Mortals

by Norman Rush

  They had placed him in a heavy armchair whose feet were nailed or bolted to a smooth wooden floor. Rare woods from the forest around Kazengula had been used in the Sand Castle’s interiors. With his feet, he detected added metal bracing securing the chair legs to the floor. A leather belt had been passed around the chairback and over his chest and cinched tightly but not painfully. He could get his breath. His wrists had been cuffed to the chair arms, again tightly but not cruelly.

  It was almost boring waiting for your tormentors to get to work. He was realizing something interesting, though, as he sat in idleness. They had made a mistake in not letting him at least rinse off his face even minimally before blindfolding him. His skin was greasy, especially the skin of his face. He could make the blindfold slip, he was fairly sure, even though it was on tight.

  He decided to try something. By forcing his head over and down against his shoulder he was finding he could drag the blindfold down on one side. They had left him alone in the room and there was no one to stop him from doing what he was doing. He was elated. With luck, he should even be able to repeat the action in reverse, assuming no one caught him. He was going to do this. They were taking too long. He did it. His right eye was free.

  He was in a disused bedroom. Along three walls mattresses and tall cylinders of rolled-up matting had been propped, imperfectly blocking the room’s windows. Some light was coming in at the tops of the windows. He would have to be standing in order to see out at all. He wondered if the mattresses were intended for anything more than making looking in or out a difficult feat, intended for example as improvised sound-sops. He hoped not.

  There was no housekeeping going on. There was sand on the fine broad-planked hardwood floors. The rug, a mock Persian or possibly the real thing, had been roughly rolled off to one side. There were dismantled bedsteads crowding one side of the room. There were oddments of debris strewn around, lager cans mostly. There was no air in the room, only heat. There was nothing he could do about the sweat drops burning his eyes. That was torture of a sort, but not something anyone would mention, because it was nothing, compared to what could be done, was done. It was nothing. No man would mention it. Sweat was eating his eyes alive, however.

  Adequate light came in over the mattress barrier, but there was an array of candles in saucers, some fresh, some half burned, on the card table directly in front of him, the candles tending to suggest that interrogations were proceeding into the night and that there was no general power supply in the building. There were fixtures on the walls, sconces with pink torch-flame-simulating bulbs in them.

  His interrogator would sit on the straight chair behind the card table, facing him, and begin by having a leisurely smoke. There were cigarettes on the table, a lighter, a carafe of water and two tumblers. There was no ashtray, which meant that very restricted time horizons were controlling this phase of whatever was going on. And there was no cassette recorder in evidence, which was a further support to the image that everything was very present tense. Ashes and refuse were going on the floor and nobody cared because this place was going to be vacated sooner rather than later. That was what he thought.

  He saw nothing exotic in the way of abusive implements on the table. There was a vial of liquid that might be ammonia. And that would be to revive people who fainted during their torments. There was a giant flashlight on the table. But there was nothing like a thumbscrew, say, or pliers.

  He knew what most of the props were for. His interrogator would sit down at the table and make him wait lengthily while a Santos Dumont was smoked. The conventional idea was that everybody was dying for a smoke and it went with the parallel game of pouring water into a glass noisily and sipping loudly from it at intervals. Ray was not particularly thirsty yet, which was good. He had had the tea and the leftover water to drink.

  There were four open cartons on the floor near the table and in one of them he could identify items of his projecting out, his map case, his knobkerrie. This was a discovery. His documents would be in the carton and so would Strange News, he would bet. This was a victory and it was enough. He should reset the blindfold, if he could.

  He took too long being pleased with himself. The door opened and his interrogator and his assistant strode in. The assistant was a new character, a young black African in sunglasses, another example of physical culture taken to an extreme, a man rather festively dressed in a cherry-red silk longsleeved shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts, his chest crossed by bandoliers. Ray was sure the wardrobe was expropriated. Maybe it had come from the closet of the Englishman who had built the Sand Castle. The bandoliers were for ornament only. There were no cartridges in the holders, so far as Ray could tell. But he couldn’t be sure.

