Mortals

But one and all if they would dusk the day.

There was more of the same. This was not the ticket for cheering Keletso up. It was grim. It was hard to believe this was the same William Morris he associated with big improvements in wallpaper design.

He found something that looked lighter, by a poet unknown to him, Robert Brough. A note described Brough as a famous republican who had died of drink at the age of thirty. Kerekang was teetotal, Ray remembered.

“Would you like me to read you a poem?”

“Ehe, to pass the time.”

“I have the poem in Setswana and English. Dintsha le dilebodi le diPeba le dikatse. I’ll try it in Setswana.”

“It is to do with animals, then, rra?”

“Yes. Well, listen. Here I go.”

But after two stanzas in attempted Setswana, Ray concluded it was no-go. Keletso was laughing, and there was nothing that amusing in the verses he’d read to him, so it was his performance that was funny.

He began again, in English.

“The title is The Terriers and the Rats and the Mice and the Cats: A Fable. And this was written in England long ago, written against the king and the nobility that supported the king, at that time. And you’ll see, the dogs, the terriers he talks about, stand for the ruling system, Domkrag, with the king at the top. And under the dogs are the cats. The dogs are ruling the cats and the rats are ruling the mice. Anyway…

“Once on a time—no matter how,
(By force of teeth, or mere ‘Bow-wow,’
   Let studious minds determine)—
The Terriers upon Rat-land, seiz’d,
Its natives hunted, worried, teas’d,
In short—exactly what they pleas’d
   Did, with the whisker’d vermin.”

He was going to have to skip. Looking ahead, Ray saw the piece was endless, all the verses showing that the mice were on the verge of revolt. He continued reading.

At last he was at the end. The revolt had been frustrated.

“‘We beckon out the biggest rat,
And ask him, with a friendly pat,
To join our side the merrier—
We teach him how to bark: with shears,
We dock his tail, and trim his ears,
Give him some bones, to calm his fears,
And tell him he’s a Terrier.’”

Keletso seemed unsure of what to say. Ray had read the piece, the bulk of it, partly in the spirit of experiment. He was curious about what a Motswana would make of this antique republican agitprop.

An awkward silence began.

“Rra, who are these cats and uprisen mice? What nation is that?”

“Well, it’s no particular country, it’s an imaginary country, a country made up so the poet can tell a story about how the terriers, who are the kings, the nobility, the big men, rule the rats in Britain. The cats are the ones in another country who are inquiring, to learn how they can dominate the mice in their country the way the terriers dominate the rats. But in any case now this poem is being reprinted and translated for the Batswana of today.”

Keletso was silent.

Ray said, “So, rra, if you were applying this fable, fable is what it is, to Botswana at this moment today, what would it mean?”

Keletso, giving Ray a sidelong glance, said, “Rra, what is your opinion?”

“Well, could we say that in Botswana the terriers are the big men and the chiefs and, well, Domkrag?”

“Ehe, you mean as when they can pinch away leaders from BoSo to make it weak? As we had in Gaborone when BoSo elected their man mayor, and then he switched across to Domkrag, like a flash…”

“Yes, right. That kind of thing.”

“Nyah, rra.”

“You say no?”

“Your eyes are too small, rra.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Because if you would say who are the big dogs today in Botswana, it is the makhoa. Sorry.”

“White people, the white man, Europeans, you mean…”

“Ehe. When you put the question, I say the makhoa.”

“So we are the dogs, still, you feel?”

“Such is what you can take from this poem, rra.”

“And it is what you take from it?”

“Rra, it is.”

“You say it without hesitation.”

This was the wrong tack to take, and Ray knew it. But he couldn’t help himself.

He said, “So, is your view, then, that despite independence… and you’ve been independent since 1966, isn’t it?… that still the white man is… is maneuvering at the top?”

“He is, yes. You cannot always see him.”

“Ah well,” Ray said.

“Yah.”

“So it is, then.”

I’m hurt, stupidly enough, he thought.

Twice during the afternoon they had noticed lines of black smoke, like scratches, rising from distant fires far to the north. No discussion had come out of it. This was the wrong time of year for the veld fires the Bushmen employed to drive game into traps, if they were even still doing that. The Bushmen were operating under restrictions. He had no idea what they were still allowed to do. Their hunting was controlled. That had to be a joke, though. How could anything in the Kalahari be administered, that was the question. He didn’t know. He did know he should always say Basarwa and not Bushmen. And he did know that they were facing extinction. He knew that. Did they?

He wasn’t looking forward to turning in tonight. His pillow and to a lesser extent his sleeping bag had a consomme smell, rank. He had beaten his pillow and his pillowcase against a tree trunk. He had flicked aftershave on the pillowcase. The odor was in the pillow itself. Drifting off, he had to smell himself, as he fell… there was no escape.

They were nowhere, still. And they would sleep in another section of nowhere, beside the road, again. They were inching. There had been rain in the area. The road was viscous in spots and Keletso was being exquisite with his driving, as he should be doing. There was a movie with Yves Montand driving a load of dynamite over roads like this that had nothing to do with their situation that he could think of. Ah yes, atopia is where we are, he thought. Black cotton soil was the name for the treacherous sort of surface that showed up in places along the spoors after heavy rainfall. The guidebooks warned about it. He was studying Keletso’s technique. He had to get it down.