Norman Rush - Mortals

“He sayed, My eyes are heavy with sleep.”

“Oh, right.” He wanted to finish up with more Setswana, but he was fading and sinking.

Keletso held his hand down to him and he took it and rose out of himself, his weakness. Deep breaths would help. He considered the pinpricks of firelight strewn thinly through the dark. Some of them represented happy marriages, some fraction of them. How many, though, was a question only an anthropologist could answer. Some should be invited to take up the question, get out there and find the answer. He would like to know. It was germane to a feeling he was having, a sort of swelling desire to give some advice to Keletso. Tomorrow his opportunity to advise the man would be gone.

He was not entirely himself, which he knew. But if he could deliver some advice he would feel better and sleep better. It was a generic desire to give advice that he was suffering from, but he could narrow it down. And he had to be careful to be sure that what he said was all right, not unusual. It was some consolation if the mistakes that added up to a particular life could be crushed to yield a vial or two of advice.

He was going to concentrate on advice henceforth. That was an idea. He would find Kerekang and give him advice too, if he could find him. We should be kind. The world is a terrible machine, he thought.

Wait, he thought. Because he wanted to shout something before he began advising, to the effect that he was older. He had turned forty-nine. Two days ago he had turned forty-nine and not noticed. There had always been a strain with Iris over birthdays, which she loved and that was fine, but which he considered celebrations of what, sheer duration. She had always prevailed on the question of doing something, a little something, dinner with what, he couldn’t remember what, something extra, some wine they had had at someone’s house that he had said was delicious and that she had remembered and gotten for him, always something. And then always, no matter what he said, some sort of giftlet, always. Or a real gift, a book he wanted, something.

Ray said, “Rra, I want to give you some advice before you go, which is tomorrow.”

“I am listening, rra.”

“It’s about a wife, when you come to find a wife, what you should do. One and number one, you should be true to her. Yes, be true, but that is not enough. Okay, I was true, and … But nevertheless it is number one.”

Keletso groaned, Ray thought.

He said, “What is it?”

“Nowhere am I finding my wife, I …”

Ray interrupted. “But you will, my friend, and let me tell you what you must do, according to me, you see, when you do. Number one you must forget this testing of women by taking only one who can make a child. No, my friend. I know all about this.”

“I am old, rra,” Keletso said.

“No you’re not, Keletso.”

“Yah, I am forty years. So I must find a young woman for a wife. You can see.”

“Well, I understand. You want children. I understand. But you have to think of other things, too, when you look at women … and you have time, in your life. Do you know how old I am?”

“Nyah, rra.”

“I am forty-nine, just.”

“ Is it? As from what day, rra.”

“Sunday, it was.”

“ Ai . You sayed nothing. Yah, cheers. Cheers, rra.”

“Cheers. Thanks.”

“So we are two monna mogolo.”

“No, I am. You’re not.”

“You have a wife. I cannot catch you up.”

“You can. And you can keep her.

“You will find someone and, Keletso, listen, when you touch her with love the first time, you must find words to say how you love to touch her, how much. Say, This is heaven, to touch you. If you see what I’m saying. You find some way to make her feel your love like a knife going in, so it is different from any touch before. You can say anything, Your flesh is God, strong words, anything you like. And every day hold her hard against you. And say the same thing or anything similar, but strong. Your breath is like water, and so on.

“Because, rra … women are very decent. They can drown us with sweetness and love, if we let them …”

“Ehe,” Keletso said, uneasily, Ray sensed.

I’m saying too much but I have to, Ray thought.

“And you must be willing to seem a fool, when you tell your feelings. You must be extreme. You must be what they say in West Africa, fou. I don’t know what the Setswana is … mad is what it is in English …”

“Setsenwa,” Keletso said.

“Good. You want her to think this chap is setsenwa. And you want her to say to herself, No other man will feel like this toward me. He does not exist.

“And as to finding a wife and having children, it will happen.”

He was finding it impossible to get out the image that was filling him, to release it and plant it. He wanted Keletso to have it. It was that women are what, that the right woman is a locket or not a locket a jewel box, a jewel box full of something so beautiful and rich and rare, and yet men fixate on opening the catch, the lock, the word wedlock was wrong, but opening the lid and leaving the lid just open, failing to throw back the lid, turning to something else, satisfied. It was poesy and it was true, wasn’t it? But it was useless. It was too ornate. It was too ornate.

“You are right,” Keletso said.

“About what?”

“I am too much with chasing up these young girls.”

“Yes, if that’s what you’re doing. There are fine women, widows, women with children already. No, it’s a question of finding that one , that one, the correct one.”

“And rra, what do you say as to presents, because I am always too soon with presents, it seems. And I see I have just put my money to burn away to smoke. They are looking for presents, rra.”

“Well, you have to be careful about that, I would say.”

It was time to stop. He had gotten out as much of the essence of his great conclusion as he could. On the details of courting, he had nothing to offer, he was ignorant, a self-taught ignoramus as Iris had described herself in one of her modes, funnily self-deprecating modes. And he was an ignoramus on the subject because he had only seriously ever courted one woman in his entire life. Now she was turning to smoke.

Ray wanted to be useful. He would try.

“Keletso, I know you want to have children. But I can tell you something about it.

“I would not put it first. You see me. I can swear to you before God that I am the happiest husband in the world. I have no children with my wife. No man was ever happier with a woman.”

It was all true, but he felt he should have gotten at least the shadow of the past tense into it.

He got to his feet. He was sorry for the unmarried. He was as sorry for the unmarried as he was for himself, in his situation.

Keletso said, “You are happy in your home, rra. So you must ask God for nothing more.”

Ray’s eyes were filling up. He doubted Keletso could see that they were, but he turned his face away.

“Keletso, do you know where the aspirin is?”

“Ehe, rra. But is it your knee?”

“A headache.”

He needed to sleep. It was urgent.

He was driving cautiously and so far successfully. He was keeping himself hydrated. He had two water bottles. He had Weetabix crackers to munch. He was going to keep his blood sugar up and compensate for the fact that it had been Keletso who had reminded them it was time to snack, have a meal, not go too long without eating.

The sky was overcast, a burning white. The landscape was flat and blank and yellow tending to white on the left, also burning. And the landscape was the same but then dark green in the near distance to the right, where the delta was. The road had swung closer to the delta. The road was more sinuous. He wondered if he would ever see the delta, where it was exotic, exotic Africa. He was uninterested in tourism except as a form of shared fun. He had done too little of it during his wifetime. He had to smile. His accidents were amusing and that had been one.