Mating Page 14

  There was no bravura about any of this analysis. In fact I could see he was depressing himself as he went on.

  How is it going to end, do you think? I asked.

  I don’t know, but it is, he said, and there’s something amusing the Boers have done to themselves that they won’t appreciate until it’s all over. Possibly the dumbest thing the Boers ever did was allow kung fu movies into the townships. They thought they were letting in cultural trash to distract the masses. Mark my words, someday somebody will trace the influence of kung fu movies on the liberation struggle and it will be substantial. Because kung fu movies, which are in fact trash, nevertheless teach over and over again an important lesson: you’ve got to get revenge. Christianity says you don’t, the reverse, and for years the educated black leadership went with that. But here comes something else, a set of brilliant how-to illustrations that says to young men Join into groups, use your bare hands against the enemy—the corrupt kung fu clubs that support the gangsters or the evil dynasty—accept discipline and adversity, team up, never give up, avenge your brothers. And by the way, here and there include women as fighters.

  I had done as much as I could for myself. It would be smart to leave before I was dismissed.

  I got up and said Do you know the Batswana call the stars the same thing the Sumerians did, the shining herd, letlhape phatsimo?

  I went to the gate. I had been a touch abrupt in leaving, slightly disconcerting him, which I liked.

  Would he at least think about considering using me as a volunteer?

  You tempt me, but I have to say no, he said. Of course what would make you irresistible would be if you know something about cooperage. Or taxidermy, say.

  Sorry, I said.

  That was all. He asked me if I had a torch, and I said no as if he were asking a silly question, the point being to show how acclimated I was to getting around in the dark the way you do in the village at night. It was bravado and in fact I was afraid. But I forged out into the black labyrinth of Old Naledi as though nothing could make me happier and as though I were a person with an actual sense of direction.

  I enjoyed this, he said as I left.

  All the way home I flattered myself that I had at least gotten into the foyer of his consciousness. Sometimes I believed it. In any case, he would see my face again.

  Grace, Again

  I was feeling tender and valedictory toward Gaborone, and even toward the mall, now that I was going to be leaving. It was set. I was preparing to get to Denoon’s site. I was determined to do it. The surprise would be his.

  I liked and hated the mall, a halfway-paved enclosure three blocks long which is the crux of retail and street life in the capital. The shops lining the mall are pseudomoderne, with go-go displays featuring Mylar and pinlights, with Muzak loops droning, and with typical third world inventories: gluts of what you don’t want, voids where the most commonplace necessities—such as tweezers, my then most pressing need—should be. For the most part the proprietors are Chinese or Indians, with a few Batswana fronting for South Africans. The array of businesses is the usual: hardware and clothing stockists, chemists, takeaways, butcheries, a walk-in surgery or two. The only really big buildings are at the ends of the mall—the banks, the embassies. For amenity you have, on either side of the central and widest part of the mall, between the Capitol Cinema and the President Hotel, cement benches with umbrelloid metal canopies. There are thorn trees intermittently. I liked the mall for its comédie humaine but hated it because it so completely incarnates the Western good idea of what Africa should become and because the South African merchandise the shelves are overflowing with is such shit yet so overpriced. South African shoe manufacture is my personal bête noire. It is risible. A smattering of poor devils, mainly women, selling seasonal items like fried mopane worms or maize on the cob spread their karosses under the trees—but only a smattering. When the mall was put up, the traditional farmers’ market was deconstructed and the shards moved into permanent stalls far away along the railway, where the market languishes but is definitely not an eyesore for makhoa, who prefer to shop in tidiness, on vinyl tile flooring, to the strains of the Melachrino Strings or some other dead orchestra.

  I was crossing the mall, just passing the President Hotel, en route to a second attempt to secure a tweezers, which I was willing to be in stock at Botschem. My mode when I want something badly, and which has been known to work, is to proceed up to the absolutely last moment as though there could be no doubt I would get it. In three days of hard work I had succeeded in assembling everything I felt I needed to begin my expedition to Denoon’s site, with two minor exceptions: tweezers and the actual location of Denoon’s project.

  I picked up a commotion on the grandiose staircase connecting the balcony of the President Hotel to the mall.

  Oh no, I thought, more abnormal psychology. It was Grace, pushing her way roughly down through the ascending lunchtime throng and calling my name.

  I stood stockstill to lessen her anxiety, and waved.

  If we were going to talk it would have to be someplace else. It was bright and hot and we were already the object of the attention of the mall crowd. The Batswana love it when whites make spectacles of themselves as in fighting or showing affection in public. Grace looked as crazed as before. She was persisting in running, and it was clear she had decided to cast her bra to the winds as part of living life to the hilt for a while in the heart of darkness where nobody knew her, as can happen.

  She came up, preceded by the distinct bouquet of Mainstay. She was wearing a different outfit in the same genre as the one she’d worn to the Bemises’. Her undereyes were puffy, but she was neat and clean and all fixed up.

