Mortals

by Norman Rush

  And then Morel had made as if to hand the waste bucket to them, to the guards, to take care of, and they had bridled, but they had allowed him to carry it out and empty it himself, a little away from the shed. And he had brought it back tolerably cleaned up. He had shaken sand around in it.

  And there had been no repercussions over not following the standing-against-the-wall-with-back-turned protocol.

  Ray didn’t understand. It was showing.

  “I know what this is,” he said.

  “What what is?”

  “This … all this. This food.”

  Morel was secreting the paper the omelette had come on, folded up, in a crack in the wall.

  “No, they’re softening us up. This is the softening-up phase. They’ll alternate. You’ll see.”

  “Maybe they’re through with us, Ray.”

  “That’s what they want us to think. Don’t. Don’t relax.”

  “You’re the coach,” Morel said.

  There was a knock at the door, a knock, not a barrage of banging and pounding. And the door was unchained again.

  The guards were back. This time an old woman was with them. She was carrying a large basin of hot water. Steam was rising from the water. Ray wanted to sink his face into the water however hot it was. A sponge was produced, a couple of not too unclean-looking rags, and a bar of yellow soap, laundry soap but still soap.

  Morel’s Setswana was very good, surprisingly good. That had to be part of the explanation for the improvement in their situation. He could only follow what Morel was saying after the fact, by repeating to himself whichever line or fragment he could catch and remember. Lere ditlhako tsa me meant Bring me my shoes. It was in the imperative mode. Morel thought he was going to get his shoes returned. It was laughable. Morel spoke Setswana rapidly, too rapidly, like a native speaker. If he would slow down I could understand more, Ray thought.

  For some reason, their captors were being less paranoid about allowing them to see something of the grounds, the surroundings. They still had to do their little tasks, like eating, inside, with the doors closed. But Morel had been allowed a few moments in the open. And incidental glimpses of the main building were not being forbidden.

  Closed in again, Morel and Ray crouched down at the basin. There is no civilization without hot water, Ray thought. Washing up would be voluptuous. He wanted to at least touch the water while it was still hot. The question was whether or not he should go first, whether he should assume it would be fair for him to go first, because he was the filthier. Or would it make more sense for Morel to go first because he was cleaner and so would need less water? Inevitably meanwhile the water was cooling. He couldn’t stand it.

  “You go ahead,” Ray said.

  But Morel had his own protocol and that was the one that would be followed. Apparently, according to it, Ray would be allowed right off the bat to lavishly wash his face, his orbits, his eye-pits if that was the name for them. He was encouraged to do that. He did it.

  And then began the painstaking, assisted part of the procedure, the scalp-cleaning, followed by all the secondary ablutions, the laving of his armpits and so on. It was all done expertly, stretching the water, as Morel put it, carefully lathering up a particular area before rinsing with the sponge. The wastewater fell to the floor.

  Ray felt like a baby, once it was done, but he felt much better.

  Morel used the remaining water on his own face and feet. He had dedicated the precious water almost entirely to Ray.

  “Thank you,” Ray said. It was awkward.

  He felt restored. He was less his body and more himself, less his body pulsing and hurting and preoccupying everything, more his consciousness of Iris, he was sorry to say. But it was true. He was sorry because now it was time to take up the question of Iris, with Morel. He knew he should put it off but he couldn’t put it off.

  He was ready to go. He was gathering his breath to begin when there was an interruption, noise outside. And then the doors were unlocked and cracked open and Morel was summoned out, and then, and this was new, the doors were pushed shut but not locked.

  He didn’t know what to conclude. Something was new.

  An evident altercation was taking place just outside and then Morel was back, pushed into the cell. Ray had gathered pretty well what the altercation had been about. It had transpired in English and Setswana and it had been about Morel’s shoes. He had been demanding the return of his shoes as a precondition for whatever it was they wanted. And Ray was getting clearer about what that might be, what the explanation for the better treatment they were enjoying might be, that is.

  There was something undeniably what, tough, about Morel, something tough or reckless and more reckless than tough. It was one thing to be tough if you fully appreciated what these evil cocksuckers were capable of doing to you and another thing if you didn’t. These bastards came trailing clouds of murder and arson and beatings. Morel knew it, but he knew it in the way you know something you read about in the paper. That is, he knew it but didn’t know it.

  But Ray knew the truth, which raised the question of why he wasn’t himself considering the question of throwing himself on one of the bastards and breaking his neck with a move he knew how to do. In the grand scheme of things that would be a worthy thing to do, removing one of these bastards from the phalanx they were in, making one fewer of them in the world, even if it got him killed and removed from life, which it would.

  He really ought to think about it. Koevoet was an evil plague. It would be doing something. There was the question of his life, of course, and whether he could do something more useful than that with it. He would have to take the idea under advisement, killing one of them. He would have to take the idea under advisement. He had numerous ideas under advisement. This would be one more.

