Mortals (28 page)

And if he wasn’t going to go ahead and learn Setswana, it was certainly stupid of him, and also indefensible, to have pretended to Boyle that he was fluent in it. How base was it to make himself into a liar to Boyle, and how pointless was it to do it over something that didn’t actually matter to his work, to his productivity, and also how stupid was it to try to impress Boyle by claiming a skill Boyle wouldn’t have the sense to value?

Comma Lesole was there in the crowd around Morel. Comma had recently been promoted to chief of maintenance at St. James and Ray couldn’t remember if he had congratulated him or not. Guiding Iris, he moved next to Comma Lesole and touched his shoulder.

“Dumela, rra,” Ray said to him. “Can you say what this is going on about?”

“Dumela, rra, when he can stop I shall say it to you.” But he wanted to be able to listen closely for the moment.

“Very good. But the moruti is …? His name is what?”

“He is their bishop, rra. He is called Bishop Tsatsilebe and you must call him your grace every time.”

He didn’t think Iris had ever met Comma. She was going to be curious about the name. Ray wouldn’t be able to help her because he had never asked Comma why that particular name, his registered Christian name and not a nickname, had been given to him. Odd names were commonplace in Tswana town culture. Questioning people about them was gauche and stamped you as a greenhorn. You just could not overreact to the recurrent necessity to address someone you worked with as Toboggan or Judas or Substitute.

The bishop’s tone was angry. Morel was listening, but saying less and less. He was having trouble knowing when it was appropriate for him to respond. The bishop left large intervals between the points he was making, presumably to allow them to register, but the intervals were just that. A sequence of pronouncements was in progress and the bishop was making it plain that Morel’s attempts to respond to each point were premature and unwelcome. Ray didn’t need to know Setswana to recognize that a good deal of the bishop’s presentation involved emphatic repetition of the same statements.

There was a pause as the bishop was handed his tea, extended by consultations with several of his followers as to whether an umbrella should be held above his head. A woman who was probably his wife pushed a tam-o’-shanter into his hands, which he tossed angrily away. He declined the umbrella. A follower retrieved the tam-o’-shanter.

Morel had a trait which, in Ray’s experience, was common among
important or self-important people. This was a reflex tendency to be aware at all times of who in the immediate area of the important person might be more important to talk to than present company. It was a scanning reflex. Morel was doing it now.

Ray decided to bother Comma Lesole again.

Still reluctant, Comma Lesole said, “I cannot tell you all what-what he has said, rra. This chap.” He indicated Morel. He said, “He has said many things, many things. Well well, it was not good. Ehe.”

Ray liked the standard local pronunciation of “said,” making it rhyme with “aid,” as “says” was pronounced to rhyme with “gaze.” It elevated what was being reported, somehow. Maybe it had a biblical ring. The American “sed” sounded vulgar and inferior to him, if he thought about it.

It occurred to Ray that possibly he was being unfair to Morel, who really was trapped. The scanning Morel was doing might not be the one Ray hated, the one that made every conversation with the self-important party provisional and interruptible. After all, Morel was under pressure and all his scanning might be driven by simple fear that somebody like the ambassador might happen by and notice that Morel was agitating a valued guest. That might be. We shall see, Ray thought.

Iris crowded closer to him, clutching his arm. This scene wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

Comma said, “You see, I don’t know him well. In fact, I don’t know him. But this lakhoa is saying such as how we must say bogwadi is no more true amongst us.”

The word meant nothing to Ray, but he noted that Comma was indeed seeing Morel as a lakhoa.

“Can you tell me what that means?”

Arduously, Ray wrested out of Comma’s reticence a semblance of an account of the exchange between Morel and the bishop up to that moment. There was widespread belief among the Batswana that widows were a source of certain diseases. AIDS was one of these diseases. AIDS was something that the Batswana had known of for many years. The bishop had given this information to Morel for him to understand, so he would not be misled. The Tswana name for AIDS was bogwadi. The idea was that widows, resuming sexual relations after the long period of abstention that followed the death of their husbands, would release toxins stored up in their vaginas. These toxins caused diseases. That was why it was so urgent not to be the first man to sleep with a widow after the death of her husband. This the bishop had said many times. But the doctor had said it was not true, at first. But then the doctor had said only that he had
not heard of this cause, after the bishop began mocking him. That was the point they had come to.

