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The end of taking goods came about. Some women of one church saw too many prizes falling to another church, and grew jealous. Always if you ring up the police they can say you must come for us, for our transport is gone out. So then one woman went to them by foot to force them to return back with her. And so it was all ended.

Bastiaan was returned back with Rra Wren. He was
shamed. He became cruel. Soon Mma Wren was taken off. They said she must stay at a house of rest at Bloemfontein. Bastiaan said we may not see her face, we are unworthy, we must be driven out from that place. All power was with Bastiaan, as Rra Wren must go to join Mma Wren on leave for a time. When he could return back, we could not know, we are too lowly, and culprits.

At last Bastiaan summoned me. I said What have I done that is wrong? But Bastiaan said that only because I was absent I was no better than the others. He said there was no more a place for me there. He said I was hired on to cater for Mma Wren, in fact, because she favored me. I saw my crime of thieving was unknown. He cursed all staff and even fell to naming tribes for shortcomings. I was crying. Those women begged mercy of Bastiaan, yet still lashed him with words in secret when he said they must depart. The officer from Labor came and said Clear off as this man tells you, and be glad of his Christian heart to prevent you from jail. Then those women were raging as to reference letter they must be provided. And Bastiaan said Go to your
moruti
, your thief-pastor, and let him write for you and all others in your thief-churches, but never come to me with this matter. They said it was revenge. Many said they would complain to heaven at the Labor Office and the Office of the President as well, but if they did this I am not sure. All were sacked.

It was at night. I was pushed out. Again I must carry my goods about, lost, like an ant searching. It was at Churchill Roundabout, where four roads go out and you see Holy Cross Cathedral of the Anglicans rising up before you.

I stood with burning eyes. Many people passed in there. Cars blocked up the verges nearby. Choirs sang hymns I knew already. I saw lights beaming on some bright things. The Anglicans are rich. You can see their priests in costly
robes. Always their church is built up the highest. Over countless years these European churches saved their funds well, whilst Africans prayed in the bush, never scheming as to collections. Those Anglicans have strong-rooms.

At once I saw my onward path. I said what! I can get treasure from God’s many churches. They bid you to come inside. There is always money found there. I said I can be nice, I can sing, they shall help me, even, as an orphan. I can join in choirs, I said. I can be in their bosom and then rob them freely. I can rob from collections, I said, I can rob at fêtes. At pastors’ houses there is endless passing in or out of women bearing tales, and I could thus find chances there. I said I shall be God’s enemy and servant both in one, and nothing shall escape my hand. I said I can go farther, to great churches beyond Botswana, where you can find crosses made from gold, and shawls and clothing all with gold. I said I can pull out every thread of gold, until God shall at last cry out He wishes me to cease.

At once my heart was light.

The name she was unable to remember was torturing her. She kept coming up with Bechamel, which was ridiculously wrong yet somehow close. It was important to her that she remember: a thing in a book by this man lay at the heart of her secret career as a seducer of men, three hundred and twelve of them. She was a seducer, not a seductress. The male form of the term was active. A seductress was merely someone who was seductive and who might or might not be awarded a victory. But a seducer was a professional, a worker, and somehow a record of success was embedded in the term. “Seducer” sounded like a credential. Game was afoot tonight. Remembering the name was part of the preparation. She had always prepared before tests.

Male or female, you couldn’t be considered a seducer if you were below a certain age, had great natural beauty, or if you lacked a theory of what you were doing. Her body of theory began with a scene in the book she was feeling the impulse to reread. The book’s title was lost in the mists of time. As she remembered the scene, a doctor and perhaps the woman of the house are involved together in some emergency lifesaving operation. The woman has to assist. The setting is an apartment in Europe, in a city. The woman is not attractive. The doctor is. There has been shelling or an accident. The characters are disparate in every way and would never normally be appropriate for one another. The
operation is described in upsetting detail. It’s touch and go. When it’s over, the doctor and the woman fall into one another’s arms—to their own surprise. Some fierce tropism compels them. Afterward they part, never to follow up. The book was from the French. She removed the Atmos clock from the living room mantel and took it to the pantry to get it out of sight.

