Mortals (92 page)

The woman came to his rescue. Her name was Dirang. She pried the burning candle out of his hand and set it securely in the middle of the floor, pressing it down into its own bed of soft wax.

Ray scraped the wax from his fingers as well as he could. Dirang was not a young woman. She was wearing a headscarf and a faded wash dress and she was barefoot. The old man was her father, Ray gathered. The old man was barefoot too.

He had more respect for the ability to go barefoot without complaining continuously than he had had previously. Because he had tried it lately and it hadn’t even been full-bore barefootedness because his feet had been protected by his socks. You stopped appreciating people being barefoot and what they were undergoing when you saw it so regularly every day, even in the towns, even in Gaborone. He remembered the first time he and Iris had seen barefoot white people, underclass white people, going barefoot like rural Africans, in some of the decayed areas of Johannesburg.

In any case, he was going to be more sensitive about it. Not that he had any idea what being sensitive about it would entail, unless he was going to pass out shoes and sandals, carry them around in a satchel. He would see. He had to remember that the naked sole of the foot would toughen up over time.

He was finding it hard to get moving, even though he had gotten away from his burdens for the moment at least. He wondered what it would be like in the world if enough people decided all at the same time to do nothing, not even be parasites, not even be mendicants. But then there
was the question of why India didn’t collapse under the weight of its nonachievers, its gurus and beggars. But then he was thinking of an even more complete withdrawal than that. He was thinking of “Bartleby the Scrivener” becoming some kind of creedal text, the story of somebody who refuses to do anything. But he did know what he was going to do next.

He was going to kick Quartus’s table over.

He stood in front of the table and kicked as hard as he could, overturning it. He liked doing it. He was thinking of uprighting the table and kicking it over once again when he realized something.

Quartus’s chair had been drawn up to the table. Visible on the chair seat was the thing he had come for, he was sure,
Strange News
, sitting there, a stack of pages, thick rubber bands around its middle.

He collapsed on the manuscript, clutching it to him.

He was seized with the need to protect the manuscript immediately, shield it, disguise it.

He needed fabric, sheets, curtains, a blanket, anything he could wrap the manuscript in, doubling and tripling the wrapping, folding it in. And in addition he wanted to strap it to his body if he could, but in a way that wouldn’t be noticeable. He knew he was being insane.

He knelt down with the manuscript, next to the candle.

All of the manuscript seemed to be there. He bent the top half of the bundle back and riffled the pages slowly.

One enraging thing leapt out at him. Quartus or someone had made notes in Afrikaans here and there in the text. There were checkmarks and arrows connecting certain entries. He wanted to tell Morel.

He calmed himself. The markings were a sort of defilement, but if the original entries were still legible that would be okay, really, he would be able to accept that. He would have to.

He had to find something to wrap the manuscript in. He got up and wandered along the wall, poking around among the oddments collected there, until, occultly, his fingers found an edge of cloth jammed between pieces of furniture. It seemed promising.

He tugged it free. Something fell and shattered back in the tangle of furniture. He didn’t care.

It was a bedspread, not especially savory, a tan chenille bedspread stiff in spots, and stained, but usable. It had been employed to sop up something unpleasant, but it would be fine.

Dirang and the old man helped him fold it into a square. He placed the manuscript in the center and delicately wrapped it up. He wondered what
Dirang and the old man were thinking, if they had some idea that this was an item of some value. They could see that he was excited. In fact he was more than excited. He was happy. He wondered what Rex would think if he could see what he was doing and feel how he was feeling. It was funny because he had been assuming that his happiest moments in this life were probably behind him. Now I need rope, he thought.

There was a row of open boxes and cartons in the space between Quartus’s chair and the barricaded window. There should be something. Torturers needed rope.

Ray hauled two boxes over into the candlelight.

