Norman Rush - Mortals

Ray turned his attention to the barricaded windows on either side of the door. They would have to pluck the fangs of broken glass out of the window frames first, then dislodge and push through the mixed barriers of planking and plywood and furniture as quietly as they could. Clearly some of the planking had been nailed in place, and there was some random interweaving of barbed wire throughout the different assemblages. But the whole project looked extremely improvised to Ray. But there would be noise involved there, too. How they could manage to enter like thieves in the night was the question.

Morel was trying something new. He was knocking softly on the door, very softly, politely. It seemed ludicrous and probably it was going to lead to nothing because he was tapping so softly.

He was knocking and then pausing and putting his ear to the door and then knocking again.

Something was happening just behind them. Ray spun around. What he saw looked like buried clothesline being jerked up into the air. But what he was really seeing was automatic weapons fire ranging for the first time along the area between the hotel and the sheds. Dust hung in the air. Somebody was firing close to them. The way back was threatened now. Morel was not paying attention. He was still knocking politely on the door.

The door opened a crack, and then a little wider, and Morel, beckoning wildly to Ray to follow, slipped inside. Ray was right behind him.

It was dark. They were in a hallway and there in the semidarkness, crowded to one side, was a body of people, Africans. When his eyes adapted he would count them. Morel’s eyes were better than his, obviously, because he was already having exchanges, murmured exchanges in Setswana. These people knew him. He had visited them in the zoo cages. Morel was taking care of business, seeing to things. He seemed to be making sure that the door was securely relocked, for one thing. There were no more than a dozen people in the hallway.

Abruptly he needed to sit down. His knee was torturing him and his boots were uncomfortable. It was odd how pain went away during periods of excitement and fear and came back when you felt safer. He had to rest while he refilled, was the way he was thinking of it, while he refilled with his solid self. Outside in the open with death in the air and no cover to speak of, he had felt light and empty, untethered, light on his feet but inwardly light too. Sitting against the wall, he felt better by the moment, heavier.

The air was foul. Ray thought he could smell blood. The word ngaka was going around, meaning Morel was being identified as a doctor. That would make him popular. Doctors are always useful, Ray thought.

Ray felt useless. It would be helpful if he could get the right metaphor to apply to the life he was going to lead post-Iris. That would strengthen him. So far the images he had come up with were feeble. One of them had been to see his life as the plates and glasses and cutlery that miraculously remained undisturbed when the magician jerked the tablecloth out from under everything. It was an image that had no force. He thought, This is what you’ll do: You will think of your life in panels with one panel not necessarily having anything to do with the others. What he meant was that each panel in the triptych or whatever a four-framed or five-framed set of panels should be called, would be judged totally individually. If the first panel was beautiful and was by Maxfield Parrish the point would be to have the appropriate reaction to that and pay no attention to the next panel, which happened to be by Hieronymus Bosch depicting the same subjects as in the first panel except that in this panel they were in hell and it would be fine to be horrified. And then there would be the next panel.

He could see well enough to count the crowd. There were twelve people, men and women, no children, lined up pressed to the wall like caryatids. He thought, Hey that’s how useful I am, able to supply the right term for these poor bastards at a single bound, caryatids.

An old woman came over to him. He said, “Dumela, mma,” and she said nothing and he said “Dumela” again and she said nothing. And then he said, “I am useless,” and again she said nothing.

This hallway, at least, was in the hands of the victims and not the villains, so Morel had been right. Or he had been right. One of them had been right. He didn’t know which one. He should be doing more. He should get up immediately. He had the impulse to shake hands with the caryatids, do something to reassure them because they were obviously frightened. They were in terror. He could tell that much. He made himself get to his feet.

Hell is where you don’t know anyone, he thought. Alarmingly, there was a white face floating toward him from the depths of the hallway. It was smiling. It was a face he should know.

He did know the face. It was Dwight Wemberg the long-lost coming toward him, the man driven mad by not being able to get his wife out of the ground, dead wife out of the ground. He looked dead himself. He was emaciated and oddly dressed. He was wearing a headband, unless it was a bandage, and he was in fatigues spotted with filth. He was carrying a rifle. He was smiling inordinately.

Ray didn’t know what to do. There was the feeling that he should be reporting to someone that Wemberg was alive. But that was easy to dismiss because it was part of the past way of doing things. Boyle had been desperate to find Wemberg.

“Hello, man,” he said to Wemberg.

“Nice to see you. Why are you here?” Wemberg seemed happy.

“Well I was doing stuff for the ministry and these bastards caught me. I was doing site studies.”

“Our boys are the best,” Wemberg said.

“What boys?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll be okay. We got these guys trapped on the roof. We came down and you know what we did? We came in and blew their fuel pump to hell before they knew anything. Two of our boys. Anyway.”

“Dwight, you don’t look well.”

“Well you know what, I lost a lot of blood. But you know what, it’s good to see you. But what you better do and better do it fast is put one of these on.” He touched his headband.

“Okay,” Ray said.

“And the doctor too. You know why, because that’s how we know you’re with us, so we don’t shoot you.”

Morel came over to them. He exchanged greetings with Wemberg, bemusedly.

Ray said, “So Dwight is saying we need to put some kind of headband on, to identify us.”

Wemberg said, “Not headband, witdoek . That’s the correct term. Witdoek.”

Ray said, “Okay, fine.”

“You can find something around here.”

“You remember Dwight, don’t you, Davis?”

“From Gaborone. Sure.”

“Well I guess we can gather he’s joined up with Kerekang’s people, somehow. It’s pretty amazing. This is a war.”

Wemberg was nodding vigorously. He said, “Kerekang is here. He’s leading us. This is koevoet’s main base, you know. In this country.”

“You need to sit down,” Morel said to Wemberg.

“There’s no chairs,” Wemberg said.

“We’ll find something for you,” Morel said.

Wemberg said, to both of them, “You knew my wife. You know about that. What they did to me.”

Ray said, “I met Alice. And I think my wife knew her.”

“Your wife is Iris. I know her. I know you love your wife. You do. So you see how I feel. They wouldn’t tell me where she was buried at first, you know. Not even that.”

“I know,” Ray said.

“She’s asleep,” Wemberg said.

Ray nodded. It was disturbing. It was grotesque, too, seeing Wemberg standing there armed, injured, involved in killing. Obviously losing his wife had dislodged Wemberg from his normal life and left him exposed to violent propositions and outcomes and urgings. Pay attention to this, Ray thought. He wondered what it meant for him, if it was cautionary. He wanted to say something comforting to Wemberg but nothing was coming to him. Ray felt a tortured moment of envy. Wemberg’s love life was over, all his love-struggles, all the striving to get and keep one excellent person. All life longs for the last day was somebody’s line. That was exhaustion speaking. He would be fine.