Norman Rush - Mortals

“You mean we scramble out and split up and find a ditch or something out in the veld or something to get behind and wait, wait until this is over one way or another?”

“That would be one way to go.” And it was the best way, from the standpoint of reason, Reason, as his brother would have put it, with his capitalizations, Reason, his poor fuck of a brother, his poor brother. The problem was that there was a slight misunderstanding on Morel’s part about Ray’s vocational qualifications for this kind of situation. He had hated his brother and failed his brother and now his brother was dead. But the truth was that he had no special operations training addressing anything like this hellfuckshit hell going on. But that was his own problem.

Morel began kicking at the wall as hard as he could, with his good foot. Ray got up, but before joining him in his effort, scrutinized the crack structure developing in the wall, the crackage, as it was undoubtedly referred to among professionals in what, walls.

He thought, We have to kick scientifically because we are wearing ourselves out.

“Stop,” Ray said.

“Why?”

“We need to study the crackage so we bang at the right spot. Which would be right there.”

“The crackage,” Morel said, dryly.

“Right, the crack pattern.”

“It’s very important for you to have the right word for everything. Hey look, frankly I think you made that up.”

“I may have. I may have . I like the right descriptor being applied to the correct object. Vocabulary is important. Iris is the same way, about words. You’ll see. The working vocabulary of Americans is half what it was in 1950. That’s horrifying. I have students in this country with better vocabularies than Americans their age, English vocabulary.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Morel said, which infuriated Ray.

“Of course you do, you’re not deaf. And don’t ever use that expression again. Iris will think you’re an asshole. What I was saying is this, and I am being helpful, and it’s that you are going to come under a lot of pressure to play Scrabble, if you haven’t already. She loves it. I wasn’t good about it. She stopped trying to get me to play, over time. You may wind up playing Scrabble a lot, if you know what’s good for you. It’s just a word to the wise. About Scrabble my excuse was that I was doing English morning to night at St. James’s and that I wanted surcease from English. It was a mistake and we all make mistakes and sometimes a lot of small mistakes turn into a gigantic mistake.” He felt okay. He hoped he had created for Morel a vista of postprandial board games being part of his utopia with Iris. He would bet that crackage was there in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Morel was going ahead without him, jerking and hauling with his hands at the wall in the wrong place, according to Ray’s judgment, when an astonishingly large segment of the wall, a jagged huge rind, came away.

They were free to go.

Morel said, “Okay, we have to leave now, and I think we should stick together whatever, out there.” It was an appeal, but it was unnecessary because Ray had already decided it would have to be that way. They would have to be brothers, temporarily. The man had a short leg.

Ray said, “It’s a deal. That’s the only way. Right.”

“Okay, good.”

Ray didn’t want to say what he was going to say next. It was going to sound like an ultimatum. It wasn’t. It was just a necessity. He said, “Okay, but look, first we need to get into the hotel to get my brother’s manuscript, if we can. I hope you don’t mind.”

Morel was going to object. Ray didn’t care.

“That makes no sense,” Morel said unhappily.

“I know it. But I have to. Look, you don’t have to go in with me. In fact, wait here if you want to, which is not exactly the protocol we agreed on. But that’s where I’m going first, if it’s physically possible, if it looks like I can get in. So wait here, I’ll go, I’ll come back, and then we jump out together. I have to try. Because I don’t know where we’re going to end up, how far from here we’re going to end up, hiding or whatever we do. The whole place could burn down while we’re watching it, burn from a distance, you see. Man, I have to.”

“Okay then that’s first thing. We’ll do it together. I need to find my bag, anyway. I think I saw it in the torture chamber over there. I’d like to get my car keys, too. We’ll try it together.”

The wall made a noise, a brief grinding noise, and they both jumped back in unison, like a dance team, Ray thought. They were abashed about doing that.

They had to get going. The wall was rotten. There was new crackage showing. They were both thinking the same thing, that the wall was unstable and something could happen. The wall could come down, the roof with it, they could be sitting up to their necks in thatch attracting attention.

Morel was afraid. It had helped that they had agreed to stick together out in the maelstrom, but he was still breathing fast. It was not going to be possible to have a blueprint for every step.

Morel was gathering himself. He wanted to act well, outside. They both did. They both knew that the other might be the main surviving witness to how he had comported himself at the very end.

They had to go quickly. Ray had the urge to say, Shall we dance?

Morel wanted to lead. That was all right.

Morel was hesitating over whether to go out feet first or head first. He decided on head first. The clearance was just adequate. He proceeded very carefully, seeking to have as little contact with the wall as he could manage, put as little strain on it as possible, as he squeezed through. It was because the wall seemed delicate.

Ray prepared to follow. Morel was out. Before Ray could enter, Morel’s hand appeared in the gap. He seemed to think Ray could use help, this time. Morel was all right. He was doing his best. Ray hissed at him, to move him back. Ray got through very neatly. They were free.

Morel wanted something. He wanted to shake hands. They did. Morel was vibrating, vibrating, not trembling. He was wound up. He was gesturing about something. He wanted to say something in Ray’s ear, apparently.

“I think we should whisper,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“If we have to communicate, we should. But mostly we should use gestures, watch each other. Give signals.”

Ray didn’t want to laugh, but it was funny. Morel needed a manual, a new manual for each fifteen minutes. And it was funny to worry about being overheard in the pandemonium unfolding around them. He was adapting to the steady sound of firing. The most concentrated popping sounds were coming from the front side of the hotel, around the corner from them, to their right, and it was likeliest that the shooters would be in the second-story rooms, or on the roof. That was something to keep in mind. If there were shooters moving around on the roof the chances that they would be spotted were better, that had to be communicated to Morel.

The smoke was thick. He was grateful for it but they had to get away from it. His eyes were stinging. He rubbed them. When he opened his eyes, Morel was gone.

It was nothing. Morel had dashed off to look at the dead man. He was crouching over him.

Ray went after Morel full of irritation. They had an understanding.

But he knew what Morel was doing. He was being Hippocratic. He was a doctor. All I need to hear right now is that the guy is alive and wants his boots back, Ray thought. But he wasn’t alive. Half his neck was gone. Ray should have mentioned that to Morel earlier. Morel was asserting himself, making the point that he was a doctor and so this was the first thing that had to be done.