This was new to Ray. Comma confirmed to him what he suspected, which was that bogwadi was considered curable by the sangomas. So here was another nightmare that somebody at the agency and at the embassy would have to incorporate. He would pass it on.

AIDS was murdering Africa. He hated to think about it. Ten percent of the population in Botswana was seropositive. The percentage was higher in the towns. So here was another obfuscation to deal with. The agency was already exerting itself against another popular belief, which was that AIDS was a piece of white biological warfare against Africans, which somehow was associated with the belief that AIDS was a trick to make Africans use condoms and reduce their population growth. And there was yet another belief that only makhoa could contract AIDS, that the Batswana themselves were immune. It was a mess. The picture of AIDS in Botswana was incoherent and the disease was galloping. A small campaign had begun. Posters were up here and there, saying
DON’T SURMISE! CONDOMISE!
The posters were frequently torn down or defaced. The agency was interested in knowing who was doing that.

Comma said, “In fact this man is apologizing very much. You can see.” Comma seemed greatly relieved. Ray understood it. Here, Morel was seen as a white man. Batswana arguing with Batswana was one thing. Batswana openly arguing with whites was another. There was something distinctly unusual about it. The past was still alive. Antagonism expressed obliquely was closer to the norm than confrontation, and antagonism denied or concealed in evasions and the lie direct
was
the norm, although that was putting it harshly.

Apparently it was over. Morel was doing a certain amount of bowing and scraping. The bishop was collecting his people. Ray would be able to do a supplementary on Morel with just what he had so far. Morel was injudicious … insensitive to the prerogatives of people with status or blind to the self-evident status certain people possessed … and then there were the implications of his command of Setswana.

Now he could say something to Morel, interact more adequately with him from Iris’s standpoint, as he’d promised he would.

Ray was cordial. Morel was cordial in the way professionals are cordial, Ray thought. To a member of the free professions everyone is a potential client, and they present themselves within certain limits.

“Excitement,” Ray said.

“All my fault. How are you?” Morel asked.

“You tell me, Doctor,” was Ray’s answer. All smiled.

To Iris, Morel said, “Hello my dear,” rapidly and lightly, avuncular. Ray didn’t like it. It was provocative. It was Morel formally asserting a role toward Iris that
surely
Ray couldn’t be expected to take seriously. Ray told himself not to bridle.

Iris was herself in the few words she spoke to Morel next. There was nothing guarded that Ray could see. They seemed to be coming to a standstill too soon for Ray. He wanted the exchange to continue a little longer.

Ray said, “That man was a bishop, in case you didn’t know.”

“A bishop?”

“In one of the Zed CC splinter churches.”

Morel had a good but not great voice, tending toward tenor. Stress was probably driving his pitch higher. His speech was accentless, purified. The man could be a radio announcer.

“He got upset with me. He even … I think this happened … not sure. I think I was referred to as the Antichrist. I think. Not directly but to some of his people.”

Comma Lesole came forward to verify what Morel had said. “In fact, he says you are, very much.”

“This is more than I deserve,” Morel said, shaping his tone for Iris and Ray.

The ambassador’s wife was suddenly striding toward them, making scooping motions to urge them toward the buffet, to Ray’s disappointment. He wanted more time with Morel. There was more to see in him. And what he wanted to see was the hardest thing there was to see and be sure about. He wanted to see, to know, if Morel was a settled man. It was his own term. A settled man meant something different than a True Man. A settled man was … a
sound
man. Applying the category to Morel was difficult for him. He wanted to know how he, himself, would fare if comparisons were ever to be made between them in that category. And beyond that, he wanted to know what kind of man Morel would be for Iris, to Iris, if the unthinkable happened. A settled man could still be an enemy.

