Norman Rush - Mortals

Then Five came to him. He didn’t want this Five. Five was Iris saying to him apropos of nothing, saying, and looking steadily at him when she said it, to separate it from everything else that had preceded it, saying I know this sounds stupid but one thing I want in this life is to have nothing to do with … with cruelty. She had looked at him as though he was supposed to make some kind of vow back to her. This was Five, and it was Iris being suspicious of his work or her notion of his work. It was an assault. He resented it. That was Five.

Ray was enraged. This was reckless, and Victor had never been reckless before. This was sheer recklessness.

He was enraged as much at his own flux of panic as at the stupid act that had provoked it. There was an obvious flaw in the system he had developed for Victor. He had told Victor never to call him on the phone. So the flaw was that if something turned up that Ray needed to see urgently at some point between his scheduled visits, Victor was stuck with waiting. This had never happened before. Victor was obviously taking himself more and more seriously in his work for Ray. And then it had probably been a mistake to increase his remuneration so sharply the last time. No doubt Victor was seeing Morel as a treasure trove he had to plunder expeditiously before all of Morel’s goods had moved through.

Ray went to the door of his office to reassure himself that he was locked in. The curtains were secure across both windows. He returned to his desk.

He turned on the tensor lamp and again sorted through the contents of the packet Victor had so goddamned recklessly gotten a courier to bring to him, paid a courier to bring to him, a mobashi. Probably that was the dumbest part of a dumb maneuver. The courier had been one of the ragged street children, the bobashi, one of them, a mobashi, than which or whom or whatever nothing could be more conspicuous standing next to the main gate into St. James as the students in their neat uniforms streamed past on their way to first period. And the packet itself had been absurd, an outer mailing envelope overlarge for what it had to contain, and a flat sweets box wrapped in two layers of kraft paper and that parcel tied with string and the knots sealed with crimson candle wax. And Ray’s name was on it in pencil, presumably so it could be erased and the paper reused at some point. His name had been printed on the envelope and the inner parcel, both, in block letters.

He was calming down. Ray felt a kind of joy, handling the exhibits. Victor had been right to think that they meant something arresting about Davis Morel, although what they meant, exactly, it was difficult to say. They were at the very least suggestive of Ray’s idea that Morel was planning to set himself up as a part-time Antichrist of some kind.

There were four exhibits. Three were printed cards. Victor had noted on each one that it was a sample taken from a quantity of the same card. There were several hundred of each kind. Ray was relieved that Victor hadn’t gone on to make an exact count, which was the kind of thing he might well have done, for which Ray would have been obliged to praise him a lot.

The cards were four by six, on heavyish white stock, and professionally printed. Ray supposed that they were for handing out, primarily, although the typeface was large enough to permit display in the privacy of your own catacomb, say on your bedside table, or stuck into your shaving mirror. The cards bore free-thought slogans loosely speaking.

One read The Creator, A Comedian Whose Audience Is Afraid to Laugh , H. L. Mencken.

The next read WHAT YOU MUST LEARN ABOVE ALL ELSE IS WHY YOU SAY YES, Der Jasager , Bertolt Brecht.

The last one was, to Ray, weird. It read SYSTEMS UNEQUAL TO THEIR WASTES ARE EQUAL TO ONE ANOTHER. There was no attribution line. Ray felt that this was probably Morel’s own creation.

The remaining exhibit was different. It was a listing. It was for display, but probably for personal display, for Morel’s own personal display needs. The listing was, according to Victor’s note, in careful — probably meaning calligraphic — handwriting. Victor hadn’t, thank God, felt free to send the original, so he had recopied it in his own peculiar hand.

Piacocas, Punaxicas, Quibuquicas, Quimecas, Guapacas, Baurecas, Payconecas, Guarayos, Anaporecas, Bohococas, Tubacicas, Zibacas, Quimomecas, Yurucaricas, Cucicas, Tapacuracas, Paunacacas, Quitemocas, Napecas, Pizocas, Tanipicas, Xuberecas, Parisicas, Xamanucas, Tapuricas, Taos, Bazorocas, Pequicas, Parabacas, Otuques, Ecorabecas, Curacanecas, Batasicas, Meriponecas, Quidabonecas, Cupiecas, Ubisonecas, Zarabecas, Curiminacas, Chamaros, Penoquicas, Boros, Mataucas, Otures, Veripones, Maramoricas, Morotocas, Caypotorades, Guaycurus.

This is a pure mystery, Ray thought. He read the list again. It related to nothing he could think of. It seemed vaguely Latin American, but that told him nothing. A job, he thought. He was pleased. He locked everything away in the top drawer of his desk. His top drawer locked frontally and also from the left via a special bolt arrangement activated through a side drawer. It was his own arrangement. The top drawer was lined with galvanized iron, which he had fitted himself.

The mobashi had asked for him by name. The boy, not more than ten years old or so, had been pathetic, with an injured hand in a filthy improvised dressing, a train of scabs along one leg, arms like laths.

It had been unwise but he had given the boy money, which had prolonged the exchange between them and exposed Ray to more attention than had been necessary. It was certain that Victor had already paid the boy.

Sending the boy had been an error and being prodigal with him had probably been an error. He had given him a five-pula note and the boy had been stunned. Ray hoped he wouldn’t start hanging around.

But enough pity and terror for one day, he thought.

He wanted to know who was responsible for doing something for the bobashi. Someone had to be. It was terrible. There was something wonderful on poverty, in Herrick, but he couldn’t remember the whole thing. There were better quotations Morel could have used. Come to me next time, he thought. What was English Literature for, if not to constitute a midden of thought-gems so acute, so beautiful, so apt … But you needed a guide to get the best ones. On every side of every issue there were gems. He thought, Take Herrick: Poverty the greatest pack: To mortal men, great loads allotted be, but of all packs, no pack like poverty. Marxists don’t even know that it’s there. He should look it up. That also would calm him down, his books, sometimes just touching his books.

Well here I am at the foot of the cross again, Ray thought as he entered the mall at its lower end, from the west. The phrase was a tic he was tired of but that was evidently going to be with him forever. He had once given directions to somebody re how to find the American embassy, describing it as being near the foot of the cross, which was to say that it was at the foot of the cross-shaped layout of large buildings enclosing the pedestrian mall that constituted Gaborone’s semblance of a downtown civic center and embassy row all in one. The mall was in the form of the Latin cross but with the arms three-quarters of the way up the shaft shortened to stubs. The transection of the shaft and the arms constituted the main plaza.

Today he had to deal with Boyle.

He proceeded up the shaft of the cross, away from his destination, the American Library annex of the American embassy. He was early, and since he was agitated, he thought that keeping in motion was a good idea and that he would head on up to the plaza, look around, and be back for his appointment in plenty of time.