The Lion Seeker (25 page)

Her warm palm on his cheek, her thumb quieting his lips, and again he's eight years old, the feeling of that old time ripples through him, how she sat him on a wall to tell him all about life. She says, You'll be all right, Isaacluh. For you I'm not so worried.

What can that mean? Her scar is so close to him, that signifier of a hidden world. Once she was The Saint of Dusat, now she won't set foot in a synagogue. Why? The urge to tell her what he's learned from Blumenthal rushes crazily to his tongue and almost beyond. —What's it, Ma, tell me, what are you so worried for?

There's a half a minute or so there where he doesn't move and she stares at a space on the floor unblinking. As if now she will speak her secrets. As if she is hefting their mighty weight within, deciding at last whether or not to pitch them out into the world. Into her son. Do it, he thinks. Do it Ma, tell me, Ma, what it is that's eating you alive.

When she speaks, he starts in his chair. Isaacluh, go and fetch for me the albums.

So he goes into his parents' room and comes back to the kitchen table and they sit as he once did when he was little and again her wide fingertip moves under the faces on the photographs, turns the stiff cardboard of each freighted page.

Name them. Tell me their names.

That one and that one. Who is that one?

Trudel-Sora. Dvora. Rochel-Dor.

Orli and Friedke.

Afterwards she takes the albums into the bedroom and shuts the door: her afternoon lie-down, something new. Never before had she been enervated during the day, napping would have been a lazy disgrace. A question stabs him: is she well? Is that the secret that he senses, the inching progress of some dread disease? His mind bleeds horror pictures. He's still sitting, gripped by this dark meditation, when Rively comes home, carrying her satchel full of textbooks for her paralegal courses in town. (Mame doesn't understand why she's trying to do men's work instead of settling down proper to start a family, when she's so young and pretty and she can have any man, why must she wait to get married old like Mame was? But Rively has a nice way of laughing her off, loves telling Mame about how a modern girl is capable of achieving anything a boy can. Women can even vote now like any White man, since 1930 already. He remembers one time Mame retorted: Look at that Amelia Earhart in the news, with her hair cut short like a boy, trying to fly air machines, and what happened? She disappears into nothing. If you look for crazy trouble, trouble will find you right back.)

But Mame doesn't even try to argue with Rively so much these days, down, down in her new mood of dark morosity. Now when Rively drops off her books and heads out to her night job as a waitress at The Tulip Café and Restaurant in Hillbrow, Isaac follows her into the yard. Low-voiced he asks her if she's noticed the change in Mame.

—Honestly, she says, I reckon it's that new law hey. She asked me about it like four times and I had to explain it to her every time.

—What law?

She grimaces and clacks her tongue, impatient with his ignorance. But she tells about the Aliens Act that came in just last year. Something he's completely missed in the bliss of his work and his Yvonne, the detached sense of indifference to the larger world that is generally his attitude now. Rively saying there were too many Jews leaking in from Germany and Austria, so now the government put this antialiens law in that anyone wants to come here has to apply before a special board. They didn't use the word Jew in the law (even though Malan's Nats pushed for it), but everyone knows no more Jews are going to get in anymore, from anywhere. What Rively doesn't see is why Mame would be so fussed now. Lithuanian Jews have been cut off for eight years so why would this make any difference?

—You don't understand nothing, Isaac says. Nothing.

She takes a step back, her face screwing. —Unlike mighty brain here. Who never heard of Aliens Act and couldn't even spell it if his life depended.

But Isaac only half hears, his cigarette hand digging at his sternum. —What about Smuts?

—What about him?

—Smuts wouldn't agree on a law like this.

—Course he would! He
has
. He did it for the election, you think he was ganna lose that for a few thousand Jews? And if he tried to stand up for us, his whole party would've kicked him out like a dog. The voters don't want us, full stop.

Isaac stands there shaking his head.

—Feel bad? Knife in the back? Imagine you're a German Jew and stop moaning. Those double-crossers in London won't let those poor people into Palestine neither, when they can see how desperate, and after they signed and promised us back in . . . Where you going? Hey—wanna do something useful, come to a meeting with me and Yankel, hey Isaac I am
talking
to you.

