Mortals (103 page)

It was meat he needed. There was something ultimate about meat on an open fire. Barbecuing was supposed to be bad, and it was possible Iris was right and it was, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t ultimate. There was the story by Jack London about a Mexican revolutionary who came to the United States to raise money for the revolution by fighting for prizes, prizefighting. And the Mexican had somehow been unable to get a steak to eat before the fight. He hadn’t been able to afford it. The title of the story was blunt, “A Piece of Meat.” And then the fight had taken place and the Mexican had fought like a demon as hard as he could and had almost won, then he had lost because he hadn’t been able to get his piece of meat. Rex had been a fan of Jack London’s stories. And there was the one about the guy struggling to build a fire to save his life someplace in the Arctic and getting the fire going and the fire melting snow stuck in the branches of a tree overhead and killing the fire, and him. Rex seemed to love stories where you struggle with all your might and then at the end you lose.

Ray said, “I am interrupting your supper.”

“Nyah, gosiame.” Kevin sent the armed man away. Kevin was using more Setswana, becoming more Tswana, it seemed to Ray. That was called acclimating. His comrades were bush Tswana, a lot of them. There had to be other students, people of Kevin’s type, somewhere in this madness. A number of them had left the university to join up with Kerekang. He was curious about them. He wanted to know where they were, but he couldn’t ask without looking like a spy. He was not a spy.

Kevin was chewing and pulling strings of tough, unchewable meat out
of his mouth and throwing it away. Ray thought, When I say ultimate about meat and fire, I mean ultimate in the same way a woman’s breasts are ultimate, an ultimate thing you want to see and touch, a fact that will never change. When he was old he would still want to touch her breasts, assuming he was in the position to do so, Iris’s breasts, which was not likely, to say the least.

He wanted to go into the faux cave and eat with the others and he wanted to escape from the feeling that the blackness around them was shuddering because of the bats engaging in their activities.

“What are you eating?” Ray asked.

“Rra, you can come to have some. It is noga.”

That was a word Ray knew. It meant snake.

Kevin said, “You see when we put you for sleeping in that place we first took some snakes. Now you can come and enjoy them.”

Snakes had been in the place they had slipped him into to recuperate in. It had been a good idea, except for sand flea bites on his wrists and so on. They had gotten the snakes and were eating them for dinner.

The idea of eating a snake made him want to be able to be the one human being in history who could fly, a human bird, fly to Gaborone and land in his patio and see his wife and see what she would say, seeing him. Here I am, he would say, and what do you say?

His tasks were mounting up too rapidly. There was getting
Strange News
, his packet, for one. And then there were all the others. But to get
Strange News
he would need help, he would have to be boosted up. He didn’t like asking for help. He had asked for help too much already. And in fact if his entire life picture could be put up on a screen he wondered if anyone here, around here, would say he deserved help.

Kevin was pulling him toward the fire, the faux cave.

“We are cooking tea,” Kevin said.

“I would like some.”

There was a small, hot, resinous fire, and on a grill over the fire, coils of white ribbons of meat, snake meat. Mokopa the one-eyed chief was tending the ribbons with a knife, tossing them.

Kerekang was looking better. He stood up and held his hand out to Ray.

“Gosiame,” Ray said. He had a strong desire to apologize for his absence during the time it had taken to get to the point they had all reached, this faux cave, full of men. This was something he wanted to enter and not go away from until he had to. It was a feeling between men
that he wanted to have, not that he ever could, not with these men, because he was white, and for other reasons. Everyone around the fire was serious. They didn’t know that was remarkable.

Kerekang ushered Ray in, conducting him to a place near the fire. Ray squatted down. He had done it with bearable discomfort, which was an improvement. He began shivering. He had been holding his reaction to the cold in abeyance. Now he was letting himself be cold and at the same time letting his bites itch and sting to their heart’s content.

Mokopa was skillful with his knife. He was able to maneuver the whole tangle of snake flesh with just the one blade, one or two thrusts, turning it. Mokopa was salting the ribbons of flesh. Three large snakes had been killed. There was a good bit of meat. Two Basarwa were there, to the back, eating. Mokopa put a pot, mouth down, over the snake meat. The meat would be smoky. He would eat it however it tasted. He was getting the impression that to Mokopa grilling snake meat was a commonplace, a skill he happened to have. An eye patch would make a nice gift for Mokopa.

