I had done as much as I could for myself. It would be smart to leave before I was dismissed.
I got up and said Do you know the Batswana call the stars the same thing the Sumerians did, the shining herd, letlhape phatsimo?
I went to the gate. I had been a touch abrupt in leaving, slightly disconcerting him, which I liked.
Would he at least think about considering using me as a volunteer?
You tempt me, but I have to say no, he said. Of course what would make you irresistible would be if you know something about cooperage. Or taxidermy, say.
Sorry, I said.
That was all. He asked me if I had a torch, and I said no as if he were asking a silly question, the point being to show how acclimated I was to getting around in the dark the way you do in the village at night. It was bravado and in fact I was afraid. But I forged out into the black labyrinth of Old Naledi as though nothing could make me happier and as though I were a person with an actual sense of direction.
I enjoyed this, he said as I left.
All the way home I flattered myself that I had at least gotten into the foyer of his consciousness. Sometimes I believed it. In any case, he would see my face again.
Grace, Again
I was feeling tender and valedictory toward Gaborone, and even toward the mall, now that I was going to be leaving. It was set. I was preparing to get to Denoon’s site. I was determined to do it. The surprise would be his.
I liked and hated the mall, a halfway-paved enclosure three blocks long which is the crux of retail and street life in the capital. The shops lining the mall are pseudomoderne, with go-go displays featuring Mylar and pinlights, with Muzak loops droning, and with typical third world inventories: gluts of what you don’t want, voids where the most commonplace necessities — such as tweezers, my then most pressing need — should be. For the most part the proprietors are Chinese or Indians, with a few Batswana fronting for South Africans. The array of businesses is the usuaclass="underline" hardware and clothing stockists, chemists, takeaways, butcheries, a walk-in surgery or two. The only really big buildings are at the ends of the mall — the banks, the embassies. For amenity you have, on either side of the central and widest part of the mall, between the Capitol Cinema and the President Hotel, cement benches with umbrelloid metal canopies. There are thorn trees intermittently. I liked the mall for its comédie humaine but hated it because it so completely incarnates the Western good idea of what Africa should become and because the South African merchandise the shelves are overflowing with is such shit yet so overpriced. South African shoe manufacture is my personal bête noire. It is risible. A smattering of poor devils, mainly women, selling seasonal items like fried mopane worms or maize on the cob spread their karosses under the trees — but only a smattering. When the mall was put up, the traditional farmers’ market was deconstructed and the shards moved into permanent stalls far away along the railway, where the market languishes but is definitely not an eyesore for makhoa, who prefer to shop in tidiness, on vinyl tile flooring, to the strains of the Melachrino Strings or some other dead orchestra.
I was crossing the mall, just passing the President Hotel, en route to a second attempt to secure a tweezers, which I was willing to be in stock at Botschem. My mode when I want something badly, and which has been known to work, is to proceed up to the absolutely last moment as though there could be no doubt I would get it. In three days of hard work I had succeeded in assembling everything I felt I needed to begin my expedition to Denoon’s site, with two minor exceptions: tweezers and the actual location of Denoon’s project.
I picked up a commotion on the grandiose staircase connecting the balcony of the President Hotel to the mall.
Oh no, I thought, more abnormal psychology. It was Grace, pushing her way roughly down through the ascending lunchtime throng and calling my name.
I stood stockstill to lessen her anxiety, and waved.
If we were going to talk it would have to be someplace else. It was bright and hot and we were already the object of the attention of the mall crowd. The Batswana love it when whites make spectacles of themselves as in fighting or showing affection in public. Grace looked as crazed as before. She was persisting in running, and it was clear she had decided to cast her bra to the winds as part of living life to the hilt for a while in the heart of darkness where nobody knew her, as can happen.
She came up, preceded by the distinct bouquet of Mainstay. She was wearing a different outfit in the same genre as the one she’d worn to the Bemises’. Her undereyes were puffy, but she was neat and clean and all fixed up.
She had to get her breath. Two things told me I was right about some affectional extravaganza going on. She had a leopardskin print ribbon in her hair. And I spotted the notorious extra-large Boer, Meerkotter, proprietarily following her movements from the balcony and holding a drink in each fist, one of them obviously intended for her. He was the local representative for some South African consortium of construction firms, I think. He was a tireless lecher and bon vivant who ate all his meals in the Brigadier Room at the President, usually buying rump steak for one of his various and numerous Batswana teen queen girlfriends. Going jet, as it’s called, was his basic thing, but he embraced all race groups. He was very proud of what Edgar Rice Burroughs would have called his thews. He had forearms like bleach bottles. I immediately wanted to warn Grace about a couple of dangers attaching to him. I thought he must be infectious. But worse, lately the story was that he was steady with an actual beauty contest winner, Idol Mketa. She was famous for her hairdos, which really were art — the current one was amazing and looked like a suitcase handle display — and her violent jealousy. Meerkotter was considered a prize. One recourse of wronged Batswana women is to scald their rivals. I thought Grace should know these things, if I was right that she was with Meerkotter. There was also the story that Meerkotter’s glass eye was the product of female reprisal, which possibly deserved mention if only as a clue to the sort of milieu Meerkotter swam in.
We greeted each other. She had something she so much wanted to say, she said.
She was wearing a little red scarf knotted around her throat. It made her look like a Brownie. I praised it.
I got it here, she said, as a present. It was a gift from a person.
I wanted to warn her that you get drunker on less alcohol in Gaborone, because of the elevation. She wasn’t leaving spaces for me, though.
I know Nelson likes you, she said.
The sun is eating us up, I said. We should go somewhere, but not the President.
Where we could have a drink, she said. She got a death grip on my elbow and began leading me purposely across the mall as though she had a perfect idea of where to go. This was drink spreading its wings in her mind, which resulted in her walking directly across the mat of a woman selling cowpeas, almost treading on the woman’s hand. Grace had no idea where she was going. I took over. She was odd. She looked labile to me. It occurred to me he had been giving her Mandrax, which the grapevine said he had access to.