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The settlement with Elaine had impoverished him. Because of Lois, he had to be overseas to recoup, because the housing and utilities were covered and they could save like bandits. If they demoted him back to Washington, he and Lo would end up living like graduate students—at that level. Lo would have to go out and cashier. It was unthinkable. Since he’d stopped, he had to buy something from this woman. He paid twenty
thebe
for a banana—four
thebe
more than his highest estimate. Still, the woman was looking implacably at him. What had he done? It came to him: he had forgotten to greet her before starting the transaction. That made him a worm, in her eyes. He moved on.

Secretaries and technical personnel tended to live at the embassy compound, a square of apartments around a microscopic swimming pool. One apartment had been turned over to the nurse, for a medical unit. In a previous incarnation he would have been interested in the nurse, Rita. She was single. She was low-forties and Hispanic, and tough. He liked lean women. He looked at the empty pool wrinkling and creasing in the noon sun. There was a woman he had read about, a prodigy, nineteenth century, who could sleep floating in water. It might have been a man. There had been two prodigies, one of them named Fraticoni, and one was the Human Magnet and metal objects stuck to him or her, and the other was the Human Cork, who could sleep floating.

The nurse was steely. This was a lecture. “I’m not giving you any sleeping medication,” she said. “I don’t trust you around medication. You scared us with your X ray. We don’t need
this. You showed four strange round spots in your gastric region which we finally figured out had to be mineral-supplement pills with a lot of iron in them you weren’t absorbing. Does anybody at your house know what vitaminosis is? Maybe you can’t sleep because you’re irritating your nervous system yourself with whatever you’re taking. If you want to self-medicate, then self-medicate, but don’t come to me looking for sympathy.” There was more. Did he know too much niacin could turn his face red? Was he aware that it was natural for the body to require less sleep as it aged? He used to think Rita liked him.

“And
also
, I never want to find you in my office when I walk in,” she said. “I don’t want to make a big issue. But you sit in the waiting area, period.”

“I was looking for you,” Carl said. The nurse began writing. Stepping into her office when he saw it was empty had been the latest in a recent line of bright ideas. He was having too many bright ideas. He had foreseen not getting pills. The possibility that he might spot some lying around loose in the empty office had suggested itself. Then there had been a vague idea that he might be able to do something against the dogs with a syringe, if he had a syringe. He had seen disposable hypodermics in Rita’s wastebasket more than once. One dog, a big orange bitch, seemed almost like the choirmaster of the pack. Whether dogs could die from an air-injection, he didn’t know. Would it have been feasible to creep up on the bitch while she was rooting around near the fence and jab her? Probably not. He had taken a stupid chance. He felt pale.

Rita handed him the appointment card for his next shot. She reminded him to use the stress cassette she had given him, and said maybe he should try earplugs again. He got up, putting on his sunglasses. Lately his eyes were on the reddish side. The whites of Lo’s eyes were clear, like stationery.
There was a problem connected with sunglasses, which he had to keep in mind. Apparently, older Batswana resented sunglass-wearing. A Member of Parliament had criticized young Batswana for wearing sunglasses, because it was disrespectful to conceal your eyes when you were in conversation. It had been in the
Daily News
. There was probably no special dispensation for expatriates.

He left. Rita was dense about earplugs. From his standpoint, there were two things wrong with earplugs. He could hear through them—any that he had tried. And earplugs forced him to listen to his own heartbeat. He had a functional murmur. It was impossible not to listen for irregularities. Listening to his heartbeat was like listening to the drum in a Roman galley. He had explained all this, but she was still pushing earplugs. He forgave her. She still gave the best gamma-globulin shots in the foreign service. She always warmed up the ampule first in her bra and then had you toe-in to loosen up your gluteus muscle. The bruising was always minimal.

He was yanked from sleep. The barking was on.

Someplace he had seen a movie where the hero is dragged into the air on ropes attached to hooks in his flesh. This was similar, except that the movie ordeal had been an initiation for an English lord who wanted to be a Comanche brave for some unknown reason. So there was a point to it.

The moon was full. It would almost be worth it to be a werewolf. After all, he would have his little problem only once a month, like women. Then he could take care of Letsamao’s dogs, either all at once or a few per month. But did werewolves eat dogs? He would.