He found a tin mug full of hot tea in his hands. Sugar was being poured into it, too much sugar. But the calories would be good for him. It was black tea, very strong.

He looked around. He didn’t know who to thank.

He thanked Kerekang, who was reclining now and smoking a rude cigarette, hand-rolled cigarette, and not smoking tobacco. It was dagga. Ray knew the odor, and that was dagga, he was sorry to say. It was very upsetting. No doubt Kerekang had a right to take a drug to calm down, the way, when he himself had been a drinker, he had taken a belt of scotch. But the problem was that he had to talk privately and seriously to Kerekang, to a Kerekang in a clear state of mind. But first he had to eat some snake meat.

Mokopa, lifting the pot, furled a darkish ribbon of snake meat onto his knife and held it out to Ray before repositioning the pot.

Ray sought to accept the furled ribbon in an insouciant way corresponding to the manner in which it had been offered. He pinched it off the knife without cutting himself and crushed the coil into his mouth. It was salty and delicious but inedible, unfortunately. Or at first blush, it was inedible. He smiled in thanks. He chewed steadfastly. He continued to smile.

He had a new vocation, chewing. There were nutrients in this protein and he would get them. And he would go and get Morel so that he could
have some of this feast. And at the same time he would retrieve his parcel and bring it into the faux cave with him. But first he would get Morel and praise the delicacy he was going to get.

He got up. He thanked God he had all his teeth. That was one more thing he owed to his fanatically flossing beloved. The spines that grew on the branches of thorn trees ought to make passable toothpicks. He would collect some.

He had to talk to Morel. He wanted him to eat, if he hadn’t already. They had work to do together. They had to talk sense to Kerekang. Morel knew Kerekang better than he did. And he wanted Morel to say something about dagga. They had to get Kerekang aside and lean on him, save him from this war he had lost control of. And what about Kevin? The dagga was a bad sign that had to be addressed and Morel was a physician.

There was other food to eat. Mokopa was opening cans with his knife while the smoking of the snake meat continued. Mokopa could do anything with a knife, apparently. He was very deft.

The collation, laid out on the ground, on a sheet of newspaper, was still developing. There was a stack of irregular pieces of crispbread. There was a can of peach halves. There were four cans of Vienna sausage. He had to get Morel right away, so that he could have a decent choice of what was on offer. He ate some crispbread and was delighted when Kevin produced a clutch of massive chocolate bars, Cadbury, Hazelneute, and handed one of them to Ray, who began eating it immediately. He finished his tea and asked for more.

He went to find Morel, carrying his tea with him. Morel was sitting on Wemberg’s headstone. He had a penlight and it was on and it was being used to illuminate a small notepad he had open on his knee and was writing in. Hearing Ray’s approach, Morel snapped the penlight off.

Ray didn’t like it. There was something secretive about it he didn’t like. He needed to escape his fixation on warnings and notes and fore-warnings from Morel preceding Ray to his meeting with Iris, contaminating that moment, but this wasn’t helping.

“What’re you writing?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, really, what?”

“My will.”

“It’s none of my business. But really, what were you writing?”

Morel was silent. This is all wrong, Ray thought. They had tasks to
complete together. But he needed to know what Morel had been writing. They had to find more stones for Wemberg’s resting place, for one thing. He couldn’t help himself.

Morel pointed his penlight at Ray and turned it on for an instant. He saw something in Ray’s expression that softened him.

“Okay, I’ll let you read it. And you’ll see it’s nothing, it’s about a piece I was writing before I came looking for you.”

Ray was ashamed of himself.

Morel said, “And now I’ll show you the page itself.”

“You don’t have to.”

Of course what Ray really wanted was for Morel to hand the notepad over so that he could read everything in it.

Morel said, “What have you got in your mouth?” Ray kept doggedly chewing, but he was nearing the end of his ability to continue.

“This is snake,” Ray said, spitting out the irreducible wad he had in his mouth.

“Jesus,” Morel said.

