protected by ancient monopolies and a determined insistence on prerogatives and precedent. It was here that Marlo carried on his social research and here that he found an ‘organization of labor’ whose principles he hoped to see embodied in an economic order which would protect Germany from the ravages of the Industrial Revolution.”
And here was Marlo himself speaking despairingly. “Nothing remains for even the most intelligent to do, but to surrender his social independence and put himself in the service of the capital-rich entrepreneurs, and leave to them the greater part of the fruit of his labor.” Ray could see clearly why Marlo appealed to Kerekang.
Here was the core of it. “Industrial and agricultural enterprises would be limited to a certain number of workers, and each merchandising firm would be given a monopoly over a part of the national market… Those who amass more capital than is needed for their enterprise will be able to lend it to those who lack the money but not the competence to exploit their share of the national market. The state must keep interest rates low, and must also assure to each citizen ‘a sphere of activity’ equivalent to his abilities. Would not, Marlo asked, such a state be able to ward off the wild struggle for markets and capital, the destructive competition, and the dangerous concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few which have transformed modern societies into vast arenas in which occur chaotic struggles for survival?… Every citizen will be expected to contribute to health, old age, and life insurance programs…”
It sounded to Ray like Sweden in the fifties. And the outcome for Marlo was that his advanced ideas had enraged the liberal revolutionaries who wanted to break the guilds, and the socialists who wanted to vest ownership of everything in the state, and he had been tried for treason when the reactionaries came back to power after the crushing of the revolution.
Ray thought, Outcomes are funny: Imagine that somehow Marlo and this renovated guild system had won out in Germany, what might have been next? Well, for one thing, no German Marxism burgeoning up enough to drive the ruling classes crazy and no ruling classes putting Lenin on a train to Russia and no Russian Revolution and no Stalin and no Red Army carrying fire and blood and doom to what was left of the crazy old regime, thank you very much: We outsmart ourselves!… How can I possibly get this across? We destroy moderates at our own peril, something like that: He won’t get it, he’s Boyle.
When it came to Kerekang’s political life in Britain, reading it correctly took only the smallest amount of sophistication and goodwill. Kerekang had never taken out physical membership in anything. He had been sampling this and that in the nonparty left, over there. He was a pilgrim. There was no evidence of anything more. Yes, at the very beginning of his time in the U.K. he had fellow-traveled with a couple of Trotskyist sectlets or groupustules, Boyle’s tweaking of the standard derogatory term for miniature left groups, groupuscules, but Kerekang had clearly found them wanting. He had rejected them and gone elsewhere, which ought to count in his favor. He had been a sympathizer with something called the Commonwealth Party, now defunct, a precursor to the Green Party. The man was a seeker, and where he had come out was, if looked at without jaundice, innocuous. But Boyle was Boyle. He remained Boyle. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with the world?
It occurred to Ray that a prime reason people want power is so they can say no, have that pleasure, exercise the power to prohibit. It was how some people made the world simpler, people who hated the confusion of the world. It was primitive.
The buzzer sounded, the red light flashed, he rose up wearily.
With Iris gone Ray could eat anything he wanted, and he had planned a transgressive meal for himself for tonight, which, now that he was sitting down to it, he didn’t have much appetite for. He had to get past Boyle’s
He had a fine clod of fried steak before him, with baked potato and salad, flageolets dressed with oil and vinegar, a salad by British standards only. It was a thick steak, silverside. Cliffs of beef, he thought. The garnish of sauteed garlic and onions was less thoroughly caramelized than he liked. Iris would have done them perfectly. As a cook, his weakness was impatience. He was doing his own cooking. Dimakatso had offered to take over, but she was a rotten cook and he would have had to praise everything.
He was on his second Ringnes beer. The brand was just lately available in Gaborone and it was wonderful, and strong, which was why he liked it, of course.
He missed Iris cruelly. She would call tonight. He was hoping for a call less consumed by the detail of what was going on with Ellen and her new baby girl than the previous calls had been.
He should be happier right now. He was set up to read and eat, a combination he liked, a pleasure in itself that a happily married man generally experienced only when he was eating away from home. He had two
The phone was on the table. It rang and he picked up the receiver. It was her voice. He wanted her back home. He wanted to kiss her mouth, feel her open it under his kiss. He pushed his plate aside.
“Oh God I can hear you,” he said, which was not how he had meant to begin. Somewhere he had a list of things he wanted to mention. It must be at work. There were key things on the list. The point was to attract, to attract, for want of a better word. One item was that they had fennel now, at the Chinese greengrocer’s in White City. But that was the least interesting item on the list.
She thought he was referring to the phone connection, obviously.
“I can hear you too,” she said, twice.
He wanted to do something, talk French to her, something, attract her, remind her of how much he loved her but without just saying it over and over.
“I love you,” he said.
“I do too,” she said. He knew what she meant. It was fine. He didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted something stronger.
She was proceeding with the news about the baby, still unnamed, fully recovered from the mild case of jaundice she’d suffered from when she was born. Iris was keeping Ellen as calm as possible. The baby was at home with them now. It was good that she had come. Did he have any suggestions for a name for a girl, keeping in mind that it had to go well with Gunther.
“Not right now,” he said, realizing that he wanted urgently to escape the subject. The last time he’d been engaged in baby-naming exercises was during one of Iris’s false pregnancies, long ago.
“But please help us, Ray. Think about it. You have good suggestions. Anything with a little literary feeling to it would be welcome to Ellen. She’s getting the most absurd suggestions from her friends here. I hate them. That’s another subject. I’ll tell you later. Just rebarbative is what I’d call the whole bunch of them. But there seems to be a trend going to find a name that’s got trashy associations like Lulu or Lola or Ruby. I don’t understand it. Or she’ll be enthusiastic over a name that’s just plain weird, like Merle. Of course there was Merle Oberon… But the worst is that she keeps muttering that if black people can make up any sort of name they want for their children, then why can’t she? Who knows what she might come up with. Ladeeda or Ladido or something.”
“I think the father should have some say in it, Iris.”
“The father. No.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“Ray, he knows about the baby, she told him, he just doesn’t know she’s been born yet.”
“Shouldn’t somebody inform him, Iris?”
“Of course! But this is the way Ellen wants it. He’s in another state. He got married. I don’t know how this is going to work out, but she wants me to help with an insane letter she wants him to sign. He’s getting his mail at a post office box. It’s all a mess. He works in a bookstore. He has nothing. He’s in terror of his wife finding out. He always calls, when he calls, from a pay phone. And he always whispers. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I might call your brother…”
“Now why in hell would you do that?”