  She had to get her breath. Two things told me I was right about some affectional extravaganza going on. She had a leopardskin print ribbon in her hair. And I spotted the notorious extra-large Boer, Meerkotter, proprietarily following her movements from the balcony and holding a drink in each fist, one of them obviously intended for her. He was the local representative for some South African consortium of construction firms, I think. He was a tireless lecher and bon vivant who ate all his meals in the Brigadier Room at the President, usually buying rump steak for one of his various and numerous Batswana teen queen girlfriends. Going jet, as it’s called, was his basic thing, but he embraced all race groups. He was very proud of what Edgar Rice Burroughs would have called his thews. He had forearms like bleach bottles. I immediately wanted to warn Grace about a couple of dangers attaching to him. I thought he must be infectious. But worse, lately the story was that he was steady with an actual beauty contest winner, Idol Mketa. She was famous for her hairdos, which really were art—the current one was amazing and looked like a suitcase handle display—and her violent jealousy. Meerkotter was considered a prize. One recourse of wronged Batswana women is to scald their rivals. I thought Grace should know these things, if I was right that she was with Meerkotter. There was also the story that Meerkotter’s glass eye was the product of female reprisal, which possibly deserved mention if only as a clue to the sort of milieu Meerkotter swam in.

  We greeted each other. She had something she so much wanted to say, she said.

  She was wearing a little red scarf knotted around her throat. It made her look like a Brownie. I praised it.

  I got it here, she said, as a present. It was a gift from a person.

  I wanted to warn her that you get drunker on less alcohol in Gaborone, because of the elevation. She wasn’t leaving spaces for me, though.

  I know Nelson likes you, she said.

  The sun is eating us up, I said. We should go somewhere, but not the President.

  Where we could have a drink, she said. She got a death grip on my elbow and began leading me purposely across the mall as though she had a perfect idea of where to go. This was drink spreading its wings in her mind, which resulted in her walking directly across the mat of a woman selling cowpeas, almost treading on the woman’s hand. Grace had no idea whe
re she was going. I took over. She was odd. She looked labile to me. It occurred to me he had been giving her Mandrax, which the grapevine said he had access to.

  I reversed our direction and got us out of the mall and across King’s Road onto the long dusty path that takes you to White City, the shabby and unpaved shopping area where everything is on a far far humbler scale and some of the shopowners are actual Batswana. I was told it was called White City because most of the buildings had been white at one time.

  I took her to the Carat Restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall place run by a Motswana woman I liked and which was doomed to fail because they gave you too much food for your money. It no longer exists.

  Grace wanted a beer. I conspired in Setswana to get them to forget to bring it until she had started on her salad, id est shredded beetroot and some baked beans, and also to bring us some strong tea simultaneously with her beer. I talked her out of getting chips, which at the Carat came so underdone they looked like they were made of Lucite.

  She was utterly drunk. She said Do you like the four seasons? Because no one here does that I’ve talked to.

  I said I did like the seasons, assuming she meant wasn’t I nostalgic for the snowfall and crisp fall mornings and so on, at which point she went Dawn go away I’m no good for you, in a little deluded whining voice. She meant the Four Seasons. I couldn’t believe it. I let her sing quite a bit of it.

  When would she get to Denoon? And in retrospect her great love for the Four Seasons is odd and may have played a part in why it didn’t work out with Nelson, because in his lexicon, one of the all-time stupidest popular songs in history was Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man, sung in piercing falsetto by the lead singer of the Four Seasons. I think it was in first place for entire-song stupidity, with first place for single-line stupidity—to say nothing of hardheartedness—going to Now laughing friends deride tears I cannot hide.

  I was worried about Grace. She was underprotected. I talked circuitously about Meerkotter. She was seeing him, as she put it. I tried to fill her in gently. This was unwelcome, I could tell. Either very little of it was registering, or I was only making Meerkotter seem more exotic and attractive. I let myself mention the glass eye business. There was an explosive effect that astonished me. She began weeping.

  She wouldn’t stop. I wanted to know what I’d said to cause this. Ultimately she told me.

  People tell you things that make you wonder if the world is fiction or nonfiction. She had started weeping, she said, because of the glass eye. She hadn’t been aware Meerkotter had one, but her father had had one and it was one reason she was a feminist. She had a slightly younger brother and her brother had been the one allowed to assist her father with certain ministrations, including rinsing, concerning her father’s eye. She, never. And she was the one who had truly loved her father. Her brother had disappointed him right and left. The news that she saw herself as a feminist touched me in some way and helped me be a little more patient with her.

  It finally came to my saying What is it you want to say to me about your husband—which is what you want to talk about, Grace, isn’t it?

  She sobbed summarily and then said yes. She wanted me to know she and Nelson were finished. Nelson was free and she wanted him to be happy, if he could. She had a sixth sense, she said, about who Nelson liked and would be good for him and she hoped I could forgive her for the way she’d introduced us, but time was short. Had I seen him again yet?