The scene had been like a flashbulb going off. She had realized that, in her seductions up to that point, she had been crudely and intuitively using the principle that the scene made explicit. Putting it bluntly, a certain atmosphere of allusion to death, death-fear, death threats, mystery pointing to death was, in the right hands, erotic and could lead to a bingo. Of course, that was hardly all there was to it. The subject of what conditions conduce—that was her word for it—to achieving a bingo was immense. For example, should you strew your conversation with a few petals of French? The answer was not always yes, and depended on age and educational level. For some older types, France meant looseness and Pigalle. But for some it meant you were parading your education or your travel opportunities. One thing, it was never safe to roll your Rs. She thought, Everything counts: chiaroscuro, no giant clocks in evidence and no wristwatches either, music or its absence, what they can assume about privacy and
le futur
. That was critical. You had to help them intuit you were acting from appetite, like a man, and that when it was over you would be yourself and not transformed before their eyes into a love-leech, a limbless tube of longing. You had to convince them that what was to come was, no question about it, a transgression, but that for you it was about at the level of eating between meals.

She was almost fifty. For a woman, she was old to be a seducer. The truth was that she had been on the verge of closing up shop. The corner of Bergen County they had lived
in was scorched earth, pretty much. Then Frank had been offered a contract to advise African governments on dental care systems. They had come to Africa for two years.

In Botswana, where they were based, everything was unbelievably conducive. Frank was off in the bush or advising as far away as Lusaka or Gwelo for days and sometimes weeks at a time. So there was space. She could select. Gaborone was comfortable enough. And it was full of transient men: consultants, contractors, travelers of all kinds, seekers. Embassy men were assigned for two-year tours and knew they were going to be rotated away from the scene of the crime sooner rather than later. Wives were often absent. Either they were slow to arrive or they were incessantly away on rest and recreation in the United States or the Republic of South Africa. For expatriate men, the local women were a question mark. Venereal disease was pandemic, and local attitudes toward birth control came close to being surreal. She had abstained from Batswana men. She knew why. The very attractive ones seemed hard to get at. There was a feeling of danger in the proposition, probably irrational. The surplus of more familiar white types was a simple fact. In any case, there was still time. This place had been designed with her in mind. The furniture the government provided even looked like it came from a bordello. And Botswana was unnerving in some overall way there was only one word for: conducive. The country depended on copper and diamonds. Copper prices were sinking. There were too many diamonds of the wrong kind. Development projects were going badly and making people look bad, which made them nervous and susceptible. What was there to do at night? There was only one movie house in town. The movies came via South Africa and were censored to a fare-thee-well—no nudity, no blue language. She suspected that for American men the kind of heavy-handed dummkopf censorship they sat through at the
Capitol Cinema was in fact stimulating. Frank was getting United States Government money, which made them semiofficial. She had to admit there was fun in foiling the eyes and ears of the embassy network. She would hate to leave.

Only one thing was sad. There was no one she could tell about her life. She had managed to have a remarkable life. She was ethical. She never brought Frank up or implied that Frank was the cause in any way of what she chose to do. Nor would she ever seduce a man who could conceivably be a recurrent part of Frank’s life or sphere. She assumed feminists would hate her life if they knew. She would like to talk to feminists about vocation, about goal-setting, about using one’s mind, about nerve and strength. Frank’s ignorance was one of her feats. How many women could do what she had done? She was modestly endowed and now she was even old. She was selective. Sometimes she felt she would like to tell Frank, when it was really over, and see what he said. She would sometimes let herself think he would be proud, in a way, or that he could be convinced he should be. There was no one she could tell. Their daughter was a cow and a Lutheran. Her gentleman was late. She went into the pantry to check the time.

