Whites

by Norman Rush

  In the American pavilion, the mood was poor. The judges had been cursory. People were saying the ambassador was annoyed. One of the judges was Letsamao. Carl thanked God he had been elsewhere during the judging. He needed to sit down, badly. He considered the cartoon tent. He put his head inside and saw that he would be the only adult. He backed out. There was another tent, smaller, pitched outside the main circuit of stalls and exhibits. The sign above the door flap said “YOUR FATE,” the letters formed by handprints in different colors. From a marketing standpoint, the sign was dubious: it was hard to read, because the lighter-colored handprints broke up some of the letters, and there was no price posted. The palmist would be wondering where her trade was. He went in. There was a chair, an armchair.

  The interior was candlelit. The atmosphere was dark yellow. The palmist was a woman his age. She was seated behind a table draped with a kaross. He knew who she was: she was the wife of their dental-systems man, Napier. Carl knew something about her and tried to remember what it was. There was some kind of feeling against her among the wives, except for Lo as per usual. As he recalled, people said she had something to do with the occult. Her name was Ione, he knew. She had gone all out. Her lean face was masklike with powder, and her eyes were extreme—framed in squared-off black makeup patterns like the eyes of women in Egyptian tomb murals. She was wearing a black turban and a red caftan with mirror chips sewn into embroidered eyelets around the yoke. She was pretty striking. He liked her. He sat down and paid. The chair was perfect. He was going to prolong this. There was some colorless bright stuff on her lips that looked good. He was comfortable. She reminded him that she needed his palm. There was a tremor in his fingers. His hand calmed down right away when she took it. He admired her for staying in character. He could rest. She was value for money, just for her getup.

  His mind drifted while the woman studied his palm. Friendship was a problem in the foreign service—having the kind of friend you could go to for comfort and advice. It was only natural to hold back when everybody you met would be moving on to some other country in two years at the outside. On top of that, potential friends were always one of two things—superiors or subordinates, neither of them good categories of people to expose your troubles to. Life was brief, really brief. And, if on top of everything else your wife was your enemy, good luck. He wanted to knock wood about having Lo.

  He remembered another thing about Ione. She knew Setswana. But he had heard that when she was learning the language, she had refused every female tutor assigned to her by the Orientation Centre, insisting on having a male. People had carried on about that. Now she was speaking.

  She told Carl that she was picking up enormous stress, but she wanted to know if it made sense to say that the source of this stress was unusual in some way. He said yes. She asked if this stress was from something other than a person presently around him. To Carl, this meant the dogs. This woman was extraordinary. Something was happening to him that was undeserved, she said.

  He began about the dogs. She stopped him and said she wanted him to know she had sensed a nonhuman source for his problem, as he could verify in what she had said. He told her more. She said that he was facing a threat but that he could be helped. Either she was a superb actress or she was really concerned and serious. He found her convincing.

  He told her everything. She listened intently. When someone tried to come in, she got up and said she was closed. It was only someone reporting that the Brits had won second, anyway. She had him go over his situation again, repeating certain parts. She was intelligent.

  Ione said she was going to help him.

  That night he was still awake when the dogs began, at two. Things about Ione were agitating him. Why would all their arrangements have to be so sub-rosa? Why did he trust her? She was extreme.

  He got up. Now that he was sleeping in the study, he had more freedom for quick, furtive acts of vengeance against the dogs: “venting behavior,” Ione had called it, approving of it as a stopgap. He put on his shaving robe and went softly out into the yard. Next to the stoop he had a cache of small stones and fragments of roof tile. He hurled three stones in the direction of the worst noise. Two of his shots struck metal. There was no change in the barking. He felt better, less wound up, when he was back inside.

  Also, he had never thought of Lois as tiny until Ione—trying to identify who Lois was—had asked if she was “that tiny blue-eyed person.” Lo was small. Maybe she seemed smaller because of being with someone his height and also because she would never wear heels because of what they did to your spine. Of course, Ione herself was on the tall side, which would also explain what she’d said.

  He was smoking again, a little, as a pastime and only at night. He felt it was justified. He lit a cigarillo. There was no inhaling involved. Lois would understand, when she found out. Dutch cigarillos were the best in the world, and they were cheap in southern Africa, for some reason. He would never be able to afford Ritmeester Seniors back in the U.S.

  Ione put things in a way that stayed with him. He should imagine everything he’d done about the dogs, so far, as pictures in an album, with everything he had done in a certain category represented by one picture with a caption: a picture called “Lapidation” would show him throwing rocks through the fence at night. And the title of the whole album would be “Things That Didn’t Work.” And then he should believe that there would be a second album coming, with just one picture in it, and the title of that album would be “The Thing That Worked.” But he had to believe in the second album. She had been shocked by his trapezius muscles, the rigidity. She had made him feel them himself.

  He was getting more hopeful. The dogs continued. Idly, he began singeing the hairs on his wrist with the tip of his cigarillo.

