Mortals

by Norman Rush

  No, he was going to write to Iris. He got out his notepad. And he would write in pen, not pencil, proving to himself that this was not going to be a draft. Drafts were his enemy. He loved them. He had to write to Iris. He had gotten one letter from her during his time in Hillbrow. And then he had had to leave Johannesburg. And now he was where no one was likely to find him and he had to write her. There wasn’t a telephone within five kilometers.

  He wrote,

  My Dear Woman,

  This letter will be handed to you when you don’t expect it. I have worked this out. I will use a courier. I don’t want to use the regular post for a while.

  And when you get this letter I want you to destroy it, silly as that may sound.

  He stopped writing. He had someone picked out to be a courier. And he had yet another prospect. He would have to make a trip back to Joburg to set it up. But it would work. One of the two would be fine.

  How interested in me anyone connected with the agency may be I have no idea. But I have learned to be circumspect and I am being circumspect.

  Where I am. I am in a safe place. I am in the bush. It’s rural. When I can let you know exactly where I am, believe me I will. I have my ways.

  I can say this much about what I am doing. You know that the farmworker children got little or no education, depending on whether or not the owners wanted to put anything into some minimal teaching scheme. Now that whole arrangement is falling apart. The Boers are cutting their costs because they think they are going to have to sell up, once Mandela comes, which will be soon. So out in the countryside, education for farmworker kids is collapsing. So ex machina there is a unit in the ANC that is thinking ahead and wants to do something preemptively and which also has some money, from the Swedes. So by devious and clever means I got in touch and found people at St. James’s to vouch for me and here I am.

  Now as to my life in Joburg, Hillbrow. I only stayed in the Johannesburger Hotel for two nights, after which I descended into hell. I decided I would try to live rough for a while, find a way to live in one of the squats. Every other building in Hillbrow is being squatted. I thought it would be economical, and that it would extend the time I could devote to looking for our friend. It was easy to get into a squat if you gave any sign that you had pocket money. I got into one squat with white down-and-outers and I was taken advantage of, shall we say. And then I left Hillbrow and went to Yeoville, which was as I understood it a sort of bohemian area and got into a squat and was taken advantage of. And then I returned to Hillbrow and got into a mixed squat. I was presenting myself as an alcoholic. I was believable. The whole time I was trying to find my way into the realm of people with something to sell, information to sell that might help me in my search. I got nothing. It was a mistake.

  And then in the Daily Mail I saw something. There has been an explosion of street performance activity of all kinds in Joburg, singers, self-taught acrobats, fortune tellers. And I noticed in the chronicle of crime stories they publish every day, in the Mail, one story. Three Brits had been given fines for harassing a poetry reader in the central train station. They had been tourists waiting to board the Blue Train to Cape Town. They had been drunk. And they had been attempting to bully the poetry performer into reciting Kipling instead of his own repertoire of Tennyson. And there had been a dustup and the police came and they were fined fifty rands apiece. That was all.

  So I knew where to look. And I did go and did look and I found what I was searching for. I presented an aspect a little more frightening and off-putting than I realized I had achieved, but I made myself known. Our friend was living rough, not in squats but in the train tunnels. He should have called you. I wish he had, he was in poor shape.

  So I have been able to help greatly. We are together here. Our students are Pedi, Xhosa, and Tswana, so we have our work cut out for us. We are at the beginning.

  Anyway, I’m well. I’m sleeping well.

  He knew what he was going to conclude with.

  Going back to your last call, my last call, rather, from Hillbrow, before my disappearment. You were being cryptic, but I gathered from it that for a while at least you would be staying at Kgari Close, by yourself. You seemed to be saying that you wanted to come down and stay with me in the Republic at least for a while. But I was squatting so there was no way, in that phase, I could even think of inviting you.

  Something you said on the drive down has stayed with me. I don’t care if it was something you got from Morel. It was about the Incas and how people were living out their lives thinking they were living normally, getting and spending and mating, but in fact they were trapped in an insane system governed by a prophecy declaring that if a certain constellation they had been observing for centuries sank below the night horizon, then the Inca nation would be cast into hell. But its station in the sky was doomed. It was the precession of the equinoxes and the Incas were witlessly trying to mobilize their whole illuded nation to reverse it, primarily by selecting the most beautiful children in every district and sacrificing them. And that was what the society was about, more and more sacrifice, until the whole thing fell apart.

  Well. I am living a new life here. I want you to come and see it. What I am doing and what these children will get out of it is very direct. I am teaching and doing curriculum and helping out as well as I can with construction for the school. You can give your own judgment on what I’m doing.

  I am writing Lives, just my brother’s so far, and it’s not finished. There will be more.

  I am full of love for you, but you can come however you feel about me. I have a way to let you know where I am and I will use it in a short time.

  Love,

  Your husband,

  Ray

  He folded the letter and sealed it an envelope, rapidly, before he could change his mind.