  His interrogator was going to be Quartus, and he was in a rage seeing the state of Ray’s blindfold. Hopping mad would capture him. He was a peculiar figure, a gaunt, bald man in his forties whose prominent, knoblike cleft approached deformity. It was severe enough, in its resemblance to a pair of buttocks, that it might, Ray thought, have pushed Quartus out of the main game where the most symmetrical and physically standard usually won and into the military realm where traits like ferocity would carry you up the stairway to power no matter what you looked like, if you didn’t get killed along the way, and where rage at what nature had done to you could be productively redirected at selected representatives of the more normal population. He was cursing in Afrikaans. I have regular features, Ray thought. His appearance had never been an obstacle to whatever he might have wanted to do, for which it made sense to be thankful in the There but for the Grace of God Go I sense, a platitude which in itself ought to be enough to destroy religion at the root the moment anyone employing it fully grasped what it meant about God.

  He was having a seizure of sympathy for Quartus, for his joke of a chin and for the dire anxiety showing in his exhausted-looking face. Ray had seen him plainly up close and he was not taking it well. Oppression is hard work, Ray thought.

  Quartus was a Boer, definitely. His eyes were cornflower blue. One eyelid was burdened with a sty. From gums to mid-level, his teeth were tobacco-stained. If he had a wife she would pity him, seeing him as Ray was seeing him.

  Both men lunged toward Ray, converged on him. All in the same moment his blindfold was jerked back into place and he was slapped across the mouth, twice, and then once, harder, on the side of the head.

  These people knew how their blindfolds worked. And they had both immediately concluded that the thing hadn’t slipped down on its own, by happenstance. They hadn’t even given him the chance to claim that it was all an accident. They knew. And then one of them hit him again on the side of the head. The previous blow had left his ear ringing. Now it was howling. People are fools, he thought. Hitting his ear was counterproductive. Why would they do it if they wanted him to answer their questions with any celerity? They would have to shout. He would tell them why.

  There was a lull. He heard the door close. And then they were back and someone was behind him forcing a hood over his head and pushing the blindfold down as he did. It was a black hood with a drawstring mouth. It was totally opaque and the thick cloth it was made from was saturated with a foul musk combining the odors of garlic, blood, and sweat. It was his own fault. He was breathing the perfume of his predecessors, the previous wearers of the hood. The thought gave him a perverse feeling of cold strength.

  Another lull began. He had to keep in mind that all this hysteria about keeping him from getting a good look at the players was an indicator that they were expecting at some point to release him rather than kill him, or that at the very least they were interested in preserving the option. He held the thought. He wanted them to come back. He wanted this to start, so it could end.

  It had started routinely, boringly, even. It had begun with Quartus smoking, blowing smoke Ray’s way, taking his time. Ray had been asked to give the story of what he was doing in the area, slowly, with detail. And he had. And Quartus had informed him repeatedly but patientl
y that he knew he was lying. And then Quartus had given him the opportunity to deny that he knew anything at all about the incriminada, the guns, the packets of rands and pulas, the stupid smoke grenades. And then Quartus had gone down a list of names, African names, starting with Samuel Kerekang, twenty names exactly, and given him the chance to admit he knew these names and knew how the names were connected and knew what these people were doing to innocent people all through the northwest, the crimes they were committing. And Ray had denied any knowledge of any of the names. And Quartus, affecting sadness, had said that, after Ray had taken a little time to think more, it would be necessary to go over the list again, only the second time there would be measures taken to help his memory. And then, after a break, when the session resumed, Quartus’s assistant had rewarded each denial of acquaintanceship or knowledge with blows to Ray’s arms and shoulders, not open-handed blows during this round, no. Ray had been struck with what felt like an enormous knot tied at one end of a length of rope. The thing came whistling down. The knot was the size of an orange. Quartus’s assistant swung the knot around in the air, making the whistling sound, more often than actually striking with it. That was for terror purposes. It was childish. He was a hittingbeast. It was to keep Ray off guard, never knowing when the next blow would land. And as to the implement itself, there was a reason it was being employed. The knot was yielding. You could hit more and bruise less. It was like the bar of Ivory soap in a kneesock that some bastards used for hurting people during interrogations. The theory was that when it was brought down full force the bar would break in two along the grooved line scored into its midsection, making bruises but not breaking bone, if he was remembering correctly, or was it that the soap broke precisely before causing unconsciousness, hurting and shocking the victim just up to that point? He couldn’t remember. The knot was different but similar. It wasn’t like being hit with a mallet. It could go on longer, obviously. So far they were hitting him mainly through his clothing. There was protection in that. Everything was subject to change. They were taking another break.

