Norman Rush - Mortals

“I want to tell you I’m sorry about it, with Iris, but I can’t. I have to be truthful.”

“You’re not sorry because it’s so wonderful, with my wife. You want her. You love her.”

“I do.”

“I’ll see if there’s more tea.” There was nothing to do with his feelings of fury and betrayal and inadequacy. Ray had been preoccupied with confrontation, with inducing the truth by allowing her the chance to be shameful and lie to him. Morel was thinking about how she might be doing, thinking more about how she might be doing without her new lover than without her old lover, it had to be said, but still.

Kevin was keeping the fire going.

Ray asked, “Can we make some more tea?”

Kevin leapt up to attend to it. Ray thought, He would make a nice son. But of course he already was somebody’s son, somebody else’s. There was nothing he could do to protect Kevin from the hazards of war. He would die bloodily. What can I do? Ray thought. It was late in the day. He could hardly put himself in the position of trying to make special provisions, arrangements, for everybody he liked among the witdoeke and not for the others, the ones he barely knew. And there was the further fact that he was not in a position to do anything, alter anything, provide any kind of alternative. And when it came to alternatives, he wasn’t clear what his comrades and friends were planning to do next, what he would be trying to think of an alternative to . He had to talk to Kerekang. Every food can in the faux cave was empty. Fighters were already asleep or preparing to sleep. Some had sleeping bags and some had scabrous, filthy blankets and quilts. No pillows were in evidence. Kerekang was still outside somewhere, off on his own.

Kevin had put too much water in the pot. It was going to take too long to boil, especially now that the fire was in decline. Water was precious in the desert. He couldn’t tip water out of the pot and onto the earth. He knew he couldn’t. He waited until Kevin’s attention was elsewhere and poured the excess water into a can and drank it down. Shortly, the water boiled.

Ray went to Morel. “Here’s tea,” he said.

“I was out of line,” Morel said.

“That’s all right.”

“I was. And there’s another thing I want to say.”

“Please don’t.”

“No, I want to say this, then that should do it. I didn’t know you. I didn’t like you. I knew you were in the agency. So there was that. It put you in a category I’m not proud about. I had my objections to the agency and what it represents, and you know what, I still do. And I don’t want to make an excuse out of it, but it did go on the scale. It added to the feeling I had that you didn’t deserve her. Everybody knows you’re in the agency …”

“I think you told me that once before. I had the pleasure of hearing that when we were locked up.”

“Well, I didn’t know you. That’s all I want to say.”

“Now you love me. You think I’m great.”

“I’ll just say I’m sorry I didn’t know you better. It’s cold.”

If what he was hearing was an apology, it was only making Ray feel worse. What was he supposed to do with this information? He couldn’t think of a thing.

“If you’re cold, come on. We have to figure out where to sleep. I’m not going back into that cave. I don’t know what’s in there, and I notice nobody is fighting to use the space. Come on, doctor.”

“You’re supposed to keep a fire going as a preventive against lions and jackals, aren’t you?” Morel asked.

“Yes, and leopards.”

Ray noticed something. There were five stones on Wemberg’s grave. Morel had been active, doing that, waiting for his tea. Ray was grateful. It was a gesture. To make a serious cairn that would pose some kind of real barrier to carrion eaters, energy would be required that neither of them had.

They went back to the fire. Someone had gathered stacks of wood, for the night. Probably it had been the exemplary Kevin, who was now lying down, sharing a blanket with someone Ray had not been introduced to. There were so many of them. He counted ten sleepers by this fire.

Kerekang was away. Kevin was asleep. Ray didn’t want to call the disorganized or unorganized state of things at the center of the band of fighters dysfunctional. He had to believe that there were organizing templates that were expressing themselves in this casual scene, people sleeping, smoking dagga, that made sense. Meetings must have taken place earlier, when he was out of it, and decisions reached that left everyone in a relaxed, recreational mood. But things looked askew, lax.

“Stay by the fire, doctor,” Ray said.

Morel sat down and mechanically began to feed branches into the fire, bending them in the attempt to break them into shorter lengths but giving up when they didn’t break because they were too green and setting them across the fire anyway.

“I’m going to get Setime,” Ray said.

“Who?” Morel asked.

“Kerekang. Don’t use too much wood. Don’t use too much at once.”

“I’m cold.”

“I know you are. But still don’t.”

At first he couldn’t find Kerekang anywhere. Ray went entirely around the monadnock without finding him. And then it occurred to him that Kerekang might be up on the monadnock itself. And, probing with the torch, he located him, at the summit, sitting and smoking.

Ray hailed him. Kerekang signaled vaguely back. Ray decided to take it as an invitation.

Everything is too much, he thought. He had to find a route through and over a mound of boulders ranging in size from medicine balls to very large refrigerators. And he had to do it with one hand, because he had to keep the torch in use, and one good leg. And he had to avoid various thorn-bearing types of vegetation. And he had to be alert for whatever animal menaces there might be, scorpions, snakes, although they had eaten whatever snakes the monadnock hosted that they could find, presumably. There was a way up, obviously, because Kerekang had found it.

He began his climb.

“I am coming, rra, with difficulty,” he called out. He was hoping that Kerekang might be moved to come down and give him a hand up.

The monadnock was more bell-shaped than pyramidal, much less pyramidal than it looked from ground level. He was at the top, with Kerekang. The climb had been mildly difficult, but he had found what appeared to be a pathway, although who had pioneered it and who would ever use it constituted mysteries. The pathway had circumvented the large monoliths or gone behind them winding steadily upward to the top and the stars. The night was moonless.

Ray had to take a moment for the view. It was beautiful, he supposed, perfect in its emptiness, an endless flat surround dotted with small, isolate, gnarled trees. They must have come a good distance because there was no sign of burning or smoke from the direction of Ngami Bird Lodge, or from what he assumed was the direction it lay in, what was left of it. The smoke would be showing black against the stars unless it was all too far away, or unless the burning was over with.

Kerekang had brought a camp stool up the monadnock with him. He had been sitting, smoking, smoking dagga. Ray didn’t like that. It was too continuous. Ray found a place to sit, on a patch of sand with a boulder to set his back against. He scratched at the sand before lowering himself onto it. The idea was to dislodge creatures like scorpions.

The stars were distracting they were so brilliant.

One thing in the landscape was bothersome to Ray. He could just make out another monadnock, of about the same caliber, in the distance, to the north. He was worried that he might not be able to find the right monadnock when he came back, or more likely when he sent someone out, someone hired, to retrieve Wemberg and, while they were at it, the other two bodies buried down below them.