by Norman Rush
The ovaldavel to the right I classified as general administrative, since it housed the post office-bank, the library, meeting rooms for the mother committee, the disputes committee, and the committee as to names. I analogized the mother committee to a town council, although the interlocks between it and something called the sister committee, which had to do exclusively with the economic side of Tsau, meaning Sekopololo, were for a long time obscure to me. Denoon had no office anywhere in the public buildings, I was surprised to learn. There was some mousy shrubbery around the administrative building, and some freesias, I think. A ship’s bell hung from a hook next to the front door.
The ovaldavel to the left was Sekopololo itself—offices, record rooms, a veranda where the morning shapeups took place, and a combination shop and lounge devoted to stocks of the most commonly needed commodities, such as salt, toilet paper, cooking oil, and batteries. There were some smaller buildings behind Sekopololo, in one of which was the largest of the three generators in Tsau.
Wires could be strung across the plaza from high up on the different buildings so that, using support poles and sheets of burlap, large sections of the open area could be canopied for outdoor events in the hot season. In fact it was possible to accommodate the whole populace under shade in the plaza. Risers would be packed in along the inner curve of the terrace, a canopied dais would be erected out toward the terrace rim, and the fun would begin. It was unique.
I was informed I should report to the plaza at seven in the morning for my meeting with the mother committee. I was prompt. Just off the Sekopololo veranda a circle of chairs had been set up around a low round table with a crockery urn and nine mugs on it. The mother committee was prompt. Just as I arrived the eight members of the committee filed out of the administration building. I was motioned to sit anywhere I liked. They were new faces, only Joyce and Dineo being familiar to me. We all said our names before beginning, but I was concentrating so on what I was going to say that only one of the new names stuck with me, the name of a woman who seemed fascinated with me, Dorcas Raboupi. Her eyes never left me. She had perfectly straight eyebrows, like dashes. She was short, not young but not yet in the aunt category. She was lighter complexioned, almost a coloured, her face lumpy on one side, as though she had a fat-deposition disorder. She sat in a huddled way that I thought showed hostility. The day was cool but not cold. Several of the women had brought shawls with them, and I had been told I could get one to borrow at the counter in Sekopololo. I didn’t need one. Dorcas Raboupi was unnerving. She appeared to be someone’s nemesis, probably mine for no reason I could think of. I was prescient.
I expected Dineo to lead off and handle the meeting, but instead a bag was passed around and people drew disks out of it, with the one who drew a notched disk beginning the proceedings. This was a heavyset young woman, Mma Molebi, evidently nursing: there was a milkstain in her bodice over one breast. Judging by the way she wrung her hands before she commenced, she was uneager for her assignment. My back was to the desert.
Mma Molebi began with the obviously obligatory history of Tsau. As she spoke, the other women got up one by one and served themselves tea. I was struck by this, because it would be usual for the youngest woman present to serve the older women. There is so much reflexively hierarchical behavior in Africa—the young serving the old, women routinely serving men—that this self-service feature of life in Tsau leapt out at me. It reminded me that I had seen something else that was atypical, namely young males willingly shoveling up animal manure to use in composting. Admittedly I had seen this in Tsau only a couple of times. But it was not the Botswana I knew. If manure had to be collected, it would be usual for women to do it. I knew from my Peace Corps doctor that there was perpetual sturm und drang with the boys the Peace Corps hired as messengers over being required to take sealed packages containing stool samples from the medical office to the lab at Princess Marina Hospital. One of the messengers had quit rather than demean himself so. Finally the female receptionist had volunteered to take over the task herself.
I got the feeling that our meeting was taking place in a circle out in the open so that passersby would feel comfortable in hanging around to see what was going on. People did drift up and listen for a while. I found it both inhibiting and relaxing, more the second as time went on.
Mma Molebi was speaking too softly for the group, and people signaled this to her by holding up their index fingers until she spoke up. She was either concluding or she was losing her way. Tsau was a jewel, she said twice. And then she went into something that moved me, albeit it was rather disjunct from what had gone before. She said Some women in this place have even once been beggars, but never shall they be again, because any woman who chooses to go away from Tsau can have money to take and shall know catering as well as many other kinds of work, and she shall never be seen working as maids or cleaners to others. The degree to which I’m easily moved in the early morning must have something to do with my biochemistry. I remember bursting into tears the first time I heard The Cherry Tree Carol sung on a record by Joan Baez, also at that time of day. And I have had other attacks of piercing feeling in the slot between seven and eight in the morning, including one over Mother and Child Reunion, an incident that let me in for some substantial teasing. People noticed that Mma Molebi seemed to have moved me, and were approving, I thought. The basket circulated again.
The winner this time seemed to have nothing to say other than that I was to be praised for never forcing any sister to speak to me in English.
