Norman Rush - Mortals

He handed out copies of the school brochure. There was a little conversation about the honors class he taught over at the university. They reported that Mr. Curwen the rector had told them how proud St. James was to have a scholar like him amidst their staff, a Miltonist! That was true. Curwen seemed genuinely glad he was there, culturally flattered, too, that an American seemed so interested in a poet he himself had been taught to revere but found unreadable. As the group left the office they could hardly miss the run of Milton Studies in which Ray’s two articles and four research notes were buried. It was displayed at eye level in the bookcase just to the right of the door.

The group was rising. They had been seated around a conference table set endwise against the front of his desk. The men were in coats and ties and the women in skirts and sleeveless blouses. The women’s forearms had left damp-prints in the finish of the table. He watched the damp-prints fade, annoyed because there was something he was forgetting to do. Curwen was outside, with an escort of Form Ten boys. One thing he had forgotten to mention was that the school was coeducational now, since a year ago. He heard Curwen’s enthusiasm.

At the last minute he remembered to present the cyclostyled handouts giving the last examination results for the school. He went out into the heat to watch them go, Curwen gesticulating. Curwen had put his robes on despite the fact that there were only four in this group. The man was endearing. They were headed for a tour of the ablution block.

Ray thought, How can he keep doing it?… But we all do and we all do it the same way, by not thinking about it. About half of the last graduating class at the university had failed to get placements with the government, which represented a severe public shock no one had gotten over. Batswana used the Boer term for the government of the day or reigning power, Domkrag, which meant lifting-jack. Some of us are doing our best, he thought, but Domkrag is broken, Domkrag isn’t working … But we do our best.

The other thing was to keep in mind what education was like not that far away, where the killing was still going on, Angola, students without limbs, from the land mines. He thought, Please raise your hands, Oh, sorry. He couldn’t think about it.

Thank God this isn’t the only thing I do, he thought.

They were in bed together, naked under one sheet, sitting up and talking. It was late.

“I gather you want this to be about my brother again,” Ray said.

She nodded, and he said, “Fine, but before I forget, let me give you another example of his, what shall I call it? his drive to be irritating. This is the kind of thing he was always doing. He was continually annoying his classmates by acting like a completely innocent literalist in the way he pronounced their names. Two examples: A girl named Margot became Margott. And someone named Lloyd he called Luh-loyd, pronouncing both l’s. This is a small thing, but it’s Rex.”

“That sounds like someone who’s bored.”

“It was more than that. He got other people, other kids, to go along with it. That turns it into harassment. He had a claque. He created claques. Anyway.”

“By the way he’s starting up a new gay column. I think he said it’s going to be in a free newspaper. But he still gets paid.”

“His old columns weren’t that funny.”

“Yes they were. There were clever things in them.”

“Such as?”

“Come on, nobody can remember exactly what it was that made them laugh. But there were things. Joke definitions. One of them was, Man is the only animal that prefers brand-name items.”

“If that amuses you, okay. I think it’s routine. It’s patter.”

“And maybe he’ll get inspired and get more work with the patter service.”

“I thought he decided he was too far left for them.”

“You keep trying to say he’s so left. Why? He mocks everything. He thinks there is no left. In his old columns he even had a department called Life in the Afterleft . You want to think he’s so subversive. He makes fun of anyone. He makes fun of … that very famous … now I can’t remember his name. But he was famous in the sixties and went to France in 1968 during the student revolution and appeared at the Sorbonne at the height of everything and got up on the stage and shouted Le peuple au poivre! Rex makes fun of everybody.”

“He’s left. I know him.”

“You don’t know him now.”

“I know what he is. He’s culturally left.”

“I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think it means anything. You just let your animosity control you. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it because I love you both.”

“Good luck loving Rex.”

“Please, Ray! All right. Let’s be calm. Now. All right, tell me about this event he precipitated when you were children that was so titanic and let me just listen. Start where we stopped the other night.”

“May I put on the airconditioning?”

“Sure, but then you’ll have to shout.”

“So obviously I won’t put the airconditioning on. But if you don’t mind I’ll just rinse my face before I get into this.”

Ray went into the bathroom. He cooled his face with a wet washcloth. He thought, This may be for the best … it might help … it may help us: It won’t, I may cut my throat, which might help.

“I adore you,” she said as he got back into bed.

“Thanks.”

“I do, Ray. And you’re gorgeous.”

“I am? Hm. May I call you angel-tits, then?”

“Stop that. But listen to this, before you begin. This is wonderful. The other day when we were talking about why we’re so attracted to each other …”

“Yes, the nonphysical reasons, if we could think of any. Yes indeed.”

“Don’t be so mocking. Anyway I realized something about you. This isn’t exactly nonphysical but I bet it had something to do with how I felt. What I realized is that you look like the actor who played Woodrow Wilson in that biographical movie they made about his life and I realize I have just uttered a redundancy, so don’t bother. But that was absolutely one of my favorite movies of all time. I saw it in high school and I thought it was wonderful. Woodrow Wilson, or the actor, rather, was extremely handsome in case you don’t know. The same actor played Wilson young and then older. I’m comparing you to the younger Wilson. Can that movie be as good as I remember?”

“I never saw it, but this is horrible news, isn’t it? You went for me because I reminded you of an authority figure you really loved? And I look like Woodrow Wilson ? Didn’t he look like a bank president or a leading Presbyterian, something like that? I believe he looked very boring. Also wasn’t he a great failure, by any standard? War to end war and the League of Nations and all that? I’m not crazy about these associations, frankly.”

“He was one of the four great presidents. He tried.”

“Oh God and also in the end didn’t he turn into a vegetable and his wife was discovered to be running everything? I hate these associations.”

“Well, I can’t help it. I think it was one of the first big Technicolor movies. That can’t be right. I think it wasn’t a recent movie when I saw it. We saw it for social studies. Well. Sorry I brought it up.”

“I’m glad to know about this. And I have to report that I haven’t thought of anything other than your supernal beauty that originally knocked me out about you. I’m still trying. Something will come.”

“I don’t want to hear about my beauty as an explanation for everything.” She spoke seriously, but was half smiling.