Nelson went voluntarily to sit and wait in a room in Sekopololo. He must stay in one spot, he must be under guard, Dorcas was shouting. He must not roam about at this time. And pointing at me, she announced that I must not be allowed to stay with him or speak to him. Some of the loyalists said Gosiame, meaning they were going along with this, while others said no, I should be with him. I paid no attention. I went inside and sat myself in a chair outside the door of the room Nelson was in. Dorcas was now certain that the voice she’d heard summoning Hector was Nelson’s. Word kept coming in that Hector was not in this venue, nor in this, nor in this. I was going to suggest a sabbatical once this was over. Dineo went in to talk to Nelson. I couldn’t make it out. Nelson was speaking in Setswana. Other people went in and out. Nobody would look at me.
I had a moment of panic about our house, our things. I knew people had been inside our place, and I was diffusely afraid they’d found something that would be dangerous to us, although what that might be I had no idea. I had to go and check. But everything looked undisturbed, except for the transmitter, where some wires and leads at the back of the set seemed to have been pulled out. But the radio was not my province and I wasn’t certain I was seeing things correctly. I tried to get a clear mental picture of what the damage might be so I could pass it on to Nelson when we were able to talk, which I was determined was going to be soon.
I went back to my post outside his door. Spring had come. It was a superlative morning. There is no more beautiful season in the Kalahari.
A Cell
Don’t pay any attention to this, he said.
But this was a cell! There was no other word for it. They had brought in a pallet, a covered bucket, and a water jug and cup. He said This is voluntary. They need to do this. They know I don’t know anything about Raboupi: I was asleep.
We embraced. He asked me to stop acting tragic, if I didn’t mind. This was nothing and would be over soon. We said we loved each other.
Do you at least have privacy when you use that? I asked, pointing at the bucket. People had been going in and out fairly freely, not knocking.
I don’t know yet, he said, but in all probability.
I described the state of the transmitter as best I could. He seemed to think that possibly a section of lead was missing, possibly not, but it didn’t matter since he had spares for everything.
Nothing is going to happen to anyone, he said. But I could feel effort behind his saying it.
You have to fight more, I said. He barely let me finish. His smile had never seemed so transcendent to me. I hated it. This was a performance of his reposing his trust in the entity or organism he had created, and I was just supposed to sing along. I knew his tropes. This one reduced to a sickly fatalism. He was saying If this my child or creature fails me, then I have failed and I have done it to myself, so that must be what I deserve.
I went outside and came directly back to say There is the most beautiful weather, can’t you come out for a second and just stand there and inhale? No, was the answer: there were meetings going on. He pretended it was his choice.
I had theories about Raboupi, the premier one being that if he was genuinely missing, it was something faked up between him and Dorcas. Then: what about friends of Adelah’s? I hated Raboupi myself. What about Basarwa, who were undoubtedly being cruelly cheated by him? It was no use. He wouldn’t speculate. Time would take care of it. There were a few things I could bring him, if I didn’t mind.
Nelson Is Very Calm
Tsau was distracted with meetings, with the snake women filing in and out of the plaza on one search after another, with rumors.
Nelson stayed under office arrest — the only term for it I can think of — for two bad days. Attitudes toward me were unstable, but I didn’t care. All I did was loiter, essentially. Everything was arbitrary: sometimes I could walk straight in and see Nelson, and sometimes I was refused. When I did get in, I found him very calm, meditative. I had to suppress impulses to tell people things they should know about Nelson, such as that he needed to wash his upper torso thoroughly every day to keep him from developing a rash under his chest hair, which was quite thick. He claimed he was allergic to his own sweat, but I knew it was bacterial because witch hazel, which we were out of in Tsau, always cleared it up in a couple of applications. His message to me was unchanging — this would all be over, the mills of the gods were grinding, the thing was to be patient.
Routines slipped. The Barclays plane came and went, and no one met it. I was the one who, after wandering down to the airstrip, brought to the attention of the powers that were the fact that there were crates and items sitting on the ground waiting to be picked up. Somebody unknown, once, began ringing the alarm bell. Never had this happened before. There was a generalized feeling of transgression affecting us. Mma Sithebe and Mma Isang were subtly trying to keep track of me and keep me reassured. I had no appetite. I was unable to plan.
In the end Nelson was discharged from office arrest for reasons of convenience. He was needed to get the transmitter back in working order so that Dorcas Raboupi could file a charge against him with the police in Gaborone. The damage to the transmitter was real, but it was triviaclass="underline" he remarked that it must have occurred because people moved things around without being careful. He made nothing of it. And the police made nothing of Dorcas’s confused appeal to them. A male relative making himself scarce without notice was nothing. They were sure he would turn up. Dorcas went into too much detail. Her assertions that Nelson should be put under investigation because he was the one who knew more than anyone at Tsau what caves and fissures there were and how by shifting a rock a dead body could be concealed forever were simply uninterpretable to the police. So that was a misfire. I think Nelson would have volunteered for a third night of office arrest unless I’d made a move. He was very mild about captivity. He was very much enjoying reading the Tao Te Ching, which he had asked me to bring him. You have to stay here with me, I said, because I’m becoming paranoid: I get the feeling the house is being watched, and I’m afraid to be here alone. I need you to stay with me.
There would be more meetings. There would be a hearing.
Our first night back together was odd. He wasn’t interested in sex. I was. Odder was that he couldn’t seem to make himself help me with my panic, my need to have us acknowledge we were on a precipice together. I wanted that, and I wanted for us to pool everything we could think of about Hector and his possible fate, to try to solve it, to comprehend it. And as if that weren’t enough, I also wanted it made clear to me, in any form he could do it in, that I was living with the man I thought I was, someone of absolute delicacy in regard to human life, innocent of any connection with any injury to Hector Raboupi. Women supposedly want to marry men taller than they are on the subliminal assumption that the taller they are, the more adequately they can be expected to function as protectors, for which read killers, if need be. This was never me. Not that it proves anything, but Nelson and I are the same height. I wanted a pacific male: I suppose I always had, but he had made the need definite and intense. Wonderful, I told myself, the way you’re multiplying your desiderata as you get older, Brava! Stupidly coexisting with this value was an emotional trope that said that in matters of violence women could have latitude, because of history, which turned violence by them against men into reprisal actions.
But I was getting no help from Nelson. All he wanted was normalcy.