Norman Rush - Mortals

“I’m sorry to hear about this.” But he was and he wasn’t, because if he was understanding correctly there was a bond glimmering between them that he hadn’t known would be there.

Kerekang was walking around the narrow summit. He was holding his fists against the top of his head. He came back to Ray.

He said, “Do you know Thomas Lodge?”

Ray felt incompetent. He knew it was English Literature, but that was all he knew. It was not his period.

“I know the name.” English Literature was the Pacific Ocean.

Kerekang said, “I know every word of his ode,

“Of thine eyes I made my mirror ,

From thy beauty came mine error;

All thy words I counted witty ,

All thy smiles I deemèd pity;

Thy false tears that me aggrieved

First of all my trust deceived .

“Siren pleasant, foe to reason ,

Cupid plague thee for this treason!”

It was a consummate performance. Kerekang could take dead text into his chest and mind and heart and make it live, just as he had done with Tennyson at the ambassador’s residence. Kerekang was putting his sorrow away in poetry. He was standing up stanced in an artificial way as he declaimed. He was meant to be a performer. It was obvious. He was speaking blindly and brilliantly to the stars the air and to his one-man audience the English professor. “Bravo,” Ray said.

“Thank you. I sent that to Eunice when she broke it off with me. And do you know she was married in two weeks afterward?”

“Eunice … not Eunice Kamphodza?”

“Yes it is. You know her?”

“Well her husband I know, Kamphodza, at the Ministry of Education. He is an obstacle to progress, mainly. He’s number four, or three, maybe three, by now. He should retire. And I see her. I think she works at Tourism and comes out to get food at King’s Takeaway in the mall for her office mates. At least I assume the food is for others. She’s quite a heavy woman, if I’m thinking of the right person.”

“Yah, it is. She is very fat now. She is an elephant. Tlou, we say. She wasn’t so fat when she was younger.”

It was probably the wrong thing to say but Ray felt impelled to say it. “So then do you … well, do you feel you escaped something, in a way? I mean, does it make you feel a little better about what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Kerekang answered.

Ray wished he hadn’t said what he said. He knew what was behind it. He was feeling envy that Kerekang’s missed prize had so quickly tarnished itself in the eyes of the world. That wouldn’t happen with Iris. It was not something he could wish for, not something he should wish for. She was more of a prize as time went on and she held steady and rose in the eyes of the world and he became a drier and lesser version of himself, withering into the unpleasant truth of what he was, or not the unpleasant truth but the unimpressive truth. There were ten years between them. He was a dry person. He would long precede her into dryness, terminal dryness. But she was flourishing. In every period of her life she had been the ideal representative of what a woman could be in that span, her pretty youth, her beautiful young womanhood. She was still not a matron. She was flourishing, with her glossy hair, sweet dark eyes, good flesh, her lean face. Her breath was always sweet. She had perfect breasts, lower than when she had been young but appropriately lower and still full, perfect handfuls for the lucky man who could get into her bower. She knew everything there was to know about nutrition, what was good for the skin. She had avoided the sun, managed to do that in Africa, and without calling attention to it, being subtle about it. She had been in advance of the news that the sun was our enemy. She was a disciplined eater. God had given her teeth as white as cotton. His own hair was hanging on but it was less thick than it had been and across the crown there was a glow rather than a solid presence of hair. He might find someone if he could keep Iris’s admonitions in mind, like remembering to sit up straight at the table because alphas always sit up straight. And there were her silky nipples, so delicate. Her voice had gotten a little huskier with age, but men liked that. He did himself.

Ray said, “Well then do you see her, do you encounter one another?”

“We did for a time.”

“And what was that like?”

“Ah, rra. The truth is that she is rude to me. She moves away if she sees me, very fast, slick.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Well it is because she knows what I feel about Kamphodza. He is powerful in Domkrag, do you know that? You must. In Ghanzi he is a tautona, with the lands he owns. She will inherit a lot when he goes. It was the dream of getting beasts that pushed her into his old-man arms, I am sure. Because the law is changing so that women can inherit lands. And he has no sons, or any children at all.”

“Well okay, but what are your feelings toward her? I have no right to ask you, I know, but what are they?” He couldn’t stop himself. He was taking everything as a rehearsal for what was coming with him. He wanted information.

“You see, rra. I still love her. Even today, I do.”

“I understand it.”

“Yah, but she is too fat now.”

“We still love them,” Ray said.

“Yah, we still love them.” Kerekang seemed to be laughing.

“What can we do?” Ray said. The woman was obese and this good man still loved her, loved her soul or her previous envelope, younger envelope.

It was amazing how much light the stars gave. He could see everything he needed to see in the face of this tough, small, wiry man. He liked him. He liked him more all the time.

Kerekang was seeming sympathetic to the project of departure together that Ray was proposing. Of course what choices did he have?

Ray said, “What about the students, like Kevin, who came north with you to Toromole, what about them, where are they?”

Ray was uneasy with his own question and he knew why. It implied he felt a special obligation to do something to save the educated, bypassing the question of everybody else caught up in the insurgency, the rural people, the proles, all those who had swung in behind Kerekang just as solidly as the jeunesse dorée had. What was wrong with him? On the other hand, what was wrong with everything?

He couldn’t help pursuing it. He said, “I see Kevin with you, but what about the others from the university?”

Kerekang said, “Ah, you see, he is very disobedient. He wouldn’t listen. He is disobedient. The others, I sent them back. I sent them back one by one as they came in from hunting Pony, and not finding him anywhere. I said to them that they could come back at some later time. Kevin said no. It was a fight. Well. So he is with us.”

He was going to help Kerekang, if he could, but there was going to be an absence of justice in the way it worked out, because it was a fantasy that Kerekang could gather up all his forces and make a speech to them saying they had done as much as they could and then urging them to follow him like Moses across the border into Namibia, assuming there was a way to do that, an army wending its way through the desert into another part of the desert, a safer part, without being destroyed on the way.

He had to narrow it down. He had to save himself and he had to save Kerekang and he had to save Morel and he had to save Kevin. And he had to save his brother’s manuscript, which had been out of his sight and care for too long.

Someone was whistling, someone close by, someone approaching.

It was Kevin, and Ray was annoyed. He had been getting somewhere with Kerekang.

Kevin appeared.

“You must come and sleep, Setime,” he said.