  He devoted himself again to listening. He had a task, which was to remember, record, register everything, against the possibility that someday somebody would be interested in punishing these stupid villains, unlikely as that might be. He would be ready, he himself, by God above. We all need a task, he thought. Iris had been given a task, by him, her task being to be his beloved, his be-all, which she had gotten tired of or gotten to dislike. If that was the case he was sorry, but it was still true that we all needed tasks. He thought, I’m not a great … thing, thing to love forever … I am not great nor do I think continually of those who were truly great, which would be a waste of time, colossal waste of time. Only a fool would do that. He wanted the interrogation to proceed. The hard part was coming. Life is extreme, he thought.

  He was getting an idea. He could do something on the order of who was it, Lee Marvin, in The Dirty Dozen, when he fouled up a word association test by taking every response from baseball, being completely unhelpful to the psychiatrist testing him, giving him nothing. In his own case he could answer every question with a gem, a quotation from English Literature, verse especially. He could try it. He could try it a little later, depending on how things went. And if he could pull out quotes that were somehow apposite to the question he was refusing to answer, that would be best of all.

  The door opened and closed and his friends were back. There was some shuffling of papers. Someone was lighting a cigarette. No, they both were. Someone was standing over him, close, blowing smoke at him, probably the assistant. There could be something positive here. He would never want to be a smoker again, after this. The negative associations would be helpful. It was Iris who had gotten him to stop smoking even before the worst news about the health effects of smoking had come out. So the question was whether his vices would reassert themselves in the next stage of things, when he was alone, when she was somewhere else, not helping. The answer was no, he hoped. Your charred breath was a phrase of hers from the first days of their marriage.

  Quartus began. “Meneer, now you are going to tell me the truth. I am finished with playing about. I am finished and that is all. So.” Papers were being handled.

  Quartus continued. “So, meneer, I will tell you why you have come to be with us. You have a friend, meneer, who was at one time to be found not so far away, at Toromole. You came to call on him, isn’t it?”

  Ray said, “No. Nothing you are saying means anything to me. I’m not going to Toromole. And what shall I call you? How shall I address you properly? I know I asked this before but I think you failed to answer.”

  “Call me nothing, meneer.”

  Quartus’s English was decent, but the hardness of his b’s and d’s and his phrasing reflected the influence of his bedrock Afrikaans, a language whose standard delivery, in Ray’s opinion, resembled biting more than it did normal talking.

  The smoke was too much and Ray began coughing. It was bad. It was torture, in fact, coughing inside a hood. It was clever, too, as a form of torture, if you were concerned to leave no marks, half suffocating a victim with smoke while he had a hood on. He hadn’t heard of it. He would have to be ready to hold his breath if this was going to continue. The varieties of torture here were pretty infinite. His chest hurt. His throat, too. He craved water. They wanted him to beg for it.

  But someone else was coughing, having a coughing fit right along with him. Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust, he thought. Whoever was coughing had a condition. He thought it must be Quartus. For a moment they were animals together in a similar affliction.

