Norman Rush - Mating

The way it worked, as I gathered, was that beforehand people had submitted statements or assertions on the general subject of god and religion. These were on cards which got shuffled by Denoon or Dineo or Mma Keridile before one was selected to be read out. The writer would acknowledge. Then people would respond, sometimes substantively and sometimes with deprecative shouts. The point in having three interlocutors was to rotate the function of selecting people from the floor to reply. And you were supposed to signal your desire to comment by holding up a twig. Maybe half the audience adhered to this protocol, half the time. Also the chairs were authorized to summarize or supplement contributions and to determine how long a particular point was to be pursued. Clearly also the panel was balanced in terms of viewpoint in that Mma Keridile was a believer of some kind, probably a Zed CC, Dineo was neutral, Denoon was the village atheist. You could tell which chair was in charge of the current phase of the proceedings by his or her tenure of a glass bar like Mma Isang’s and a little metal hammer to strike it with in order to punctuate the flow. Most of the older children were there, looking excited. There was coming and going in the crowd, but not much.

I arrived as Denoon was reminding us that parlamente was not intended to raise one idea or belief up to oppress others but for all views to show in the light. Now for a time we would proceed in English. I was relieved at this. The idea of exerting the concentration necessary to follow closely in Setswana, with my head hurting the way it was, was painful.

There was a statement before us, to wit, that it was wrong that in only one village in all Botswana was it true that believers of god could not raise up a building, this village of Tsau. There it was. The very issue I had been told endlessly was under control, not an issue, was plainly on the table.

No, someone said, this rule was correct because in the religion of the people before the coming of the makhoa there were no churches required. But also the rule was correct because not even BNP or Boso could raise buildings, which was best because such buildings would be signs and proofs of division amongst the people. Mma Isang’s contribution was that if Tsau was a village for women, then why should a church be raised if no church could be seen in any corner of Botswana where a woman could be seen to be the priest or pastor. She repeated this in the form of a rhetorical question to the crowd, asking for the name of any church of which this was not true. It was a fusillade, highly organized, and there was more. The stalwart Dirang Motsidisi pointed out that we know from scripture that the Lord Jesus was very much rude to his own mother, Mary. This could be proven time and again, so why must we rush to raise churches in such cases? She followed this with We must always remember that whole tribes were at one time given by chiefs to be under one church, such as the Bakgatla given by Chief Lentswe to be under Ned Geref Church, whose name we know today from crushing down African people and in South Africa saying all the while apartheid is from the Bible. Where were the seconds for the pro edifice view? This seemed to be a true rout. I was certain Nelson and Dirang had orchestrated it. There was no question it had been artful.

My pal King James piped up with Until it comes when god speaks the same rules to every church there should be no churches of differing kinds raised up. Because churches disagreed very much, yet all said they were the churches closest the lips of god. Nelson glowed at this, and at Even there are churches found who say you must talk as poultry or dogs, just senselessly, to show you are of god. I gathered that this was a thrust at some pentecostal tendency in Tsau not known to me.

That wasn’t quite all on the subject, though. One group, which was, I noted, referring to itself as the Friends of God, contended variously that god deliberately made false creeds abound in order to force people to find which was the true one, the implication being that Zionist Christianity was the true creed. A few of the Friends of God were carrying mini New Testaments and using them rather than twigs to signal when they wanted to be heard.

A majority laughed politely at this contention of the Friends of God, and out of this laughter the voice of the Ox, Dirang, rose at its most clarion. We must not waste gum poles and mud blocks to raise any church at all, because really there is too much disagreement, she said. If you stay to Kenya the Israel Church Nineveh will tell you you must speak in any words of nonsense god sends to you, as even small boys in Tsau can see. If you stay to Zimbabwe you can be told by followers of Maranke that to pray you must kneel but with your eyes held open and your hands raised up and not closed together and you must turn to the east whence Christ will return from and you must make a loud sound in your nose like Zulus finding out witches. This produced a ripple of grumbling. There were some Zulus among us. Then she said In Malagasy there is a church of vomiters who teach out that we best worship god by vomiting, so you must practice to vomit, because in your vomit will be found sins and devils your eyes cannot see, so thus you must ask your moruti, who can see everything. Then she repeated that she was not disrespecting any view but surely everyone could see that if one church tells you a man can have only one wife and another says he can have many, and each have buildings to gather and plot in, there would soon be trouble. Her final point was a hit: she reminded us that there were many villages in Botswana with more churches than fleas and yet in those villages also would be found thieving and too many prostitutes to look at.

I realized I was thinking of the pro-Denoon people as loyalists and everyone else as the opposition, whether their differences sprang from ultratraditionalism or genre marxism à la Boso or reflexive centrism. This is interesting of you, I thought. I realized how natural it felt to be dividing the women — sisters — into winners and losers when I heard myself inwardly ranking the loyalists, with myself included, the winners so far.

There was a fairy ding from the chair and everyone got up to stretch. The signal to rise had come somewhat after the fact, I thought, since Raboupi’s men had been getting up even as Dineo was concluding a homily to the effect that if god was our author he would expect us to make use of our brains without restriction, even as touching views as to god himself. She was her usual oddly splendid self, in a purple sheath split fairly high along each side seam — which permitted her to maneuver on the ground comfortably — and a coarsely knit white cardigan and a black turban whose broadened tails could be arranged around her neck scarfwise. It was intriguing. Denoon was dressed in a way I believe he felt made him look more non-Western. He was back to his headband, which was actually functionless now that I was keeping his hair short. He had on his pasha pants, and he was wearing a boxy plain light blue dashiki over a black turtleneck sweater. I looked closer. On the right breast of his dashiki was a large food or drink spot. My reaction was weirdly strong: I was ashamed! I was guilty of letting him come to appear at a function wearing dirty clothes. Of course I had been lying with a cloth over my eyes when he left, but still. Then I was doubly ashamed, the second wave being over the extent of my identifying with Nelson. I had long ago seen the archetype of pathetic identification and sworn to learn something from it at the time. It had been in a crowded coffee shop in a Greyhound terminal in Yreka in the redwoods in northern California. I was sharing a table with a young local working-class couple. They had ordered omelets or scrambled eggs cooked so incompetently they looked like omelets. The husband must have been ravenous, because he managed somehow to furl an egg mass the size of a potholder onto his fork and swing the entire thing into his mouth. Obviously my horror showed. His wife turned red at my shock. Then she furled her own egg up defiantly and neatly in exactly the same way as her husband, intending, I’m certain, to suggest to me that this was merely a regional way to eat eggs and not something boorish and particular to him. She had done it instinctually. What this is is servility. I told myself Never forget it. And there I was, flushed, wanting to go up and somehow block people from seeing the spot on Nelson’s shirt.