Dineo signaled that it was my turn to speak, which I did, saying who I was and in essence repeating my pitch about being fascinated with Tsau and wanting to stay as long as that could be permitted, but volunteering this time to work however much I was asked to in order to help with any costs my presence caused. I laid in some filigree, but sincere filigree, so to speak, about wanting to witness the extraordinary things women seemed to be accomplishing in Tsau.
I could tell something was up with Dorcas. She said, out of turn and under her breath, something to the effect that she hoped I would find enough birds in Tsau to please me, and that if I was unable to find enough birds to please me I should come to the mother committee, who would find birds for me.
Dineo cut her off and proceeded directly to what I took for the vote. She looked at each member of the committee until she got some response imperceptible to me. But apparently the vote was in my favor, because she went into a welcoming speech. A great exception was being made for me, she said, and I would be welcome among them only so long as I was seen as a friend of the struggle of poor women to gather strength and wealth. She put this with emphasis. I could stay where I was now, in the empty rondavel next to Mma Isang, who would continue to see after me and organize my meals, for which I would be asked to work at any tasks I would choose for a sum of fifteen hours each week. They hoped I would be willing to think of helping with teaching English to some of the older children. There was a great need. Finally, they thought it would be good for me to stay awhile because it was always a pleasure to meet persons from one’s own country when one was in a far place, so they thought Rra Puleng would be glad to see me there in Tsau. If ever I wished to leave, it would be three weeks until it could be arranged with the Barclays plane. On no account would they assist me to go off into the desert again, even if I wished to. And as a last thing, was I pleased at how my donkey was being looked after?
I thanked them, then it was over. Mma Isang appeared from the wings and came to embrace me, which inspired a couple of rather more halfhearted embraces from two of the women, not including Dorcas.
I was elated.
Dorcas walked by me, saying musingly to herself the names of the local bird species she could think of, making a production out of not seeming to be able to think of more than six.
At Tea
A sort of municipal high tea was put out every afternoon around four on the Sekopololo veranda. There would be tea, powdered milk, fruit cut up into small p
ieces, sometimes bread pudding. Denoon would make cameo appearances at tea, often, but he hadn’t been staying put long enough for me to get into casual conversation with him. I was tired of this and didn’t understand it, really. My life is taking forever, I remember thinking.
I loved teatime. There was a moral point to it. Some days there would be a generous collation put out, some days it would be sparse. It all depended on what happened to be either left over or in good supply. If there was only a little fresh fruit, it would be cut up minutely and thorn tree spines would be stuck into each chunk, as in hors d’oeuvres. Tea was never intended to be a spread adequate for the whole population, should it choose to turn up. The point seemed to be for people to adjust to what was available each day, holding back from taking any large, personally satisfying amount in favor of everybody getting a little of whatever there was. One custom was for no adult to take any fruit until the children who were around in the first few minutes had taken what they wanted. An undeclared object of the exercise seemed to be for teatime to finish each day with something remaining uneaten on the table, no matter how much or how little had been provided. Everyone seemed to know what this exercise was about and to enjoy being part of it, even the children. You could see them assimilating the rules, deferring to each other occasionally, turning down morsels themselves. I never tired of it.
I managed to be in the right place when Denoon arrived that afternoon. I went up to him and we shook hands. His palms were like planks. We knew everyone was watching.
He had a talent, which was to be able to talk intelligibly while ostensibly merely smiling. It was remarkable.
They want you to stay, he said. Even a faction I felt sure would be against it wants you to stay. It’s very funny. They think you’re a spy sent here to get the goods on Tsau, and that suits them fine. Most people just seem to like you. But anyway keep doing what you’re doing.
I said Yes, everyone was very nice at the mother committee. I’m definitely going to be here awhile.
Congratulations, he said. And then he said There was never any doubt.
Votaries of the Maggot
I forgave him that evening during corso, which was the correct term for the postprandial walking around and going into houses where the welcome light was on that he had inculcated in Tsau. He had gotten the idea for it out of Tolstoy’s Sebastopol Sketches, he told me. It was apparently something done in Russian provincial towns during the nineteenth century, and it had seemed like a good idea, so why not?
In addition to the usual shooting the breeze, another thing that went on during corso was a scene that was a good deal like testifying, as it’s called in fundamentalist Protestant churches. One woman might tell her tribulations up to the time of coming to Tsau and the listeners would chorically moan along, often making the speaker repeat the most painful episodes a few times. Many of the stories were genuinely harrowing, but there was something formulaic about the way they got told.
That evening I was in a house on Slessor where a woman lived whose name was Mariam Nene. She was under forty and seemed young for the chronology implicit in her story. She was the daughter of an accused witch. She had been fourteen when her mother died—poisoned, Mariam was sure—and it was widely assumed that Mariam had been initiated into witchcraft as a matter of course by her mother. So she was persona non grata, very, in her village near Pandamatenga close to the border with then Rhodesia.
