Norman Rush - Mating

I knew what I needed was exactly what I couldn’t have here: a woman friend I could discuss Nelson with, confide in. There was the political barrier of my identification with him. That would always exist. Also standing in the way was the Tswana institutionalized madness about secrets. Secrets are for the family only. Outside the family, secrets confer dangerous power to the hearer over the divulger. When I say the Batswana are opaque I mean things like the young woman at the national bank, high level, whose husband had been in England for four years straight getting a doctorate in biology: she was perfectly cheerful, was famous for it and for not having boyfriends. Of course in time every culture will yield to someone saintly enough, supposedly. Of course I had recently been driven to talking to my donkey, and what did that mean? There were two women in the United States and one, possibly, in Sweden I could conceive of making an emergency life and death confessional help-me phonecall to. But there were no phones in Tsau and never would be until I was in cronehood, if then. Would life in Tsau be me forever wandering up and down the interface between the main two races I would never understand, Bantus and the male? This was when I was at my lowest.

I tried America has taught me to overestimate my importance in the scheme of things. I tried this often. I fought off image seizures of newlywed wives in movies confronting more than humble apartments and putting their fists on their hips and saying This place has possibilities, which would lead into surreal fantasies of how I would revise and redecorate Tsau to my own individual taste, long and involved fantasies. Mostly I tried to find some equilibrium around the feeling that Nelson had in fact been talking more exploratorily than conclusively. But then he would unhorse me by reminding himself of dead undertakings he was going to revive — promoting sauerkraut and croquet were two of them. And during all this he was being especially perfect and solicitous.

I think I must have known there was a hump in the arras. Dineo seemed stricken over something private once or twice. Possibly I could have picked something up if I’d lingered in the robing room after a hunt for a rock python, which I joined. But I didn’t stay to socialize. I was in too great a hurry to resume observing Denoon and brooding on the results. And writing my broodings down. And reading what I’d written, back and forth, back and forth.

The Night Men

An epitome of both how conflicted I became and how perfect Nelson was being toward me: I woke up one night at three a.m. and woke him up to tell him he had to stop reading poetry to me as a nightcap for the time being because it was unfair. It was unfair because having poetry read to me is the equivalent of manna and he knew it. We had done it a lot during our first weeks together, then there had been a caesura when it became sporadic, and now he was reading Whitman to me every night, beautifully. He agreed instantly. Anything I could in any way, shape, or form consider coercive on his part was out. In the midst of this I was seized with guilt and wonder over having a man I could safely wake up in the middle of the night with a particular concern and get an agreement or get calmed down and never hear a murmur of objection out of. Every other man I had regularly spent nights with was like a wild animal over his sacred sleep, because — had I conceivably forgotten? — he had to work the next day, in caps, as if I didn’t. I lay there. In Nelson I had someone who would not merely tell me my nightmare was only a dream, which I tended to know, but would to the best of his ability trudge through my attempts at analysis with me. Where was I ever going to find that quality in someone again in my life if I gave him up? He was already asleep again and so crazed was I that I woke him again to apologize and take it back, and even that was all right with him. I told him I felt like pure shit. It was no help reminding myself that men sleep better than women in every culture known. In the morning I apologized again and let him make love to me standing up, my least favorite position, as a treat for him and a penance for me.

I went to a menarche party for Golepe Setlhabi, a girl of twelve. I had been to one before. These were more musicales than anything else, for women only. There was kadi to drink, which was new. I sang By the Rivers of Babylon when my turn came. We gave Golepe a collective gift, a sheepskin. She was overwhelmed, genuinely. So I was overwhelmed. The sheepskin had been my idea. Real gratitude in others for something you do for them or give them is tonic. I was exhilarated. Of course I’d had some kadi. Here was an unmixed good, it seemed to me. Adolescents in America are so jaded a reaction like Golepe’s would be impossible. Why would I leave a place like Tsau? What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I more sensitive to the simple pleasures? Was I more jaded than I wanted to admit, and could Tsau be a cure?

I was glad when my inner maundering was interrupted by the summarist’s putting in an appearance. She reminded everyone to be sure to attend the coming great discussion as to god, to see who would gain the prize. This was the first I had heard of this event. Tsau struck me then as very precious and various. I went home to ask Nelson what this event was, very positive for a change, almost hyper.

Now I realize that the first bruitings about the night men occurred at that party. It seemed like nothing to me. Certain men, part of Raboupi’s entourage but not Hector himself, were in effect being prostitutes, spending the night with some of the younger women for gifts. I think I asked if they used contraception, which was the only serious social point of concern that I could see, and was told Yes. Someone claimed the batlodi had conceived the enterprise, although I doubted that. Given the demographics of Tsau, it was not a surprising development. It had started with token gifts from competing girlfriends and escalated. I believe the discussion was truncated when it became clear I was following it despite its being in rapid sotto voce Setswana.

If I thought anything about this it must have been that it made Tsau seem like a slightly more interesting place. I don’t remember thinking anything in particular, nor would the idea that this was a development I or anyone could conceivably intervene in have occurred to me. I remember the brilliance of the stars, my optimism.

Parlamente

I asked Denoon what this function I’d heard about was. It sounded like a debate.

No, it was different. It was syncretic. These were periodic mass free-form meetings, which he would interlocute. Each one was on a single large subject. Colliding presentations were given, there would be heavy questioning and intervention from the floor, then a prizewinner would be chosen in a novel way: people would shift physically to the side they favored. Another feature was that the entire proceeding had to unfurl with everyone remaining seated on the ground, no matter how heated things got, until the very end, when it was time to shift permanently for the headcount. Staying seated had been taken from the Zulu indaba format. If you got to your feet in anger your side was dishonored, disgraced. Nelson called these things moots. I told him moot was wrong unless an adjudication was going on, which happened to be the one item sticking in my memory from Ancient Law. He was impressed. The Tswana term for these meetings was either parlamente, the loan word for assembly of talkers, or phutego, meaning public meeting. They were apparently leisurely and drawn-out affairs, with people bringing mats and even napping a little at times. Food was provided by Sekopololo seriatim, to encourage people to stay till the end, Nelson finally admitted. He said These things are looked forward to immensely. As to past topics, he mentioned Master and Slave and What Is Work? or How Should We Work? You should have one on Whither the Local Bushmen? I said, thinking of the growing ambiguity of their relationship to Tsau. There were more of them. More and more they were coming to the infirmary. His reply was to groan at me. I’d missed the point about the scale of the questions the parlamente was for.