Norman Rush - Mortals

“Which we think has to do with something else. The government finally drove our friend Samuel Kerekang into the wilderness, literally. He was creating incidents over everything, it’s true. He came out with the claim, probably true, that the country is already about ten percent seropositive for HIV, which nobody wanted to hear. He couldn’t get work anywhere. And, um, there were a number of mishaps connected with his paper The Mattock , copies disappearing on the way to the distributor, and then a fire wrecked his printery. And then somehow the Anglican women’s guild got very interested in taking control of his gleaners group. And now they’ve done it. Suddenly they had all kinds of money.

“So Kerekang decided to pull back to Galilee, if you know what I mean. He has a family claim to land in one of the villages way the hell up on the Cunene River, almost into the Caprivi Strip. And he’s organizing some sort of commune up there, turning the northeast into his version of Yenan, is what the government thinks. Now that he’s out of town they’re even more hysterical than before. Domkrag want something done! The Mattock , or rather Kepu , because it’s three-quarters in Setswana now, is circulating again. He puts a lot of poetry in it, by the way.

“What nobody likes is that a number of kids from the university dropped out and followed him. Some of them are sons and daughters of big men in Domkrag. Sons, I should say. Only two young women are among the missing, versus seven guys.”

The flow of tears had stopped.

She said, “Don’t press so hard on the top of my foot, there’s no flesh there and you’ll bruise me. In fact, thank you, but you can stop now. I am so sorry about everything, Ray.

“My sister. My sister . Ray, I encouraged her to have this baby. I don’t know if I was identifying or what. I thought it would be fine. People are doing it all over. I am coming back to you a crock of woe, just what you need. I kept trying to find a metaphor on the plane for how I am and that was what I came up with. Woe is you. I mean woe is what you get. From me. I am responsible for my sister. I mean … I don’t know what I mean. I mean beyond the thousands I gave her, I have to do more. Thank God for the way you are. You are my God, you know, which is the problem, Davis would say, but he would be so wrong. We have gods. I don’t know. My sister. I am responsible. Now she has Margo.”

“Who’s Margo?”

“Oh, you don’t know. Margo is her baby. Ellen went back twice to change the name at the registry place, making scenes. She kept changing her mind. Nothing I could say. I shouldn’t have left. She gets me hysterical. She is completely provocative.

“Here’s an example. I don’t know if I told you about this or not. The first time she nursed in public somebody made a face or passed a remark, which was lighting a fuse if only they had known. Now she just throws out her breast for nursing anywhere in Tallahassee she happens to be, the more public the better, the more dubious the location the better.

“She is totally miscast in Tallahassee, by which I mean totally out of place. Except with her associates at the Montessori place, of course, she’s in a frenzy. She goes around raging . She wants to make citizens’ arrests! She should be with my mother. But my mother is out of the question. She keeps going on about illegitimacy. They could never get along. She has no room. Ellen drives me to the edge. I was on the verge of taking the postman aside and pleading with him to tear up her copy of The Progressive when it comes. Of course, I didn’t. But she reads their classifieds and orders the latest inflammatory bumperstickers, which they seem to specialize in. She has one she hasn’t put on her car yet because she can’t find it. Guess why. I hid it. WWJD — Who Wants Jelly Donuts? I have to think of what I can do.”

“Do what, though?” Ray said, thinking There is no physic for the world’s ill, it will burn in a fever forever .

“I have to walk around for a minute,” she said, getting up abruptly.

He watched her. Doing something for her sister was going to mean bringing her here, he knew it, and it was impossible.

Iris walked in a circle, leaving oily footprints on his clean floor.

Abruptly she lay down again and returned her feet to him.

She said, “I don’t know what to do. That child cannot just vanish into state care. Say something.”

“Such as what?”

“Maybe she could come here. Not forever but for a while. We have the space, Ray. I could give up my den.” She liked to call her room of her own her den.

“Well, I mean, the idea is pretty staggering, Iris. I, um. What. We, I think, um, we need to monitor the situation first, don’t we?”

“If we could just calm her down, Ray. I know Davis could help her.”

He felt suffocated for a moment. It passed.

He resumed rubbing her feet.

“Be gentle,” she said. He didn’t feel like being gentle. He felt like ripping her feet off and cutting his cock off and starting life over as a eunuch someplace where there were no phones.

“I’ll have to think about this,” he said. Think about opening a madhouse, he thought.

“Okay, good. Bend my toes back. And hold them back forever. And if you can remember from the reflexology book the spot you push for constipation, work on it. If you remember, from when you were doing reflexology before we decided it was ridiculous.”

“I do remember,” he said. He thought he did. He pressed his thumbs into the balls of her feet.

“That isn’t it.”

“Right,” he said. He began a random sequence of pressures, assuming that he would strike the spot at some point. The sole of the foot is not Asia, he thought. Maybe this would help.

“I don’t think we loved our siblings enough,” she said.

“Oh right. That’s inane, Iris.”

“No I’m serious.”

“You mean we should have stayed in America and loved them, just loved them a lot, and none of this would have happened?”

“All I know is that my sister is lost.”

“A lost cause.”

She sighed in a conclusive way and he was encouraged to think she had come to the end of the topic, for now.

She sat up sharply. “Oh boy,” she said.

“What?”

“You can stop now.”

He released her feet and began grinding his hands dry in a bath towel. She went off toward the bathroom, thanking him over her shoulder, in advance.

…

They had eaten. She had liked the collation he’d gotten up, especially the crab salad. They were at the kitchen table. Three candles provided their light, their only light. They were sipping chilled fresh guava juice. They were closer. Tonight he would give her a wrenching orgasm, if at all possible.

“We have to discuss your brother,” she said, not eagerly.

“How is he?”

“It’s hard to tell on the phone. We spoke a lot. He’s like you. It’s hard to tell how he is. We spoke a lot about the book and the arrangements and whether he could, well, impose on you to read it.”

“Well and how’s his roommate?”

“I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“Come to it.”

“I shall. I have to say, though …”

“What?”

“Don’t be … your usual way on this.”

“My brother has never been anything to me but a source of pain and embarrassment, to start with a given.”

“Okay, so you’re hostile. But I learned something talking to him you never bothered to mention. Our name isn’t really Finch, or yours isn’t, so mine isn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, spacing his words for emphasis.

“Well, in passing it came out, when we were talking, that your family changed its name from Fisch, F-i-s-c-h, to Finch, which is fine, if they wanted to do it, but it does raise the question of why you never mentioned it.”