Mortals

by Norman Rush

  “Oh sure you did. Don’t tell me otherwise. But you’re missing my point. And by the way, I believe you imagined yourself betraying me with the embassy nurse. Your juices run. You’re not dead there. I benefited from that. You’re a live cock. But this isn’t my point. I don’t know if I’m being too subtle for you. You were my model. I don’t doubt that your history of rectitude would have been different if any of the ladies you enjoyed staring at so much had gone aggressive toward you. Do you doubt it?”

  “Of course! I don’t know what you wanted from me …”

  “You’re not getting the point I’m making. There was a certain imbalance that felt worse to me than maybe it should have when Davis showed up. The fact is that I have truly been a virgin when it came to feeling or showing anything toward other men. So when I decided to move toward Davis I had a certain model in my mind and a certain amount of historical aggravation to go with it. That I had never felt free to address because I didn’t know how to address it and didn’t know I had a right to address it other than asking you to cut it out in public, in the rare cases when that happened.”

  “Cases? Don’t you mean case, singular?”

  “No, cases. But this is a byway and not an excuse for what I did and I don’t want to have it taken for an excuse because it’s not an excuse. So let’s stop talking about it. Let’s pause.”

  They stopped at the side of the road near Swartruggens. He ate a banana.

  He said, “So is this right? two things happened. First, it got, in your words, more intense than you’d expected it would, leaving intense undefined for the moment. And second, it came to my attention. I found out about it and I wasn’t supposed to find out about it. Because you were preserving, or reserving, better, the right to have this thing evolve to its full stature and glory and intensity, at which point I would have been clued in, or not. And possibly you harbored expectations that you would gain knowledge out of this and decide to return to the mixture as before with yours truly in the dark forever? In other words, this was your variant of a very commonplace … with other people … situation. So is that about right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know.”

  “You’re cold. You’re being cold.”

  “No I’m not. Wait until I start on myself. But before I do that, I have to know everything I don’t know about you and Morel.”

  “You mean the details.”

  “The details, yes. And I have to know about the question of love, who loves who. Because I love you. In all this, that’s absolutely clear, crystal clear, as they say. I can’t be with you, anymore. I know I can’t. And that’s because I love you, paradoxically. This is what I think and this is what makes everything impossible, and that is that even if you told me you loved me again, interesting concept, reloved me, I wouldn’t be able to believe it. Believe it again. I’d be afraid you were being pragmatic or something like that. I mean, I could try to think of your adventure with Morel as an experiment that got out of control and that I was partly to blame for it in the first place. But I don’t see how it could work.

  “And I don’t even know if you would be interested in convincing me that it could. That would be presumptuous of me, now that I bring it up. So, no. Yes, the details.”

  “You assume I stopped loving you, Ray.”

  “You must have. Of course you did.”

  “I can’t stand discussing love. Ray, I can’t.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s too simple. I have … feelings …”

  “Love-feelings? Love-feelings. See, I understand what’s going on here. The reason you don’t want to talk about how you feel about Morel is because it would be disloyal to do that, to give the details to somebody else, such as your husband. You may not have thought of this. You develop a primary loyalty to the person you love and a secondary loyalty to the person you used to love and primary trumps secondary.”

  “You’re making it too simple, the way you always do.”

  “Well, describe it in your own words, how you feel about him. By the way, I like Morel. He’s sterling, my dear, in many ways. He has gone out of his way to have an interesting mind to present, interesting views. He was a friend to me in captivity. This is just by the way. But you owe me a description of how you feel. You can make it concise. But don’t leave anything out.”

  “This is impossible.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “I mean, it’s hard enough talking about this, but talking about it cooped up where you can’t move is impossible. Could we just get out and walk around?”

  He agreed to do it. He didn’t like it. He didn’t know how dangerous it was in this area. There was some SADF presence. They had been stuck behind a convoy of six army trucks for a few kilometers. He supposed it was all right. He had good, long vantages in every direction. There was plenty of starlight. They would stay close to the vehicle. He understood how she felt. They were discussing enormous subjects under conditions of restrictions that were unfair. He wanted to pace around and break things. But they couldn’t. Wringing each other’s necks would also be appropriate to their discourse. They got out.

  She was sensitive to their need to abbreviate as much as they could, if they were going to make it into Joburg not later than nine-thirty or ten. He would have to find a hotel, find a safe place to deposit the Volkswagen, get organized so he could start out early in his search for Kerekang.

  “We’re having a sighing contest,” she said. They were leaning against the car.

  “We have to go soon, Iris.”

  “I know. But I want to get this part over with. You have a right to know certain things. This is so impossible. But you’re going to quiz me about the sex with him, with Davis, and the part that played in everything. And in a way I’m eager to tell you, as much as I hate it, because it reflects well on you.”

  “This is a little too abbreviated for me. Say what you mean.”

  “Well. First is that you have nothing to be concerned about … about you, sexually. You’re fine. You’re unusually fine, I guess you could say I’m concluding, not that my experience has been so exhaustive.”