 

Alone, Isaac smokes, his thoughts still with his mother, those black-and-white faces. Name her. Name him. The other night there was some shouting from her room and he woke up and went to have a look what was wrong but his father said it's nothing, just a dream she had. He knows that Mame remembers the Great War, Tutte too; they were married during the war time and neither one will ever talk about it. War: ja, maybe it's coming again now. Maybe.

Name this face, name that one.

Three brothers chopped up alive, thrown into flames. Pieces of their Jewish bodies in the hands of children.

The shutters are drawn on a far-gone place inside. The here is the here. What does everyone want from him?

I've got Yvonne, he thinks. I've got Yvonne.

He smokes down four cigarettes, grinding each most carefully into a saucer.

AT THE CASTLE
when Yvonne lets him into the garage he catches her by the waist before she can pull down the garage doors. The concrete floor is pale and immaculate in its empty brightness; left of centre rises the long bulk of a sheepskin cover. He walks her into it, kisses her. When she sways back he lets her go. —Where are you going, perfect?

—You know you not supposed to say that.

—Why not, perfect?

—Do you want to sound like Dadsy?

—No, I'm trying for Momsy.

—Like Dadsy when he's on about the dear love of his life.

Isaac smiles, puts one hand on the soft pad of the sheepskin. —Is it really the dearest love?

—The very dearest.

—Not Momsy?

—It's Moth
er
or Mat
er
.

—I think Mater is his trade-in.

She smiles. —Yes. Mater has skin and blood and Dadsy prefers steel and petrol.

—American steel. He says the word Cadillac in three syllables. Like a spell off the tongue, a summoning. —I wanna have a look.

She laughs. —No-o.

—You know I've got to see it. I'm tired of pictures.

—Don't even.

—I'm going to.

For the moment he can feel she still thinks he's joking, while he sinks to his knee, looking up at her. Then his hand hooks under the bottom lip of the sheepskin and her head slants, her hands go onto her hips. —Don't. He'll know.

—How's he ganna?

—Bet you he puts things. Hairs. Measures with a ruler. Powder.

—I'm a professional, he says. For a while he waits for the permission; she bends her lips in over her teeth. Looking at her, he lifts the edge of the cover. He stands to turn it back over the bonnet. He puts his fingertips to the smooth cool cream of the steel.

—Oh God, you'll make fingerprints.

He turns more back, up to the base of the windshield, whistles.

—What?

—Steering wheel's the wrong side.

—Ja, he's got a special thing on his licence for it.

He moves around and takes a double grip lower down.

—Isaac.

—Relax max.

He starts to jerk it up. A voice: —Joh!

As he spins he is looking for a weapon. Everyone knows how Blacks can go bushy. You see it in the papers: the gardenboy or the butler one day, they take a pair of shears from the shed or a golf club or a kitchen hatchet and they spatter the lounge red with White blood.

There is a man in overalls crouched low; behind him is the workbench against the wall.

Isaac looks at the man's hands on his thighs. He hisses at Yvonne to get back but Yvonne is already walking to him, saying,—What's wrong?

—Oh sorree sorree, says the man. I too sorree, medem.

—What is it, Moses?

—I come for to get . . . He twists, awkward in his squat, to point back to the bench. —When I see for you, small medem, I scare, I wait.

She tells him it's all right, he just didn't want to disturb them, she understands. But Isaac is thinking, He could have said something, over there watching us frenching, the stuffing
gardenboy
. With his big purple knob getting all stiff pro'lly, the cheeky bastard. Should bladey whack him, I should. Can you believe.

Moses says,—I sorry to you, baas. Then goes on saying it so many times that Isaac finally coughs: —Ja, oright. Oright hey. S'enough.

—I can show for. I must to do for you . . . 

He crosses to the Cadillac, reaches under. Isaac bends to see: there's a strap underneath, stitched into the sheepskin. Isaac fingers it. Ja, his matadorian yank would have ripped it, no question.