  But it was all academic because of Iris, because he had to conclude with her and it had to be face to face. It had to be done in the flesh. It had to be open. It had to be a clear thing. He had to let her argue her side, argue, say, that they should stay together despite everything, not go, not go.

  And she needed to hear what he had to say, not that there was that much on his side. And he needed to hear the dire truth or whatever lies she might want to try on him, showing how abject she could be, how much she wanted to take everything back. And he needed to see what that would do to him, if that was the way things went. So he had to live.

  But that meant he had to get the whole truth out of Morel. That was his next task. And it was an urgent task, urgent to tackle right away because something might separate them anytime because they were in the hands of others.

  Whatever strength he had now, he owed to Morel. That was beside the point.

  Ray said, “We have to …”

  Morel cut him off, with a sign. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to listen. He was concentrating on listening for cues from outside. There was a consultation going on just outside.

  He hated Morel, then. The man was nothing if not self-confident to the point, judging by his expression, of smugness. He knew something. Or he expected something.

  And then the doors were inched open and somebody placed two neatly folded blankets on the floor, withdrew, and then a hand reached in and deposited, on the stacked blankets, Morel’s shoes, thick-soled high-quarter shoes, laceless but cleaned up, rudely polished, even.

  The shoes were works of orthopedic art. They matched nicely. But clearly the right shoe contained a substantial orthotic. Staring, Ray could make out certain telltale differences in the right shoe, but not anything that would be noticeable when the shoe was being walked around in. And of course such shoes would have cost in the high hundreds, at least. He didn’t know why that depressed him. It did.

  Morel’s eagerness to get his shoes on was understandable. He understood it. He was sorry for Morel being pitched into this morass and having to deal with everything from the standpoint of being lopsided.

  “What is going on?” Ray asked.

 
“Guess.”

  “I don’t know.” But he did know.

  “They want my services. They need me to look at some people.”

  “So you bargained.”

  “Right. I wanted more. I wanted my toothbrush. Yours too. I didn’t leave you out. But I really wanted my shoes. They knew that.”

  “I understand. Of course. This is interesting.” He was wondering if this leverage of Morel’s meant that there would be an extended regime of better treatment and if he would be included in it.

  There was another novelty. Someone knocked at the doors before unlocking them.

  Two hooded men appeared, invited Morel to come along, and closed and locked the doors with the rough ceremony Ray had earlier gotten accustomed to.

  Ray decided to pace around for a while, vigorously, the way Morel had said he should, for exercise. Morel seemed to be saving him, in various ways. That seemed to be the picture. In addition to proposing to their captors that Ray was a mental case, Morel was getting benefactions for him. They both had blankets, now.

  It didn’t matter. When Morel came back they would have to discuss Iris.

  They had to. And in the meantime he needed to be able to refer to Iris and the Iris question without using her name. Inwardly he was going to refer to it, to her, as … the subject matter. That would make it easier.

  Because it was odd about her name because when he said it to himself even in the most passing way he felt the impulse to say it to her, to feel himself addressing her. So this would make life easier.

  It was harder being alone, now, waiting. Having company had somehow done that. He was losing the equilibrium he had developed.

  There was nothing. For present company he had dust motes and flies, a few flies.

  It was remarkable how rapidly it went from cold to hot in the Kalahari. Already the heat was beginning to press. His grasp on the passing of time was not what it should be. Morel had been gone too long, he knew, but how much was too long in minutes? He didn’t know how long it had been.

  He kept pacing around dutifully. He detached a splinter from the chewed-up wooden floor and used it to clean under his nails.

  He wanted to know what was going to happen next.

  Morel was back. He looked ashen, which was bad because there was the subject matter to deal with.

  Again the locking up was noisy and emphatic. Everything is a sign, Ray thought.

  Morel looked beige, true beige, a shade lighter than his usual tan coloring. He had been through something.

  “What?” Ray asked.

  “What kind of place is this?”

  “You mean the Bird Lodge? Well, it was supposed to be a resort for birdwatching, game drives …”

  “Because apparently they had a zoo here, too, a small zoo.”

  “That’s right. I remember that. One of the attractions was a private zoo. I don’t know that they ever got around to stocking it.”

  “It’s stocked now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They have people in cages. They’re holding people in the zoo cages.” “What, they took you there to treat them? And how many people? And who is it?”

  “I don’t know who they are. They’re local, mostly Bakgalagadi, I think. They understood my Setswana okay, but when they spoke it was not the Setswana I’m used to. I don’t know any Sekgalagadi, unfortunately.”

  “How many were there, I mean how many are there?”

  “Twenty. Four women and the rest men. All the people in the cages are black, of course …” Morel was agitated.

  “Calm down,” Ray said.

  “There were only black people in the zoo. And I’m in here, with you.”

  “I can see how you feel, but look. It’s an accident. The zoo was meant to attract white people, tourists. It was a facility, it was available, it got put to use.”

  “I saw three exposure cases. What am I supposed to do? I have nothing to work with.”

  “Who are they, though? Did they tell you anything? Are they from the Toromole area …?”