The first box he looked into held an unhelpful olla podrida of doorknobs, serving trays, jars of nails, screws, and glazier’s points, and no cord or rope or twine. The doorknobs could be hurled at an enemy, in a pinch, during a fray, though they would miss the enemy and he would just hurl them back with greater accuracy. But rocks were scarce in the Kalahari, which was a reason to not forget the doorknobs. Anything can be a weapon, he thought. A sigh is a weapon, can be, a pause before answering a particular question can be, an averted glance can be, everything can be a weapon, your beloved angel of a child can grow up and kill you for nothing, for fun, he thought. It was something that happened from time to time. A handful of glazier’s points flung into a ruffian’s face when he least expected it might be effective for two seconds. He set a jar of them aside.

He thought, Rightly considered, the world is a congeries of weapons, an assemblage. He had seen a movie where a gangster visits a deadly enemy after being searched up and down and stabs his victim in the eye with a wing of his reading glasses, and kills him.

He had to move on, and more rapidly. His helpers were looking oddly at him and he knew why. They were concerned. He was hugging the bulky parcel containing his brother’s soul, would be one way to put it, a sentimental way.

He couldn’t keep sitting on the floor, either. He got up and sat in Quartus’s chair while the process of looking into boxes continued. His legs were weak. It looked like he couldn’t let go of the manuscript, which was true. He wanted another box brought to him by his bearers, which was not what he meant, he didn’t mean they were bearers.

He had to stop using his main force to clutch
Strange News
to his chest. There was war in heaven, meaning what was going on on the roof. It was thunderous up there again. He wanted to explain about
Strange News
to his helpers, but how could he? It was not a great thing.
An airliner hauling its roar through the void
was a fragment that had stuck with him. It wasn’t
great. In riffling through the pages he had glimpsed Rex’s odd little poem, he supposed it was a poem anyway,
A perfect Specimen of Surprise
/
would be to discover
/
on your wife’s Buttocks
/
handwriting, in ballpoint pen, of a minute Size
. It was obvious why that would have embedded itself in his mind even if Quartus hadn’t brought it up, but there was nothing great about it either. It was silly.

He was looking through another box. It was devoted to plumbing-related items. There were lengths of pipe, joints, tap handles, cans of joint compound, rolls of duct tape. The tape was giving him an idea. It was thick and metallic and extremely sticky, still.

Ray took his shirt off. He would summon the old man to help him. There was plenty of tape. There was roll after roll of it. He was going to tape
Strange News
to his person. Then he would put his shirt back on over it and continue participating in the affray. He would have the use of both hands. Affray was one of those words that was vanishing from the language. The makers of the English language would be appalled, whoever they had been. There was nothing to be done about it. He was capable of feeling sorry for the English language as an entity, at odd moments, if anyone wanted a perfect specimen of sentimental stupidity.

The tape was very tough, but they had the hunting knife and could use that to segment it up as they needed. He thanked God for the knife.

He decided to hold his arms straight up above his head, as a signal. He did, but saw he was producing confusion. What he wanted was for the old man and Dirang to stop what they were doing and address his new idea, help bind the manuscript to his body. He looked like he was surrendering to these two, in all probability. He knew what he needed them to do. He was going to tape the manuscript to his chest. He had reached that decision because if it was taped to his back the manuscript might slide down or fall off and it would be more awkward to reach around and catch it than if he had it right in front where he could grab it.

“Thusa,” he said. Thusa meant help. It was so fucking annoying and unnecessary, the multiplicity of mutually uncomprehending cultures. He wanted to say in Setswana
Put this on me
or
Strap this on me
and he couldn’t remember how. Stress was bleaching out his Setswana lexicon, such as it was. He would have to use signs, gestures.

They understood. He made the bundle as tight as he could, first, and then lapped tape endlessly around it until it looked like a block of armor. He held it to his chest. They understood what he wanted.

His helpers exhausted roll after roll of tape, looping the bindings creatively around his neck, his shoulders, his thorax. He had to keep his
lungs inflated while his helpers worked because once the bundle was firmly affixed he didn’t want it to be difficult to get his breath, because he would be participating in the denouement of this fray, whatever it might be. He stood up, to test his burden.

