Norman Rush - Whites

He should enjoy nature more. There were a lot of gum trees on this route. There were other trees whose blooms looked like scrambled eggs. Lo noticed everything. The first time she’d seen him naked she’d noticed that his right arm was permanently darkened by the sun, from the elbow down, from having it out the window as he drove around Africa on site visits. Sometimes Lo said his name in her sleep. It moved him enormously. It was proof of something. He doubted Elaine had ever talked in her sleep. But how would he know, because in those days he slept at night, and Elaine was on her guard to the roots of her being. Lo wanted him to show more interest in the local birdlife. He thought, When it comes to bird-watching, I say let the birds watch me . A colony of Cape vultures had a nesting ground in the cliffs near Ootse. There was supposedly a trail up the cliffs, so that interested parties could get close enough to look directly at the vultures or even interfere with them. Lo wanted to go. He might be able to manage that.

Just ahead, at the edge of the path, was a fruit stand — two upended cartons. The vendor was a Motswana matron wearing a housedress and a blanket over it like an apron. He was going to be irritated, he could tell. He stopped to look over the display of bananas and green apples. The fruit was less than fresh — probably it had been four or five days on the street already. Batswana merchants absolutely would not bargain. This woman needed to clear her stock. She should lower her prices drastically, for the bananas at least. But she had her unit price figured and would stick to it unto death. She knew what the other street vendors were getting and would consider she was being made a fool of if she took less. If he offered a lower price, she would think he was trying to take advantage of her. He had been through this. The fruit came from South Africa and was substandard to begin with— ondergraad . The Batswana wholesalers were stuck with long-term contracts for fruit the South Africans wouldn’t touch. He knew all about it. It was a scandal.

The vendor waited for him to say something. She decided to eat an apple. He predicted that she would take one of the best ones, not one of the least salable, and she did. Sometimes he thought southern Africa was specially designed to try the souls of small-business experts. He had had his difficulties persuading Africans elsewhere in the continent to be serious about business, but southern Africa was the sharpest thorn in his crown so far. He had to give himself mixed reviews at best for his performance to date — for his career — so he had to succeed in Botswana. This was not the best subject vis-à-vis his blood pressure. Botswana was probably his last chance to stay overseas. He ought to be able to succeed, because his main project was foolproof: it was all women, very tractable, making school uniforms for a guaranteed market — the state.

The settlement with Elaine had impoverished him. Because of Lois, he had to be overseas to recoup, because the housing and utilities were covered and they could save like bandits. If they demoted him back to Washington, he and Lo would end up living like graduate students — at that level. Lo would have to go out and cashier. It was unthinkable. Since he’d stopped, he had to buy something from this woman. He paid twenty thebe for a banana — four thebe more than his highest estimate. Still, the woman was looking implacably at him. What had he done? It came to him: he had forgotten to greet her before starting the transaction. That made him a worm, in her eyes. He moved on.

Secretaries and technical personnel tended to live at the embassy compound, a square of apartments around a microscopic swimming pool. One apartment had been turned over to the nurse, for a medical unit. In a previous incarnation he would have been interested in the nurse, Rita. She was single. She was low-forties and Hispanic, and tough. He liked lean women. He looked at the empty pool wrinkling and creasing in the noon sun. There was a woman he had read about, a prodigy, nineteenth century, who could sleep floating in water. It might have been a man. There had been two prodigies, one of them named Fraticoni, and one was the Human Magnet and metal objects stuck to him or her, and the other was the Human Cork, who could sleep floating.

The nurse was steely. This was a lecture. “I’m not giving you any sleeping medication,” she said. “I don’t trust you around medication. You scared us with your X ray. We don’t need this. You showed four strange round spots in your gastric region which we finally figured out had to be mineral-supplement pills with a lot of iron in them you weren’t absorbing. Does anybody at your house know what vitaminosis is? Maybe you can’t sleep because you’re irritating your nervous system yourself with whatever you’re taking. If you want to self-medicate, then self-medicate, but don’t come to me looking for sympathy.” There was more. Did he know too much niacin could turn his face red? Was he aware that it was natural for the body to require less sleep as it aged? He used to think Rita liked him.

“And also , I never want to find you in my office when I walk in,” she said. “I don’t want to make a big issue. But you sit in the waiting area, period.”

“I was looking for you,” Carl said. The nurse began writing. Stepping into her office when he saw it was empty had been the latest in a recent line of bright ideas. He was having too many bright ideas. He had foreseen not getting pills. The possibility that he might spot some lying around loose in the empty office had suggested itself. Then there had been a vague idea that he might be able to do something against the dogs with a syringe, if he had a syringe. He had seen disposable hypodermics in Rita’s wastebasket more than once. One dog, a big orange bitch, seemed almost like the choirmaster of the pack. Whether dogs could die from an air-injection, he didn’t know. Would it have been feasible to creep up on the bitch while she was rooting around near the fence and jab her? Probably not. He had taken a stupid chance. He felt pale.

Rita handed him the appointment card for his next shot. She reminded him to use the stress cassette she had given him, and said maybe he should try earplugs again. He got up, putting on his sunglasses. Lately his eyes were on the reddish side. The whites of Lo’s eyes were clear, like stationery. There was a problem connected with sunglasses, which he had to keep in mind. Apparently, older Batswana resented sunglass-wearing. A Member of Parliament had criticized young Batswana for wearing sunglasses, because it was disrespectful to conceal your eyes when you were in conversation. It had been in the Daily News . There was probably no special dispensation for expatriates.

He left. Rita was dense about earplugs. From his standpoint, there were two things wrong with earplugs. He could hear through them — any that he had tried. And earplugs forced him to listen to his own heartbeat. He had a functional murmur. It was impossible not to listen for irregularities. Listening to his heartbeat was like listening to the drum in a Roman galley. He had explained all this, but she was still pushing earplugs. He forgave her. She still gave the best gamma-globulin shots in the foreign service. She always warmed up the ampule first in her bra and then had you toe-in to loosen up your gluteus muscle. The bruising was always minimal.

He was yanked from sleep. The barking was on.

Someplace he had seen a movie where the hero is dragged into the air on ropes attached to hooks in his flesh. This was similar, except that the movie ordeal had been an initiation for an English lord who wanted to be a Comanche brave for some unknown reason. So there was a point to it.