The Lion Seeker (27 page)

No.

Yes. Listen: Hugo tells them how these farmers would love to get the wrecks off their land, only towing costs too much. So he offered to do it for a price they couldn't say no to.

—A loss leader, he says. I reckon they were laughing behind their hands. They caught a Jew! But I'm the one who's getting a little something to cover my supply costs. And a contract isn't enforceable less money changes hand, and I got down payments on them all! You see how there's the best part. I've taken these contracts to the finance firms and I factored them for my capital. Enough for a down payment on a plot with a building in the East Rand and to put for the trucks on hire purchase. Man, I'm ready to move on this thing!

His excitement has come in a rush of English that Rively has to explain to Abel and Mame while Isaac toys with a fork, watching his fingers.

Yes, Hugo has capital assembled. He has his property organized, his trucks. He is shining up. And here he has come to offer the opportunity to shine up with him.

Rively is the first one to rise, she's late for the political meeting, Yankel will be worried. Isaac glances at her, her voice has changed. —Mr. Bleznik, I'm sure you'll do very well out of it if it comes war, God forbid. While other men go fighting to keep you safe.

Hugo's smile escapes blemish. —Why, thank you, my dear.

Abel is next. He limps around behind Hugo, curves one of his long-fingered hands over Hugo's shoulder. I want to wish you a good Sabbath and much success, but for an
inveshtment
, I'm sorry to say—

—Neyn, Mr. Helger, ich zooch nit fur kayn investment.

I'm not looking for an investment.

—Ah vos?

He doesn't want our money, says Mame. He wants Isaac to come work for him.

Not for, Hugo says in Jewish.
With
. He looks at Isaac. —I'm offering a piece of the business. A share. A partnership.

Partnership. Mame knows the word.

Abel's mouth bends down, his chin sways. —I don't shinks so. Vot you shinks, Yitzchok?

Isaac has been making that fork cartwheel over and back. —Hu uh, he says. I am an apprentice, class A. And I don't like all this jawing about war. Not ganna be any war.

—Dat's it. Dat's it, my boy. A champion.

Mame's face doesn't twitch; it hardens like plaster. The scar turns slowly livid. Abel says good night, he is tired and will be at shul early in the morning, hard praying to be done. He limps away and Isaac doesn't look up from the busy fork, not once.

 

In the night, summer rain eases onto the corrugated iron roof of number fifty-two Buxton and a droplet worms through one of the rusted scabs in the roof and falls onto the cheek of Isaac Helger asleep on his canvas cot. He lies there in the sweet weakness of a black sleep still clinging and he listens to the whispering of the rain. It will be bad with his mother in the morning. There are certain lines of tension that have been pulling for a long time in her and in him and there will be a break in the morning, he knows this as surely as he knows by the feel of his tapping hammer when a dent in the steel curve of a broken vehicle is about to pop out clean. He slides under into the dreams again and is dreaming of working on a car in the clanging shop when it turns so loud that it forces him out of his dream and he opens his eyes to find the workshop brimming with pale first light and the roof and the walls and the windows rattling and thudding and scratch-noising with countless little impacts like the scurrying feet of some pestilent invasion.

He goes to the front door and opens it and feels a rush of cool air in the sudden staccato blare of louder noise. The white hailstones are hitting the street and the other roofs like juggler balls. African hail the size of golf balls, the white balls bouncing off the asphalt and veering off the cars and appearing to dance on the rooftops as if the rooftops are vibrating. A man runs with a newspaper spread over his head. In the gutters the collected hailstones drift like paint chips and heap up on the drains. He puts out his hand and gets his palm stung then catches one and puts it into his mouth, presses its cold hardness to his palate. The water has a chemical taste. Gold mine water, he thinks.

Later in the kitchen he cups a hot mug of tea to his lips and says goodbye to Abel and Rively off to shul. It's him and Mame now, her in her slippers and her nightgown keeping her back to him. He has a vague need for a cigarette that he quashes. He puts down the mug and walks to the counter and back, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. —Ma. I wanna ask you summin.

