Norman Rush - Mortals

My regards to Ray, who, I know, would like to see me humiliated in any way possible. This is something he has always wanted and which was always as mysterious to me as my own feelings now about Joel are. It could be genetic but I don’t really believe that. Ray hates me because I’m not a True Man. I think he has always felt this way toward me. But if what he thinks is a True Man is a True Man, then he isn’t one either.

Ray paused, thinking Ah, the True Men. Their mother had been an expert at discerning True Men, separating them from counterfeit True Men in the flux of male celebrity. Gary Cooper had been a True Man, as had Gene Tunney, General Douglas MacArthur, and, oddly, one singer, Robert Goulet …

You may tell him I said this. I would love to hear any response he gives you. A True Man would never be gay like me, he thinks. What is a True Man? you ask. I’d say that at the heart of a True Man is a sort of hunger to get as close as possible to the act of obliterating some other True Man, either directly (war) or indirectly and symbolically (nowadays via sports … action-adventure fantasy products … killing animals as surrogates for killing other True Men and using the tally to show everyone how high you rank as a potential obliterator of actual men). You really have to distinguish between the voluntary and the involuntary contents of the mind of a True Man. True Men have to think about work and business, too, in order to eat. Fortunately there is scope for a lot of transferred aggression in economic life, especially at the entrepreneur level. So men have to think a lot about work and making it and turning their firms into killers of other competitor firms. Plenty of True Men are gay, by the way. But I’m not one, and neither is Ray , mon semblable, mon frère. Ask him. He was never in a war. He hates hunting. He would rather not be outdoors with the True Men. He’s not interested in sports. There’s a psychological thing called the Bem scale. Tell him to take it and see where he registers. I dare him. But I am willing to go on record as saying he will find some way never to do this. I know him.

Ray stopped reading, not out of annoyance but because he was being watched.

Ray always knew when he was being watched. He was being watched now. It was a faculty he had and not a product of his connection with the agency.

He saw who was watching him. It was Dimakatso. She was standing just within the extreme right edge of his field of view, just visible outside the frame of the breezeway window overlooking the front yard. She had come around that side of the house. She was in and out of sight, but mostly out. He had seen her without moving his head or looking up. He continued ostensibly reading. He had caught her without any movement, he was sure, that would have let her know he was aware of her. Now only her little paunch was showing. He wanted to know why she was behaving so furtively. He couldn’t remember her being furtive in any of her outdoor activities before. She was the opposite. There were times when you had to look away, in fact, like when she pulled up her skirts and rinsed her legs at the standpipe or when she was rubbing the soles of her feet against a piece of log she had, to get rid of calluses.

Something was going on.

He moved closer to the breezeway window. His view comprehended the drive forking from the gate and most of the gate. An overgrown rubber bush half obscured the gate. He was sure Dimakatso had gone back around the house and was now out there somewhere to his left.

He moved even closer to the breezeway window, pretending to be reading with more absorption than before, moving only to get better light.

He wanted to know why nothing, nothing, ever, was straightforward for him in the last year, say. Blame it on a guy named God, he thought.

He thought, Okay! Because there she was, standing, waiting for something. He had caught her edging out from behind the garage. She was poised to go to the gate. She had already made one false start and drawn back, looking in his direction. He kept his head down, which was hard because he was looking into brightness without being able to shade his eyes.

It was clear what this was. He could, of course, go out and see what she had to say. But there was no question about what this was. She was waiting to intercept Iris coming back from wherever she’d been, to warn her about what, though?

It looked like the universal conspiracy of women, stanza nine billion, on the face of it. She was out there to signal to Iris that he was on the scene, contrary to what she expected at this time of day.

He hated it.

The question was whether she would try to signal from the wings or actually run out to give the message. It would be the second. There was something urgent about this business.

Too much is enough, he thought, I have too much to deal with, I have Boyle, I have no more writing, I have my orders, my POI is not Morel, no, it’s whoever the most virtuous character in Pilgrim’s Progress is, Kerekang is his equivalent, my POI is, if you can believe that.

Dimakatso made another false start.

He thought, Then on top of that include the bastard my brother that no one has ever been able to do anything about: I have to do something, though, from Africa no less, but what?

Dimakatso was in motion, rigidly sauntering up to the gate. As a piece of acting, it was pathetic. Iris had to be coming.

He went out onto the patio, still holding the letter, trying to look idly okay.

Dimakatso met Iris at the gate. He had been right. The point had been to alert her, and it could be completely innocent, the reason being a considerate desire that her mistress not be taken off guard. Iris liked the incredibly sour Dimakatso. Or the reason could be sinister, for want of a better word, except that the word had never applied to anything Iris did and couldn’t. Iris saw him.

Iris struck a pose of comic surprise, hands up to shoulder level, palms out. Dimakatso sidled briskly off, looking at the ground. He heard the kitchen door bang.

He loved his wife, shimmering there all in white. She was dressed up, he would say, that is, dressed up for her, dressed up a little more than usual for going downtown. She was wearing a long white rough linen skirt he particularly liked her in, a longsleeved white silk blouse with shoulder tabs they both thought were funny, her best sandals, but with stockings, which was unusual, and one of her conical Lesotho sun hats, one of the extreme ones with a sort of raffia sphere sitting on the peak. They were ungainly objects and she had to keep this one on her head with cords run through a slip bead and cinched under her chin. The cords left faint, transient grooves in the flesh of her jaw that he liked to press away. Generally, she was well covered up for the sun, as she was supposed to be, except that she wasn’t wearing her sunglasses, which he ought to upbraid her about at some point. A line of brass buttons closed her skirt along one leg. He wanted to unbutton her and tell her everything, which was impossible. Now would be a good time for one of the imaginary crude pickup lines she used to laugh at, whatever they were, like Gee I bet you look tremendous naked, or Let’s go take each other’s pants off.

She came up to him, looking concerned. They were going to talk first about him, about why he was there, at home, and that would leave the delicate question of whether or not she was going to volunteer anything about where she’d been. Or would it be up to him to ask? Questions of her whereabouts had never been an issue, but now that he thought of it, her whereabouts were a gray area, something like opening mail addressed to her before she got to it. Neither of them ever opened letters addressed to the other, although either could read any mail opened and left around. Of course they were both aware he belonged to an organization that gave him access to diabolical machines that could flush out and print whatever was inside an envelope and never leave a sign.