Norman Rush - Mortals

When that bout of smoke cleared away Quartus was gone. There was nothing he could do about anything except to get something to cover his nakedness, his groin, with. Because he had the strength to stand, probably, but not until he got dressed, or mostly dressed. Because as he was, he was an exhausted device, a joke, like a jester running around doing tricks when the castle is in flames, falling.

He needed pants, but it could be a diaper, a loincloth like Tarzan’s, except that he would need Tarzan’s secret jockstrap to go with it, the reason Tarzan’s penis had never peeked out during his exertions with the various wild animals giving him no rest.

“Can you get me something?” he asked Kevin, gesturing at his groin.

Kevin wanted to help, Ray could tell. But he was baffled. He looked wildly around.

Kevin left him, strode off to find something for Ray. And Ray croaked at him to keep down. It had been a reflex. But at least for now it was safe to walk around normally so he had made a fool of himself.

Kevin was doing something. He was stripping a pair of bush shorts off one of the corpses.

Kevin presented the shorts to Ray, and turned his back, pointlessly but courteously, pointlessly because he had already seen everything there was to see. But it meant that things were going in the direction of normality. Courtesy was important during bloodshed. He thanked Kevin.

Ray got the shorts on. They weren’t clean and they were loose on him, but they weren’t bloody. It was surprising how much pants helped. He got up. He was a little unsteady. But he wanted to join in.

Kevin asked, “Are you fine?”

Ray said he was, but in fact he didn’t know how he was.

Kevin was hovering around him too much and now he was off fetching one of the parasols Ray had observed in use by the koevoet earlier. They weren’t parasols, they were umbrellas, heavy dark canvas umbrellas. He had had no idea that such a thing as a military umbrella even existed.

“No thank you, my man,” he said to Kevin. And he wouldn’t allow Kevin to hold it over him, either.

But he wanted help getting Strange News off his chest because the tape was burning where it was passed across his bare skin. There was some chemical reaction, something unpleasant, and the tape was cutting into his neck and sweat was biting badly where the flesh was raw.

“Can you help me take this off? I need to take it off now.”

Kevin insisted Ray sit down again, out of the way, against the parapet on the south side of the roof. He began to disentangle the bindings but stopped when he saw that skin was coming away in places as he lifted the tape away.

“This is going to be bleeding, rra.”

“I don’t care. Just pull it off.”

“Ehe, but I’ll pull it fast, like that. Be ready.”

“I am ready. Do it.”

Kevin had a knife, a small thing. He sawed the bindings apart. The bundle fell into Ray’s lap.

“Now I am pulling,” Kevin said, and then he did and it was hot pain again but mainly unbearable around his neck. The tape came away more easily from his back. Certain spots were bad, little hells, on his back. He needed something, some Vaseline, some sort of balm. But at least the weight was gone.

He wanted to get up and join in the effort to scavenge the roof for anything useful for killing. That was what his friends were doing. They were furious because the mounted guns were bolted to wooden skids and there was no time to find tools, wherever they might be, to use in dismantling them, because the building was on fire behind them. Trying to stamp it out had been a gesticulation. They were letting the building go. But it was not something to argue about.

They had the hatch to the end set of stairs up and were pitching whatever they could lay their hands on that they wanted down the stairwell. They had discovered those stairs without him, which was fine, but he had wanted to be the one to lead them to it, or if not that point it out to them, at least.

Ray got up, the bundle under his arm.

He knew what he was going to say to Morel when he saw him. He was going to say You may draw my bath. That seemed very funny to him, but it was also what he wanted most from anyone who could provide it.

Mokopa wanted him to leave the roof, go down the hold, go downstairs. He was being urgent about it.

Ray went over to the stairs. He didn’t want to go. Mokopa was praising him in Setswana and he understood enough to know he didn’t want to go until Mokopa was through doing that. And then he was through. And then Mokopa’s attention was elsewhere, off over toward the pan. He was yelling joyously. People were yelling back. People were coming down into the pan, a line of them, waving. Mokopa came and got him as he was about to descend the stairs and pulled him over to the parapet facing the pan and raised his arm and waved it for him. “Tau” was something Mokopa was saying in reference to him, which Ray knew meant lion, and then it was “Dilau” over and over, which Ray was going to have to ask someone about. It was just another thing on his list. He wondered who anyone thought he was, out there, what the people in the pan thought.

He hated leaving the roof, the scene. He wanted to delay if he could a little. He wanted Morel to appear and see what he had done, or the results of it, see him waving. He wanted to shout along with his friends. So he shouted “Dilau dilau dilau,” picking that word out of Mokopa’s praise of him, and produced unexpected hilarity in the men around him. That was fine. Everything would be revealed.

Someone was calling him from the direction of the fire. Ray couldn’t tell who it was. There were two kinds of darkness over the roof, the darkness of the smoke itself, coming in blurts, and then the darkness of the shadow of the smoke. And there were the buzzards but not only the buzzards. There were smaller birds, some sort of carrion bird specializing in the leftovers of the buzzards and vultures. He knew nothing about birdlife. He had never been interested. And neither had Iris. She had been invited to birdwatch with a birdwatcher and had said to the birdwatcher, What I say is let the birds watch me . The birdwatcher had taken it the wrong way, missing the funniness.

It was Morel calling him, calling and coughing at the same time, bursting through the smoke barrier. He was carrying his medical bag. There were two new witdoeke with him, new to Ray, not from the roof team.

Kevin had Ray by the elbow, which Ray didn’t want, especially now. He pulled himself free and drew himself up.

Morel looked battered and befouled. He had soot on his face and his safari suit was chaotically stained. He was trying to maintain some kind of presence. Ray was sorry for him. I don’t care how I look, Ray thought.

Morel came up to him. He was out of breath. He snorted.

“Christ, look at you,” Morel said.

“I know.”

“We need to clean you up.”

“You may draw my bath now.”

“Oh very funny. What’s wrong with your voice?”

“I’ve been shouting at people.”

“Let me look at your neck. And when did you get new pants?”

“It’s a long story.”

The new witdoeke had been mingling with members of the roof team and now returned to stare at Ray. Morel was beginning to understand. “Dilau,” they said.

“They thought you had a bomb, you ran around like that with that thing. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Roughly.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Roughly.”

“Well do I get any credit?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I gave you the idea.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I gave you the idea when you scared the shit out of me when you walked in with that thing on your chest.”