Normally, he would go to mind force now. But he had given up on mind force, permanently. That was clear. Mind force was the only form of warfare that would let him lie
immobile and not wake Lois up. Unfortunately, it was a delusion and stupid. He had tried hard to give mind force the benefit of the doubt. After all, there was a Russian medium who could make matchsticks hop around under a bell jar, supposedly. Poltergeist cases seemed to reduce to something real—certain adolescents sending out streams of invisible energy able to smash crockery and empty ashtrays on their parents’ heads. Freud once made Jung faint through sheer hatred during an argument, according to Jung, and so on.

Doing mind force, he had imagined white fire flowing up from the root of his spine and out between his eyes, where it would take weaponlike forms and destroy the dogs. He had started out with benign visualizations, such as sleep-inducing fog banks. Then he had escalated to winged nooses, blunt instruments, and on to spikes and blades. Sometimes he had accompanied his visualizations with body English, like tensing his neck cords or clenching his teeth.

He was beginning to resent all the slow motion getting in and out of bed. He realized it was making him feel old. This time, he got out of bed normally. Lo murmured, but was asleep again by the time he had frozen. He picked up his bathrobe and went out into the breezeway to sit until daybreak.

Diabolically, the barking stopped.

Lois said good morning, startling Carl. She was in the kitchen doorway. There was something in her expression. It was possible he’d been thinking out loud about the breakfast he’d made, because, seeing it all laid out, he realized it was excessive.

“Hey, please don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to myself,” he said, getting a weak smile out of Lo.

There were poached eggs, four slices of toast, broiled
tomatoes, kippers, sliced peaches in
maas
, cornflakes, the last of their decent coffee. There was a reason for the extravagance. He had something urgent to get across. He felt that a leisurely breakfast would set up the right mood.

Lo excused herself. She would never come directly from bed to the breakfast table. Even if breakfast was brought to her in bed, she would insist on getting up to rinse her face before eating anything. She was inflexible about it. That was an example of what was worrying him about her. He had a feeling that she’d made up her mind to appeal to the ambassador for a change of housing. Carl had to prevent that. He had already explained why, and she had seemed to be listening. But there was a reservation in her attitude that had him worried. She had a naïve conception of the ambassador and his powers. He sensed she was planning to do something. It wasn’t that Lois was aggressive by nature. Lo wasn’t even a feminist. But Lois loved him, and because of the dogs she was a potential fanatic on getting assigned to another house.

They sat down together. There was no reference to the extent of the breakfast. She ate a little of everything, praising everything.

Over coffee, he began. “Lo, I need you to promise me something.” He reached across the table for her hand. “I need you to swear on my life you won’t go to the ambassador about our housing.” She was silent. He knew that he had been right.

He explained it all again, watching his tone. There were no alternative houses to be had. The housing shortage in the capital was grave. The Government of Botswana was going so far as to turn down any project that required it to provide housing in the capital for experts. The ambassador was not a god, and he was helpless on this issue. There was no way anyone in his right mind would trade quarters with them, because everyone knew about the dogs. Americans were
doubling up in houses meant for one family. Contract people were stuck in hotels for months.

She came back with her experience in hotel work. Desk clerks might say there was nothing available, but if you were important enough there would always be a room. She reminded Carl that they were official Americans in Botswana, not contract people.

He explained again that the ambassador saw himself as a new broom. Under the previous ambassador, the housing committee had been a circus, an uproar, a black mark for the ambassador when the inspectors came through. As a sign of strength, the new ambassador had killed the whole appeal process in the housing committee. Now it was policy that people took the housing they were assigned and liked it, or they were sent home.

Finally, he had to explain about Elaine and housing—something he had minimized until now. He was under an emotional injunction from Lois against speaking ill of Elaine, which he accepted. But there had to be exceptions. Elaine had made a hobby out of challenging their housing assignments. She had become notorious. It had gotten into his efficiency rating reports. In short, there was a negative history to be lived down. He recognized that Elaine had needed to assert herself as a person, under what she probably saw as difficult overseas conditions. Nevertheless, there had been a difficult result. Lois seemed to be understanding all this. He finished by saying that going to the ambassador, besides being absolutely not in their own interest, would make her look childish—like someone who couldn’t appreciate facts. It would look like a tantrum.