“It’s protein. But there’s other stuff to eat.”

“I had something earlier, those little sausages with the red insides and some tea and some applesauce.”

“There’s crispbread. And they have chocolate. And just to be polite you can try the snake.”

“I’ll eat anything they let me.”

Kerekang was standing off by himself, outside the faux cave, like a fireman without a hose, which was Iris’s phrase for people in hapless solitude, or appearing to be.

“We have to work on him, the two of us,” Ray said.

“We also have to get ourselves out of this at the earliest.”

“I know, but first we have to prevail on Kerekang.”

“No, first we have to get our own asses out. I can’t take too much more. I’ve got to get back to Gaborone. I mean it.” Morel spoke with sudden fierceness, an unfamiliar fierceness.

“Well, but—”

“I’m telling you,
I have to get back.”

Something was happening with Morel. He was vibrating.

“Let’s go back and sit down. We can talk to Kerekang later,” Ray said. They could go back to Wemberg’s grave and the other graves and he could bring tea and food from the collation. They could eat with their fingers. He hadn’t seen any silverware in the faux cave, any
napkins, but they could still have a sort of picnic. He would make it a picnic.

He said to Morel, “Let’s eat something before we do anything. Go back and sit down. I’ll bring us more stuff to eat.”

Morel nodded and moved off in the right direction. Ray was very worried. Morel had been fine. Possibly it was the effect of being out of the immediate zone of danger, in fact it had to be that, all the high-mobilization processes coming down suddenly, in a heap.

He looked over the collation. The Vienna sausages were gone. There was no sign of chocolate. There were peach halves, a couple of them. There was some crispbread left. There was an open can of something that looked like pigeon peas. They were untouched.

Ray drained the last syrup out of the peach can into his tea mug. That would be the main vessel. He lifted up a few strings of snake meat, as a courtesy to Mokopa, who was watching what he was doing. He dropped them onto the peaches. He was dubious about the pigeon peas, but he shook most of them into the peach can. You never know what another person loves, he thought. He had a vague notion that pigeon peas were like black-eyed peas, which were favorites of black people, but not the black people around the fire, it had to be said. And he refilled his cup with the last of the tea.

Morel had gone back to Wemberg’s grave and was sitting where he had been sitting before. Ray shone the torch briefly on him. This time Morel was sitting on his hands. At first Ray was bemused by it, but then he realized Morel was trying to conceal the degree of shaking he was suffering. It was severe.

“What is it?” Ray asked.

“I have to get to Gaborone,” Morel answered.

“Me, too, but what’s going on? Are you cold?”

“No I have to get to Gaborone. That’s it. I have to figure it out.”

He pressed the tea on Morel, who accepted it, but set the cup down on the ground and returned his hand to its prior place under his buttock.

“Do you like pigeon peas?” he asked Morel.

“What are they?”

“Well then I guess you won’t like them. They’re a legume. They’re like black-eyed peas. If you don’t know what they are you won’t like them. They have a strong odor.” He felt it was important to make Morel talk more, keep talking, get off the subject of going back to Gaborone, which was something nothing could be done about.

“I can’t do anything here,” Morel said.

“Sure you can. What do you mean?”

“I have nothing to work with. I have zinc oxide, what can I do with that? I have petroleum jelly. I have a headache. I don’t even have any aspirin.”

“Look, eat something and you’ll feel better. You have low blood sugar. Drink some tea.”

“Don’t tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“No, that’s just, I don’t know, it’s what Iris says to me when I get ragged and crab at her and I eat something and I …”

“It isn’t that. I have to get back to Gaborone.”

“You keep saying that. Why do you have to get back more than I do? Why is it so urgent? We’re in a mess, here.”

Morel murmured an answer.

“I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I have to see Iris,” Morel said loudly and brokenly. Ray felt a rage of emotion, outrage, fury mixed with injury and indignation at the breaking of rules between men. He could hardly breathe.

He trained the light on Morel’s face. It was an aggression. Morel was about to cry. Tears were coming. He was distraught. Ray wished that the beam of the torch could be scorching, hot enough to burn Morel, make him cry out, apologize, apologize, apologize with a scream, a begging scream. He turned the torch off. He was reeling.