Norman Rush - Mortals

But that meant he had to get the whole truth out of Morel. That was his next task. And it was an urgent task, urgent to tackle right away because something might separate them anytime because they were in the hands of others.

Whatever strength he had now, he owed to Morel. That was beside the point.

Ray said, “We have to …”

Morel cut him off, with a sign. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to listen. He was concentrating on listening for cues from outside. There was a consultation going on just outside.

He hated Morel, then. The man was nothing if not self-confident to the point, judging by his expression, of smugness. He knew something. Or he expected something.

And then the doors were inched open and somebody placed two neatly folded blankets on the floor, withdrew, and then a hand reached in and deposited, on the stacked blankets, Morel’s shoes, thick-soled high-quarter shoes, laceless but cleaned up, rudely polished, even.

The shoes were works of orthopedic art. They matched nicely. But clearly the right shoe contained a substantial orthotic. Staring, Ray could make out certain telltale differences in the right shoe, but not anything that would be noticeable when the shoe was being walked around in. And of course such shoes would have cost in the high hundreds, at least. He didn’t know why that depressed him. It did.

Morel’s eagerness to get his shoes on was understandable. He understood it. He was sorry for Morel being pitched into this morass and having to deal with everything from the standpoint of being lopsided.

“What is going on?” Ray asked.

“Guess.”

“I don’t know.” But he did know.

“They want my services. They need me to look at some people.”

“So you bargained.”

“Right. I wanted more. I wanted my toothbrush. Yours too. I didn’t leave you out. But I really wanted my shoes. They knew that.”

“I understand. Of course. This is interesting.” He was wondering if this leverage of Morel’s meant that there would be an extended regime of better treatment and if he would be included in it.

There was another novelty. Someone knocked at the doors before unlocking them.

Two hooded men appeared, invited Morel to come along, and closed and locked the doors with the rough ceremony Ray had earlier gotten accustomed to.

Ray decided to pace around for a while, vigorously, the way Morel had said he should, for exercise. Morel seemed to be saving him, in various ways. That seemed to be the picture. In addition to proposing to their captors that Ray was a mental case, Morel was getting benefactions for him. They both had blankets, now.

It didn’t matter. When Morel came back they would have to discuss Iris.

They had to. And in the meantime he needed to be able to refer to Iris and the Iris question without using her name. Inwardly he was going to refer to it, to her, as … the subject matter. That would make it easier.

Because it was odd about her name because when he said it to himself even in the most passing way he felt the impulse to say it to her, to feel himself addressing her. So this would make life easier.

It was harder being alone, now, waiting. Having company had somehow done that. He was losing the equilibrium he had developed.

There was nothing. For present company he had dust motes and flies, a few flies.

It was remarkable how rapidly it went from cold to hot in the Kalahari. Already the heat was beginning to press. His grasp on the passing of time was not what it should be. Morel had been gone too long, he knew, but how much was too long in minutes? He didn’t know how long it had been.

He kept pacing around dutifully. He detached a splinter from the chewed-up wooden floor and used it to clean under his nails.

He wanted to know what was going to happen next.

Morel was back. He looked ashen, which was bad because there was the subject matter to deal with.

Again the locking up was noisy and emphatic. Everything is a sign, Ray thought.

Morel looked beige, true beige, a shade lighter than his usual tan coloring. He had been through something.

“What?” Ray asked.

“What kind of place is this?”

“You mean the Bird Lodge? Well, it was supposed to be a resort for birdwatching, game drives …”

“Because apparently they had a zoo here, too, a small zoo.”

“That’s right. I remember that. One of the attractions was a private zoo. I don’t know that they ever got around to stocking it.”

“It’s stocked now.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have people in cages. They’re holding people in the zoo cages.” “What, they took you there to treat them? And how many people? And who is it?”

“I don’t know who they are. They’re local, mostly Bakgalagadi, I think. They understood my Setswana okay, but when they spoke it was not the Setswana I’m used to. I don’t know any Sekgalagadi, unfortunately.”

“How many were there, I mean how many are there?”

“Twenty. Four women and the rest men. All the people in the cages are black, of course …” Morel was agitated.

“Calm down,” Ray said.

“There were only black people in the zoo. And I’m in here , with you.”

“I can see how you feel, but look. It’s an accident. The zoo was meant to attract white people, tourists. It was a facility, it was available, it got put to use.”

“I saw three exposure cases. What am I supposed to do? I have nothing to work with.”

“Who are they, though? Did they tell you anything? Are they from the Toromole area …?”

“I couldn’t talk about anything but their symptoms. And that’s all they were allowed to talk about. That was the restriction. I followed orders. There were two of those goons with me. I feel like killing. I feel like killing.”

“I know. I do too.”

“I said they had to get those people indoors. Or at least they had to let them have fires at night, allow that.”

“Will they do it?”

“They laughed at me. I’ll get them, though, somehow I will, I’ll testify against them. If I get the chance.”

“We need to keep calm, come on.”

Morel squeezed his eyes shut and began breathing measuredly. Ray waited.

“Now I’m all right,” Morel said.

But he wasn’t all right. He was in a state of agitation. He was in the corner gesturing violently that Ray should come over and boost him up so that he might examine the ceiling. Escaping was on his mind, clearly.

Ray went over to him. “This isn’t a good idea. If they come in and see us doing this we’re in trouble. Really. I’ve gone over this. We’d need tools to get out through the ceiling. There’s chicken wire, layers of it, up there. And it doesn’t make sense because even if we got out we’d just be here. They watch this place. There’s nowhere to go except the bush and we don’t even have water. They patrol around here at night. You can hear them. Listen to me. Believe me.”

This was bad. He didn’t want to have Morel obsessing on this. There was a subject matter they had to discuss. He needed Morel to be calm, in his right mind, because of the subject matter.

Now Morel was scrutinizing the floorboards, pointlessly.

Ray said, “Tell me anything you observed over in the hotel.”

“What did I observe? I observed they have a problem. They don’t have a functioning medic with this unit. And they have two guys with serious sepsis, infected wounds. I don’t know what’s wrong with the medic. He’s comatose. I think it’s an overdose of some kind, maybe Mandrax. There’s plenty of dagga in the air, by the way, over there. That’s what I observed, this is a messed-up group of people. This is a messed-up operation. It could go any direction you can think of. That’s my sense of it. That’s what I observed.”