Norman Rush - Mortals

Ray went to stand by the door, keeping his back to Morel and his business.

There was some significant flatus. Ray wondered if silence might not be less kind than doing some patter.

He said, “Your bowels shall sound as an harp. Coleridge.”

Morel was not having his easiest evacuation, Ray couldn’t help but gather. This was going to be a little embarrassing for a man whose religion was regularity. He had gotten that impression from Iris, who could be raffish and funny about the lower self and its discontents. “Must you fart so?” was something she had said to him in mock pique. It was hard to say exactly why that had seemed so funny. It still did.

He said, “I’ll tell you something. This is in the category of trivia from my history with Iris, our life. I just mention it. Most of the places we lived in had the tub and the toilet in the same room, not like here in Botswana. So when it would happen that Iris needed to go and I happened to be in the tub, we developed a protocol. I would sing some nonsense to overwhelm any sounds that conflicted with her … her darlingness. And of course I would keep my eyes closed throughout.”

“Do you want to sing something? Go right ahead.”

Ray thought of doing “Carrickfergus,” and then of doing the national anthem. He had to make a quick choice, if he was going to do something so antic. There was a feeling of sacrilege about the proposition of doing one of the songs he had actually sung when Iris was on the pot. “Greensleeves” was one of them. Singing it had been a jocular sort of choice, a sequel to conversations they’d had about whether that was the most beautiful song in the world or whether “Amazing Grace,” Iris’s choice, was, or whether “Down by the Salley Gardens,” his candidate, was. All at once any impulse to sing was gone. There was nothing he could think of that would help, that would get him anything, in this situation, his wife’s lover on the pot.

Morel was straining. Briefly Ray wondered if a flight-or-fight reaction had played some part in Morel’s urgency, the urge to evacuate being one of the accompaniments of the physical mobilization for panic flight. I would like to think that, so it’s probably wrong, Ray thought.

Humanly, he felt for Morel. Doctors hated to be sick. A holistic doctor would hate to be constipated. No, he couldn’t sing. That was out. But he could recite something. Almost anything would do.

“I can’t sing, but I’ll recite something. I don’t feel like singing.”

Morel grunted something Ray chose to take as positive.

“I’m not going to sing. But you might be interested to know that her choice for the most beautiful song of all time is ‘Amazing Grace.’ We love that song. It might be the kind of thing you want to know, for the future. Anyway.”

He cleared his throat and waited for the right piece to recite to suggest itself. It should be one of her favorites. In fact, it should be her all-time favorite, “Dover Beach.” The poem could still move her toward tears. Or at least it had, the last time he had read it to her, which had been when? It had been pretty long ago, maybe as long ago as their vacation in the San Juans. “Dover Beach” was the perfect choice.

He began. “ ‘Dover Beach.’

“The sea is calm tonight ,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits … on the French coast the light

Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand ,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay .

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch’d sand ,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling ,

At their return, up the high strand ,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin ,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.”

He paused. He was shaky on the next segments. He plunged through them anyway, raising his voice even higher. There had been errors. He didn’t care.

This last part he knew cold. He would make it as close to song as he could. He had tears in his eyes, he was interested to note. He wondered if this poem had ever been set to music. Take this, he thought.

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams ,

So various, so beautiful, so new ,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light ,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight ,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

That was it. That was it. That was her favorite poem and what had she done and what had he , the man at stool, to use a good English Literature archaism, done, and what was that man thinking right now, this minute? Ray thanked English Literature for what, for being or giving him a weapon.

Now, stupidly, he wanted something from Morel.

He said, “That was her favorite poem.”

Morel said something indeterminate.

“Still is , I assume,” Ray said.

There was an outburst, Morel saying, “ Oh shut the fuck up . You’re an idiot. Would you consider shutting up?”

Ray knew why it was happening. “Dover Beach” was about fidelity. So reciting it had been a form of rubbing it in. Still, it was what had come to him and in fact it was her favorite poem.

“Sorry. I was trying to be helpful.”

“You never shut up, is the problem. You’re an idiot.”

This would pass. Morel was forgetting who was the injured party and who wasn’t.

Ray waited while Morel finished up and reorganized himself.

“I only used half the paper,” Morel said, pushing the unused paper into its previous crack in the wall.

“Thanks.”

“You’re not an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“I am an idiot. I beg to differ.”

“And by the way, My Bowels shall sound as an Harp isn’t Coleridge.”

“Yes it is. It’s in the Notebooks.”

“It may be, but it comes from the Bible. Isaiah. That’s where he got it.”

It was a small thing, but Ray hated it anyway. He felt shown-up at the professional level. He was an idiot.

“I won’t argue with you.”

“I’m right, believe me.”

Sounds of glass breaking came from the direction of the main building. It was possible it meant nothing. There was no sequel.

Morel placed himself against the wall, leaning on it a little, his arms crossed on his chest. Ray sat against the opposite wall, on his pallet. He wanted to be in a standing position for what was coming, but the prospect of finally getting the truth had made his knees weak, as in the cliché. He would get up when he could.

“I’m sorry about that,” Morel said, gesturing toward the bucket. There was no need. It was the way it was.

Morel said, “One way we could go with this would be for you to tell me just how you know about Iris and me. You say you already know. That would save a lot of time. And I’d be interested.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“I see. And why would that be? Because it would reveal, what do you call it, ‘sources and methods’?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because I was lying. I knew you’d think I had tapes or videos. That’s why I said it. I sort of regret it. But when I said I knew, it wasn’t that. It was signs and indicators I kept trying to put together to mean anything else and they didn’t, I couldn’t. It was partly a literary exercise, in a way. The only story that made sense was the painful one. I don’t know what to say to you. I had a premonition about this and she agreed to an insane compact with me. She was going to tell me if she was going to cheat, or if she was tempted, warn me so I could do what, something. But the horse was halfway out of the barn by then and when she agreed to it she was already halfway into being in bed with you, dreaming in that direction anyway. But she thought she was in good faith, I don’t doubt it for a minute. She was in the rapids and she didn’t know it.”