—Can make like this, Moses is saying.

He unbuckles with grave correctness then turns the cover back by brisk quarter folds. She looks at Isaac and Isaac shakes his head. She says,—That's fine, Moses, put it back now please.

—Yes medem.

—And Moses?

—Medem?

—Mustn't tell anyone. Please.

—Tell?

— . . . About my friend here, Isaac.

—Don't tell my
name
, shit.

She flogs her hand at him: quiet. —Even to Momsy and Dadsy, anyone.

Moses is a small man with a tight-skinned face like a dark plum; one eye has a thick lid. His mouth opens and shuts and the thick eye trembles. —No, never, I never . . . I . . . wait . . . 

He works very quickly and very cleanly to finish the cover. He goes to the door and leans through. Hooks his arm for them to follow.

—Ach, for Chrissake.

—Don't, she says. Do not be nasty hey.

—Me!
I'm
the nasty one!

—Shhh.

She is following and Isaac goes after her. Ahead Moses checks the way, whistles a soft all-clear. At the next turn Isaac pulls her elbow. —Hell's he doing? She plucks loose and shushes him and they go on. Moses scouts them up through the pantry adjacent to the kitchen, through the laundry room and out the back unseen.

In one wall of the courtyard there is a low basement window inset in the bricks, with burglar bars in front and a deep windowsill at the bottom. Moses shows them they can sit back on the ledge as if it's a bench, into the hollow space of the window with the burglar bars against their backs. In here they are out of the sightlines of the windows above and screened by the fig trees to the front. In the dust under the ledge are the marks of many feet and the pinched butts of many a hand-rolled cigarette.

—Gosh I never even knew this was here! says Yvonne.

—He did, says Isaac, scuffing at a butt.

—If someone coming, I will say for you, says Moses, then leaves.

—Oh my gosh, says Yvonne. Oh my gosh this is so nice. So
nice
of him. Isn't it? Oh my gosh isn't he so
sweet
.

She has slipped into the hollow and is patting the hard ledge beside her. Isaac paws the dust with his foot for a while. —Izey wizey, she says. He sits and she pulls his arm across and works in close against him. —We've never been together all snuggly outside have we. We always go upstairs.

—What's so wrong with that?

—We don't always have to do the same thing.

—Right, says Isaac. Thinking: Yes we bladey do, all day forever and ever, the same thing on the soft bed, over and over. Only that.

—This is exciting hey. This is nice?

—Ja, lovely.

But he doesn't like sitting back in the shadow with the windowsill cold under his arse, the cold iron window bars hard against his spine.

He tries to kiss her ear but she wriggles. —Don't pretend.

—Ay?

—Pretend.

—Ach, do me a favour.

—You don't like it here do you.

—I do.

She leans away.

—What?

—No.

—What?

—I loathe it, pretending.

—I'm not pretending.

—I thought you never pretend. That's what I thought of you.

—I don't. You know I don't.

She looks away. He makes a gentle fist with the thumb on top. He looks at the thumb, then he fits the edge of the thumbnail between his front teeth.

She says,—People always want things, it gets me so despondent.

—Ja, Isaac says. Me too.
So
depondent. He clips off a little piece of nail, turns his head and spits at the butts.

She slides away. —Don't.

—So-rry. Jeez.

—I mean pretending. Don't give me pretend words. My whole life is full of enough pretend words. My
friends
. Well, you've seen them. And Momsy and Dadsy . . . 

He leans forward, elbows onto thighs. Another silence. He is looking down at the red dust under his heels, he rubs his palms together carefully, drily. —Oright. Oright.

What he feels now that makes it hard to look at her, to feel her without shying off, is that old sense of her claustrophobia: how it presses on him, like a heavy oilcloth over the mouth and nose, pressing.

—I'm serious, she says.

—I hear you.

—Do you?

He nods to himself. —Oright, you want honestly? Ukay, honestly I'd rather be in your room where it's soft and warm. And I don't like this gardenboy of yours knowing about us and it makes me want to coch up my lunch to think on how he was over there in the corner watching us.