The Lion Seeker (10 page)

—Lalique, says the woman. Baccarat. Waterford.

Isaac studies the feathered turban, this grown woman talking gibberish to him over the breakfast table and it hits him she's a mental patient, an absolute loon. He begins to understand Cecil's embarrassment; he waits for him.

—You see, Cecil says, art glass is really Bupsie's life.

—Right, says Isaac.

The woman says,—A rugger ball in a satchel, I don't think so. I'm sorry.

—Right, says Isaac.

Cecil sighs and dips his long head sideways, the cigarette lifts. He has fine light hair like candy floss. He walks off towards the house and Isaac follows. They descend three flights of marble stairs, passing seven-foot oil paintings. Make bladey sure this man signs off: no telling with that madwoman. At the base spreads an unadorned hall full of boxes, Cecil tips his cigarette at them. —These ones, those ones.

Isaac says: —Wait a sec. We on the bottom level here hey. Same as outside by the gate?

—It is.

—And those doors, they go through then hey? The garage?

Cecil doesn't seem to want to answer, his tongue makes a shifting lump in his cheek, he nods very slightly.

—That is great stuff, says Isaac. Great stuff. We can take it straight through the garage. I was worried—

—No, says Cecil.

—Hey?

—No.

Isaac tries for eye contact but Cecil's pupils keep flickering side to side.

—I'm afraid not. The car is rather in the way.

—The car, says Isaac.

Cecil draws on his cigarette.

—Coulden you just move it, like?

The right corner of his mouth kinks; a smoke funnel stabs down. —No.

—Pardon?

—No.

Isaac looks at him there with his cigarette holder and his weight on one leg, one foot pointing out, slender soft-skinned fingers on the hip that would snap in half like stale Marie biscuits if they were ever to try and lift a bedroom suite or a coal stove, even a mere box of glass.

The cigarette sweeps. —Everything on this side, basically, straight to the new shop.

—Mr. Linhurst.

—Popsy's opening in Rosebank next month, all her art deco first. Thank God. Gives us some space to breathe around here again.

—Mr. Linhurst.

—What's the trouble?

—Mr. Linhurst, if we can't use the garage, where we supposed to go?

—What does
that
mean? says Cecil.

—I mean is there other stairs?

—Others?

—Not the ones I come in on.

—No, there are no other stairs.

—Mr. Linhurst, those stairs are like this wide. No landings, plus.

—Well. We all have our jobs.

Isaac feels the heat seep up into his tightening face, he looks away a moment, his lips working.

Slowly he says,—Mr. Linhurst, the stuff is already down here. Otherwise they ganna have to come up all the way two flights inside first. Plus then go back down those outside stairs there that're pure bladey killers hey, just killers, scuse my French but they are. This's glass we talking. Any little bump. It's not just the boys hey, it's putting like ten times more chance for accident.

—Let's not fret about accidents.

—But the garage.

—The garage, the garage, says Mr. Linhurst. I have just told you you may not use it. I am not having movers near the Cadillac.

—Dadsy and his Cadsy, says a voice.

Isaac turns, sees a girl on the stairs. —I'm ready, Dadsy, she says. Her voice is very high, very musical, something gentle and shimmering in it. She is a tall well-made girl in a school uniform with a round doll's face, and plump pouting lips, thick blond hair dragged back with a headband like the kind dancers wear and the hair spreads out behind the band down to the level of the collarbones. The school uniform is a green blazer over a white blouse, tartan skirt below, dark socks pulled up three-quarters of the way to the knee with parallel stripes at their tops. A coat of arms on the blazer's pocket over the soft shape that pushes it out. Isaac looks at her face, the wide cheekbones, the colourless eyebrows, and a kindliness, a blood warmth, radiating from the whole of it. A light switches on inside of him, in his chest. Strong and clear and icily flooding.

—Okay, Shookee, says Cecil.

She goes up. He can hear her school shoes on the marble. When he turns back, Mr. Linhurst is talking about the Cadillac limousine, saying that Isaac perhaps couldn't appreciate this automobile and what it means.

Isaac says: —No, I know exactly what a Cadillac is. What model you talking?

Mr. Linhurst smiles with one side of his mouth. —Do you now.

—Ja I do.

—A 1934 Fleetwood. D Series, four fifty-two.

—The V16? says Isaac. That's a monster hey. Biggest engine in the world. A hunned seventy horsepower right? What's it, a seven-litre?

The line of Mr. Linhurst's eyebrows breaks steeply, like a raising bridge, and he's no longer smiling. —Seven point four, he says slowly.

—Ja, no, I look in the car magazines hey. All the pictures . . . Unbelievable that thing, but I thought there's none in South Africa.

Now the smile stretches back, fully and slowly, like a sunning crocodile. —I've got the only one.

 

When they are outside again, Isaac's notes on the goods signed by Cecil and safely buttoned in his shirt pocket, he sees she is sitting at the garden table that has been cleared of breakfast, her school bag on the ground beside her and a book open on the tabletop between her elbows, her hands cradling her head and the thick hair hanging down over the wrists. The mother is still in her seat, twisting now to look over her shoulder. She asks Cecil if he explained it all properly.

