Mortals

they got. And those associations were fundamentally mercenary in any case. When it came to his family, he had only critics and adversaries. Rex was his enemy. His mother was neither friend nor enemy. He wasn’t present enough in her consciousness for her to have an attitude toward him. She had stronger feelings about the game of golf. In his opinions on Milton, in his publications, he was alone. He had no seconders. He belonged to no particular school of interpretation. Sometimes his views were objected to, briefly, and set to one side. He could deal with it. That was the world. He would like to get a closer look at Samuel Kerekang. He liked him. He felt a dim bond with him through the man’s evident love of English literature. Kerekang would inspire friendship, Ray thought. When he thought of the world as a spectacle of enemies, he tried to be resigned about it, telling himself that the lives of most men could be shown to resemble his. How unusual was it for men not to have close friends of the same sex except in the context of athletics, of team life? But even that didn’t scan. Team life was riven with rivalry, especially at the professional level. He had had a few friendly superiors in his career, the greatest of them being Marion Resnick of blessed memory. But of course that’s what Marion had been, his superior. That said it all. They had been business friends. And of course real social friendship outside of the agency had been structurally ruled out for him. The feeling of affinity that had overwhelmed him the first time he encountered Milton had been a form of friendly feeling, he supposed, but different, naturally, because Milton was dead and was alive to him only in lines of text. But he loved Milton and had recognized, with some surprise, an element of personal sympathy or pity in his feeling, part of a sense that in some way he could help Milton, help him to be better apprehended and loved. This was nonsense, but he wondered how other English specialists chose their men, chose their people, wondered if there was something like what he had just recognized, if choices were made on the flaws, certain flaws in the achievements of the artist, certain appealing flaws that you might help with. That he had been feeling sorry at some level for the sublime Milton was good for a laugh. The idea of friendship with the dead, in itself, was also good for a laugh.

They were falling back in the queue as Iris let people slip ahead. She was under the impression she was holding a place for her doctor.

“He’s not coming back for this,” Ray said.

“He said he was.”

“He also said he was fasting.”

“But then he got on line.”

“No, he let himself be put on line by Maeve, out of courtesy. That’s all. He’s not coming back.”

She looked distressed. “I thought he’d changed his mind about eating,” she said.

“Is he a vegetarian?” Ray asked.

“He favors it.”

“But is he?”

“Pretty much.”

“Does he have an explanation for the rise in age at death as populations consume more meat?”

“You want the frikadellen.”

“I’m hungry. I’m seeing white. I’m having bizarre ideation.”

“Eat whatever you want, you poor thing.”

“Remember when you said Don’t come to me when you fall over? During one of our first shall we say discussions about meat?”

“You remember my formulations when they’re simple, don’t you? They stay with you. Anything simpleminded.”

“That wasn’t simpleminded. I knew what you meant. You meant when I fell over with a heart attack.”

“The cute me. That’s what you like. That’s all right.”

Don’t come to me when you fall over dead, however she’d put it, had seemed amusing when she’d said it. His talent for making things worse was making itself felt.

The queue stalled.

“Wait, I need to tell my doctor something. I think I see him in the house. I’ll be back.”

That was fine.

The line had stalled because the frikadellen had run out.

He thought, Liberation is what she wants… I have it… What is it?

Wemberg, it appeared, was missing. The man the present event had been created for was gone. He had evaded his handlers, which was surprising because he had seemed so inert. That must have been an act. This was looking to everyone like an escape. People were reminding one another that the Wembergs had more friends among the Batswana than anyone.

The substrate of confusion under today’s enterprise was starting to show. There was awkwardness everywhere. The ambassador had managed to pack together a little delegation of local clergy, including the bishop Morel had offended, with the idea that they would offer a group condolence to the bereaved. Now Wemberg was nowhere. The ambassador was striving to keep the group of clergy entertained while somebody located Wemberg.

Ray didn’t mind scenes of great confusion, things falling apart, just so long as he bore no responsibility.

In a minute the ambassador would have to release the group he had drawn together. He was deflecting his embarrassment into blasts of staring affability directed almost randomly. His height made him so conspicuous.

Ray had loaded his plate with tomato salad, nothing else.

Iris beckoned to him across the lawn. She was part of a constellation consisting of herself, Morel, and Kerekang that was drifting, each star remaining at a fixed distance from the others, across the lawn, in the direction of a horseshoe pitch in the lee of the main house and receiving some shade from it. This was the group he wanted, excellent! Iris was carrying two plates of tomato salad, one of them probably intended for him. He raised his own plate to show her that he was already eating an abundance of damn tomatoes.

Signs of disorganization continued to multiply. It was deadly bright and hot, and people had packed themselves into the seats under the canopy to eat. One man was standing and eating at the podium. A presentation of flowers, gladioli, had just arrived late and were being set up. A low hiss emanated from the public- address system speakers. Staff people who should have been in evidence were not. Obviously many of them had been hurled into the search for Dwight Wemberg.

Following Iris, Morel, and Kerekang toward the shade were the gleaner children, in a body, moving carefully and attending to the full plates they were carrying. Ray watched them settle in the horseshoe pitch, at Kerekang’s feet. Morel and Kerekang, now lounging against the wall of the main residence, were in mid-conversation. He was going to go over there. Iris was kneeling among the children. The children shifted, moving even nearer to Kerekang. It was vaguely like a scene from the Gospels.

Ray was set up to tape. His wife was beautiful but he wished she were standing. She could be careless about people interested in looking down her front. She had one top with sagging, too generous armholes that he wished she would eliminate from her wardrobe. She was careless.

Going by the gestures in play, Kerekang was engaged in a verbal attack on Morel. This was not Morel’s day. Ray couldn’t imagine what the issue might be. He had to hear this. He tried to call up anything he knew of Tennyson’s beyond what everyone knew from Locksley Hall. Nothing was coming.

Halfway there, he was invisibly deflected. Boyle crossed in front of him and gave a double cough that meant Ray should follow him, mark where he was headed, and then find a discreet way to get there and meet with him. Boyle had studiously not looked at him as he was crossing his path, which was usual. Anyone who had intelligence business with Boyle was to avoid public contact with him on pain of being considered something between an absolute idiot and a walking threat to the continued existence of the Central Intelligence Agency as an institution. Ray wondered if anyone had figured out that a good way to winkle out who was doing Boyle’s work would be to make a list of the people who were always feverishly scuttling out of Boyle’s neighborhood at gatherings like this one.

Ray was furious. He should be with the constellation. Boyle was using a cane today so maybe there was hope somewhere. I curse you, he thought. If Boyle was descending toward immobility there was hope, unless because he was so invaluable he would be kept on even if all he could do was sit in a chair and concoct actions. The agency loved Boyle.

Normally he would feel pity for anyone moving along with such evident difficulty as Boyle. He wished Boyle would fall. That way this mission he had been summoned to the same way a dog is summoned by his master’s