Mortals

careful.”

“If you’re asking me if I trust him not to expose me to disease by cheating with other people, I do.”

That formulation was painful. But it was all painful.

She said, “And he’s completely terrified about HIV. He’s made a nuisance of himself over it with people in the Ministry of Health. He’s going to get them to be serious about it.”

Good for him, Ray thought. This was hell, this part. He could feel himself releasing her. He had accomplished the intellectual act of release, but there was more, a visceral part, a corporeal part, that felt like physical injury, tearing. One had to be kept severed from the other. The intellectual act consisted of halfway imagining himself walking and talking normally and conducting business in the future, business of some kind, without her anywhere near the scene. Of course he would be doing business in hell, because his life post-Iris would be hell. He seemed to be attracted to hell, hell via Milton and hell via the agency, which specialized in making little hells for the enemy here and there, individuals and groups. True hell is your wife being in love with another man, he thought. He had known a couple of men in his time who were obsessed with pursuing other men’s wives, mavens of married female flesh, and he had considered it a fetish and the men freakish, with their fascination with getting into colleagues’ wives, with all the risks and betrayals that entailed. He had regarded them as unpleasant types and so had Iris. He should have paid more attention, understood them better. In The Decameron the seducer priest got his way with young women by convincing them that putting his penis into them was a pious act called putting the Devil in hell, back in hell, supposedly. Of course Iris might say he had been slightly complaisant at the beginning concerning her signs and gestures toward Morel, in that he hadn’t opposed her going to the man. He didn’t think he had been. If he had he was sorry and he would have to put it down to looking for a great refusal, a gran rifiuto, on her part, maybe. He thought, If you love hell so much you should have done Dante instead of pitiful Milton. He was surprised at the thought. It was too late to do Dante.

Joburg was one hundred and sixty miles from Gaborone, as the crow flies, and they were only halfway there.

Normally on road trips Iris was the navigator. He didn’t need her help on this trip, which was straightforward. They both knew it by heart. But still she had gotten out the roadmap and was keeping it on her lap, refolding it as they progressed, keeping up. She was beautiful in profile.

“I want to go up there,” she said, almost peremptorily.

He knew where they were. They were passing along a valley with one high wall. A curving side road ran up it to a picnic area, tables and benches strung along a railed escarpment, and there was a concrete observation platform. You could see Pretoria in the distance. At night you could see the amber haze that hung over it. They had been up there in the past. He couldn’t imagine anyone would frequent it at night, using it as a lovers’ lane, for example, because of the general fear over security that permeated the Groot Marico. There were toilet facilities on the site, as he recalled. She was willing to stop and urinate by the road, normally, but getting to the bush was more of a trek now that there had been so much clearing-back.

“Do you need to pee?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t mind, but that isn’t it.” That meant it was nostalgia. He couldn’t oppose that. He looked at her. He realized that she was tearing up, not weeping yet. His heart hurt. The thing was that he loved her, every inch of her, which it was pointless to keep saying. So they would go up and have a gaze. She wanted to and they were making good time.

He took the side road and drove slowly upward. Without prologue Iris reached in his crotch and pressed on his penis.

He had no words. He was unsurprised, but this was dangerous, an egg full of suffering for somebody, maybe everybody. He coughed. Out of pleasure, suffering, would be something in Latin. On the other hand, there was something fated about the prospect, and correct, because it acknowledged something about their personal carnal history to do it one more time, saluted something. She rested the backs of her fingers against his penis, moving them slightly.

She said, “Hm, I see you’re at least bi. I thought you might be gay, but I see you’re bi. Well, thank goodness.” This was an old game between them. Gay meant he was soft, bi meant he was semihard. She would give the mock characterization that he was gay or bi if, when she was teasing him on the way to sex, he was not in his usual quite prompt hard state, his hetero state. It was a painful attempt to relive old stuff. He forgave her. He was sorry for her. He didn’t know what she thought she was going to get out of the coming event. There was going to be one. He was hard, as they rose.

“Oh my,” she said. That was another thing she did, acting prim as an ingredient in the course of lewd conduct. Lewd was her own word for herself.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

“Now you’re hetero,” she said.

“I know, I know. This is silly,” he said. She was delicately unbuttoning her blouse.

They were near the top. In Dante there was something about l’arte de tornar. Turning back was an art he didn’t have, had never had. He wasn’t going to turn back. She was leading the way. He didn’t know if he was being insane to follow. It was possible. Her eyes were wet. He had to watch the road, but she was unbuttoning her blouse, his wife. She was.

It didn’t look like there was going to be any discussion. The parking area was of course marked parkering. It was empty. The whole site was theirs. He had no idea what she had in mind for a location for what she had in mind, which was probably not the car. It would be complicated in the car. But doing anything outside the car could be dangerous. It was getting cooler. And they would be exposed.

He parked. Her blouse was completely undone. He groaned. He couldn’t help it. She knew what she was doing. He could see the inner side of one breast but not the nipple. That was meant to tease. She had perfect, sleek darkish nipples. There was a sense in which a woman wasn’t naked if she had something obscuring her nipples even if everything else was there.

“It’s getting chilly,” he said.

“No it isn’t,” she answered. She was in a sexually driven state. He had seen it in their life together. He wondered if Morel had seen it. He was inflamed. Fluid leaked from his penis.

They would be in danger outside the car, in a generic way, white people naked, one a woman, in the dark, in South Africa, making themselves vulnerable in the most absolute way. The danger could come from Boer farm guard groups, from Boer police or from the army, even, or from ordinary criminals or from black guerrillas. He could propose that they wait until they got to Joburg and into a hotel but that felt like a bad idea. She was in the grip of doing it now and here. It would be extraordinary to do it now and here and not extraordinary to do it in the comfort of a hotel. There was a certain subcategory of the human race consisting of people who sought out and enjoyed public intercourse and the dangers that went with it, but he was not in it. She was going to have to let him reconnoiter the site thoroughly to make sure that nobody was hiding behind a bush. She was undressing all the way.

He said, “I have to take a look around.” He found a torch in the glove box and let himself out. He made a circuit of the site. The toilets were locked, which was annoying. She always wanted to pee before sex and then after. He only needed to pee after. The good news was that she had been right about the temperature. It wasn’t too cold. It was cool. It was all right. He was radiating heat.

Iris was naked, waiting in the car. It looked like there was not going to be any discussion. He got into the driver’s seat.

“You don’t want to be inside, in the car, do you?” he said.

She shook her head.

He said, “What’s your plan?”

She pointed into the back. There was a thick pink acrylic afghan on the seat, along with a canister of towelettes. She had planned this. He knew the afghan. He had knocked a can of ginger beer over on it once. It was faintly redolent of that, still, and of motor oil. Usually it was kept in the boot of their own Beetle. He was not going to go out into the bush with her. They would have to stay next to the car, with the doors open so that they could jump back in should some kind of danger appear. They were not going to go off in search of a setting with a view. He would prefer it if he could leave the engine running, even, but that would be distracting. He was fully aroused.