He nearly pitched forward onto his face, but he righted himself in time. The parcel with its wrappings and bindings was monstrously heavy. Now he had to try to find the box containing his effects. He wanted clean clothes, he wanted his watch, he wanted anything of his that he could find. And he had to do his best to find Morel’s medical bag. That was urgent.

His helpers returned to the labor of dragging crates and cartons over to his post near the guttering candle. Time was short. It would be better to dump the boxes out in situ. He would help.

But there was a problem. He could button his shirt over the parcel but it made him look ridiculous. He would have to leave the parcel showing, his shirt open. He would have to explain a few times. They would get used to it.

A box of spoons was overturned, creating walking hazards. He kicked his way through to the action.

He saw his boots. They were desert boots and he loved them. The old man had found the correct box. He could see his knobkerrie in the box. The old man seemed to be considering Ray’s boots for his own use. It wasn’t true that people would choose to be barefoot over going about in normal shoes. Here was proof. But he had to explain the situation. Dithlako meant shoes. He shouted it a few times and pointed at his feet. Dirang smiled and said, “It’s all right.”

It was all right. The old man was backing away from the desert boots. Ray would give him the dead man’s boots he was wearing. They would be too big, but they would do. Dirang spoke very good, easy English. Who was she?

The light was execrable. Ray needed help getting his boots off. The bundle was in the way. His fingers were weak. Dirang bent to the task. Finally it was done. The old man had the dead man’s boots. He seemed grateful. He was putting them on.

Ray thanked Dirang and the old man in Setswana. Dirang replied, softly, again in English, “You’re very welcome.” Ray answered in English, “Thank you, mma.” With his own boots on, he felt reborn. Going quickly through the few remaining crates and boxes, he satisfied himself that Morel’s medical bag was nowhere around.

Ray resumed charge of the Enfield, heavy as it was. He could manage
it. He was adapting to the millstone on his chest. Everything that could be taken care of had been taken care of.

He made his way back to Morel’s venue. The man was remarkable, it had to be said. This was an organized scene and there had been improvements during the short time Ray had been elsewhere. There was more light, there were more candles, and the caryatids were directing torchbeams in a coordinated way, at Morel’s instruction. Ray thought, You have to stop calling them caryatids. They were active. They were helping.

The simulacrum examination table formed by lining up overturned crates was now covered with padding, toweling. Pots of hot water had been procured from somewhere. There was an astringent odor in the air. A Basarwa woman was sitting on the examination table and Morel was attending to her neck. Ray remembered being fascinated by dead skin as a young boy. His brother had produced yards of it. His brother had gotten too much sun for his skin type, during summer vacations. I never wanted to be a doctor, Ray thought. He had been squeamish. His brother had chased him around while he was peeling off sheets of dead skin because he had figured out that Ray found it upsetting in some way.

What about these people’s children? That was a question. It looked like he was not going to have children in this life. There were orphans in the world. He could teach orphans if he could find a way to do that.

Wemberg had been taken care of. He was lying on the floor wrapped up in drapes, still alive. He had to be alive because his head was showing. If he had died his face would be covered. Ray was relieved. A surge of heavy firing shook the building. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. Ray wondered how strongly the building was constructed. He had his doubts, but there were more pressing things to obsess on, like the expression on Morel’s face.

Because Morel was staring at him. He could see that. Several torchbeams had swung in Ray’s direction, lighting him up.

Ray said, “I couldn’t find your bag.”

Morel said nothing.

“I looked around,” Ray said.

“That’s all right. No, I found it. No someone found it for me.” Morel’s tone was odd.

Morel kept talking, still oddly. “All the drugs were gone but everything else was there, except for the drugs and my hypodermics, but okay. Oh also what about the first aid kit you had, any sign of it?”