Norman Rush - Mating

It was hard getting Nelson’s attention, he was such a hive of industry of late. When I commented on it he quoted a line of Blake from a catalog to an exhibition of his pictures I remember as Now after such long slumbers I once again display my giant forms. The exhibition was a failure, as I recall, and Blake went back to engraving ads.

In any case Nelson was back at work in his spare time on a contrivance about the size of a beer keg that I made the mistake of referring to as a light fixture. No, it was more than that, much more, it was something in notional Latin like luminon, lucinant, noctiluminant. The polyhedral carapace was panels of amber and lettuce-colored glass set in a metal framework. Within was a revolving honeycomb entity involving mirrors and certain cells which were crude lenses that would swell the beams of light. A ring of vanes around the top would let the slightest breeze turn the inner entity, at whose heart burned a lamp that would run for twenty-four hours on two quarts of sunflower oil. The idea was to be able to raise and lower it from a mast in the plaza or, better yet, one on the summit of the koppie. But probably it would be for the plaza since decorating the top of the koppie would have to wait until the committee as to names ended the deadlock on what the koppie should be called. Denoon had originally wanted the koppie named the Fulcrum, until he had been convinced that there was no equivalent word in Setswana. His proposal to use a word in Sekalanga that might be stretched to mean fulcrum had been met with furious objections. Even in Tsau the Bakalanga were considered foreign, more foreign than the Baherero. Then he’d proposed Tshiamo, Justice. But there was suddenly an iron consensus for the koppie’s being named for a person, a woman, possibly some woman from the charter days of Tsau. Factions had formed, and there the matter stuck.

I loved to go down to the glassworks and write letters or read while he tinkered with this ornament, sanding glass or buffing or drilling and setting it. Concentration was important when he was at this, so I wasn’t supposed to talk while he was busy unless something in his train of thought led him to laugh out loud or say something on his own. Then I could partake. He started laughing once because he had just had an epiphany in which it suddenly became clear to him how comical a word foolproof was, with its associated imagery of objects or machines so basic no flailing oaf could damage or misuse them. This was!gum, moreover, and the glassery was usually warm because of the furnaces Nelson used. There was immense tablespace there, whereas at the octagon I had to elbow his impedimenta aside whenever I tried to do personal clerical work. The glassery was domestic. The thatch on the building was recent, I gathered, since a faint smell like cinnamon or sherry came from it. There were generous windows looking east to the kraals and the mealie fields. I could duck out and visit my boy Baph.

I realized the luminon must be the object he’d referred to earlier as something he’d given up working on because he’d concluded it would take forever. I couldn’t resist saying At the risk of being what you hate most, that is, psychologistic, at least tell me we both see this object you’re making as a form of undoing or of some process related to putting the bottle castle your father smashed back together. I thought at first he hadn’t heard me, but then he said I’m not a complete fool, am I? So what? he said. He seemed calm. I thought but didn’t say that what this bauble would most resemble once it was up was a lit-up macropineapple or one of those mirror-chip globes that tell you this is a prom and not just a regular dance. That sent old feelings cascading through me, about dance avoidance. We had established that we were both nondancers, historically. With me it was a feeling of bad faith about dancing, especially close dancing, with someone you had no intention of letting sleep with you. Dancing is erotic for me. Dancing was unpleasant for him because it got him hot, or I should say had when he was adolescing and still in the shadow of the withdrawing batwing of the church. It was a minor bond between us.

His back was to me when he said We could stay here. He may even have been fully out of sight: all I have is the voice. We were in the glassery. I may have been facing the landscape, trying to catch a glimpse of my animal, which I could sometimes do if he drifted to the far end of the kraal he was in. I know I stayed fixedly wherever I was and tried to replay what Nelson had said, to be certain he wasn’t saying something as innocent and local as that we could stay an extra couple of hours at the glassery if I sent to the kitchen for some soup and scones, rather than going back for supper to the octagon. But the inflection was wrong for that. This was what it seemed to be and it was pivotal. I felt cold. I had to deal with the way I felt, somehow, without saying something that would turn out to be fatal, something assaultive re his lifework, Tsau. Also, why did I feel so cold?

By stay, I said, you mean stay indefinitely in Tsau, us both.

That was what he meant.

But what about Jews? was my absolutely peculiar first thought. I felt panic. Staying in Tsau with Nelson could hardly be considered durance vile, but there were no Jews there. All of my best friends were Jews. The only male colleague friends Nelson ever alluded to with signs of feeling were Jewish, I had happened to note. Then there was a surge of feeling about my mother. I would never see her.

Nelson came over then and we embraced.

How smart are you, fundamentally, I was thinking, if you love someone who produces these tests for you? Because I felt it as a test. This was not the drift things had been taking.

I went on a diversion. But how could you qualify, how could you stay in Tsau, I asked, since we’re not citizens?

There was no problem. There was a provision in his contract with the government specifying that he and any dependent of his could elect citizenship — but not dual citizenship, he was quick to point out. In fact the government had been pleased, he thought, when he’d proposed it. This also was news to me, and another rung in the ladder of tests I felt I was climbing. I’m trying to be fair to myself and what I felt when this news came. I was in tumult. I wanted to know why everything comes out as an ordeal, a test. Tests have been my bête noire all my life.

I said But what about your status otherwise? The rules are that men only get to stay in Tsau as dependents, relatives. Same for Sekopololo. You can’t just say koko, I want to be a member, and get in. There are rules.

I could through you, he said. It would be like this. As my dependent you could be a citizen and as your dependent I could live here and belong to Sekopololo. It would work. You could be chartered in terms of the rules, technically: you have no money, you’re unemployed, in fact with your student loans you’re a pauper. Your mother is not a resource.

I maintained my neutral to slightly positive attitude façade fairly well until he mentioned in passing that he had recently assigned all his royalties in perpetuity to Sekopololo. We hadn’t discussed that. He described it as only a gesture, but to me it was preemptive. I felt betrayed by it, but equally I felt I was betraying Nelson with my reactions, my apparent grasping at the negatives of staying on in his creation.

I fought myself back to a casual level. I remember Denoon as now back at his workbench and holding a piece of glass up to the light. He looked absolutely beautiful to me at that moment, more beautiful than he ever had. This is a serious man, kept saying itself to me. Other men aren’t. What I was suddenly afraid of was that this moment was our perihelion, the closest we would ever approach or be, and that everything after this would transpire between bodies farther apart. I was thinking that if you looked back over the trajectory of every mating once it was over, there would be an identifiable perihelion. I couldn’t stand the idea that this was ours. I didn’t know why I thought it was, even. My eyes were hot. I had to leave. This is all hypothetical, I said, keeping it declarative and trying to keep any note of entreaty out. But I knew better.