She was unhappy, but she promised. He stood up. He was reluctant to go until she released him with some sign of forgiveness for everything.

A hornbill called in the garden. He had a thought. Lo
had no idea that the one bird he could always identify was the hornbill. He remembered the first time he had heard it, years ago in Rwanda. He had stiffened at whatever he was doing, guiltily. He always heard the harsh, drawn-out
aww
as a cry of disapproval, probably maternal. “I think that’s a hornbill,” he said.

She looked up, pleased. He could go.

Walking home late that evening, Carl made himself contemplate trying to see Letsamao again. He had already spoken to Letsamao, once by phone and once in person, but both times he had been too gingerly. Whether to avoid seeming neurotic or to engage Letsamao’s chivalrous side, Carl had put it that it was mainly Lois who was suffering from the dogs. Both times, Letsamao had said the same things—that Carl’s wife was oversensitive and would in time adapt; that the dogs were not extreme, as shown by the fact that no one else was complaining; that among the numerous Europeans who had lived in Carl’s house previously there were none who had ever complained. Letsamao had as much as said that it was the business of a husband to manage a wife’s problems and to avoid intruding on the valuable time of a cabinet minister. Letsamao had reacted in no way to the suggestion that he might take his dogs in at night. It was as though the suggestion hadn’t even been made. Now Carl had a better and more moderate idea. It was that someone from among Letsamao’s retinue—that was the wrong word and unfair—be appointed to come out and quiet the dogs when they started up. This time when he spoke to Letsamao he would bring himself into it, confessing that he was the one primarily suffering. Letsamao had dominated their earlier conversations, pressing Carl to finish his business quickly. Their second conversation had been short and sharp. When nothing resulted from the exchanges, Carl had gone over
twice more, at times when he knew Letsamao was at home, only to be told each time by the maid that the Minister was not to be disturbed. Trying to relay complaints through Letsamao’s domestics was a waste of time.

Letsamao was a rough customer he had a right to be afraid of. The Minister of Labor had oversight of all expatriates working in the country. Letsamao was a power in the ruling party. Moreover, he was a favorite of the AID mission director and the ambassador, largely because of a reputation as a strong administrator. Carl thought of the Batswana as an unusually agreeable people, so long as you remembered to greet them properly with
dumela
. Letsamao was atypical. He was permanently expressionless. He was short, thickly built, hard-looking. He was cicatriced, with three faint scars like cat scratches on each cheek. Carl had never seen Letsamao in casual dress.

He was approaching Letsamao’s house. The gates in the high front walls were ajar. Carl had a flash of irritation. Letsamao’s front yard, with its oblong of chive-green lawn, was beautifully landscaped and tended, but the backyard, which faced the front of Carl’s house through a wire fence, was a wasteland of bare earth, flailing laundry, children, dog life. Servant Theatre was what Elaine had called a similar scene they had lived with briefly, in Blantyre.

The coach lights on either side of the gate came on. That meant Letsamao was expected imminently. On impulse, Carl stopped. He would wait at the gate to intercept Letsamao. He had time. It would be pleasant. Because of the drought, mosquitoes were scarce. The first stars were out, twitching.

Letsamao’s silver Peugeot appeared at the bend in Sefhare Road, traveling briskly. Carl waved. The Peugeot swung toward the driveway. Carl stepped into the middle of the drive, one hand up, smiling hard. Letsamao stopped—more abruptly than he had to, Carl felt.

He went around to Letsamao’s window and tapped. Letsamao sat looking at him for a moment before lowering the window very slowly halfway. Carl noted that Letsamao was playing the clutch, keeping the car moving slightly forward. Carl was off balance. He did remember to begin with
dumela
, but then he rushed. There was too much to convey. He said he was getting sick. He used the word “insomnia,” which he had decided against using. When he said he thought it was time for an
indaba
, he could see Letsamao stiffen. Carl knew the term, meaning “powwow,” from reading the
Rand Daily Mail
. The term was Zulu and was supposed to be lingua franca all over southern Africa—but was it? Had he patronized Letsamao?