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,
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
