was under the impression that the women’s colony he had established was a success, something the government was proud of.
“Well, yes, a success, but it’s a success as a German plantation. That’s what it’s turned into, in effect. It’s true that a sort of female elite runs it for the Germans, but it’s not the same place it was. Grapple plant grows wild in the Kalahari and the Germans were buying all they could get to put in some aphrodisiac concoction. The biggest health food chain in Europe got involved. There was a boom. And then a collapse in all the growing areas except the one around Tsau. It’s a tuber and you have to leave half of it in the ground if you want it to regenerate, which is the way Denoon had taught the women at Tsau to proceed. The other foragers had just ripped the whole thing out of the ground. Anyway, so the Germans moved in on Tsau, gave them contracts… and paid plenty because devil’s claw, which is the other thing they call it, had gotten so scarce. Now it’s like gold. So Tsau is a little like a company town on the order of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The women are doing quite well. Some of them are married to Germans who’ve settled there. There’s a long waiting list to get in, and the female-line inheritance deal Denoon got the government to allow is a big draw, but it hasn’t spread anywhere else and it’s breaking down informally at Tsau. It’s very gentrified, compared to what it was. And the Denoons are unhappy with the way things have turned out and they are letting everyone know how they feel. So they won’t be making a visit to Tsau on this trip.”
She said, “Hm. That’s sad. But why is the government being so unfriendly to them?”
“Well, goromente is perfectly happy with the way Tsau is going. So that’s one thing. But it’s not mainly that. I think it’s because of what happened in India. Botswana wants to keep the Indian community here happy. They’re well off and they have a lot of influence. And the Denoons made trouble in India. They’re persona non grata there. They got kicked out of Poona. So—”
“Yes, and kicked out when he was still convalescing. After what happened. And he’s still convalescing. I think it’s a scandal.” She looked at him. “You’re a cornucopia of information on almost any subject I raise, Ray. That’s lucky for me. I’m serious.”
“I try, my dear girl.” He lowered his voice to say that the file on the Denoons was huge.
“I hope more people come, Ray.”
“We’ll see. But anyway, I don’t know a lot about what happened in India. Essentially, he was invited out of Tsau because it was time for the women it had been meant for all along to take over. So she, Karen, came back from the States and took him by the hand and married him and when he told her he wanted to go to India she said fine, they would find something useful to do there. And so they did. You know what I know. They got into the movement against dowry murder. They plunged into it. She learned Hindi…”
She said, “I wonder why she took his name, though. For a feminist, and one so prominent, it seems slightly strange. Do you have any idea why?”
“Oddly enough, I do. Her true maiden name wasn’t the one she grew up with, Karen Ann Hoyt. That was the name her mother gave her, but it was an invention chosen because her mother thought it sounded classy, better than Dooley in any case. You may think it’s amazing I know all this, and it is, it is. Karen Ann hated her name, and that was because her mother, a simple person, at some point confessed to her that she had chosen Hoyt because it sounded like ‘hoity-toity.’ And the name Karen Ann had been copied from some local subdeb in the area who was always in the local news.”
“What’s a subdeb?”
“Subdebutante. I guess that term is out of use now. So she had reason to hate all her names. Her birth certificate reads Baby Girl Dooley. She dropped the Ann part of her name when she married Denoon. So now we have Karen Denoon and your question is answered.”
“I understand the feeling of wanting to change your name. I don’t love my name. And I know what you’re going to say, Ray, so don’t bother. Also, thank you for telling me interesting things.”
“What I was going to say was that I love your name. And I do.”
“So then is what happened in India that he was setting a trap, setting up to video an attempted wife-burning and planning to jump in and stop it after he had his footage, and the plan went wrong?”
“It went way wrong. The wife got out okay but the fire got out of control, there was a conflagration, and for a while they thought Denoon was caught in it and incinerated. But, as God wills, he survived. Somehow he curled up in a niche. They have it on tape, Denoon emerging from the ashes like a phoenix. They may show it tonight, although I don’t see any monitor… well, maybe one is coming. But he came out of it with damaged lungs. He can’t speak above a whisper. Even then, he talks in bursts and not for extended periods, they say. But they’re still campaigning. She hauls him around with her. He’s pretty much an invalid, apparently. It’s done wonders for the movement. You could see him as a burnt offering that worked.”
