Kevin insisted Ray sit down again, out of the way, against the parapet on the south side of the roof. He began to disentangle the bindings but stopped when he saw that skin was coming away in places as he lifted the tape away.
“This is going to be bleeding, rra.”
“I don’t care. Just pull it off.”
“Ehe, but I’ll pull it fast, like that. Be ready.”
“I am ready. Do it.”
Kevin had a knife, a small thing. He sawed the bindings apart. The bundle fell into Ray’s lap.
“Now I am pulling,” Kevin said, and then he did and it was hot pain again but mainly unbearable around his neck. The tape came away more easily from his back. Certain spots were bad, little hells, on his back. He needed something, some Vaseline, some sort of balm. But at least the weight was gone.
He wanted to get up and join in the effort to scavenge the roof for anything useful for killing. That was what his friends were doing. They were furious because the mounted guns were bolted to wooden skids and there was no time to find tools, wherever they might be, to use in dismantling them, because the building was on fire behind them. Trying to stamp it out had been a gesticulation. They were letting the building go. But it was not something to argue about.
They had the hatch to the end set of stairs up and were pitching whatever they could lay their hands on that they wanted down the stairwell. They had discovered those stairs without him, which was fine, but he had wanted to be the one to lead them to it, or if not that point it out to them, at least.
Ray got up, the bundle under his arm.
He knew what he was going to say to Morel when he saw him. He was going to say You may draw my bath. That seemed very funny to him, but it was also what he wanted most from anyone who could provide it.
Mokopa wanted him to leave the roof, go down the hold, go downstairs. He was being urgent about it.
Ray went over to the stairs. He didn’t want to go. Mokopa was praising him in Setswana and he understood enough to know he didn’t want to go until Mokopa was through doing that. And then he was through. And then Mokopa’s attention was elsewhere, off over toward the pan. He was yelling joyously. People were yelling back. People were coming down into the pan, a line of them, waving. Mokopa came and got him as he was about to descend the stairs and pulled him over to the parapet facing the pan and raised his arm and waved it for him. “Tau” was something Mokopa was saying in reference to him, which Ray knew meant lion, and then it was “Dilau” over and over, which Ray was going to have to ask someone about. It was just another thing on his list. He wondered who anyone thought he was, out there, what the people in the pan thought.
He hated leaving the roof, the scene. He wanted to delay if he could a little. He wanted Morel to appear and see what he had done, or the results of it, see him waving. He wanted to shout along with his friends. So he shouted “Dilau dilau dilau,” picking that word out of Mokopa’s praise of him, and produced unexpected hilarity in the men around him. That was fine. Everything would be revealed.
Someone was calling him from the direction of the fire. Ray couldn’t tell who it was. There were two kinds of darkness over the roof, the darkness of the smoke itself, coming in blurts, and then the darkness of the shadow of the smoke. And there were the buzzards but not only the buzzards. There were smaller birds, some sort of carrion bird specializing in the leftovers of the buzzards and vultures. He knew nothing about birdlife. He had never been interested. And neither had Iris. She had been invited to birdwatch with a birdwatcher and had said to the birdwatcher, What I say is let the birds watch
It was Morel calling him, calling and coughing at the same time, bursting through the smoke barrier. He was carrying his medical bag. There were two new witdoeke with him, new to Ray, not from the roof team.
Kevin had Ray by the elbow, which Ray didn’t want, especially now. He pulled himself free and drew himself up.
Morel looked battered and befouled. He had soot on his face and his safari suit was chaotically stained. He was trying to maintain some kind of presence. Ray was sorry for him. I don’t care how I look, Ray thought.
Morel came up to him. He was out of breath. He snorted.
“Christ, look at you,” Morel said.
“I know.”
“We need to clean you up.”
“You may draw my bath now.”
“Oh very funny. What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I’ve been shouting at people.”
“Let me look at your neck. And when did you get new pants?”
“It’s a long story.”
The new witdoeke had been mingling with members of the roof team and now returned to stare at Ray. Morel was beginning to understand. “Dilau,” they said.
“They thought you had a bomb, you ran around like that with that thing. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Roughly.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Roughly.”
“Well do I get any credit?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I gave you the idea.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I gave you the idea when you scared the shit out of me when you walked in with that thing on your chest.”
“Okay I give you credit. Are you happy?”
“You’ve got to tell me how you did it, man, everything. But how is everybody up here?”
“I think mostly okay. What is dilau, by the way? You’re the linguist.”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Because they’re saying I’m dilau, I think.” “Rra, I can tell you,” Kevin said. “What does it mean?”
“Rra, it is saying you have the lerete of the lion.”
“What is that?”
“It is the genitals, rra. Dilau. The genitals of the lion.”
“Thank you,” Ray said to Kevin.
“Quite a compliment, man. But you need to sit down and we need to get out of here.”
“Stop telling me to sit down. Everyone’s doing it. I’m okay.”
Ray could see, as the smoke shifted, the fire like a vast bright claw gripping the roof. They did have to go.
They had to go especially because the faintness was coming back. He didn’t know if he would be able to quell it this time. He might lose consciousness, and it was impossible to tell how long a spell of unconsciousness might last, not excluding forever. There was something on his mind. At some point Iris would be notified about the outcome of all this, by someone, notified about who had survived. That moment would come. She would be waiting for it. Probably she would rather hear that Morel was alive. Or at best she might want to know equally. But in fact he knew her heart and if she had a button to press that controlled the news of their respective fates with one button telling his fate and the other button telling Morel’s fate she would punch the Morel button first. It would be a reflex. She wouldn’t be able to help it. He could see her doing it. She wouldn’t want him to see. But that was what he would see.
He was on the stairs. He was descending carefully. He was holding his bundle against his chest. Kevin was descending backwards, holding lightly on to him, which he didn’t approve of. Going backwards down the stairs was dangerous for his friend Kevin.
“Wemberg, the old man, is dead, Ray,” Morel said. Morel was just behind him on the stairs.
So that was another entry on the list of things he could do nothing about. The world was turning white.
