Norman Rush - Mating

The assumption behind the exercise was that disputants made to sit in close proximity to one another would cool down, usually. The principle was identical to the one in the handholding stratagem he’d been so dismissive of, but no matter. And they did calm down that night, although later I found out it was because of something Harold broached during musical chairs. There was supposedly a manuscript of a fragment of a play about Sir Thomas More, author unknown. The fragment itself was in four fragments, each in a different hand, and the last or D fragment was in the hand that wrote Shakespeare’s will. This was something totally new to Nelson. It stopped him. It wasn’t that he disbelieved Harold on this, but he needed more details, time to try to imagine how this datum might be made to fit his anti-Stratfordianism.

The peacock fight apparently having concluded, Julia and I concerted to give a précis of Taming of the Shrew. I translated here and there, to be sure the picture was clear. Scenelets from the play were going to be performed around the village the next day and we hoped the members of the mother committee would do a modicum of audience preparation for us. Harold and Nelson began listening to us, Harold even chipping in, finally.

Getting ready for bed that night, Nelson was generally apologetic about the way the evening had gone, but strewn among the apologies were questions for me as to what I had ever heard in re the More Hand D evidence. Not my field, I told him. I knew nothing about it. The light was only off for a couple of minutes before it was back on so he could dash off an airletter to an academic friend at Cambridge on the subject. His friend must be world famous, because I’d heard of him. Then I fell asleep.

I woke up an hour or so later with the light still on and Nelson still writing. But this was something else, a surprise for Harold and Julia he would prefer I not ask him about because it was going to be a surprise for me too.

Perfidious Albion

Things were developing amiably enough over the next couple of days, I thought. Harold in particular got steadily more accommodating, agreeing to use his rapier in shadowfencing routines when the children begged sufficiently. I was the interlocutor and translator for the spot performances — or suites, as they called them — that we put on before various groups. The costuming and props made a great attraction: Harold wore a jerkin and a doublet, and Julia had a change of gowns and a toy lute she plucked to counterpoint some of the poetry. She also sang Dowland and Purcell. Harold and Julia worked entirely from memory, which was commented on. And I think they were pleased at how closely people seemed to be following, to the extent that there was hissing and ululating from most audiences once they had my translation of Petruchio’s conquest-of-Kate speech. In fact, once he saw the reaction he was getting, Harold darkened his reading of the lines I will be master of what is mine own / She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house / My household stuff, my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing. I did begin to notice that certain people whose presence I would have expected at the performances were turning up absent. Circuitously I found out that they were with Denoon, in rehearsals for something, a play to be put on by Rra Puleng and the mother committee especially for the visitors, as thanks. I decided not to know more about this. My plate was full. Nelson would have told me everything that was planned, if I’d asked, I did later establish.

Suddenly the news was that there was going to be an extra day of Harold and Julia. Nelson had arranged it by radio. It had to do with what he was cooking up, obviously. He asked me to inform them that there would be an extra day and not say why, which I refused to do and which Dineo ultimately did.

On the penultimate day of their visit we had their final and biggest performance, for the whole village at once, whoever wanted to come, in the plaza. Essentially it was dinner theater, people sitting on mats and eating mealie while against the backdrop of the darkening Kalahari Harold and Julia strutted their hour. I translated. I was hoarse when it was over. We were a team by now. They knew instinctually when to pause for me. It was very smooth. Denoon was in and out. I wanted him to dislike Harold less, despite Harold’s provocative tendencies, such as being sure to appear between performances wearing either a crucifix or an ascot with a cross of St. George stickpin. These tendencies predate you and aren’t aimed at you, I tried to tell Nelson. I liked Harold. Earlier that day I had come across him sitting under a tree reading Andrew Marvell.

The thanks and farewells were nicely handled by Dineo.

I became aware of a contained hubbub to the rear left. The audience, which had started to rise to disperse, was asked to sit down again, and people complied. Something had been going on offstage earlier, I realized, which I’d thought at the time was rude, because it had been distracting during the Hamlet and Ophelia amalgam, which you had to follow fairly closely. Anyway, I had returned to the audience and was joined there by Harold and Julia, still in costume. It was a little cool. Not everyone had come prepared with shawls and afghans for this addendum, but there had been forethought: people were passing out shawls and even extra mats. We took some and tried to make ourselves comfortable. An announcement was made. We were going to see a brief program that would show our thanks to Harold and Julia. Harold wasn’t comfortable sitting on the ground. I asked him if I should get him a chair, even though it might make him feel a little conspicuous to be the only one sitting kinglike above the rest. So be it, he said, and also urged Julia to accept a chair, which she declined. They argued a little, and somewhere in the exchange I heard her use the phrase Childe Harold, for my benefit, I think. I got Harold’s chair and he sat in it. The proscenium was suddenly dramatic: we had blazing torches, four of them, on staves set into metal stands, grouped two on each side of the center spot.

I was torn. I knew Harold and Julia must be hungry and that it was up to me to go off and do something about it, but the feeling that I needed to stick close to them was stronger. Baskets of ground nuts were being passed around, which I took as a sign that what was coming would probably be brief, so I stayed put. Julia ate ground nuts, but Harold passed. Nelson gave the signal for the games to begin. I don’t know what I expected. I think I expected something gentle that might be called The Apotheosis of Tsau, something poetical and historical.

In retrospect I have sympathy for Nelson, knowing what his intentions were. There is such a thing as being so driven to act that you blot out the gulf evolving between the incident you find yourself creating and the ideal incident the depth of your feelings entitles you to have. Also, the image of William Blake was somehow ghostlily conceptually entwined in Nelson’s idea of what he was doing — Blake the defender of the essence of England against the traducers who were turning it into mere empire. Nelson adored Blake. And in defending himself, when we went over this later, it was his identification with Blake he used against my accusation of Anglophobia run amok. The idea of the performance had been to present to Harold and Julia, emissaries of England the mother of empires, the feelings of some former subjects of the crown who were now undeceived and no longer humble — as those feelings might well have been articulated by people acculturated to express themselves in terms of formal drama. This may seem elaborate, but I want to be fair to Nelson. The script for the occasion came out of several sessions where members of the mother committee were encouraged to free associate on the subject of the British Empire — with Nelson stirring the pot, interpolating considerably more than he should have, I’m sure, transcribing, and then editing the whole. I never fathomed how he had proceeded so far without cognizing how embarrassing a product was resulting. Because it was embarrassing.