transforming himself so absolutely yet so abruptly? Your questions are non sequiturs, one non sequitur following another, he thought. He was paralyzing himself with questions.
On impulse Ray reached out and seized Kerekang’s wrist, and then his hand.
He said, “This is serious, what I’m saying. I want you to think. Stop smoking dagga, why don’t you. You’ve had plenty.”
Kerekang seemed surprised but not annoyed.
He said, “That’s right.” He spat out the burning cigarette. There was something almost jaunty or jocular about the way he did it. That’s the marijuana showing. It made people compliant with whatever was going on. Ray didn’t want Kerekang to come around to this view because he was being helped there by the dagga. No, what he wanted was for Kerekang to come around because he had spoken to him from his heart, there was no other phrase for it, spoken from his heart to the man Kerekang, and had been understood, had been received man to man, Ray speaking from his situation, dying animal to dying animal, he couldn’t express it exactly.
Kerekang was being agreeable. He was standing up and stretching.
“I had a wife, as well,” Kerekang said.
“Ah. You did?” Ray was surprised. This was a lacuna. There had been nothing in Kerekang’s dossier to suggest it.
“You were married?”
“Nyah, she was waiting for me, to marry. She was my betrothed.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, perhaps you can tell me, because she surprised me after six years when I was abroad, studying, as we agreed I should do, while she worked in Gaborone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rra, I had one more year to be in Scotland. We were writing, we were telephoning. I had home visits, and they were just what you would hope. All the time I was abroad I was sending her poetry, this and that.”
“So you had no sign?”
“Nyah, not one, rra.”
Ray was amused that the agency had missed this information. It was an example of how defective the apparatus he was leaving was, how incompetent in so many ways.
“I’m sorry to hear about this.” But he was and he wasn’t, because if he was understanding correctly there was a bond glimmering between them that he hadn’t known would be there.
Kerekang was walking around the narrow summit. He was holding his fists against the top of his head. He came back to Ray.
He said, “Do you know Thomas Lodge?”
Ray felt incompetent. He knew it was English Literature, but that was all he knew. It was not his period.
“I know the name.” English Literature was the Pacific Ocean.
Kerekang said, “I know every word of his ode,
It was a consummate performance. Kerekang could take dead text into his chest and mind and heart and make it live, just as he had done with Tennyson at the ambassador’s residence. Kerekang was putting his sorrow away in poetry. He was standing up stanced in an artificial way as he declaimed. He was meant to be a performer. It was obvious. He was speaking blindly and brilliantly to the stars the air and to his one-man audience the English professor. “Bravo,” Ray said.
“Thank you. I sent that to Eunice when she broke it off with me. And do you know she was married in two weeks afterward?”
“Eunice… not Eunice Kamphodza?”
“Yes it is. You know her?”
“Well her husband I know, Kamphodza, at the Ministry of Education. He is an obstacle to progress, mainly. He’s number four, or three, maybe three, by now. He should retire. And I see her. I think she works at Tourism and comes out to get food at King’s Takeaway in the mall for her office mates. At least I assume the food is for others. She’s quite a heavy woman, if I’m thinking of the right person.”
“Yah, it is. She is very fat now. She is an elephant. Tlou, we say. She wasn’t so fat when she was younger.”
It was probably the wrong thing to say but Ray felt impelled to say it. “So then do you… well, do you feel you escaped something, in a way? I mean, does it make you feel a little better about what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Kerekang answered.
Ray wished he hadn’t said what he said. He knew what was behind it. He was feeling envy that Kerekang’s missed prize had so quickly tarnished itself in the eyes of the world. That wouldn’t happen with Iris. It was not something he could wish for, not something he should wish for. She was more of a prize as time went on and she held steady and rose in the eyes of the world and he became a drier and lesser version of himself, withering into the unpleasant truth of what he was, or not the unpleasant truth but the unimpressive truth. There were ten years between them. He was a dry person. He would long precede her into dryness, terminal dryness. But she was flourishing. In every period of her life she had been the ideal representative of what a woman could be in that span, her pretty youth, her beautiful young womanhood. She was still not a matron. She was flourishing, with her glossy hair, sweet dark eyes, good flesh, her lean face. Her breath was always sweet. She had perfect breasts, lower than when she had been young but appropriately lower and still full, perfect handfuls for the lucky man who could get into her bower. She knew everything there was to know about nutrition, what was good for the skin. She had avoided the sun, managed to do that in Africa, and without calling attention to it, being subtle about it. She had been in advance of the news that the sun was our enemy. She was a disciplined eater. God had given her teeth as white as cotton. His own hair was hanging on but it was less thick than it had been and across the crown there was a glow rather than a solid presence of hair. He might find someone if he could keep Iris’s admonitions in mind, like remembering to sit up straight at the table because alphas always sit up straight. And there were her silky nipples, so delicate. Her voice had gotten a little huskier with age, but men liked that. He did himself.
Ray said, “Well then do you see her, do you encounter one another?”
“We did for a time.”
“And what was that like?”
“Ah, rra. The truth is that she is rude to me. She moves away if she sees me, very fast, slick.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Well it is because she knows what I feel about Kamphodza. He is powerful in Domkrag, do you know that? You must. In Ghanzi he is a tautona, with the lands he owns. She will inherit a lot when he goes. It was the dream of getting beasts that pushed her into his old-man arms, I am sure. Because the law is changing so that women can inherit lands. And he has no sons, or any children at all.”
“Well okay, but what are your feelings toward her? I have no right to ask you, I know, but what are they?” He couldn’t stop himself. He was taking everything as a rehearsal for what was coming with him. He wanted information.
“You see, rra. I still love her. Even today, I do.”