  Ione said, “I learned hypnosis from a fairly sinister woman—a religious charlatan, really. Classes in hypnotism were a sideline for her. Her main business was a little sect she ran in her garage, the Church of the Supreme Master.” She was moving her hands in a smoothing pattern above him as he lay in a lounge chair. He was supposed to relax, but her insistence on meeting in the motel was still bothering him. She was sitting to his right, leaning over him. She had made him take off his shoes. Was it a sign that he was going under that he saw her hands almost as detached things? He asked her.

  She said, “You have to try and avoid critiquing each step of the way or you won’t go under. You have to let go more. Tell me anything that’s still bothering you. I think you understand about confidentiality and so forth. I want to help you. Your situation is pretty severe. Go long enough with low sleep and you can begin seeing things, seriously. So I want you to seal all that up in a mental envelope and lick the flap and visualize it going into a mailbox. Concentrate on your tongue, licking. Good. That’s better.” She resumed her breaststrokelike movements. “Remember, we have plenty of time and you’ll be back in your office by four, tops. I run a tight ship. You can trust me.” He concentrated.

  She said, “We met in her garage, where she had, I’ll never forget it, a picture of Christ on the wall with the eyes coated with clear nail polish—to give you some kind of frisson, I guess. The other students were something. A woman who demonstrated stove polish in ten-cent stores for a living was one. And a man who at the time owned the largest sandblasting concern in New Jersey. He was losing contracts. And an unfortunate type who was in it for one thing only—the power to cloud women’s minds. You follow me. She was a wonderful teacher, though.”

  Today Ione was normally dressed, except that her blouse had unusually deep armholes, if you were interested. She was wearing a tight white skirt and a white sleeveless blouse. She had started off by removing an ivory bracelet and her wedding ring, because they would distract him when he was concentrating on her hands.

  She bent closer to him. “Think what I speak but don’t move your lips,” she said.

  • • •

  “This is sad,” Ione said. Carl had the impression she was repeating hers
elf. He had been asleep. “This is too sad, as they say here. You’re too exhausted to be hypnotized.”

  He said, “I thought you were going to try again.”

  “I did,” she said. “You only remember the first two tries, when I woke you up. The third time I just felt like I was torturing you. So I let you sleep.”

  It’s just as well, he thought. His mind felt unusually clear. He hated the motel room. A brown line led down the wall from the air-conditioner to a rank spot in the rug. He felt a little panic. He was in danger. It was nearly four.

  Ione was smoking. “We learned something from this,” she said, soothingly, letting smoke out as she spoke. “We learned I have to catch you at the right moment—sometime when you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Wait, I totally comprehend that that’s exactly the problem, but wait for my plan. It isn’t difficult. You need to spend one night away from the dogs and just sleep yourself out before we try this the next time. You have to travel, in your job. You could tell your wife you had some field thing to do. Do you know the Mafenya Tlala Hotel, in Molepolole?” She said this quickly.

  Lois was young. She would never understand this. Hypnosis had been a mistake. Ione was saying that she still maintained he was a good subject for it.

  He interrupted. “This is it for hypnosis, I think. It’s not a good idea for me. I don’t like the feeling, to tell you the truth.”

  She said, “But you haven’t really experienced it yet, because you kept falling asleep.”

  He tied his shoes. He would leave first. She looked penetratingly at him, in a way that made him feel guilty and ungrateful. “I bow to what I hear in your voice,” she said.

  He said, “I appreciate your efforts.”

  A sliding door gave directly onto the parking area. The drapes were drawn. “You can almost go,” she said, looking out along the edge of a drape.

  But he sat down. The idea of leaving was suddenly intolerable. It felt like a mistake. This was the only person who had tried to help him, except for Lo to the best of her ability.

  He began apologizing. He said he’d felt from the beginning that hypnotism was going to be a no go for him. He apologized because he realized what he really wanted from her was probably a fantasy. His fantasy had come about because people said she knew all about the culture, and about witchcraft in particular. Probably witchcraft appealed to him because he was at the end of his rope. But wasn’t there something to it? He thought she had been implying that there was, whenever they talked. He had seen birds kept off millet fields through juju, in West Africa. He knew the Batswana used witchcraft on one another. There ought to be some way to use it on dogs. He wanted her to admit that she had implied there was a tool available in witchcraft, the first time they’d talked, unless he had imagined it, which he admitted was possible.

  She seemed to be going through some inner conflict, trying to persuade herself to help him. He said that he understood her position. He reminded her that he was desperate.

  Finally, he sensed a reluctant decision in his favor. “I understand you,” she said, seeming grave and hesitant. “But remember, I only know so much in this field. You could call me a novice. You want me to locate a sangoma for you—that’s what you’re asking.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Carl, you understand we’d have to be even more careful about getting found out than you can imagine. You know what it would mean if it got around that we were involved with witchcraft. And you would have to follow instructions, and I mean to the letter.”

  “Anything,” he said.

  • • •

  Ione called him at work every couple of days to keep him current on her search for a sangoma. He found himself looking forward to her calls, which usually somehow evolved beyond the matter at hand to range over a lot of unlikely issues on which she had opinions he found interesting. His sleepless nights provided him with endless topics for discussion. Also, he liked her voice.