  Ray tried to recall what was on his docket for the day. Kerekang wanted to plant some exotic species of fast-growing poplar around the school, for shade, which would be expensive. The seedlings had to be ordered from Cape Town. There would have to be a negotiation. And then there were two locals, potential teachers, to be interviewed.

  He went outside to wait for the students. It was a moment he liked. The elements of the world were distinct. Kerekang, who was lodging in the farmworker location to the south, would appear at the head of the procession of children coming from that quarter. And there he was, striding, jocularly orchestrating his charges into a semblance of orderly marching. In twos and threes children were popping up, coming from other directions, on their own, unled.

  Seeing Kerekang, antic man, the children from the east and the west and the north began to run.

  Glossary

  S: Setswana A: Afrikaans

  ANC: African National Congress

  Baherero: members of the Herero tribal group

  bakkie: pick-up truck (A)

  Basarwa: members of the San, or Bushman tribal group

  Batswana: inhabitants of Botswana. A single inhabitant of Botswana: Motswana (S)

  BDF: Botswana Defence Force

  bogwadi: the belief that widows are a main source of sexual disease, in particular AIDS

  BoSo: familiar abbreviation for the left-leaning Botswana Social Front

  braii: barbecue (A)

  chibuku: maize beer (S)

  CODESA: Convention for a Democratic South Africa—Constitution-writing exercise undertaken by opposition groups and the South African government, 1990–92

  CTO: Central Transport Organization

  CUSO: Canadian University Services Overseas

  Dikgang: daily newspaper of the government of Botswana

  ditlhamane: fairy tales, tall tales (S)

  Domkrag: lifting-jack, meaning “the ruling power” (A)

  donga: ravine (S)

  ehe: okay (S)

  expat: expatriate worker

  goromente: government

  gosiame: all-purpose term meaning variously: I agree; okay; everything’s fine (S)

 
; halal: Islamic kosher

  Ichokela Bokhutlon: Endure to the End, the name of Kerekang’s shortlived commune (S)

  ISA: to make happen. The name of Kerekang’s social movement (S)

  “Ke Bona”: Botswana’s national anthem (S)

  koevoet: crowbar. Boer-controlled paramilitary force in former South West Africa (A)

  koko: Knock, knock. Said to announce oneself on arrival (S)

  koppie: island mountain. Isolated stony hill

  kraal: corral (A)

  lakhoa: European (any foreigner). Plural: makhoa (S)

  lobola: bride-price (S)

  mealie: cornmeal

  meneer: mister (A)

  mma: mother, woman. Form of address (S)

  Mmegi: local newsweekly, published in Gaborone

  mobashi: street child (S)

  moruti: preacher (S)

  Ovambo: majority tribal group in Namibia

  pan: craterlike depression (in the Kalahari Desert)

  paraffin: kerosene

  permsec: Permanent Secretary

  POI: person of interest. Intelligence term

  pula: the national unit of currency, meaning rain (S)

  REDSO: Regional Economic Development Services Office. A department of the Agency for International Development

  rondavel: traditional round thatched hut (squaredavel, ovaldavel—contemporary variants) (A)

  rra: sir, father (S)

  SADF: South African Defence Force

  sakkie: plastic sack (A)

  sangoma: traditional medical practitioner

  Setswana: the national language of Botswana

  SWAPO: South West African People’s Organization

  Tsamaya sentle, Sala sentle: Go well, Stay well (S)

  Waygard: commercial security guard service

  Wits: University of the Witwatersrand

  ZANU: Zimbabwe African National Union; Shona-based nationalist movement led by Robert Mugabe

  ZAPU: Zimbabwe African People’s Union; Ndebele-based nationalist movement led by Joshua Nkomo

  Zed CC: Zionist Christian Church

  PLACE NAMES

  Bontleng: a poor neighborhood in Gaborone

  Caprivi Strip: a tonguelike extension of Namibia projecting halfway across the top of Botswana

  Gobabis: a town in Namibia

  Lobatse: a town in southern Botswana

  Old Naledi: squatter settlement on the outskirts of Gaborone

  SouthWest: regional term for former South West Africa, before and even sometime after it became Namibia

  Toromole, Etsha, Sepopa, Nokaneng: villages and hamlets in settlements of upper northwest Botswana

  Tsodilo Hills: isolated group of stony hills in northwest Botswana, the site of Bushman rock paintings

  Tuli Block: area of southeastern Botswana along the Limpopo River

  Walvis Bay: seaport in Namibia

  Acknowledgments

  I’m deeply grateful to my editor, Ann Close, and to my agent, Andrew Wylie.

  And I acknowledge the great good luck I have in my family … Henry, Ding, Robert, Chris, Nick, Sheila, Lynda, Laura, Bruce, Renée, Peter, Josh, Luke, John, Max, Maia, Chloë, Mason, Jameson, Miranda, Gillian, and Sylvie.

  I also want to acknowledge the encouragement given, when it was needed, by my sister-in-law, Ruth Gonze, and by our second family, the Roths.