For this evening’s adventure she was conceivably a little too high-priestess, but the man she was expecting was not a subtle person. She was wearing a narrowly cut white silk caftan, a seed-pod necklace, and sandals. The symbolism was a little crude: silk, the ultracivilized material, over the primitive straight-off-the-bush necklace. Men liked to feel things through silk. But she wore silk as much for herself as for the gentlemen. Silk energized her. She loved the feeling of silk being slid up the backs of her legs. Her nape hairs rose a little as she thought about it. She had her hair up, in a loose, flat bun. She was ringless. She had put on and then taken off her scarab ring. Tonight she wanted the feeling that
bare hands and bare feet would give. She would ease off her sandals at the right moment. She knew she was giving up a proven piece of business—idly taking off her ring when the occasion reached a certain centigrade. Men saw it subliminally as taking off a wedding ring and as the first act in undressing. She had worked hard on her feet. She had lined her armpits with tissue that would stay just until the doorbell rang. With medical gentlemen, hygiene was a fetish. She was expecting a doctor. Her breath was immaculate. She was proud of her teeth, but then she was married to a dentist. She thought about the Danish surgeon who brought his own boiled-water ice cubes to cocktail parties. She had some bottled water in the refrigerator, just in case it was indicated.

Her gentleman was due and overdue. Everything was optimal. There was a firm crossbreeze. The sight lines were nice. From where they would be sitting they would look out at a little pad of healthy lawn, the blank wall of the inner court, and the foliage of the tree whose blooms still looked to her like scrambled eggs. It would be self-evident that they would be private here. The blinds were drawn. Everything was secure and cool. Off the hall leading to the bathroom, the door to the bedroom stood open. The bedroom was clearly a working bedroom, not taboo, with a nightlight on and an oscillating fan performing on low. He would sit on leather; she would sit half-facing, where she could reach the bar trolley, on sheepskin, her feet on a jennet-skin kaross. He should sit in the leather chair because it was regal but uncomfortable. You would want to lie down. She would be in a slightly more reclining mode. Sunset was on. Where was her gentleman? The light was past its peak.

The doorbell rang. Be superb, she thought.

The doctor looked exhausted. He was gray-faced. Also, he was older than the image of him she had been entertaining.
But he was all right. He had nice hair. He was fit. He might be part Indian, with those cheekbones and being from Vancouver. Flats were never a mistake. He was not tall. He was slim.

She led him in. He was wearing one of the cheaper safari suits, with the S-for-something embroidery on the left breast pocket. He had come straight from work, which was in her favor.

When she had him seated, she said, “Two slight catastrophes to report, doctor. One is that you’re going to have to eat appetizers from my own hand. As the British say, my help are gone. My cook and my maid are sisters. Their aunt died. For the second time, actually. Tebogo is forgetful. In any case, they’re in Mochudi for a few days and I’m alone. Frank won’t be home until Sunday.
And
, the Webers are off for tonight. They can’t come. We’re on our own. I hope we can cope.”

He smiled weakly. The man was exhausted.

She said, “But a cool drink, quick, wouldn’t you say? What would you like? I have everything.”

He said it should be anything nonalcoholic, any kind of juice would be good. She could see work coming. He went to wash up.

He took his time in the bathroom, which was normally a good sign. He looked almost crisp when he came back, but something was the matter. She would have to extract it.

He accepted iced rooibos tea. She poured Bombay gin over crushed ice for herself. Men noticed what you drank. This man was not strong. She was going to have to underplay.

She presented the appetizers, which were genius. You could get through a week on her collations if you needed to, or you could have a few select tastes and go on to gorge elsewhere with no one the wiser. But you would remember every bite. She said, “You might like these. These chunks
are bream fillet, poached, from Lake Ngami. No bones. Vinaigrette. They had just started getting these down here on a regular basis on ice about a year ago. AID had a lot of money in the Lake Ngami fishery project. Then the drought struck, and Lake Ngami, pouf, it’s a damp spot in the desert. This is real Parma ham. I nearly had to kill someone to get it. The cashews are a little on the tangy side. That’s the way they like them in Mozambique, apparently. They’re good.”