”

  What Ray wanted was an impossibility, to stay in the desert, to stay indefinitely there. He liked the people he was with, the comrades, and now he was having to prepare himself to go back to Gaborone to be with people he didn’t like or with people, a person, he loved but who didn’t like him, or, to be fair, liked somebody else a lot more. He had crafted a life in which something was always happening somewhere, in one department or another of his life, the academic, the agency, or the personal part. It was quiet in the desert.

  Morel was pushing too hard, saying to Kevin, “Can’t you get Kerekang, or let us go over there? The night isn’t going to last all day.” Morel was tired. He looked at Ray to see if Ray had noticed his misspeaking. Ray gave no sign.

  Ray had thought it was okay for the domestic panel of his life to be placid, the placid panel. It was the realm in which he had been attentive toward Iris, supporting her in her interests, but it was hardly a realm in which he had tried separately to make himself admirable to her, if that was what he meant. Anyway, he thought. It was too late. It was an irony, but now he was on the verge of doing something she would genuinely admire, if she knew anything about it. There was no way she could be kept up to date on his new life that he could think of. Unless he decided to send out one of those yearly-chronicle-type Christmas cards.

  No, he had used the domestic realm as an asylum from the franticness of the work panels, a haven. That hadn’t been right. It was what everyone did, but in his case, what he had been using her as a haven from was something she hated.

  He was liking the quiet, the stillness of the desert. He had never particularly understood about early Christian ascetics choosing to go out into the desert because, after all, you could be an ascetic anywhere. But now he felt he had a taste or hint of why. The desert was humbling and calming. He felt calm.

  It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to leave the desert, because he was going to have to. He turned his attention to tightening up his manuscript bundle as well as he could. He had seen a tough-looking creeping vine in the vicinity. He went off with his torch to see if he could find it and tear off a few lengths of it and tie them around Strange News.

  Morel called after him to come back. One of the things Morel didn’t understand was that Ray needed to get someplace where he could let go of his bundle, put it in a secure place and forget about its existence, for a change.

  He found the vine. It was as tough as anyone could hope for. The Mosarwa turned up beside him carrying an alarming knife. They worked together, pulling and jerking and then shaving off the sharp little spines the vine bore. He thanked the man, who seemed to know everything there was to know about this piece of flora. It was clear that Ray was not the first man to figure out some of the uses this plant might be put to. He had two six-foot lengths of the vine.

  Everything was irritating Morel, who was trying to discourage Kevin from adding any more wood to the remnant of the fire. And when Ray began artfully binding his parcel up, even devising a handle of sorts for ease of carrying, Morel showed growing impatience.

  “We have to get this settled,” Morel said.

  “I think it is settled. Act normal or they’ll change their mind about this.”

  Something was under way in the darkness, something having to do with the vehicles. Loads were being shifted around. He couldn’t believe that people who had been through violent battle could still manage to carry out heavy physical tasks in the middle of the night. We should all be ordered to lie down and sleep, he thought.

  Kerekang whistled. They were being summoned.

  Morel said, “We’re going to be on our way.” He was having difficulty containing his anxiety. He was full of adrenaline. Probably that was good. It would keep him awake at the wheel. I know what my mission is going to be in the Cruiser, Ray thought. It was going to be to keep himself awake to be sure that Morel kept awake at the wheel. And he was going to insist that they pull over and park and go no farther and sleep, both of them, if he saw the slightest sign of fatigue making Morel nod off. Ray had no intention of having this experience come to an end due to poor driving.

  Kerekang was whistling and so was someone else. There was a sort of harmony between the two different streams of sound. He had to go.

  Kerekang was coming toward them, clasping maps under one arm, beckoning them to the fire, the main fire. Everyone at the fire was standing. It was going to be ceremonial, Ray could tell. That was not what he wanted. What he wanted was to talk separately and concretely to Kerekang about linking up in the Republic, assuming each of them managed their escapes decently. He was assuming they would. He didn’t know why.

