Norman Rush - Whites

He said, “I thought you were going to try again.”

“I did,” she said. “You only remember the first two tries, when I woke you up. The third time I just felt like I was torturing you. So I let you sleep.”

It’s just as well, he thought. His mind felt unusually clear. He hated the motel room. A brown line led down the wall from the air-conditioner to a rank spot in the rug. He felt a little panic. He was in danger. It was nearly four.

Ione was smoking. “We learned something from this,” she said, soothingly, letting smoke out as she spoke. “We learned I have to catch you at the right moment — sometime when you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Wait, I totally comprehend that that’s exactly the problem, but wait for my plan. It isn’t difficult. You need to spend one night away from the dogs and just sleep yourself out before we try this the next time. You have to travel, in your job. You could tell your wife you had some field thing to do. Do you know the Mafenya Tlala Hotel, in Molepolole?” She said this quickly.

Lois was young. She would never understand this. Hypnosis had been a mistake. Ione was saying that she still maintained he was a good subject for it.

He interrupted. “This is it for hypnosis, I think. It’s not a good idea for me. I don’t like the feeling, to tell you the truth.”

She said, “But you haven’t really experienced it yet, because you kept falling asleep.”

He tied his shoes. He would leave first. She looked penetratingly at him, in a way that made him feel guilty and ungrateful. “I bow to what I hear in your voice,” she said.

He said, “I appreciate your efforts.”

A sliding door gave directly onto the parking area. The drapes were drawn. “You can almost go,” she said, looking out along the edge of a drape.

But he sat down. The idea of leaving was suddenly intolerable. It felt like a mistake. This was the only person who had tried to help him, except for Lo to the best of her ability.

He began apologizing. He said he’d felt from the beginning that hypnotism was going to be a no go for him. He apologized because he realized what he really wanted from her was probably a fantasy. His fantasy had come about because people said she knew all about the culture, and about witchcraft in particular. Probably witchcraft appealed to him because he was at the end of his rope. But wasn’t there something to it? He thought she had been implying that there was, whenever they talked. He had seen birds kept off millet fields through juju, in West Africa. He knew the Batswana used witchcraft on one another. There ought to be some way to use it on dogs. He wanted her to admit that she had implied there was a tool available in witchcraft, the first time they’d talked, unless he had imagined it, which he admitted was possible.

She seemed to be going through some inner conflict, trying to persuade herself to help him. He said that he understood her position. He reminded her that he was desperate.

Finally, he sensed a reluctant decision in his favor. “I understand you,” she said, seeming grave and hesitant. “But remember, I only know so much in this field. You could call me a novice. You want me to locate a sangoma for you — that’s what you’re asking.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Carl, you understand we’d have to be even more careful about getting found out than you can imagine. You know what it would mean if it got around that we were involved with witchcraft. And you would have to follow instructions, and I mean to the letter.”

“Anything,” he said.

• • •

Ione called him at work every couple of days to keep him current on her search for a sangoma . He found himself looking forward to her calls, which usually somehow evolved beyond the matter at hand to range over a lot of unlikely issues on which she had opinions he found interesting. His sleepless nights provided him with endless topics for discussion. Also, he liked her voice.

Again she was reporting no luck in finding a sangoma .

He said, “Stop looking if you want to. What really started me on this tack was when you said that some university had sent a team out to see if there was anything to the claim that sangomas could direct lightning strikes against certain people or places. I don’t know. It gave me hope. When in Rome. But what a long shot! Maybe it’s not a good idea. I get a lot of good ideas quote unquote at night while I’m memorizing the ceiling.”

She said he was sounding defeatist. She went on for a while, trying to buck him up.

He said, “Here’s another good idea that came to me, that I actually put some time into. It occurred to me that it would be funny to get up a fake memo saying AID should hereafter stop talking about the poor and instead refer to them as the ‘pre-rich.’ It was just for the bulletin board. This has to do with some incredible new reporting and nomenclature guidelines we recently got from Washington. I actually started typing this thing up the next day, before I realized what I was doing and tore it up. Close call.”

She said she thought calling the poor the “pre-rich” was clever. She said his bright ideas should be thought of as insights.

“I’ll give you another example,” he said. “Answer this question. Do you like it in Africa?”

She said she did.

“But you can’t quite figure out why you like it, am I right?” he asked. “Because, I mean, hell, it’s inconvenient. Gaborone is dead at night, the movies are ancient and all mutilated because they have to come through South African censorship because that’s where the distributor is located. But still we like it here. Drought, poor people … Even when they get a decent movie, they mix up the reels. We want to be here anyway, but we can’t figure out why. Except that one night I figured it out. It’s because it isn’t our country and we can’t help what happens. We can offer people advice and we get paid for it. We get good vacations, we eat off the top of the food chain, we get free housing. Hey! but we’re not responsible for what happens if Africa goes to hell, because we’ve done our best . Also, at the same time, we’re not responsible for what happens in America, either, really — because, hey! we weren’t home when it happened. Say we get fifteen per cent compliance on birth control here, which is what we do get and which is terrific by Third World standards. O.K., it’s not enough . But what can we do, we tried. We told them. But we’re too late . We all know it, but somebody pays us to keep up the good work, so we say fine. Why am I telling you this? I forget.”

She said, “What we have here are night thoughts — that kind of thing. We all have them, Carl. You’re very intelligent. You’re excellent. I enjoy what you say. It’s very O.K. to have night thoughts. I find you really thoughtful. One thing, though, is you might want to spare Lois this kind of thing. I know it’s important to share night thoughts, but Lois seems so delighted about being here. Why cast a pall, if she’s really enjoying herself — do you follow me?”

“I’m not going to be a pall-caster,” he said.

“Like broadcaster — oh, wonderful! I enjoy you,” she said.

He said, “Here’s another example. Lying awake, I figured out the meaning of life one night. Not life in general, but my life … what my life is about. It’s about women. Women are the meaning of my life: taking care of them, looking for the right ones, trying to stay on their good side. The meaning of my life is the emotions women have about me. That is a fact. I think it’s interesting. I was amazed. When did I enlist for that? I thought I was doing something else.”

She said, “I want very much to help you. Let me pursue what I’m doing. Let me find someone, Carl. I’ll get back to you.”