Norman Rush - Mortals

“There’s another pallet you can sleep on. In fact there are three more, so you can take your choice. It’s cold, so you have to fold a pallet in two and sleep in the fold. It’s easier if you jam yourself into a corner.

“And let’s see. Okay, you said Iris is okay, so when were you in touch with her last? Because now she’ll be worrying about you too, won’t she?” He let his words come out a little more darkly than he’d intended.

“No she’s all right. I talked to her from Maun two three days ago.” Ray could see that Morel wanted to rip through any matter relating to Iris at high speed. He understood why. He had a secret. He was nervous. Too bad for him.

Ray wanted the light to come for his own reasons. He wanted to see Morel with the eyes, the eyes of what, a cuckold. He wanted to see what she was seeing that he had missed. This was not a good subject matter for the moment at hand. Hell was another man’s cock going into your beloved’s cunt. That was the long and the short of it, so to speak. He had to have light so he could see guilt, the signs and traces. He was not going to accuse Morel of anything in the total dark and let him get away with anything. He was going to get him in the light of day and get the answer clear as hell and see it.

Morel was arranging his pallet. And he was giving a brief travelogue that was uninteresting to Ray, his difficulty in renting a vehicle, his cleverness in certain situations, all boring and all beside the point.

There was a silence when Morel was settled, but a short one.

Morel’s voice was coming closer. He said, “You know who these people are, don’t you? You do. You know what’s going on up here. You know what this is.”

“I have an idea,” Ray said.

“You know what they want,” Ray said.

“I have an idea.”

Now he could hardly hear what Morel was saying. He had to ask him to speak up.

“Do you think it’s safe for us to talk? I mean, I know we have to keep our voices down. But what do you think?”

“You mean have they got this place wired? Don’t worry. They’re not even taping the interrogations. You don’t know how primitive this operation is. They’ve got their hands full. They have to get out of here fast. They know that.

“They want to get one man, Kerekang. That’s all they want. They think I can help them with that, but they’re afraid to go too far with me because I’m white and they figure people are going to be looking for me. Like you, for example.

“They’re not going to go too hard on anybody white.”

“Oh that makes me feel good,” Morel said.

“Don’t worry. You’re white. You’re included. You’re American. To them you’re white.”

“Listen …”

“Doctor, don’t bother.”

Morel had moved his pallet closer yet. “We should keep our voices down, though, just out of prudence … right?”

“I don’t think it matters. But let’s do that.

“And I’m sorry you got into this. You were saying how you found me. I’m sorry if I wasn’t listening. Say it again. So go ahead.” He needed to be fair to Morel, who was just newly into this nightmare that he himself had had a chance to get used to. He had taken a risk to come looking for his lover’s husband. Probably he’d expected to fail creditably but instead this had happened and he was in hell, for his trouble. Probably he had just wanted credit for a good try. That could be unfair. There is a kind of heroism that stupidity or ignorance allows to happen, Ray thought.

Morel wanted to keep on conversing, or if not conversing, just talking, describing his situation to himself, trying to do that over and over until he had something he could accommodate. Because not everything he was saying was being said for Ray’s benefit. He was being repetitive. And he had again moved his pallet closer.

Ray was getting desperate about sleep. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful or inhospitable, if that was the word.

Morel was expressing himself in fragments.

“I drove up to Maun. That was easy. Your assistant is still around there, waiting for you, I guess. He got through to Iris the one time. By the way the whole top of the country is out of commission … Emergency area. They keep saying it’s temporary and being vague about bandits coming down from Caprivi, some bullshit story … You know this. So I found him, and it was a problem because he wanted to come along. He just gave me bare basics, where he’d seen you last and so on. I don’t know if I should have brought him. I didn’t want the responsibility. Also I had what he could tell me. Also I didn’t think this would take long … I don’t know why. So I came. I’d had to fight once already with your wife about coming along, big fight, so I was … I’d fought on the issue and I said no to him. You hear what I’m saying …”

“Doctor, I do but we’ve got to sleep, if we can. I do, anyway.”

“I know, yeah. And they don’t tell you anything. These people. They don’t tell you anything.

“They tied me up. Blindfold. But I had to come up here.”

Ray thought, Sure you did because you love her, you fucking miserable what, cock . He said, “So you came up Route 14 and they snagged you at Nokaneng. I don’t know why they didn’t just turn you around, though. Did you use my name, mention me? Bad if you did. Did you?”

“I did.”

Morel didn’t know it, but his voice was being studied by Ray, because there was going to be a discussion, an interrogation, about Iris that would let the truth escape, get it out. That was coming. He was getting a base reading of Morel and how he sounded when he was delivering true things, trivial things. Morel would try to lie. It wouldn’t work.

“I shouldn’t have,” Morel said.

It was clear as a bell that the one thing Morel was never going to want to admit was the truth about his cock and Iris. But Ray would get the truth however he had to, keeping in mind that they needed each other, he and Morel, to survive this, survive koevoet, get out okay, if possible.

Morel would defend his innocence with his life. It didn’t matter. The answer was there, burning. I have my ways, Ray thought.

“They took my boots,” Morel said. He could barely say it.

Ray said, “They took mine too. They tend to do that.” He was sorry for Morel. He was going to be hobbling around. One of his legs was shorter than the other and it was going to be humiliating and ugly. Ray wanted to say something that would help, but there was nothing to say. Pity was his enemy.

It was colder than it had been recently, unless he was wrong and it was just that his reserves were depleted. He had to fortify himself with sleep. Morel had to shut up.

“Listen,” Morel said, being relentless.

“We’ve got to sleep. And I mean now. It takes work.”

“Yeah, but listen. One thing I have to tell you tonight. I’ll tell you why I have to. We don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re in charge. They could separate us anytime, right? She sent me up to tell you this.”

Ray was rigid. The secret was burning its way out into the open. He could smell the smoke. He was afraid. He wasn’t ready. It was asking too much. He was thirsty. He was clenching up and it was making his wounds blaze. He would prefer to be up and around when the news came. That would be his preference. He had no strength.

“Listen, this is what I have to tell you. She wanted me to tell you personally, if she couldn’t herself …”

“What , please,” Ray said, his voice unnatural.

“Your brother died two weeks ago. I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” was all he could come out with. He was in agony at the news and at the interposition of this news over the secret yet to come, to be extracted. Life is pain, he thought. He had taken too long to do what he could, what he should have, for his brother. Iris had pushed him, but it had been too late.