been going on longdistance between the garage and Makoko on the veranda. He had been giving hand signals and whistling in an eerie way when he wanted the garage foreman’s attention.
“I want to walk a little,” Ray said.
“Rra, your knee is not strong.”
“No, but walking will be good for it.”
Ray liked to have destinations when he strolled.
He pointed out a substantial termite mound a little way into the bush just beyond the graveled stretch of road. It would do for a destination. It gleamed in the starlight. He had the idea he would like to sit on it or climb on it. Termite mounds were amazing things. This one was the size of a sedan, white, smooth. Thine alabaster cities gleam, would be an appropriate comment to make to a termite.
He started off and Keletso came with him, reluctantly, hoveringly, poised to catch him if he stumbled. One object of taking a short walk was to convince Keletso that his knee was improving enough for him not to be concerned. He put his mind to it.
Keletso’s resistance to letting him continue alone tomorrow had been prodigious. It had taken some heavy argument. The matter was closed. Apparently the cattle post scene had shaken Keletso less than it had him. Their argument had concluded with a certain amount of white lying, so to speak, about what he was planning to do next, the final stage of his mission, that is, that he would be resting up and working over his notes and sketches and maps. To start with, it was a lie that he had a mission. What he had was a trajectory and a trajectory that it was his fate to feel he absolutely had to complete. And that was true. It was remarkable how well he and Keletso had gotten on within the shell of deception the expedition had involved. They had lived companionably within the necessary lies. Keletso was a man.
Cooking fires wagged in some of the lolwapas. Some people in this extreme part of the world were at home, just then. They were kicking their sandals off and saying “Ah.”
He had misused his time in Botswana in so many ways. He hadn’t sunk into the particularity of the place, and there was plenty of that. He hadn’t, for instance, concentrated really closely on what the Golden Wing represented, what it was… a weird relic of a fantasy time of white overlord-ship. He knew what the green-tinged irregular windowpanes of the Golden Wing reminded him of. It was a particular brook in Tilden Park, a particular run, perfect water flowing gently wrist-deep over beds of dark gold sand. And of course that was a line surviving from the part of his life he had wasted in the assault on poetry. It didn’t matter.
The termite mound was more like an inflated seal than a sedan. It had a chimney or necklike projection at its high end, which registered the height it had reached in consuming utterly the tree it had claimed, or they had claimed, the termites.
“It seems you must be forever roaming, rra,” Keletso said.
“No more tonight, though. We can turn in.”
“Yah, but I will go again for a place in that house for us. I will make a fracas and see about it.”
“You can try, I guess. But it won’t work, rra. He doesn’t like us.”
They started back.
Keletso farted softly. He said, “Ke ditiro tsa Modimo.”
He said it because it always made Ray laugh. As Keletso had explained it, he was saying God did this, or That was a deed of God’s.
“Shame on him, then,” Ray said.
Certain things had gone well. The Wildlife connection he had made had gone just right. He let himself relive it. Approaching Nokaneng, a government bakkie coming from the opposite direction had appeared and blasted right past them. But some instinct had prompted Keletso to swing perilously around and roar after it, pressing the hooter nonstop, shouting. And Ray, jolted awake, had contributed by rolling down his window and pounding on the door. And it had worked, the angelic Keletso driving like a devil from hell and the racket they had produced together had worked. The bakkie had pulled over.
Keletso had seized the moment.
Keletso had explained that he had sprung into action on the hunch that this might be their only chance to make contact with some goromente employee, a chance they should not pass up, since goromente was so little in evidence around there, no police, no army, no veterinary trucks.
So then Ray had machinated smoothly with the Wildlife officers who had been going somewhere in the bakkie. He had quickly gotten out the news of the raid. They had been electrified. They knew the place. They had seemed capable. He had dealt mainly with the senior man, a tough, leathery character. Of course it had started out awkwardly with them, but he had overcome it. Striding over to greet them, he had been struggling to contain a fit of coughing caused by the volumes of dust he’d taken in during the chase. And he had tried to spit, preparatory to trying to machinate. But unfortunately his saliva was less than normal. He had tried to spit just casually and it had been an embarrassing moment because his saliva was viscous and the spittle hadn’t detached normally via its own weight and he had had to pinch it off his lip, in front of people, to get it to drop. Diet was affecting his saliva. He needed vegetables. And he needed peaches, if he could get some. That was what he thought.
But then he had worked it all out. They would come back the next day for sure and pick up Keletso and carry him down to Maun. In Maun goromente was still functioning and Keletso would be fine. He would have no trouble organizing transport down to the capital. Ray had given them an enormous deposit of fifty pula and thrown in another twenty rands and he had promised Keletso would give them the same amount when they returned for him. It was settled. They were burning to get away to inspect the raided cattle post. They were fearless, apparently. They were competent men, or seemed to be. They had yards of maps to consult. He didn’t doubt that their eagerness to get to the raid site had to do with salvage, the opportunity to field-dress the fresh carcasses, assuming the Cape vultures had been detained in arriving. But he was guessing about that. Cape vultures had come up in their exchanges and, as he understood what they were saying, the Cape vultures were becoming very scarce, along with other carrion birds.
They had thanked him profusely for the information. Clearly they were unafraid of the people who had been responsible for the raid, but then, of course, they had armloads of rifles, Enfields, on board, a regular arsenal. They had everything they needed that he could think of. They had roof-mounted spotlights, camping gear. There was a smell of drink coming from them, which was not something so far out of the ordinary that he had to draw any conclusions, negative ones, from it, necessarily. And then he had been relieved when it had become evident that it was the junior man who had been drinking. Ray felt he had handled the negotiations well, clinching the deal by making it clear that the payment he was making for Keletso’s passage was not something that would need to be reported to anyone.
Keletso was determined to make
“You have to say who you are,” Ray said. Keletso understood why. They wanted to avoid Makoko taking it into his head to start shooting at intruders. Keletso amended his campaign of harassment immediately.
The building was voluminous. There was obviously plenty of space, corners for two people to stretch out in. Makoko was the sole occupant. They knew that. There had been reference made earlier both to sleeping rooms and to a sleeping cabin, not by Makoko but by one of the serving women. Keletso had taken the matter up with Makoko while Ray was concerned elsewhere and had been told, as Keletso reported it, that the sleeping facilities were not “functual.” And they had decided to drop it because Makoko was already acting generally so peculiarly toward them. Ray thought he knew some of the reasons why. He and Keletso might be anybody. The property Makoko was in charge of, whether it was his or belonged to someone else, deserved expanded protection while unrest was raging in the neighborhood, naturally. Ray had been unwilling to press for lodgings because the booking process could easily have required him to produce his passport. Even in remotenesses like this one, it might have been requested. And it would have made no sense to whine for lodgings while there were other things they sorely needed from Makoko outstanding. So the time to go for lodgings had passed. Essentially, Keletso was playing. It could go on for a while without doing any harm. Keletso hadn’t been reconciled to sleeping in the vehicle one more time. This was