They were moving toward the buffet. He could mention the Antichrist matter, if he did a supplement, except that he had his doubts about whether it had really been said. He felt it was likelier that Morel had said that the bishop’s notion about bogwadi amounted to a calumny against
innocent women and that it was un-Christian to falsely condemn them and that the bishop’s reply to Morel had been misconstrued by Comma. Although he could be wrong. African Christians tended to be fairly promiscuous with allegations that their critics were Satans and Judases and so on.

He hoped he’d done what Iris wanted. He certainly hadn’t been able to bring himself to any sort of expression of gratitude for all that Morel had done or was doing for her, whatever that might be.

It’s a battlefield, Ray thought. Today, so far, he was winning. Surveying the scene, he felt a familiar passion flow into him, not a passion exactly but a passionate appreciation for the riches the scene held for him. It was more than just a carnival of egos to him. He knew more. He brought more knowledge of the secret histories the star egos were impaled on, usually, and the brighter the star, the more he tended to know. He liked the feeling. He couldn’t help liking it.
Weigher of souls
was what he said to himself when he felt he was liking this feeling too much. There was the rub. He tried to mock himself when he needed it, and there were times when he did need it, because he had to be his own critic. He had a master but no colleagues. He was alone in his work. Nobody knew the extent of this. He couldn’t have friends. He had no friends.

They had joined a queue. Morel had left, saying he’d be back shortly.

“Just eat the tomato salad,” Iris said.

“They have some kind of frikadellen that looks good,” Ray answered.

She looked pleadingly at him.

“Ray, you have no idea what’s in them.”

“I’m sure they’re fine, but if you say so.”

She worried about him. Iris was his one great friend, his sufficing friend, his pivot and anchor, all of that. She was perfect. But there was a lot he couldn’t tell her. Aside from Iris, it was fair to say that he had only enemies, or adversaries. Even his little helpers in the game were adversaries in the sense that they were there to produce as little as they could and still get paid, and he was there to induce them to produce more than they wanted for what they got. And those associations were fundamentally mercenary in any case. When it came to his family, he had only critics and adversaries. Rex was his enemy. His mother was neither friend nor enemy. He wasn’t present enough in her consciousness for her to have an attitude toward him. She had stronger feelings about the game of golf. In his opinions on Milton, in his publications, he was alone. He had no seconders. He belonged to no particular school of interpretation. Sometimes
his views were objected to, briefly, and set to one side. He could deal with it. That was the world. He would like to get a closer look at Samuel Kerekang. He liked him. He felt a dim bond with him through the man’s evident love of English literature. Kerekang would inspire friendship, Ray thought. When he thought of the world as a spectacle of enemies, he tried to be resigned about it, telling himself that the lives of most men could be shown to resemble his. How unusual was it for men not to have close friends of the same sex except in the context of athletics, of team life? But even that didn’t scan. Team life was riven with rivalry, especially at the professional level. He had had a few friendly superiors in his career, the greatest of them being Marion Resnick of blessed memory. But of course that’s what Marion had been, his superior. That said it all. They had been business friends. And of course real social friendship outside of the agency had been structurally ruled out for him. The feeling of affinity that had overwhelmed him the first time he encountered Milton had been a form of friendly feeling, he supposed, but different, naturally, because Milton was dead and was alive to him only in lines of text. But he loved Milton and had recognized, with some surprise, an element of
personal
sympathy or pity in his feeling, part of a sense that in some way he could help Milton, help him to be better apprehended and loved. This was nonsense, but he wondered how other English specialists chose their men, chose their people, wondered if there was something like what he had just recognized, if choices were made on the flaws, certain flaws in the achievements of the artist, certain appealing flaws that you might help with. That he had been feeling sorry at some level for the sublime Milton was good for a laugh. The idea of friendship with the dead, in itself, was also good for a laugh.

They were falling back in the queue as Iris let people slip ahead. She was under the impression she was holding a place for her doctor.