  “I couldn’t talk about anything but their symptoms. And that’s all they were allowed to talk about. That was the restriction. I followed orders. There were two of those goons with me. I feel like killing. I feel like killing.”

  “I know. I do too.”

  “I said they had to get those people indoors. Or at least they had to let them have fires at night, allow that.”

  “Will they do it?”

  “They laughed at me. I’ll get them, though, somehow I will, I’ll testify against them. If I get the chance.”

  “We need to keep calm, come on.”

  Morel squeezed his eyes shut and began breathing measuredly. Ray waited.

  “Now I’m all right,” Morel said.

  But he wasn’t all right. He was in a state of agitation. He was in the corner gesturing violently that Ray should come over and boost him up so that he might examine the ceiling. Escaping was on his mind, clearly.

  Ray went over to him. “This isn’t a good idea. If they come in and see us doing this we’re in trouble. Really. I’ve gone over this. We’d need tools to get out through the ceiling. There’s chicken wire, layers of it, up there. And it doesn’t make sense because even if we got out we’d just be here. They watch this place. There’s nowhere to go except the bush and we don’t even have water. They patrol around here at night. You can hear them. Listen to me. Believe me.”

  This was bad. He didn’t want to have Morel obsessing on this. There was a subject matter they had to discuss. He needed Morel to be calm, in his right mind, because of the subject matter.

  Now Morel was scrutinizing the floorboards, pointlessly.

  Ray said, “Tell me anything you observed over in the hotel.”

  “What did I observe? I observed they have a problem. They don’t have a functioning medic with this unit. And they have two guys with serious sepsis, infected wounds. I don’t know what’s wrong with the medic. He’s comatose. I think it’s an overdose of some kind, maybe Mandrax. There’s plenty of dagga in the air, by the way, over there. That’s what I observed, this is a messed-up group of people. This is a messed-up operation. It could go any direction you can think of. That’s my sense of it. That’s what I observed.”

  33. The Truth Shall Set You Free, All That

  Morel was continuing the business of studying the inner surface of their place of confinement. It was compulsive activity, something that would make him feel better without necessarily leading to a course of action. It made sense for Ray not to interfere. He would watch.

  Before long Morel reached the point of examining for the second time aspects of the place he had already gone over. He was in a loop. He would recognize it momentarily, Ray was sure. And he would stop when he recognized it.

  Ray could wait. The subject matter was waiting.

  No one was coming for them.

  This was the time to take up the subject matter. He would regret it. He expected to regret it. He couldn’t help it.

  They were sitting on the floor, on opposite sides of the room, which seemed favorable to Ray, favorable to the project at hand. Getting a discussion going and sustaining it if they were closer, in closer proximity, would be harder. The distance was a good thing. The acoustics in their prison were good.

  “My wife,” Ray said.

  Morel said nothing.

  Ray had to be sure he was being heard. He would have to speak a little louder. He might have to move closer. He didn’t want to startle Morel.

  “My wife is okay, you said.”

  “Iris is fine, yes.”

  “You’ve examined her, of course.”

  “Yes and she’s fine.”

  Ray wanted to know urgently and irrationally if Iris had had to undress for her examination, if she’d been naked for it. If it had been a full-scale examination, then of course she would have had to. Of course she would have been wearing one of those inadequate paper tunics. There were protocols. But of course he wa
s being ridiculous because Morel had been with Iris naked under, how should he put it, under worse circumstances than an examination, worse from his standpoint, anyway. It was unlikely that they had gone to it without undressing. He needed to know everything, and he meant everything. And he wanted to know how it had started, what the actual trigger had been. And he wanted to know if the actual trigger was something, some act, some particular mistake, that he’d committed, so that he could direct the time machine he was going to get into in order to go back and redo everything to the right moment, the right date. He needed to know everything, but he had to recognize that there were limits to the detail he could expect to extract. He had to be rational.

  He moved forward a little, away from the wall. He didn’t like raising his voice, and somehow that fact reminded him of something funny Iris had said, once. She had said it apropos the communications officer at the embassy. She had observed him in a number of settings and she had said, You know there’s something wrong with a guy’s relationship with his wife when he lowers his voice whenever he refers to her despite the fact that she’s in another country.

  “So you examined her.” He was back to that. He didn’t want to be.

  “I did. I said I did.”

  Ray wanted to get unstuck from the medical side of his subject matter because in fact Morel had been helpful with a few concrete things, like teaching Iris to hock mucus out of the back of her throat, and, irritatingly, with her cystitis, and with her regularity problems. She had been grateful. And one thing Ray didn’t need was any reason to wallow in areas that implied he should be in a state of gratitude himself, toward Morel, not with what he had to do, what he had to get out of him.

  There were too many sides to the subject matter. One minute he wanted revenge, if he could get it, and the next he was what, avuncular, wanting to know what Morel’s intentions were. There was no avoiding that question, ultimately. It would make a difference if his intention was to marry her after taking her away, marry her and be good to her forever. That would be one thing. Somehow that had to be determined.