Norman Rush - Mating

I was sure he was dead and then alternately that he was alive, lying somewhere with my name on his lips. The impasse I was in led to the bizarre urge to write things down about him that were coming to me now and that I realized were not in my compilation. Of course, this was no time to be writing. It was irrelevant. But I hadn’t gotten down Nelson saying Unhand my behind, followed by Do I have a way with words, or not? Or that when he was in an enamored state over a junior high school classmate, a young woman referred to as the Blond Dago, he had gotten into the shower with his pajamas on. There were other, more intimate things I knew, that I’d left out out of sheer decorum. This had been wrong. Also I had very little in my compilation about marriage. I remembered something that was probably key. He had said I never get married unless someone asks me. I needed to be in a library, the only one at my table, my polished blond parquet table, wonderful light, foliage swaying outside the window with normal birds in it.

Horsemen

I was so self-involved that when an actual anomaly appeared I failed to notice it until it was on top of me. Horsemen came threading through the brush toward me. They had been approaching for some time. There were six of them, coming very slowly. They were Baherero, looking rakish as usual, miscellaneously dressed, some with leather slouch hats, others with fur hats or rag turbans. The lead rider was lapped in cartridge belts about the torso. In fact all of the horsemen were armed. Something was exciting them: my gun was. I had taken it out of my pack and was leaning on it.

They can tell me something! was my first thought. But that would only be if they knew Setswana. There were enough Herero women in Tsau who would have been willing to tutor me in Saherero, but I’d never taken the opportunity to learn, largely because I thought that when the Herero dispute with the Botswana government over their cattle was solved they would pull up stakes overnight, including our Hereros. The only Saherero I knew was the greeting, Wapenduka. They nodded when I said it, but they wanted something more. They indicated they wanted me to lay my rifle down and step away from it, which I did, not gladly. A seventh rider was bringing up the rear, traveling even more slowly: something bulky was being dragged behind the horse on travois poles. I had to see what it was, even though I was telling myself it would have to be supplies, not to assume more. I was shaking. Two men dismounted. They wouldn’t let me move until one of them had his foot on my rifle.

The dismounted men spoke a peculiar and meager Setswana. I realized why it was peculiar. They had had their mesial incisors knocked out, per the cultural requirement of their tribe. Even before they said the word mmobodi, meaning sick man, I knew what was on the travois. I ran to the travois. I pushed back the flap at the top of the long canvas bundle slung between the poles and it was Nelson, looking inhuman but breathing, his face terribly swollen, sunburned, white crusts around his lips. I had to look away. I looked back at the double track the points of the travois poles had cut in the sand. He must have been immobilized for some time in the sun, but clearly he had found a way to keep his eyes and forehead shaded, because above the root of his nose the burn was less severe. I wanted to unwrap him, feel his limbs, give him water, but just as I was reaching to unlace his shrouding the rider moved, pulled him away. I yelled something. I made them halt long enough for me to see how hot his forehead was. It was not extreme, if my touch could be trusted. But then, amid a lot of shouting, the rider started up again, pulling away from me. They were making for Tsau. With the burden that horse was slow, I gathered they were saying. Gomela go shwa, He is sick but will recover, someone said, pushing me back from the travois. I think this is what they said. I was insane. I wanted to push the travois.

I was saved. He was alive. These people knew what they were doing, and my mission was not to become a handful and prevent them from doing what they were doing, which was making for Tsau with Nelson as fast as they could manage. I began apologizing. They began leaving, as a body. I think one was asking me how far was Tsau, but I had no idea. I think one offered to have me ride behind him, but I said no, thinking that I would slow things up, and the best thing was for them to get to Tsau as fast as they could, to our enemy the nurse. I would jog along behind the travois, since it was going the slowest, and with luck I should be able to keep it in sight. I had to jog pretty quickly, from the start, and even then I fell behind, which maddened me, because I wanted to urge the lead rider to go ahead alone, at a gallop, to let Tsau know and get help coming from the opposite direction. I jogged harder.

I was saved, but I was steadily falling behind, courtesy my Enfield, so I decided to relieve myself of it intelligently. The riders were too far ahead of me to signal anything to. They could have taken the rifle for me. But good luck to that, since they were far ahead and I was falling farther back, since the travois was going faster than had seemed likely. So an intelligent thing to do would be to discard the rifle by depositing it in the branches of a tree, a tree in some way distinctive, one of the larger white thorn trees, possibly. The Baherero would stop and look back for me occasionally, which I was desperate that they stop doing. In no time there was the right tree, one I would always remember, smack on the due north heading to Tikwe, nonproblematic, so I stuck the rifle into its branches as high as I could reach and good riddance. I could find it again, no question I could.

I was saved, but had Nelson been conscious or only semiconscious? He had said something when I said his name and my name, I was sure. But had he? He might be saying things no one was paying the slightest attention to as they pulled him along like luggage. I could catch up. In fact I was closer than before I’d ditched the rifle. So now off went my backpack and this and that, everything except for my canteens. I had two. I realized shortly I needed only one. My binoculars were nugatory too now. I dropped them. I drew closer to Nelson. There should be a universal language. English was taking too long. I would tell Nelson this. I had always thought Esperanto and Volapük and all of them, Basic English, were jokes or rackets meant to create sinecures, but that was wrong. I could have been adequate if the horsemen had been able to communicate with me in more than nine words, and I with them. Maybe Esperanto was not the answer, maybe something simpler was. I would never mock the proposition again. It could be made compulsory, universal. I could work on it with Nelson from someplace like Bern or Carmel. I ran toward Tsau.

Now He Was Perfect

When my lagging got more extreme, one of the riders was detailed to wait for me and insist I get up and ride with him. The main party, with Nelson, went on ahead. It took awhile for my man to work out the drill. He had to improvise some cushioning for me, using a putrid blanket, since his position was that we couldn’t both fit in the same saddle, which was in fact nonsense. He decided to jettison and cache one set of heavily loaded saddlebags from among the several he was carrying, but then changed his mind and put everything back the way it had been. He was very agitated regarding the whereabouts of my rifle. It bothered him that I didn’t have it, and it was evident he felt it was up to him to do something about it, like going back and trying to retrieve it. It was worth a fortune, of course. All our transactions were conducted ninety percent in sign language, which slowed us seriously. Finally he gave up on the rifle. I think he was convinced I was crazy, not someone he wanted on his docket for longer than was absolutely necessary. We set off and arrived not much more than half an hour after the others.