—Yes, Bupsie, he says. Most thoroughly.

—But properly.

—Thoroughly, he says. Most thoroughly.

—Har har I'm sure, she says. Then to the girl: —You see what's come. When you leave things to your father.

—I'm going to be late, Dadsy, says the girl.

—Dadsy
, says the woman. Father or Pater.

The girl goes on reading.

—I'll go and get the boys, Isaac says to Cecil.

—Where are you from young man? says Mrs. Linhurst.

—Doornfontein.

—Doornfontein. Morris. Wouldn't have said.

—Pardon?

—And how old?

—I'm twenny-two.

A silence. They all look at him in the nakedness of his lie, the girl too. He scratches his nose.

—Would you call yourself a
boy
? says Mrs. Linhurst.

—Hey?

—But they're older than you, your staff.

—My what?

—Tell me, what is your opinion of the Native Question?

—Ma, says the girl.

—Mother or Mater, she says without looking away from Isaac.

—Half past eight, says Cecil, on a Thursday morning is not the time.

—When is? says Mrs. Linhurst.

—About to take Yvonne to school, says Cecil.

—God, says the girl.

All Isaac can feel then is his heart reacting to the sound of that name. The light switching on in his chest again, so bright and icy clear.
Yvonne
.

Mrs. Linhurst gets up; her azure robes flap against her bulk. —When you get to the shop, my man Cornelius will open. Just knock, he's there. Boxes with the tan cards to the left, the blue opposite. Cornelius will indicate. Cornelius will assist.

She starts back toward the house, slippers scuffing.

—All right Shookee, let's skedaddle, says Cecil. And he's turning too, moving to the stairs.

Isaac speaks quickly: —The garage, he says. S'there really no way to go through hey? I mean really.

Cecil turns back. —Do you not want this job?

A wash of bloodheat rolls through his head. His voice croaks. —I's just asking.

—But we're taking the other car, Dadsy, says Yvonne from behind. There'll be tons of room for them.

Cecil grimaces. —Yvonne, pack up.

She lowers her head over the book, seems to become absorbed in reading.

—I'm not having them near the Cadillac, says Cecil to no one and everyone. He goes downstairs. Isaac looks to the woman, who is almost at the doors. He jogs across to her. —Mrs. Linhurst.

Up close she has white paste filling in the wrinkles of her hanging face.

—Can't you like open the garage doors for us, like later on?

—What, what are you saying to me?

—So my. The workers. So they won't have to go all up and down.

—God gave them feet, bless them.

—But all the stairs. Your glass.

She closes her eyes. Opens them slowly. Now her voice is clear and sane to him for the first time: —Just you make bloody certain not one single crack. Understand?

Isaac nods. —Ja, he says. I do.

She goes in. Below, a car starts. The girl is standing to put the book back in her school bag, now on the tabletop, not a canvas satchel like what he used to use at Athens Boys High but a stiff leather number like the one their doctor in Doornfontein, Dr. Allan, has for house calls, only hers is brown and slimmer. He gives her eye contact. She brushes arcs of hair from under her small pouted mouth. —God, she says. Sorry about them.

He puts his hands in his pockets. —It's ukay.

—No, it's not. It's shaming.

Shaming. While he turns this word over in his mind, like some found tool with a purpose unknown to him, they hear the rumble of the garage doors shutting at the base of that twisting stone staircase. Isaac moves closer to her. So fresh and bright she is in this waxing morning light. She has the book in her hand; he asks what it is. She has green eyes with a touch of yellow, limpid and bright. —Poetry.

There it is: that light inside his chest again, switched on by itself. —Like Shakespeare hey?

—Coleridge, she says. Milkwhite teeth in a balanced smile well under her control. He can feel the strength under the doll's face and the high voice. Her neck is thick and browned by the sun.

—Ops us a sec hey. Lemme check.

—I beg yours?

—Can I please see?

—You like Coleridge?

He is not altogether sure her smile is a hundred percent kind anymore. What is it with these people and their sly pricking ways, their gibberish? It starts to bring up a redness in him and he says: —Ja f'course man. Who duzzen?

She hands him the book, small with tan hard covers. A label has a name in pen.
Yvonne Linhurst, Standard
7
V
. A school smell off the pages, that dull musty gloom, the onerous mass of a boredom that never ends. The words he scans make no sense, the lines are clumped up funny. It's like a code book. Down below the car hoots. He feels a teetering, a desperate feeling, and starts to read out loud, something about rocks, a river, picking out easy words then trying a long one:
half-intermitted
, and failing, stumbling on it. When he looks over the top of the book he sees she's covered her mouth.

—Here, he says, and snaps it shut at her. Take it.

She does, but slowly. —I've made you cross, she says in her musical voice.

—Why should I be cross? But he cannot believe how crushed he feels inside; a mewling crushed feeling, almost nauseating.

He has moved away but she calls him back.

—What?

—Just hang on, she says.

