I’d already started in this direction, so I continued. I probably put this badly, but what I said was that she must see — given the idea or suspicion I’d just admitted — that it was only natural for me to wonder if, now that Nelson seemed so much changed, and so passive, there might be perfectly understandable reasons for him to be wanted in Tsau, with or without me. I had to repeat this with some changes to be sure that I was getting everything into it in Setswana that I wanted to be there. I was brave.
She was very cool here. She wanted me to understand that she could see how I would have such fears but that there was nothing true about them, any of them, about any fear like the one I had expressed. But she felt it would be the worst thing for Nelson to go off before he himself felt it was the correct time for it.
She alluded to the problems of the dead horse and the lost Enfield. This whole time, she was thinking I would have to sign a document of liability for the rifle, and if I went away with Rra Puleng we would both have to sign for the horse. Or possibly only Nelson would have to sign. She would consult with the mother committee. I thought I saw daylight coming. She said she assumed Rra Puleng and I would be leaving our things if we went off. I said eagerly Yes, yes. I had nothing to leave, essentially, that I cared about. All I wanted was my notebooks. Anything else they could have forever.
Early on in the discussion I felt I’d been successful in conveying that there were lengths I was prepared to go to that would be painful for me. I was loaded with propositions I never had to use, thank god. I was ready to tell her that I was going to marry Nelson and I was a Catholic, a lapsed Catholic who had just recently unbackslid and that of course as a Catholic we would need to be married in a real Catholic church, of which there were none in Tsau. I was gambling that Nelson was so limp that if I told him we needed to go to Gabs to get married he would do it, like that.
I felt a stab, thinking this. That was really the problem. Nelson was in some unreal state of acceptance. He was agreeing to everything, it seemed, with the one exception of requests that he go through chapter and verse of his ordeal. But anything else, at all, he would do for you. It was dangerous.
I wanted this interview to be over with before I lost my hold on myself. Why was she so beautiful and exactly how old was she anyway? What was I going to be in eight years or eleven or thirteen? I wouldn’t age the way she had. This was my physical high noon, in all probability. I knew it.
Then she dropped into English, just for a moment. It was rushed, and what she said was that she would be most concerned if certain of the donors were to visit with Nelson in Gaborone before he was fully recovered. She mentioned two names in particular. I knew who one of them was. The other she identified for me as the present representative of the Swedish International Development Agency.
I don’t know what I said, but it was what was needed. I made a circumlocutious pledge to guard Nelson, rusticate him in Gabs the way she had in the infirmary, manage his contacts until he was himself again, which, with the help of the doctors I could definitely find or summon to Gabs, wouldn’t be long. I half implied, to assuage her fears about donors prematurely stumbling on him, that Nelson might well be in Gabs for only a few days, if it was decided that he ought to see someone in Harare, say.
She would have to talk to the mother committee, of course. But I knew it was set. He was going away from Tsau with Scientiae Athena, otherwise known as me. I would restore him. And that would restore me.
The next day, strangely enough, facilitating rumors were percolating around. There was something about complications and the need for x-rays. And people had heard something suggesting that I was in trouble with Immigration and had to go to explain my long stay in Tsau and correct everything.
A Sabbatical
There was a hint of valedictory sentiment in the air during our departure, which was a little odd since this was only supposed to be a sabbatical. I was full of emotion the circumstances forbade me to express. There was a crowd at the airstrip to see us off, which included Dorcas and the batlodi, who were very contained about whatever they were feeling. They had been the objects of a special mollification process: word had been passed that a primary reason for our trip to Gabs was to deliver a packet of depositions on Hector’s disappearance to the Criminal Investigation Division, at long last.
Getting Nelson to agree to the excursion had been no problem at all. I’d deemphasized the medical side of it, although I did mention that the nurse was recommending it, which was true. I had a rather grudging referral note from her. In fact it would make sense for me to show my face at Immigration. I suggested that he had some business pending with different ministries. He agreed. I brought certain folders to him that he specified and he began stirring through them, but not in his usual way. He was so desultory that it was painful to see it.
On the plane it was bliss, a thunderstorm we had to pass straight through notwithstanding. I copied my indifference to the buffeting storm from Nelson. Apparently I was being a fool, because when the pilot left the control cabin and came back past us to leave, his face was chlorotic. Being with Nelson then was like being with a distracted older brother. There had been no real sex since Tikwe, and this felt almost like a kinship prohibition to me now. I began to be generally hopeful. In the plane I confessed I’d left most of his emperor of ice cream wardrobe, his vanilla vests, tops, and pants, behind, except of course for what he was wearing. Everything else was his regular gear. He smiled about it, but in fact it wouldn’t take me long to find there was some slyness afoot, because he’d packed his own supply of white raiment without telling me about it.
With us on the plane was another medical evacuee, an Indian shop-owner who’d been on holiday at Island Safari Lodge in Maun. He’d been bitten by a hippo, or rather the aluminum skiff he’d been cruising in had, and he’d been injured. He was met by a throng of family and friends, the matrons wearing the most unflattering garment ever to befall the female midriff. There was no one to meet us, which should have been a relief. I’d worked hard for it to be that way. But at the same time I felt a tremor of disgust with the world that somehow the fate of this man, my beloved man, hadn’t come to somebody’s attention in Gabs, because something was seriously wrong with him and he was important.
Time Is an Ape
I thought I should give silence and sequestration and nonconfrontation at least a week. That is, I created a vacation from everything for us.
There was only nominal pressure from Nelson for me to try to line up something for us in his old haunts in the Old Naledi squatter settlement. We spent one night in the President Hotel and by checkout time the next day I had a leave house for us for a month or maybe more. It was a big, lavish, newish walled layout assigned to the American embassy’s admin officer, who was away on a short course in Mauritius with his family. There was a cook and a yardman. The swimming pool was empty in deference to the drought, which had been ferocious in Gaborone. Tsau seemed succulent, almost, compared to Gabs. I mentioned to someone from Meteorology how well Tsau had done with rainfall, and he seemed dubious. He quoted me the figures from Maun, which were much lower. The implication was that I was telling him fairytales. Everyone around the embassy was extremely glad to see me. I had apparently done a superb job of ingratiating myself earlier on. Helpfulness toward me reigned. Of course a part of it was that the embassy wanted to get au courant with the mysterious Denoon’s activities. But they were proper. They knew all about the privacy agreements he’d extracted from the Ministry of Local Government and Lands. But the embassy was indirectly providing our housing, after all, so it was not untoward for people like the pol-econ officer or the USAID director to drift by. The yardman turned them away, according to our instructions. Nelson wasn’t ready to see anyone yet.