Norman Rush - Mortals

He was going to kick Quartus’s table over.

He stood in front of the table and kicked as hard as he could, overturning it. He liked doing it. He was thinking of uprighting the table and kicking it over once again when he realized something.

Quartus’s chair had been drawn up to the table. Visible on the chair seat was the thing he had come for, he was sure, Strange News , sitting there, a stack of pages, thick rubber bands around its middle.

He collapsed on the manuscript, clutching it to him.

He was seized with the need to protect the manuscript immediately, shield it, disguise it.

He needed fabric, sheets, curtains, a blanket, anything he could wrap the manuscript in, doubling and tripling the wrapping, folding it in. And in addition he wanted to strap it to his body if he could, but in a way that wouldn’t be noticeable. He knew he was being insane.

He knelt down with the manuscript, next to the candle.

All of the manuscript seemed to be there. He bent the top half of the bundle back and riffled the pages slowly.

One enraging thing leapt out at him. Quartus or someone had made notes in Afrikaans here and there in the text. There were checkmarks and arrows connecting certain entries. He wanted to tell Morel.

He calmed himself. The markings were a sort of defilement, but if the original entries were still legible that would be okay, really, he would be able to accept that. He would have to.

He had to find something to wrap the manuscript in. He got up and wandered along the wall, poking around among the oddments collected there, until, occultly, his fingers found an edge of cloth jammed between pieces of furniture. It seemed promising.

He tugged it free. Something fell and shattered back in the tangle of furniture. He didn’t care.

It was a bedspread, not especially savory, a tan chenille bedspread stiff in spots, and stained, but usable. It had been employed to sop up something unpleasant, but it would be fine.

Dirang and the old man helped him fold it into a square. He placed the manuscript in the center and delicately wrapped it up. He wondered what Dirang and the old man were thinking, if they had some idea that this was an item of some value. They could see that he was excited. In fact he was more than excited. He was happy. He wondered what Rex would think if he could see what he was doing and feel how he was feeling. It was funny because he had been assuming that his happiest moments in this life were probably behind him. Now I need rope, he thought.

There was a row of open boxes and cartons in the space between Quartus’s chair and the barricaded window. There should be something. Torturers needed rope.

Ray hauled two boxes over into the candlelight.

The first box he looked into held an unhelpful olla podrida of doorknobs, serving trays, jars of nails, screws, and glazier’s points, and no cord or rope or twine. The doorknobs could be hurled at an enemy, in a pinch, during a fray, though they would miss the enemy and he would just hurl them back with greater accuracy. But rocks were scarce in the Kalahari, which was a reason to not forget the doorknobs. Anything can be a weapon, he thought. A sigh is a weapon, can be, a pause before answering a particular question can be, an averted glance can be, everything can be a weapon, your beloved angel of a child can grow up and kill you for nothing, for fun, he thought. It was something that happened from time to time. A handful of glazier’s points flung into a ruffian’s face when he least expected it might be effective for two seconds. He set a jar of them aside.

He thought, Rightly considered, the world is a congeries of weapons, an assemblage. He had seen a movie where a gangster visits a deadly enemy after being searched up and down and stabs his victim in the eye with a wing of his reading glasses, and kills him.

He had to move on, and more rapidly. His helpers were looking oddly at him and he knew why. They were concerned. He was hugging the bulky parcel containing his brother’s soul, would be one way to put it, a sentimental way.

He couldn’t keep sitting on the floor, either. He got up and sat in Quartus’s chair while the process of looking into boxes continued. His legs were weak. It looked like he couldn’t let go of the manuscript, which was true. He wanted another box brought to him by his bearers, which was not what he meant, he didn’t mean they were bearers.

He had to stop using his main force to clutch Strange News to his chest. There was war in heaven, meaning what was going on on the roof. It was thunderous up there again. He wanted to explain about Strange News to his helpers, but how could he? It was not a great thing. An airliner hauling its roar through the void was a fragment that had stuck with him. It wasn’t great. In riffling through the pages he had glimpsed Rex’s odd little poem, he supposed it was a poem anyway, A perfect Specimen of Surprise / would be to discover / on your wife’s Buttocks / handwriting, in ballpoint pen, of a minute Size . It was obvious why that would have embedded itself in his mind even if Quartus hadn’t brought it up, but there was nothing great about it either. It was silly.

He was looking through another box. It was devoted to plumbing-related items. There were lengths of pipe, joints, tap handles, cans of joint compound, rolls of duct tape. The tape was giving him an idea. It was thick and metallic and extremely sticky, still.

Ray took his shirt off. He would summon the old man to help him. There was plenty of tape. There was roll after roll of it. He was going to tape Strange News to his person. Then he would put his shirt back on over it and continue participating in the affray. He would have the use of both hands. Affray was one of those words that was vanishing from the language. The makers of the English language would be appalled, whoever they had been. There was nothing to be done about it. He was capable of feeling sorry for the English language as an entity, at odd moments, if anyone wanted a perfect specimen of sentimental stupidity.

The tape was very tough, but they had the hunting knife and could use that to segment it up as they needed. He thanked God for the knife.

He decided to hold his arms straight up above his head, as a signal. He did, but saw he was producing confusion. What he wanted was for the old man and Dirang to stop what they were doing and address his new idea, help bind the manuscript to his body. He looked like he was surrendering to these two, in all probability. He knew what he needed them to do. He was going to tape the manuscript to his chest. He had reached that decision because if it was taped to his back the manuscript might slide down or fall off and it would be more awkward to reach around and catch it than if he had it right in front where he could grab it.

“Thusa,” he said. Thusa meant help. It was so fucking annoying and unnecessary, the multiplicity of mutually uncomprehending cultures. He wanted to say in Setswana Put this on me or Strap this on me and he couldn’t remember how. Stress was bleaching out his Setswana lexicon, such as it was. He would have to use signs, gestures.

They understood. He made the bundle as tight as he could, first, and then lapped tape endlessly around it until it looked like a block of armor. He held it to his chest. They understood what he wanted.

His helpers exhausted roll after roll of tape, looping the bindings creatively around his neck, his shoulders, his thorax. He had to keep his lungs inflated while his helpers worked because once the bundle was firmly affixed he didn’t want it to be difficult to get his breath, because he would be participating in the denouement of this fray, whatever it might be. He stood up, to test his burden.