  Again she was reporting no luck in finding a sangoma.

  He said, “Stop looking if you want to. What really started me on this tack was when you said that some university had sent a team out to see if there was anything to the claim that sangomas could direct lightning strikes against certain people or places. I don’t know. It gave me hope. When in Rome. But what a long shot! Maybe it’s not a good idea. I get a lot of good ideas quote unquote at night while I’m memorizing the ceiling.”

  She said he was sounding defeatist. She went on for a while, trying to buck him up.

  He said, “Here’s another good idea that came to me, that I actually put some time into. It occurred to me that it would be funny to get up a fake memo saying AID should hereafter stop talking about the poor and instead refer to them as the ‘pre-rich.’ It was just for the bulletin board. This has to do with some incredible new reporting and nomenclature guidelines we recently got from Washington. I actually started typing this thing up the next day, before I realized what I was doing and tore it up. Close call.”

  She said she thought calling the poor the “pre-rich” was clever. She said his bright ideas should be thought of as insights.

  “I’ll give you another example,” he said. “Answer this question. Do you like it in Africa?”

  She said she did.

  “But you can’t quite figure out why you like it, am I right?” he asked. “Because, I mean, hell, it’s inconvenient. Gaborone is dead at night, the movies are ancient and all mutilated because they have to come through South African censorship because that’s where the distributor is located. But still we like it here. Drought, poor people … Even when they get a decent movie, they mix up the reels. We want to be here anyway, but we can’t figure out why. Except that one night I figured it out. It’s because it isn’t our country and we can’t help what happens. We can offer people advice and we get paid for it. We get good vacations, we eat off the top of the food chain, we get free housing. Hey!, but we’re not responsible for what happens if Africa goes to hell, because we’ve done our best. Also, at the same time, we’re not responsible for what happens in America, either, really—because, hey!, we weren’t home when it happened. Say we get fifteen per cent compliance on birth control here, which is what we do get and which is terrific by Third World standards. O.K., it’s not enough. But what can we do, we tried. We told them. But we’re too late. We all know it, but somebody pays us to keep up the good work, so we say fine. Why am I telling you this? I forget.”

  She said, “What we have here are night thoughts—that kind of thing. We all have them, Carl. You’re very intelligent. You’re excellent. I enjoy what you say. It’s very O.K. to have night thoughts. I find you really thoughtful. One thing, though, is you might want to spare Lois this kind of thing. I know it’s important to share night thoughts, but Lois seems so delighted about being here. Why cast a pall, if she’s really enjoying herself—do you follow me?”

  “I’m not going to be a pall-caster,” he said.

  “Like broadcaster—oh, wonderful! I enjoy you,” she said.

  He said, “Here’s another example. Lying awake, I figured out the meaning of life one night. Not life in general, but my life … what my life is about. It’s about women. Women are the meaning of my life: taking care of them, looking for the right ones, trying to stay on their good side. The meaning of my life is the emotions women have about me. That is a fact. I think it’s interesting. I was amazed. When did I enlist for that? I thought I was doing something else.”

  She said, “I want very much to help you. Let me pursue what I’m doing. Let me find someone, Carl. I’ll get back to you.”

  He said to go ahead.

  “Look!” Lois said to Carl, as he came in from work. She was elated about something. She stood there, breathing forcefully.

  It was nothing self-evident. Was it a new piece of clothing or something from the sea freight that had just arrived? Her hair was the same as recently. He resented having to guess. He was already fully tasked. Also, there were echoes of Elaine involved—Elaine’s fu
ry the times he had failed to notice some crucial purchase or that she’d bleached her lanugo.

  “Carl, I can breathe through both nostrils at once! Look, my sinus thing is gone one hundred per cent! It was just about four this afternoon. It’s just gone away. I feel like I’m just flooded with air.” Her eyes were bright and moist. It was important.

  She embraced him a little fiercely. He was already elsewhere. His mind was back on his mission. Ione had found a sangoma in a village fifteen minutes from Gaborone—a sangoma who seemed to know all about how to deal with problems like the dogs. So Carl had been right. Ione was giving him credit for guessing there had to be some ultimate mechanism in the culture for dealing with unbearable situations—whether it was witchcraft or not. In the United States it would be the Mafia. Ione had been skeptical at first. Now she was excited.

  Lois was being grateful, pressing against him. She was easing his shirttails out. He was getting the idea. Lois slipped off a sandal and rubbed her heel against his calf. I can do only one thing at a time, he thought. There was no time for this.

  “Don’t be so tired,” Lois said, pleadingly.

  But tonight he had to get a dog bowl from Letsamao’s yard, somehow. He needed to plan. The sangoma had said to get hold of some object common to all the dogs. Carl needed to reconnoitre.

  Lois was hurt. “You could at least put your briefcase down,” she said.

  He did. “I don’t think you grasp how tired I am,” he said. He was all apology.

  She was badly upset. She was liable to go to the bedroom, which would be perfect if she would stay put there long enough for him to get outside and spot the last locations of the dog bowls before night fell. Then he could recoup with her.