  What was going to happen was that he and Morel would be said goodbye to and instructed to get directly into the Cruiser and get out of there. And that was going to be too bad, in a couple of ways, for him. Because it was going to be a tense thing, a race to get to Iris first, between the two of them. And he would have to never sleep or seriously rest in any situation where Morel could jump out and duck out of sight and get to a phone to warn Iris about the storm to come. Ray was determined not to let that happen. He was wondering whether a handshake agreement would mean anything, a promise from Morel to say nothing to Iris for a couple of days when they got back to Gaborone, staying off the scene. He doubted that an agreement would mean anything. It was the kind of situation in which th
e temptation would be to agree, make the deal, and then yield to a second temptation to break it. If he put himself in Morel’s place he could see himself breaking that kind of agreement, out of weakness. Morel would want to protect her from the shock of learning that he had let the truth out, which had never been the plan.

  Morel was holding up much better than he was. He had taken less punishment, of course. And was three years younger and of course got exercise and had never smoked, he claimed. Iris had always been more enamored of exercise than Ray had. So it was fine, she could join Morel forever after doing heel-and-toe walking or whatever was on the menu of the day.

  Morel was hurrying ahead, with Kevin, Morel the human dynamo.

  And Iris had always wanted to argue for the fun of arguing more than he had, except in the earliest days of their love. But then certain areas of argument had gotten tender, because one way or another they connected with the agency, even if only by implication. And then she had stopped initiating recreational argument. Their last memorable recreational argument had been over one of the Pinter plays, Homecoming, which they’d seen in an amateur production.

  It was a little awkward, taking leave of the comrades. There was a round of handshaking, but the handshake was a particular kind of handshake, involving a mutual grasping of wrists after the initial standard handshake. And then with each handshake an exchange of words was in order. Some of the comrades said a good deal more than Tsamaya sentle, which was the only thing it was occurring to him to say, and which, he realized, was incorrect for him to say, because that was the leave-taking formulation for the speaker who was remaining, to be said to the one going away. It was Sala sentle he was supposed to be saying. He knew that perfectly well. It was just that he was tired. He got it right for the last five or six handshakes and hesitated over the idea that he should start over again, doing it correctly this time for everyone. He couldn’t. It was hearing Morel do it correctly that had clued him in. The protocol had been to bid goodbye to each comrade. Many of them had wished Ray good luck, that much he knew. Morel had made a better job of it.

  It was time to go. Ray was asking himself, in the routine normal for setting off on a trip, if he had everything when he realized that he had nothing, no personal effects, no papers, nothing but the clothes on his body and his bundle of Strange News. And there was no money. Koevoet had found the money cached in the Cruiser and done whatever they had done with it. And he had destroyed his own passport. And where his driver’s license was he had no idea. Morel had his medical satchel with nothing but odds and ends in it. He didn’t think Morel had been able to retrieve his wallet. He would ask him.

  It was a miracle that the keys to the Cruiser had been located, although it could have been hot-wired. He knew how to do that. He half wished he’d had the opportunity to show it. But this was all right.

  Kerekang and Kevin came with them to the Cruiser. Ray had an irresistible impulse to get into the Cruiser, to be sitting in it, to be asleep in it. He was tired of squatting and sitting on the ground and leaning against things. He got into the Cruiser.

  There was a consultation over routes. Kerekang was directing a torchbeam onto a map spread open on the front driver’s-side fender. Ray felt he needed to be more participatory. He slid along the seat and opened the driver’s-side door. Why had it been assumed by all and sundry, Ray wondered, that Morel would be the driver and the maestro of the trip back? Ray felt his face. His appearance was probably against him, his beard. Morel had a very light growth of beard. Ray’s knee was swollen. It looked uninspiring.

  Now there was discussion about provisions and fuel. And then that was over and Ray had to move back to his side of the cab as Morel climbed in and got behind the wheel.

  Kerekang came around to his side and stood looking at Ray.

  Kerekang said, “Don’t get too old before I see you again.”

  “I won’t. When you get to the Republic, how will I find you? Wait, I don’t know where I’ll be. Wait, where will you try to stay?” Ray was full of anxiety. He wasn’t thinking creatively about setting up a contact point. He could have Kerekang call his house in Gaborone, but how long he was going to be living there was the question. That was a problem. He couldn’t think.

  He said to Kerekang, “Call me or have someone call me at my house. We’re in the directory. But I don’t know how long that will work. But try that. And I guess I can leave a forwarding number for you or anyone else, if I, if I have to, which I am going to have to do for after I leave.”

  Kerekang said, “I can go to a friend in Hillbrow.”

  Ray said, “That’s good. That’s good. I’ll see you. I’m serious about a school …”

  Kerekang said directly to Ray, “I will use the directory to reach your house.”

  Morel said to Ray, “What school?”

