Mortals

something objectionable in the corner of his own mouth.

They’re a success already, visually, Ray thought. Together they communicated valiancy, if there was such a word, that and an impression of worthiness and splendid weariness, aided of course by what the viewer knew about them, but still. Denoon was a gaunt but improved version of the persona Ray was familiar with from the photographic records. Adversity and weight loss had rescued the strong, hard face he had been meant to live behind. He would be in his late fifties. He was leonine, with long, almost completely white wavy hair pulled back loosely and finished in a neat pigtail, not elaborate, but it showed that somebody loved him, no question about it. The effect of the pigtail wasn’t feminine. His gaze was piercing. Iris was enthralled, Ray could tell. As to defects, the linings of his nostrils were inflamed and he had an inordinately large Adam’s apple, although whether women considered that unattractive, Ray was unsure. Probably not, Ray thought. Denoon was unsmiling, but then why wouldn’t he be? Denoon seemed costumed, rather than dressed, to Ray. He was clad in a white dhoti over a black tee shirt and stovepipe black jeans. He was wearing sandals with white gym socks. Did he represent a subtle orchestration of pallors and darknesses, with his bloodless cheeks and his black eyebrows, and all the rest of the chiaroscuro? If it was chiaroscuro. It was always hard to know what was deliberate and he had to be fair. They had glamour, this pair. They really did.

Karen Denoon was in her early forties. She was square-shouldered, moderately tall, very attractive, he thought, but fighting it. He had seen the phenomenon in other particularly goodlooking women in leadership positions with cause organizations. The olive drab tunic she was wearing was useful in obscuring what was obviously a good figure. She was a sturdy specimen, athletic. He liked her. Her fine, bold face was innocent of any makeup he could detect. He liked her type. She wore her very abundant auburn hair drawn severely back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and she was ignoring the gray streaking showing up in her hair that, if she chose to, could be wiped out with a touch of color, but no. And of course she was without adornment, jewelry of any kind, and was wearing a man’s ponderous wristwatch, a diver’s watch in fact. There was something fiery about her he liked, and he liked her sexually. It was natural to wonder what her love life must be with Denoon, considering the shape he was in. Ray was having more sex thoughts about the passing parade of women than usual. It was since Morel, he was sure of it.

They were past the preliminaries, which had been uncomfortable. Denoon had mouthed some sort of greeting to the crowd. Karen had opened her presentation with a few minutes in Setswana, a piety, given that the attendance was overwhelmingly English-speaking. The crowd was less than a third Batswana, he estimated, and that third was a young, mostly female, educated-looking group. Indians made up the bulk of the audience, men and women about equal among them, an older group overall. And the remainder were Anglo-Canadians and Americans from different development organizations predominating, again men and women about equally represented.

Iris was transfixed. She wanted his hand, again.

Karen Denoon was a practiced speaker. She was not employing the microphone. Her voice was clear and light, with a singing quality showing in it now that the summary matter was done with. And he was learning something tonight. Dowry murder was getting worse in India, not better. He had assumed otherwise. The most recent figures were triple the figures for 1980. It had been his impression that India was sliding toward reason and light. He had read something in the International Herald Tribune suggesting that managing the wandering cow population had gotten more humane there. Ray thought that a problem with causes, and public meetings on their behalf, was that if you were reasonably au courant you already knew about the evil being protested and already agreed that it was wrong and what you were doomed to was normally a presentation of the facts so simplified for ease of understanding that it was boring. He particularly didn’t like attending cause events relating to Botswana. They tended to stir up all his subterranean foreboding about where the country was going, plenty of foreign exchange in the bank but poverty not improving that much, squatters like a thickening noose around the capital, and the virus spreading relentlessly. Living as an outsider in these painful parts of the world was an art. But tonight he was learning something. Karen Denoon had provided a vivid picture of dowry crime, which, as he understood it, involved a woman marrying on the basis of a promise of money payments to the groom’s family in cases where the whole sum couldn’t be paid up front, which was increasingly the case since dowry payments were spreading downward into the poorer castes where people were less able to come up with the wherewithal than were the richer castes they were trying to emulate. That was the problem. At first when payments were not forthcoming women had been harassed to pressure their families, and then it had gone to torture, and then it had gone to murder, which left the groom free to make off with the amount paid to date and to marry again. The most common form of murder was burning, stage-managed kitchen accidents, and a criminal cottage industry had sprung up, murder specialists for hire, that the Denoons had gotten into trouble for exposing. There were thousands of murders annually, thousands. There had been two thousand two hundred in 1988 and five thousand in 1990 and these were only the ones actually proved to be murders. Thousands more had gone unpunished, mischaracterized as accidents or suicides. It was estimated that only five percent of the total of murders were ever identified as such. The room had filled up. There were standees. Unfriendly murmurs were coming from somewhere.

A voice cried out, “You are of Lal Nishan. You are communist. Lal Nishan is red flag. That is its meaning…”

Denoon was shaking his head. He seemed to want to get to his feet.

“You are completely wrong,” Karen said.

The objector was Mrs. Mukerji, a leading person in Hindu charitable organizations in Gaborone.

“My dear, we have passed laws against this as from 1961, if you don’t know,” Mrs. Mukerji said.

“I do indeed. The 1961 law is ineffective. And let me tell you that we have nothing to do with Lal Nishan. That is a lie. But please wait if you wish to attack me.”

“But we see you are providing us copies of Manushi, just as Lal Nishan does at home. We know you.”

“Can you just wait for the question period? Manushi is a journal for all women. It has no affiliation with Lal Nishan or with any other party in India. You should know this. And Lal Nishan is in Maharashtra. We are our own organization. Our base is Poona. Or was in Poona, since we have been expelled by your country. Look at our banner. We are called Shree Shakti, which means woman’s power or power of woman. We are a member of the All India Woman’s Conference, our group is. I think it is rude to remain standing but you must please yourself…

“Yes, this terrible thing is spreading, despite the laws. And these lives that are being taken are the lives of women fully grown and developed. I know that some of you in this room stand with the churches here against allowing women to choose abortion if they must, if they feel they must. But here we are speaking of women, human beings with all the thoughts and feelings of human beings. Not fetuses, women, and we need the churches, and you, to stand with them.”

Mistake, Ray thought. The Indians were very conservative on this, and so were a fair proportion of educated Batswana women.

“So here is what is happening. The upper castes, where dowry reigns, are now the model for the lower ones, where in the past, bride-price the opposite of dowry, was paid. The groom would pay moneys to the family of the bride, as is done here in Botswana with lobola payments. And never was there a question, then, of killing the groom, the husband, if there were difficulties with the payments or if retroactively someone decided the payment was not sufficient or needed implementing, sorry, I mean supplementing, adding to, I meant to say. No, if an Indian man was in default in some way he was never in physical danger, then, because even if the bride’s father was upset, the object of his rage was a man, or a man’s family…”

Mrs. Mukerji said, “You are just saying Oh this way in Botswana, it is more advanced. You are making trouble here. You are no one. We live very well together here and yet you have come praising one way over against another. You are criticizing.”

Ray had an excuse to turn around and have a good look at the crowd. There was no sign of Morel, which was something.

Karen said, “No. I am here to speak to you about a matter in India. But, all right, in this question of marriage payments, where have you heard of men dying over it? No, if there is a problem with payments that come from the man, or the man’s family, something is worked out, isn’t it? There is a council, a cup of tea, a clan meeting, the men consider, something is worked out…”

But her remarks drew objection, actual ululations, in fact, from a new quarter, from a group of young Batswana women.