Norman Rush - Mortals

“Can you step down to me, rra?” the smiling man asked.

There had been no greetings, no dumelas, no entshwarele.

“Dumela, rra,” Ray said. It would be an interesting datum if his nemesis knew English but not Setswana. He could be Ovambo, in that case.

“You must step down, rra.”

“What is it about? You aren’t BDF. I am going to Etsha, so what is this?” He sounded obstreperous to himself, more obstreperous than was exactly wise.

“The road is closed from here, rra, for safety.”

“By whose order, rra?”

“It is goromente, rra. Can you please step to me.”

Ray sat unmoving, seized by an anxiety he knew was irrelevant. He had a thick section of Strange News in a clipboard on the seat beside him. He had to guard it. He didn’t know how much of the manuscript Iris had managed to photocopy before she’d thrust it on him. Maybe none of it. The whole process of getting it into his hands had been frenzied, here, and, as he understood it, back in the States. He needed to get it out of sight before he opened the doors of the cab. He had to do it deftly. He thought he could. It felt urgent. There were ink notations in his brother’s own maddening minuscule hand on the pages. His brother was dying, or dead. That was news he was going to receive. He had to get the manuscript under the seat and he could do it now while the smiling was still going on and his nemesis was still bothering to deal coyly with him, his gaze off-center. The Land Cruiser cab sat high, meaning that sight lines were in his favor if he tried to bury the act of ditching the manuscript within the business of bending and reaching to unlock the passenger-side door. He would have to move like lightning.

He hesitated. He didn’t know what he wanted to happen. He wanted to escape this in the easiest way he could, but he wanted to know what it was, too. He wanted that more. People experienced this who had never asked for it, never deserved it. At the far end of every avenue twisting off from each of his mundane exercises undertaken for the agency, at the extreme far end, was the possibility of something like this for someone who, unlike himself, had never volunteered for it, roadblocks and worse, roadblocks that were gateways to the unimaginable. But now he had to safeguard Strange News .

He said, “Gosiame, rra. I will come out.”

He unlocked the door on his side and then proceeded to stretch over to accomplish his little trick. He got hold of the clipboard and was spiriting it under the seat when he was caught. He had miscalculated and the smiling man, no longer smiling, in fact with his lower face covered by the bandanna, was on him, having jerked the driver’s-side door open without further ado. It was war, then. He felt like a fool. Nemesis pulled him out of the cab, swung him out of the way, and clambered up into the cab himself, emerging clutching Strange News .

Nemesis had associates and here they were, wearing balaclavas despite the impossible heat. There were four of them. They were in camouflage outfits. One was carrying an assault rifle, an Uzi.

The thing to do was to look indignant and baffled for as long as he could. He had to hold down his impulse to beg his nemesis to be careful with the manuscript. That would be idiotic. He wanted to. His knee was bad again. It had been improving. But he had nearly fallen when he’d been pulled out of the vehicle and he hadn’t been able to protect his knee.

He was not going to be allowed to remain in the shade, narrow and minimal as it was, of the Land Cruiser. Nemesis beckoned him out into the road, into full sun. An associate ran forward with a camp stool, but it was for Nemesis. Ray would have to sit on the hot ground. The arrangement was that he would sit with his back to whatever was going on with the vehicle. He would be able to hear the rough interrogation his vehicle was undergoing at the hands of the associates, but not see it. Nemesis would be able to see it, direct it.

The questioning was about to begin. Nemesis tucked the hanging point of his bandanna up under the material binding his cheeks and nose, so that his mouth would be free to shout clearly, to imprecate, whatever his plan was. Ray was having a moment of strength. It was strange. Nemesis kept his cap on, but he raised the bill just enough to let him see Ray without impediment.

A sheaf of papers, Ray’s documents, taken from the glove box, was handed to Nemesis, who went tediously through them.

Nemesis said, “Your passport, rra. I must see it.”

“It should be there.”

“Nyah. Where is it?”

“It should be there. You are alarming me. It must be there.”

“Nyah, I have some things. I have your driver’s license, your third-party certificate papers, and these Letters of Reference, one, two, three. That is all.”

“Let me go and search. It was there.”

“Nyah. Give me your hat, rra.”

“Why?”

That was wrong. Nemesis reached over and plucked Ray’s hat off, made a cursory examination of its interior and threw the hat aside. Ray knew he would now be asked to stand and turn his pockets out.

That happened. Afterward, he was allowed to sit again. His hat was not returned. There had been nothing of interest in his pockets. He should be pleased with himself, since the point of tearing his passport to bits and burning it had surely been to court something just like this, the scene he was in, or entering. Or at least not to be under its protection during it.

Nemesis was leafing through Strange News .

The man was superior in rank to his associates. Ray decided to rename him Uno. What he had seen of Uno’s mouth and chin and his eyes would be enough to identify him whenever, if ever, he saw him unmasked. I have my skills, Ray thought.

And Uno’s immense arms would help identify him, although overmusculature was not in short supply in this milieu, from what he could judge of Uno’s associates. And the degree of physical development they displayed meant some formal training regimen, with weights, and that led back to koevoet and to the South African Defence Force’s special units division. Lips were more individual than teeth, often. He would know Uno. And voices were absolutely individual, miraculously.

Uno shouted something and made a slashing gesture and Ray knew what was coming and he was right. The engine went silent. That was fateful. A corner had been turned. They were not going to send him on his way. He was ready.

The sun was beginning to hurt. He was drying up. His lips felt like balsa.

Perversely, it had been a relief when the engine was shut off. It made his path clearer. He was in the cup. For how long, he couldn’t guess. He was feeling better, definitely. He had an image for his sense of improvement. It was that there was an outline around his body, invisible but real, and that now he was expanding, his self was, to fit it, snugly.

“You are not BDF,” Ray said. He felt he needed to be more resistant. He needed to sow a few pips that would grow up to give pause, hints, hints of threats.

He went on. “I want you to understand something, rra. I am expected in Maun this week. If I am not back there soon there will be an alarm. I am performing a mission for the Ministry of Education …”

Uno cut him short. “Yah, I see your Letter of Remit. It is a lie. It is nothing. Why would you be carrying on with this mission whilst you are in the midst of bandits? Why shall you come out in the midst of burning and fighting? They are burning everything hereabout. They think it is SouthWest coming again.”

That was interesting. Ray was seeing something in the shape of events that he had missed before. The Boers were finished in SouthWest. In fact, there was no SouthWest. It was Namibia. SWAPO had won. The Boer death squads that had been in action there, like koevoet, had been pushed out but had reconstituted themselves as mercenary veteran outfits operating out of floating camps in eastern Angola, where Savimbi was in charge, or up in Zaire. They had numerous sponsors. Some of the nicest governments in the world were sponsoring them, off the books of course. He could imagine Boyle imagining the possibility of a linkup between SWAPO and ISA. He could imagine Boyle selling his paranoia to goromente and/or vice versa. Things were going haywire in Zimbabwe, but Boyle was fixating strictly on Namibia and its discontents, on a country one-twelfth as significant as Zimbabwe. God save us from the geopolitical mind, he thought. Boyle understood nothing when it came to ISA. Ray had done what he could to make him understand. It had been pointless, useless. I know Kerekang, Ray thought. He had a moment of agony caused by the feeling that he himself could sort everything out, given a modicum of power, he could. But he had no power.