Nelson was vibrating with rage. He was now up on his knees. If Hector succeeded in provoking him to get to his feet, I saw a debacle. The bo-so bo-so chant began again. In perfect Setswana, Nelson tried to say against the chant A strange beast is sending its breath across Tsau, and now we are hearing the name of the beast, and it is Boso. This beast is known to be chewing the shadows of certain chiefs who are drunkards and wifebeaters. This beast declares it loves the women of Botswana so much, yet can find not one woman to take her place among the men who tell it what dance to do. This is not a living beast at all. No, though it makes sounds such as goats make, as we hear at this moment, it is no more than a skin thrown over scoundrels whose design is men at ease again, with women serving. This beast is known to take money from the Boers in Mafikeng.
I saw that Hector was in a crouching position. Whatever was going to happen would be worse than what would happen if I acted. I was born to intervene, obviously. What I should do came to me.
I got up and performed a fainting fall. It was good, but I still cringe at the little outcry I felt I had to embellish it with in order to make sure I was noticed. Still, clearly my act was the pretext the forces of good had been waiting for. The event was over. I was the center of an exaggerated rassemblement. People had been in such a hurry to get to me that another diversion had been created: a hurricane lamp had gotten knocked over and set fire to a blanket briefly. There was no going on. Denoon’s being baited to his feet had been converted into a dash to see what was wrong with me.
I reassured everyone with lies about not having eaten, knowing full well that the true cause would be assumed to be pregnancy. People were already acting knowing as I showed them I was okay again, completely steady on my feet. I agreed to stop in at the clinic. Nelson was acting stressed and paternal. He badly wanted to get me aside, but he was the one who put the most pressure on for me to see the nurse.
We went. In the distance I could hear Hector laughing. His laugh was distinctive.
Oh, but There Was No Debacle
The next day, once he was convinced that my faint had been a feint and that I was truly all right, suddenly Nelson was not interested in talking about the symposium. I sensed this was because his interpretation of events up to the point of my intervention was going to be radically different from mine, meaning ipso facto that we differed on whether I should have intervened at all or not, id est whether I had made a fool of myself at least insofar as he was concerned. I was frustrated. He was being unjust. There were things to be learned from yesterday, such as how he’d felt for the interim during which he had to entertain the idea I might be pregnant. And was the sanguine way he was acting today about yesterday the way he’d felt then? And if so, how could that be?
But he immersed himself in his map of Tsau project, erasing perfectly good — I thought — sections and penciling in legends in handwriting even more microscopic than mine in my journal. He was semisacrosanct when he was at work on the map. What could I say, since making the map was my idea? First he put an hour into looking everywhere for the art gum eraser. I had begun to hate the map on other grounds. It functioned as a meditative device for him lately, negatively from my standpoint, because when his sessions of sweet silent thought were over he would usually come forth with some grandiose thing that needed to be done right away or that should have been done earlier, when Tsau was started.
As day turned to night I got more incredulous that I was plainly not going to get the slightest credit for staving off the physical imbroglio I’d seen coming.
I brought him tea and set it down nonobtrusively, then when he said something I mistook for an opening, something like Ah shit! I thought Ah, this must be the return of the repressed, that is, yesterday in all its glory. So when I asked if he wanted a scone with his tea, and he said, being scrupulous, How many are there? I replied Oh, many, many tekel upharsin. I thought he would get this as my lead-in to presenting my interpretation of the implosion of yesterday’s event as handwriting on the wall, meaning that it was perhaps time to think concretely about moving on. But it produced only puzzlement.
And all Ah shit! meant was that he was annoyed with himself for forgetting to include somewhere in yesterday’s presentation the only contribution to science ever made by religion, namely the invention of logarithms by a Scottish lord nuttily obsessed with figuring out the dimensions of the New Jerusalem from inane clues in the Book of Revelation.
Oh spare me, I think I said. Yesterday was a catastrophe trying to tell us something like that Tsau is an organism trying to deal with us as foreign bodies. Yesterday was only the latest trope.
Please, he said, showing incidentally how pleased he was to have gotten perfect points on two pencils, meaning that now he could resume with the map and I could recede.
This is denying me, I said. You don’t listen. Where were your protectors yesterday except for yours truly? If you had gotten up and pushed and shoved Hector or done whatever, dealt with him physically, then what? And don’t tell me you weren’t ready for it, ready for demolishing this whole sitting down and reasoning-together tradition you revere so much, or used to. Did I save that or not, that tradition if not you personally? Say something.
But he began writing or tracing, whichever it was, again. You’re in another world, I almost shouted. Why can’t we talk about what was a debacle?
Oh, but there was no debacle. It was incomprehensible that I thought so. But we couldn’t talk about it right then.
Whatever false consciousness is, you’re developing it in spades, I said.
This was my unkindest cut, and I knew it. He tried working for a few more minutes, then got up and left the octagon for a midnight ramble lasting a couple of hours. I went to bed.
I was asleep when he came back, but not for long. I got a harangue. He was wound up. The symposium had been positive. Why couldn’t I see this? Tsau was evolving. Tsau today was only a foreshadowing of what it was going to be ultimately. He would be whatever Tsau wanted him to be, needed him to be. This was a new formulation. I was astonished. What did it mean? This was new. I pressed him in my usual gingerly way. Does this mean that if Tsau wants you to end up as the village atheist while she goes her merry way, while she or it turns into something entirely different, you’re up for that because it would be such a privilege just to be there to witness for the old idea of Tsau? I was being rough, because I was involved. I must have been very rough, because he changed his mind about staying in bed and went out for another midnight ramble. As he was leaving the second time I called after him I hope you remember you were the one who said the answer to the question What is the meaning of life? is The meaning of life is abnormal psychology. I doubt that he heard the whole thing, in his hurry.
He was back beside me when I got up the next morning. I made oatmeal and thought my kitchenizing would rouse him, but it didn’t. I ate alone, looking at him, wishing I had power, some kind of power.