—I got work to do hey. I'm a working man. I run a crew. I don't have any larney school to go to, to read poem books.

—Just hang on, okay.

He looks at her, face to face now, she's not as tall as he thought she was on the stairs, but still a little taller than he is.

—I apologize, she says to him. I shouldn't have laughed.

He tries to speak but his throat is plugged. The car below hoots again. He tries to smile and feels a crooked stiffness spreading on his face and hears himself say: —Better run to Dadsy hey.

It comes out all wrong, flat and harsh instead of as the joke he meant. Her face changes, she's frowning. —I just said sorry. You don't have to be so—

He can feel his eyes getting watery. He blinks hard, he can't look at her. He makes a sound—
tsuh
—that he's picked up from Silas, an expression of harsh dismissal. He means it for himself, for his own turmoil, but she flinches from it, he feels her shrinking.

When he looks up she's walking away. No: betrayed by his mouth, his wilding heart. All the churning unfairness of not being able to use the stairs joins with this feeling, joins with the frustration of not being able to understand their off-balancing enigmatic babble, and all the muffled jealous anger he has underneath everything—all of it melds as one and mounts the column of his dry throat in one unbottled rush: —Ja you run to Dadsy!
Shookee
.

It stops her; she turns at the top of the stairs. —Jesus, she says. What's wrong with you?

He doesn't move. She keeps staring at him, something odd in her gaze. Then: —It is Yvonne, actually. And who the bloody hell are you?

—Isaac, he says, hoarse. I am Isaac Helger.

SATURDAY NIGHTS HE LIKES TO GO
to the bioscope, the Alhambra of course, and not the posh Apollo, and always in a sixpenny seat in one of the front rows, for farther back costs a shilling and a penny. Hot dogs and chips for two tickeys. Inside, the blue fog from the audience's cigarettes is lanced through by the projector beam as if by a lighthouse. He likes the Warner Brothers films best, the hard gangster stuff but also the African Mirror and Pathe newsreels before the main action.

The rooster cartoon and the trumpet note, then that fasttalking pukkuh-pukkuh English voice going like a Vickers machine gun. Tonight:
French might can resist any attack, so says Monsieur Georges Bonnet
, and they watch the sabre-nosed French minister reviewing ranks of Black soldiers in Tunisia.
Even a razor-sharp sword needs oiling from time to time and here the finest navy in the world is on high-alert manoeuvres in the Adriatic
and they see British destroyers with their big guns, carriers with seaplanes.
The same old story, one nation makes demands and another nation asserts her rights. It's democracy against might makes right, and we all know who'll be winners in this little dance!
They see images from Spain where Franco and the Nationalists with help from Italian-German fascists are marching on Madrid, seat of the Republican government. Pack mules loaded with heavy machine guns, men in greatcoats climbing muddy slopes. When it's South Africa's turn the cinema erupts, most noise from the cheap seats around Isaac. Whistles and claps and stomping feet. On the screen coastal guns track the clouds above Cape Town.
Anyone thinking of invading the Union had better watch out! It's the same cry here as everywhere in the Empire. Ready for action!
And too, when it's the turn of Palestine to make the news, this Doornfontein cinema turns rowdy with Jewish pride. Showing the rocky soil being spliced behind the ploughs of Jewish farmers, Jewish orange groves, Jewish buildings, modern and clean.
By the work of his hands the Jew is redeeming his ancient land, enjoying the fruits of his labour. The Jew has proved once and for all to the world that he needs only a crack at freedom to make a go of it!
Comic relief always follows the society weddings in London. Mud wrestling in Australia or a regimental charity pantomime in the Midlands. Fat women get the most laughs, double if they're falling over.
Look out old girl! We'd better pray she doesn't land on anyone's foot! You look famished. Fancy a cheesecake?
But the laughter dies to muttering when they watch President Franklin Delano Roosevelt giving a speech in someplace called Chautauqua, New York, to a loving audience, saying,
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I! Hate! War!
And all those Americans applauding him like mad, the President promising to shun any commitment that might
entangle us in foreign wars
and warning that he won't permit any American to send help to any side fighting overseas either. Some voices in the dark give out soft hisses then; but when the Chancellor of Germany comes on there is only utter silence. The cinema seems to grow cold around Isaac. This Herr Hitler throwing his hands and sputtering like a spastic peacock and the thousands going berserk and shrieking and baying in waves back at him, spearing up their stiff arms. Earlier in the year the Rhineland was illegally reoccupied by German forces, an act of war, but France did nothing and neither did anyone else. Probably because they hate war too. Now there's a friendship pact between Mussolini and Hitler. The newsreel illustrates all this by showing black arrows spreading from Germany and Italy, leaching across the map like a poison. All those first pictures of the Royal Navy and the French army are very little against the ice feeling spreading around and welling inside Isaac then. The Archbishop of Canterbury appears from behind his big wooden desk to ask cinema patrons to give generously to help people who must flee from persecution in Germany, saying,
Particularly I want all to remember that amongst these poor multitudes not all are Jews, but Christian souls too are included in their number
 . . .