  “Who do you think I am, then?” Quartus asked, when the fit had passed.

  It might be time for my little program, Ray thought.

  He said, “Truly, My Satan, thou art but a Dunce, And dost not know the Garment from the Man.” That was Blake, a little blast of Blake for his tormentor, and not bad if he did say so himself. Not knowing the garment from the man was good. That was what he was going to get, Quartus, if he kept this up, English Literature. Now Quartus was going on again about telling the truth.

  “The truth is bald, and cold,” Ray said. It was from Emily Dickinson.

  Quartus didn’t like it. Ray could hear him getting out of his chair and coming forward in order to deliver a personal piece of punishment. It was possible Quartus had taken the mention of baldness in a personally irrational way, which meant that he needed to scrutinize his quotations a little better before using them. His punishment was a little more smoke sent his way and Quartus pouring water into a glass and sipping so he could hear.

  Unasked, Ray summarized everything rapidly, who he was, his seconding from teaching to this mission for the ministry’s search for new school sites, his marriage, his wife who would be frantic if this continued much longer, his absolute ignorance about who Quartus was and what was going on. And he added something new as to how very advisable it would be for him to be let go because the American embassy would shortly be involved, and that would be unpleasant for everybody detaining him. That was it. That was the fiction he was going to stick with no matter what. He was tiring and he needed to get it out and get it clear before fatigue weakened him and he began deviating, altering things. He had done it for his own benefit. That was it.

  Quartus sighed hugely. He continued sipping voluptuously.

  Ray was singing mentally Let me call you Satan, to the tune of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” It was for amusement. Interrogation, with its calculated halts and longueurs, was so … boring. He wanted to say something funny to Quartus. He had an idea.

  He said, solemnly, “I know that I shall meet my fate … Somewhere among these clods below.” It was funny to him. It wouldn’t be to Quartus, though. He wanted to make Quartus laugh, if he could.

  His thinking was interrupted by a blow to the right side of his neck. He had been struck from behind, with the side of the hand this time, a medium-hard blow but essentially a nothing, a kiss, as these
things went. But they were escalating.

  Ray said, “Stop hitting me for a second and I’ll tell you something you might want to know.”

  “What would that be? And you must speak louder, meneer, because of the hood. What will you be telling me?”

  Ray said, “Okay, first uncover my mouth. Tie this thing above my mouth. I can’t get enough air to speak properly. And you can’t really hear me.” He felt it was worth a try.

  They surprised him. The drawstring tie was undone and the hem of the hood was brought up and the hood retied above his mouth. There was bunched fabric against his nostrils, but still it was better. He could get a decent volume of air through his mouth. He swilled air, getting ready. He wanted to bait Quartus. He wanted to blast Quartus with something classic. Speak, English! he thought. He wanted it to be Milton but it couldn’t be because he was coming up dry. Something pithy was needed. He only had a minute and Milton wasn’t pithy. But it came to him that “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” might do.

  He began, loud. “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones …” The blow he had been inviting came, stopping him. Again it was a side-of-the-hand blow. He felt like asking to be hit on the left side of his neck the next time around, for balance.

  “He is saying poetry to us. He is a poefter.” That was Quartus’s assistant, obviously. He was exasperated. Poefter was Afrikaans for homosexual. Ray knew that much. Rex was a poefter, in fact.

  Quartus hissed angrily at his assistant, who obviously had stepped out of his role.

  The Milton had been mildly apposite to Quartus but he should have used Yeats’s “Irish Airman” instead, again, just to get Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love in, for his consideration. He might want to convey something about what, fate, about something like the feeling in the poem about the guy in the hammock hearing the cowbells as the cows came home to roost and thinking he has wasted his life, a poem he wished he knew but didn’t. He felt like teaching Quartus something. It was in his nature. Why not try? He wanted to bait him and teach him at the same time. How productive was that? He was a fool.