  This is how much I love her, he thought. He was alarmed at the idea that she was implying inadequacies, sexual ones, that she was preparing to live with. You are a prince, aren’t you, he thought.

  He had to ask. “Does he have some sort of problem? Something I should, I mean, I mean you should, be concerned about?” He was thinking of impotence. There were phobias about touching some people had. It wasn’t size. What was it?

  “Oh it’s not a problem. Look I’m giving you a compliment, is all I’m doing. This is awkward to say. You’re very skilled, Ray. What I’m saying is that I wasn’t overwhelmed by things he could do that you can’t or haven’t. He’s kind of prudish.”

  “I’m skilled? How can I be skilled? I’m what you made me, what we are together.”

  She couldn’t look at him. He wanted to know how many times they had done it, and where, and how. She would tell him if he made her do it. He wouldn’t. He wanted to apologize.

  He said, “How many times have you done it?”

  “Please don’t make me go into detail, please.”

  “I have a right to know.”

  “I don’t agree with that.”

  “Okay, so you’re saying I should be satisfied with what, the overview, let’s call it. That you just gave.”

  “If you love me you won’t make me describe everything.”

  “I wonder how many times that line has been used.”

  She was in misery. He could restrain himself on this, at least for now, he could. But there was another sex question he had to have answered. It was legitimate.

  “I have to ask you this. You’ve been absolutely careful, haven’t you? You know what I mean. About infection.”

  “Ray, he’s a doctor.”

  “I know he is and that’s good and I’m sure it gives him the fear of God he needs to have. But … you don’t know
everything about him. You can’t, yet. And you know how it is in Botswana. Half the population may be seropositive. That’s what the embassy thinks. A gigantic nightmare is coming. You know about this. You haven’t been tempted to take any kind of chances, have you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s always with a condom. I’m sorry, but is it always with a condom?”

  She nodded. She couldn’t say it out.

  So Morel had never been flesh to flesh with her, fucking. That was something. That experience was his private treasure, so far. Of course at some point, that would be taken away from him, as soon as she decided she could completely trust him.

  “I know you trust him, Iris. But be careful. I think he’s honorable, of course, but you have to be careful.”

  “If you’re asking me if I trust him not to expose me to disease by cheating with other people, I do.”

  That formulation was painful. But it was all painful.

  She said, “And he’s completely terrified about HIV. He’s made a nuisance of himself over it with people in the Ministry of Health. He’s going to get them to be serious about it.”

  Good for him, Ray thought. This was hell, this part. He could feel himself releasing her. He had accomplished the intellectual act of release, but there was more, a visceral part, a corporeal part, that felt like physical injury, tearing. One had to be kept severed from the other. The intellectual act consisted of halfway imagining himself walking and talking normally and conducting business in the future, business of some kind, without her anywhere near the scene. Of course he would be doing business in hell, because his life post-Iris would be hell. He seemed to be attracted to hell, hell via Milton and hell via the agency, which specialized in making little hells for the enemy here and there, individuals and groups. True hell is your wife being in love with another man, he thought. He had known a couple of men in his time who were obsessed with pursuing other men’s wives, mavens of married female flesh, and he had considered it a fetish and the men freakish, with their fascination with getting into colleagues’ wives, with all the risks and betrayals that entailed. He had regarded them as unpleasant types and so had Iris. He should have paid more attention, understood them better. In The Decameron the seducer priest got his way with young women by convincing them that putting his penis into them was a pious act called putting the Devil in hell, back in hell, supposedly. Of course Iris might say he had been slightly complaisant at the beginning concerning her signs and gestures toward Morel, in that he hadn’t opposed her going to the man. He didn’t think he had been. If he had he was sorry and he would have to put it down to looking for a great refusal, a gran rifiuto, on her part, maybe. He thought, If you love hell so much you should have done Dante instead of pitiful Milton. He was surprised at the thought. It was too late to do Dante.

  Joburg was one hundred and sixty miles from Gaborone, as the crow flies, and they were only halfway there.

  Normally on road trips Iris was the navigator. He didn’t need her help on this trip, which was straightforward. They both knew it by heart. But still she had gotten out the roadmap and was keeping it on her lap, refolding it as they progressed, keeping up. She was beautiful in profile.

  “I want to go up there,” she said, almost peremptorily.

  He knew where they were. They were passing along a valley with one high wall. A curving side road ran up it to a picnic area, tables and benches strung along a railed escarpment, and there was a concrete observation platform. You could see Pretoria in the distance. At night you could see the amber haze that hung over it. They had been up there in the past. He couldn’t imagine anyone would frequent it at night, using it as a lovers’ lane, for example, because of the general fear over security that permeated the Groot Marico. There were toilet facilities on the site, as he recalled. She was willing to stop and urinate by the road, normally, but getting to the bush was more of a trek now that there had been so much clearing-back.

  “Do you need to pee?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind, but that isn’t it.” That meant it was nostalgia. He couldn’t oppose that. He looked at her. He realized that she was tearing up, not weeping yet. His heart hurt. The thing was that he loved her, every inch of her, which it was pointless to keep saying. So they would go up and have a gaze. She wanted to and they were making good time.