“Oh, dear. Thank God he didn’t get burns, externally I mean.”
Denoon gets into trouble, Ray thought. Before hooking up with the dowry murder people, Denoon had made efforts to get into the campaign against indentured labor in Madras. He had been unwelcome. The campaign had been totally in the hands of orthodox Marxist groups and his heterodox leftism had been found more than annoying. He had been beaten up, at one point, in a confrontation, but whether it had been a confrontation with the authorities or with organizers of the campaign, Ray couldn’t remember. Martyrdom was a proof of virtue, of course. Clearly it was for Iris. He wondered if unconsciously that was what she wanted for him, if she would secretly prefer him to be hurling himself against the brick wall of the world, like Denoon or like her doctor, instead of being the what, the fierce champion of the inevitable she undoubtedly saw him as. But that was life. He was her lot. Or he was her lot for as long as she would accept it, which was the problem rising in the sky over them, a new orb. Morel would have a theory of Nelson Denoon, no doubt seeing him as reflexively aping the Christ myth, blindly mimicking the martyr archetype that’s buried alive and twitching in the soul of every member of the West, the Christian West. But in fact Denoon’s feints at martyrdom could just as easily constitute a creative way of dealing with depression, say, when the only other option for dealing with it was to pay somebody to paw through the leaves of the book of your soul, some cretin who thought your problem was that you never got over your mother and who meted out wisdom in commercial units of time when in fact you were bleeding all over the place and the protocol was to stop when the timer went ding, no thank you. Iris was squeezing his hand.
“We haven’t really suffered,” Iris said.
“Speak for yourself,” he answered, trying for lightness.
He was suffering because he had to go away from her. He had just gotten the order. It was the worst timing. She was barely home from the States. He was being ordered into the field, urgently. He would tell her tonight. He couldn’t stand the prospect. But there was real trouble in the north and in a complex way he could be considered partly to blame for it, which he couldn’t tell her about, not yet, although someday he would have to, if he still had her. His connection to the trouble in the north was an impossible subject for contemplation. It was de facto. He had to avoid that aspect of this misery. He hated going into the field not because he was possibly a little old for it and not just because he felt he had been around long enough to earn enough consideration to keep him from being sent, no. No the fact was that he worked well in cities. He was built for cities. He had learned all his moves in cities, towns, cities and large towns. In the bush he would be improvising. He would be raw. His Setswana was weaker than Boyle realized. Much weaker. But resentment was his enemy. He had to go, imminently. And it could be for a month or more, depending. Iris was looking around the room for someone. He knew who. But he didn’t know why a country would choose the protea for its national flower, as the South Africans had. It looked peculiar, like a giant artichoke, not really attractive. The room was filling up.
A show of organization at last, he thought. A few supporters, Batswana men and women of college age, none of them known to him, had appeared with the necessary paraphernalia of movements, packets of literature, a banner, collection baskets, bottled water for the speaker.
“Here they are,” Iris said. She was tense.
“Don’t stare,” she said. But she was the one staring.
It was dramatic. The Denoons made their way up the side of the room, Denoon moving haltingly, assisted by his wife. Just behind them came a woman maneuvering an oxygen tank on a wheeled stand, and behind her a man pushing a wheelchair. The crowd was still. The wheelchair was parked in a corner in reserve. The oxygen tank was placed just behind the table on the left of the lectern, and the breathing tube and mask the tank was equipped with were laid on the tabletop for easy access. Stiffly, Denoon seated himself. Karen wanted him closer to the lectern and proceeded to drag the seated man in his chair, to a point that allowed her to reach down and take his hand. She was clearly physically powerful. She arranged herself at the lectern but broke off to provide Denoon with a pad of folded tissues. She touched the corner of her mouth, obviously to indicate to him that he needed to touch away