She had an uncle on the Rhodesian side of the border in a village near Plumtree, and she set off on foot to find him. At this point Denoon slipped in and sat down. Members of the same tribe lived on both sides of the border, which meant nothing to them and which has still never been completely demarcated. I only remember the centerpiece of her story, which was her arrival in her uncle’s village just in time to witness him being murdered. He was a herbalist but was also clearly believed to be a sorcerer. He had gone to a pond in the bush to dive for calcified lark dung, a powerful ingredient in magical concoctions, and enemies of his had been lying in wait. Mariam arrived at the pond and saw from the bushes, where she stayed hidden, her uncle being prodded with long poles to the center of the pond and then forcibly kept under until he drowned. This was a favored way of killing sorcerers because it left no marks. White administrators would never bother about deaths that looked natural. Denoon seemed to be strongly affected by her story. Mariam started to tell this horrific part of it again, and Nelson got up and stepped outside. I followed.
He was wiping his eyes. We walked around wordlessly. I felt close to him.
I decided not to intrude on his state of being unless he made some move to show that that would be welcome. He dropped me at Mma Isang’s and went off. I was being extremely careful. I think this was the beginning of our courtship.
Of course, life being what it is, in fact the thing that moved him in Mariam’s story was not what I had thought. It was something more abstract that her story had suggested. Much later I somehow brought this scene up, and he, on his own, straightaway corrected my view of what he had been feeling that night. I was saying, I think, how much it had moved me that he had been so moved by Mariam.
The more abstract thing was manmade violence in general. Before going to Mariam’s he had been writing poetry, or rather trying for the thousandth time to turn a very clear concept that he had into a real poem. There had been an overflow of emotion at Mariam’s because the subject matter of her story was an example of what he had been trying to get into his poem. He explained it to me. He wanted to write a poem that would make the point that anyone who embraces violence should be seen as an ally of all the inescapable natural enemies of humanity, from earthquake through the panoply of diseases. It was so clear to him. He obviously thought that if he could get this into a halfway decent poem it might have some effect. He let me see some of what he had done. It was Whitmanic. He was working with titles like Allies of Famine and Victualers of the Maggot or Votaries of the Maggot. I remember that Claymore and Gatling were characterized as allies of the maggot or the blowfly. You’re not a poet, I had to tell him. This is not a poem. A genius could do it, he said. We laughed over it. Your problem is that you want to be everything, I told him. That isn’t the worst, he said.
I asked him what the worst was.
The worst was that in the course of things he had gotten to know pretty well a couple of authentic poets, people whose names I would know but which he was too ashamed to tell me. He had actually sent them each a précis of his poem idea, in an attempt to get them to write such a poem. One had never responded. One had responded politely. He seemed not to be friendly with either of them anymore.
You must be the greatest believer in the power of poetry there is, I told him.
More Courtship
Substantive courtship went on for a month, with me ultimately forcing the pace when I felt the balance between our public and private gettings-together was not improving. Public occasions far predominated, where we would find ourselves together at corso or some performance or other or at the movie. Our private occasions tended to be chaste long walks in the gloaming, which frequently turned out to end at some utilitarian destination such as a windmill in need of a touch of maintenance. Until the very end, there were no declarations toward me.
The studied pace of all this was something to be borne. I was working with the rabbits. On the few occasions Denoon and I were alone together I felt that he was more interested in how it was going in the rabbit pens than in getting to know all about me. He was always keenly interested in whatever I had to say analytically about Tsau, which served to confirm my notion that it was my reading of the place that he really wanted from me. We were going so ploddingly through the stages of courting—from handholding to a little mournful standing-up necking—that I for one found it embarrassing. It was quaint, not to say retrograde, for people our respective ages. But I went along with it, accepting the sickeningly familiar vigil for cues from the sovereign partner as to when it was time for the next plateau. There were
great things at stake, I told myself, and his grasp of the ramifications of our getting together was greater than mine.
One thing I now know I was misinterpreting was Nelson’s taste for bouts of self-communing, which I mistook as being longeurs for him just as surely as they were for me. He liked us to walk around together in total silence much more than I did. When we finally discussed it I made him laugh by saying I get bored when I’m not talking. I remembered that he had mentioned to me that a normal social occasion for his parents might be to invite friends over and sit around with them, nobody speaking for hours, while a recording of the Missa Solemnis was played. His mother and father, just the two of them, would often do the same thing. Mightn’t seeing that kind of thing have had something to do with the development of your taste for silence? I asked. No, he said, because by the time he might have been influenced by it he had figured out that the scene was really only another device of his father’s for having an apparently normal social evening while in fact being drunk: it was a sham, an excuse for sitting on a sofa with his eyes closed, only nominally present, making it to bedtime with the amount he had gotten away with secretly drinking going undetected. It was a con in every respect. For instance, his father’s record selections ran heavily toward sacred music, a lot of Bach, which Nelson saw as a transparent inducement to his mother to partake.