  I said that I had and that I liked him and I was interested in his work.

  Does he like you? she asked me.

  I said I didn’t know, but that it was moot because he was returning to his secret project, which seemed to be a genuine secret as far as location was concerned.

  She held up a finger and made herself eat. I think she wanted to be soberer for this part of our talk. I waited. So far nobody would tell me where the site was, not even Z. I gathered there was some new uneasiness and clamming up ever since the solar democracy peroration. For some reason I wasn’t desperate about it. I had faith there was some way to find out that had simply not occurred to me yet.

  I know where it is, she said. My lawyers forced it out of him ages ago. I can even draw where it is.

  I got out my pad. There was a God.

  She did know.

  It’s somewhere called Tsau, she said, on a straight line east into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve from a place that sounds like it should be in China, called Kang. I corrected her pronunciations. I was breathless. I even knew roughly where Tsau was. It would be about a hundred miles from Kang. Everything was findable. She could see I was emotional.

  You can’t of course tell anybody, she said, because a part of what he’s signed so far says I can’t tell anyone. It has to go no farther. You have to swear. I was never allowed there.

  I swore. We relaxed. But why was she giving me all this? My thoughts on this were a bolus, to use a word I owe to Denoon and that seems to have become indispensable to me. Was revenge in it somewhere or was she trying to involve me with him in order to get some legal advantage? This was my realpolitikal lobe speaking. My other lobe sensed this as something personal and unsordid. It was a bolus.

  I know all about you, she said. I picked you out before I knew anything except the way you look, but I find out you’re perfect. Everybody has an opinion about you.

  I loved that.

  You’re like a strong person, I feel, she said. Someone like you must have a lot of siblings. I said no and she was surprised.

  I made us go. She held my hand once or twice walking back to the President.

  Her South African side of beef was waiting agitatedly for her at the foot of the stairway.

  We had an effusive moment where she asked me a little wildly if I would write to her. Meerkotter was already pulling her to come with him.

  I don’t have your address, I said. She wrenched free of Meerkotter and fished up a minipurse out of her blouson and began rummaging through it. Again Meerkotter pulled on her. This enraged me, and I must have looked at him in some medusan way because he let go and permitted her to continue searching. Finally she came up with her checkbook and tore out a blank check, which she forced on me. This has my address, she said. She lived in Cos Cob. I didn’t want her check, but in the tension of the moment I couldn’t think of what to do.

  Oh, she said, do you know what bruxism is? I forgot to mention this.

  Grinding your teeth at night, I said.

  Nelson has it. I knew you were smart.

  It struck me that I could tear the address out of the check, and I did.

  I had a sudden confused feeling toward her. I wanted to say I knew that what she was now was not what she had once been. I think I loved her for helping me. I wanted to say something like Neither am I always going to be like I am. There was no way to say it.

  Meerkotter maneuvered her up the steps to the hotel.

  I think I’m going to Milan, she said. I think it was meant to reassure me.

  Kang

  Once a week the government sends a flatbed truck, a monster Bedford, the two hundred and fifty miles north from Lobatse to Kang. The trip actually starts in Gabs, whence you go briefly south to Lobatse. The truck carries sacks of World Food Program cornmeal, building material, mail, and soap and other sundries. The load is a huge mound under canvas, which people have the privilege of clinging to the lashings of if they sign a waiver of liability at CTO. The trucks also provide a good deal of additional, nonapproved, bus service for people encountered along the way. At any given time you can have as many as eight or ten people and their chattels up back.

  I was on the truck and waiting for the fun to begin, which would be when we got off the tarmac, at Jwaneng, and onto the alternating sand, washboard, and rubble track that stretches all the way to Maun. The time to think was now, in the predemonic phase, while traffic on the Gaborone-Lobatse road was keeping our speed down in normal range and even bringing us to a dead stop now and then. The sun came up while we w
ere halted opposite one of the few raised landforms in that part of the country, the abrupt little massif with lime-streaked cliff faces behind Ootse, where the Cape vultures mate and roost. They only do it there or at a similar place in the Magaliesberg. Ergo, they’re doomed as civilization creeps up the slopes from Ootse toward the vultury. I understand them, though, I thought. In love and mating, ambience is central.

  All was well. I had tied up the loose ends of my life with a vengeance. I had given a jumble sale almost as a joke but ended up making money. I had mailed things off and reduced my possessions to what I could carry. I had said thanks wherever it was applicable. There had been some misdirection. It had seemed like a good idea to give the impression that I was going back to the U.S. I had everything I needed for my sortie including my Botschem tweezers. I was decently equipped for light camping. I had a map of the water points along the route I intended to take from Kang to Tsau, although it could have been more recent. It was six years old, but I told myself that since it had been made during a previous drought it was probably accurate enough.