  Ray ignored the question.

  “I will see you, rra,” Kerekang said to Ray.

  Ray made himself believe it.

  III

  This Is the Day

  36. They’re All Dust in the Wind

  Ray was rehearsing as he drove. Morel had turned the driving over to him when they’d reached Lobatse, after a tense wrangle. But Ray had been insistent. He had his own reasons for wanting to be at the wheel when the moment of arrival came. Lobatse was only forty kilometers from Gaborone, so there was some imposture involved in his insistence on arriving in the driver’s seat. Morel had driven every inch of the way to Lobatse, all the hard driving, three days of it in the bush, which could have been more if they hadn’t diverged from their objective, Mabuasehube, when it seemed a total formality, and come straight over to Route 14. There had never been any sign of helicopters. They had ceased to believe that those represented any danger after the first day.

  It was a question of appearances. It was his vehicle, or at least it had been assigned to him. And he had been adamant about being the one to drive it into his own driveway.

  It was early evening. They would arrive while it was still light. What he meant was that he would arrive while it was still light, unless he could do something about it. Try it, he said to himself.

  Ray said, “I can drop you off first, at your place.”

  “No, I want to see that you get there safely. You’re a wreck.”

  Ray tried not to laugh.

  “I’m fine,” Ray said, which was a lie because his knee, heavily bandaged as it was, was hurting fiercely and there was some question as to how long he could keep using that leg, using the brake. The brake was working stiffly.

  He was sick of negotiating with Morel. It was almost over. And they had arrived at some decent compromises about the homecoming, the main one being that all Iris knew was that they were all right and that they were both on the way to Gaborone. And that information had come to her in the form of a radiophone message from the district council office in Kanye. And it had been the only information that she would receive until they arrived in the flesh, and the pretext that justified that was that the regular telephone service was out, in the whole north and south of the country, out, which it had been, intermittently. So the cruelty of not knowing that both of them were alive had been put to death.

  Ray hated Wagner, but he loved some of his music, like the homecoming music from Tannhäuser. He sang it, “Once more, dear home, I with rapture behold thee … And greet the fields that so softly enfold thee …” That was all he had. He couldn’t remember what the story was, where Tannhäuser had been and how long he had been there that made coming home so sweet. He sang it again. The next line, something about Tannhäuser’s native staff, escaped him. But that was all right.

  “Please don’t sing anymore,” Morel said.

  “Okay,” Ray said.

  This stretch of the road, approaching Ramotswa, the three-quarters mark to Gaborone, was pleasant. There were some rather abrupt hills on the left, green, scrub-covered. In fact the verdure on the hills had the tight, dense look of the hair of Africans, except that it was green, of course. That wa
s not an observation he could do anything with. The traffic was light. He had to be careful to avoid the slow-moving donkey-pulled wood carts, not carts but the back-ends of derelict trucks cut away and used as wagons. They passed a eucalyptus plantation. He forgot what Kerekang’s objection to eucalyptus was, but it was severe, it was a bad importation, it didn’t belong in Botswana.

  He wanted Morel to be out of the scene when he got home. And now that he was driving he had it in his power to just drive to Morel’s place and tell him to get out, give him an ultimatum despite the fact that it wasn’t what they had agreed on. It could be done but it couldn’t be done. Morel would resist. And she would be expecting both of them, naturally enough, since she was the one who had dispatched Morel off into the red rock wilderness to find him, which meant that it might be logical for Morel to deliver him home. It was the completion of a commission.

  Ray supposed it could be managed. He would make the scene brief. It would be difficult and complicated because he would have to keep his eye on the doctor to see that no hand signals or special glances were sent in Iris’s direction. He would keep it brief and then he would send Morel away. He would let him take the Cruiser to his place. He would give a reason why that would make sense. He didn’t know what it was. But he would make the homecoming scene just the last act in the sequence of scenes in which he had been keeping his eye clapped to Morel all the way back and especially since they had gotten onto the tarred roads, passing through real towns. He had followed him everywhere to see that he didn’t get hold of a phone or find some other way to send his own separate message of warning to Iris, some way Ray couldn’t even imagine. He had stood there in the washroom at the district council office while Morel shat and brushed his teeth and cleaned himself up, taking his own sweet time about it. He had shadowed him at every stop they made. The homecoming would just be a variant and he thought he could manage and get Morel out of there and away and then the fun could begin.