Mortals by Norman Rush Read Free Book Online

thatch smelling subtly like bread and the primal skins and the spider pod versus the refined glass-fronted bookcases and the orderly array of books and periodicals they displayed. When they were gone he would knock the spider’s nest down. The sad, comradely feeling he had for this group was real.
    He began, “St. James College isn’t a college … nor is Moeding College in Otse a college, nor is the other one … Moeng College, in Moeng, of course. A college.” He heard himself sounding more British than usual. He’d just almost said And nor is. Sounding British happened to him at work if he didn’t watch himself. Four senior staff members and the rector were Brits.
    “We’re a senior secondary school,” he said, and went on to explain that they might be considered a somewhat elite school because not all secondaries awarded the Cambridge certificate as they did. Beginning by saying St. James wasn’t a college always led to the temptation to tell about the Peace Corps volunteer teacher who’d taught for them for a year and then left after undergoing a breakdown and who in his terminal interview had said It looks like a bank but it isn’t a bank, It looks like a post office but it isn’t a post office, It looks like a restaurant but it isn’t a restaurant. That had been his explication of why he had never adjusted to Botswana. The discrepancy between what he thought institutions were supposed to be and what they were in Africa had been too much for him, among other things about the country. There were aspects of St. James that would fit into a litany about things not being what they seem. St. James was denominational but the All Saints Trust that sponsored it wasn’t a denomination. It was a peculiar institution. There were authentic religious involved in it, but a lot of the lay element in All Saints seemed to be ex–British military. The emissaries from the trust who came out to inspect every year all were. The trust was famously generous with bursaries in their schools in southern Africa, although he was picking up tremors and rumors that budget cuts were coming. Cuts would hurt. He would be all right. His position at St. James was good foras long as he wanted it. That had been arranged at a level far above the rector.
    He handed out copies of the school brochure. There was a little conversation about the honors class he taught over at the university. They reported that Mr. Curwen the rector had told them how proud St. James was to have a scholar like him amidst their staff, a Miltonist! That was true. Curwen seemed genuinely glad he was there, culturally flattered, too, that an American seemed so interested in a poet he himself had been taught to revere but found unreadable. As the group left the office they could hardly miss the run of
Milton Studies
in which Ray’s two articles and four research notes were buried. It was displayed at eye level in the bookcase just to the right of the door.
    The group was rising. They had been seated around a conference table set endwise against the front of his desk. The men were in coats and ties and the women in skirts and sleeveless blouses. The women’s forearms had left damp-prints in the finish of the table. He watched the damp-prints fade, annoyed because there was something he was forgetting to do. Curwen was outside, with an escort of Form Ten boys. One thing he had forgotten to mention was that the school was coeducational now, since a year ago. He heard Curwen’s enthusiasm.
    At the last minute he remembered to present the cyclostyled handouts giving the last examination results for the school. He went out into the heat to watch them go, Curwen gesticulating. Curwen had put his robes on despite the fact that there were only four in this group. The man was endearing. They were headed for a tour of the ablution block.
    Ray thought, How can he keep doing it?… But we all do and we all do it the same way, by not thinking about it. About half of the last