  He took the side road and drove slowly upward. Without prologue Iris reached in his crotch and pressed on his penis.

  He had no words. He was unsurprised, but this was dangerous, an egg full of suffering for somebody, maybe everybody. He coughed. Out of pleasure, suffering, would be something in Latin. On the other hand, there was something fated about the prospect, and correct, because it acknowledged something about their personal carnal history to do it one more time, saluted something. She rested the backs of her fingers against his penis, moving them slightly.

  She said, “Hm, I see you’re at least bi. I thought you might be gay, but I see you’re bi. Well, thank goodness.” This was an old game between them. Gay meant he was soft, bi meant he was semihard. She would give the mock characterization that he was gay or bi if, when she was teasing him on the way to sex, he was not in his usual quite prompt hard state, his hetero state. It was a painful attempt to relive old stuff. He forgave her. He was sorry for her. He didn’t know what she thought she was going to get out of the coming event. There was going to be one. He was hard, as they rose.

  “Oh my,” she said. That was another thing she did, acting prim as an ingredient in the course of lewd conduct. Lewd was her own word for herself.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Now you’re hetero,” she said.

  “I know, I know. This is silly,” he said. She was delicately unbuttoning her blouse.

  They were near the top. In Dante there was something about l’arte de tornar. Turning back was an art he didn’t have, had never had. He wasn’t going to turn back. She was leading the way. He didn’t know if he was being insane to follow. It was possible. Her eyes were wet. He had to watch the road, but she was unbuttoning her blouse, his wife. She was.

  It didn’t look like there was going to be any discussion. The parking area was of course marked parkering. It was empty. The whole site was theirs. He had no idea what she had in mind for a location for what she had in mind, which was probably not the car. It would be complicated in the car. But doing anything outside the car could be dangerous. It was getting cooler. And they would be exposed.

  He parked. Her blouse was completely undone. He groaned. He couldn’t help it. She knew what she was doing. He could see the inner side of one breast but not the nipple. That was meant to tease. She had perfect, sleek darkish nipples. There was a sense in which a woman wasn’t naked if she had something obscuring her nipples even if everything else was there.

  “It’s getting chilly,” he said.

  “No it isn’t,” she answered. She was in a sexually driven state. He had seen it in their life together. He wondered if Morel had seen it. He was inflamed. Fluid leaked from his penis.

  They would be in danger outside the car, in a generic way, white people naked, one a woman, in the dark, in South Africa, making themselves vulnerable in the most absolute way. The danger could come from Boer farm guard groups, from Boer police or from the army, even, or from ordinary criminals or from black guerrillas. He could propose that they wait until they got to Joburg and into a hotel but that felt like a bad idea. She was in the grip of doing it now and here. It would be extraordinary to do it now and here and not extraordinary to do it in the comfort of a hotel. There was a certain subcategory of the human race consisting of people who sought out and enjoyed public intercourse and the dangers that went with it, but he was not in it. She was going to have to let him reconnoiter the site thoroughly to make sure that nobody was hiding behind a bush. She was undressing all the way.

  He said, “I have to take a look around.” He found a torch in the glove box and let himself out. He made a circuit of the s
ite. The toilets were locked, which was annoying. She always wanted to pee before sex and then after. He only needed to pee after. The good news was that she had been right about the temperature. It wasn’t too cold. It was cool. It was all right. He was radiating heat.

  Iris was naked, waiting in the car. It looked like there was not going to be any discussion. He got into the driver’s seat.

  “You don’t want to be inside, in the car, do you?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  He said, “What’s your plan?”

  She pointed into the back. There was a thick pink acrylic afghan on the seat, along with a canister of towelettes. She had planned this. He knew the afghan. He had knocked a can of ginger beer over on it once. It was faintly redolent of that, still, and of motor oil. Usually it was kept in the boot of their own Beetle. He was not going to go out into the bush with her. They would have to stay next to the car, with the doors open so that they could jump back in should some kind of danger appear. They were not going to go off in search of a setting with a view. He would prefer it if he could leave the engine running, even, but that would be distracting. He was fully aroused.

  He got out of everything except his loafers. He wanted to kiss her. He put his hand behind her head. She turned her face away. She was weeping softly and helplessly, not making anything of it. He wanted it to stop. Everything is impossible, he thought. She was beautiful, naked. Her breasts were like what, some perfect imaginary kind of fruit, like that platonic idea behind some paradisiacal fruit not known on earth, something like that. He was full of lust, which was hardly surprising, he was in a deprived state. She looked silvery. They had moonlight. Widely scattered strings and points of light burned in the landscape below them and the blur over Pretoria was visible.

  He said, “We’re going to stay right next to the car, and I mean right up against it.”

  She nodded. He would dispense with his socks and loafers and put them in the car where they would be safe if they had to leave in a rush. His experience of enforced barefootedness had left its mark on him.