She doesn't answer. He opens his mouth to say, Ma, can you look at me please, can you just do that? Then he sees through the window over the sink down into the open rubbish bin outside. On top of the old tins and the potato skins and dappled over with the white nuggets of the hailstones are fanned out the broken stems of the strelitzias. The rest takes a moment to recognize: the maroon pollen fluff of the shredded proteas, the scraps of the wilted almost black petals of the ruined daisies, the rose petals torn to bits. Just throwing them out wasn't good enough; had to be ripped on top of it. He looks at it and he feels it in the belly, low down. He sees his wide-eared face in the glass looking down on the floral carnage, the reeking farshtunkene rubbish, looking through himself at it. Oright. Don't give her any bladey satisfaction. Don't you let her see a thing in your face.

She's finished with the sink and starts to leave the room. He moves past her and closes the door and stands in front of it. She lifts her chin at him: the stretched scar turning livid. Then she turns around and heads for the backyard door.

—Where you going? Fetch your chopper?

That stops her.

In Jewish: Get your axe and come and get my hands.

She looks at him and he holds up his right hand and chops at it with the edge of his left. Then it won't be able to do my
job
.

You like to hurt your mother, she says.

—Ja, that's me. Stupid me. I'm king of the bladey fools.

What's happened to you Isaac?

—No Ma, it's you.

She shakes her head. Touches the buried pouches under her eyes, sad eyes now. Isaac, my little Isaac.

I'm not little anymore, Mame.

Then why do you talk like a baby child? You get an offer from Bleznik and no, like a child you want to better play with your hammers instead.

—I'm going out.

Yes, go. The truth is hard.

He stands hunched in the doorway, his neck shivering. Just cos you don't understand doesn't mean I'm not proud of what I do. All you care about is what you want.

She snorts. Is that what you think?

Ma—

Is that what you think, it's for me?

A house, a house, a house. Yes for you! You and your piggish house!

He shouldn't have said it. Now he has to stand and watch while his mother who is shorter than him, his squat scar-faced little mother, standing there in her nightgown, his mother who never cries, slowly gets moisture in the eyes above her mutilated cheek.

He bites his lip and hits the door jamb with the heel of his palm hard enough to jar him to the shoulder. Then he goes towards her but she holds out her own palm.

—I'm sorry, Ma. I shouldn't have.

His mother presses a dishcloth to her face. There is only one thing that I live for, Isaac. Our family.

—I know, Ma. I'm sorry.

We are here but where are my sisters, Isaac, your uncles and nephews and nieces?

Isaac gnaws on his lips, swallows. It helps a little but still he has to bring the crook of his arm to the bridge of his nose, blotting.

They are my dreams if I manage sleep. More than your hammers. To bring them safe. You don't know what war is. We need money for this, real money. And with Bleznik comes a chance.

—No, Mame, not true. Can't be done anymore. There's a law now, the Aliens, you know it.

She gives him a quick knife-sharp look. You let me worry about that! Here you have a chance for real money we can use!

Isaac shakes his head, touching his eyes, looking down. —Bleznik. Come on. Remember last time, pushing that Miracle drek. I came back without a penny.

Yes, that didn't work. So? You don't think
this
idea is good?

He grimaces, his head see-sawing, conceding. But he keeps on not following her into the language of backhome, keeping the aural distance that marks the division of this country between them, how he belongs to it in a way she never could: —Maybe it is, ja. But Ma, I don't want you to get your hopes all up.

Don't worry about me!
You
should try. You! You can only try. That's all that I am asking. You want to go back to your job after, then go. But now is this chance from God.

He keeps shaking his head.

For your family.

He goes into the other room and she follows. He turns: —You didn't have to throw them out in the rubbish.

—Ah vos?

—I bought you them for a present. For you, Ma. For you.

Her face crimps, a bitter look. Ach, better keep such little presents for your girlfriend.

His turn now to be stopped, at the front of the workshop. —My what?

Yes, yes, and it's true it's a goyisher girl isn't it. A fancy one.

—Who told you this?

Nobody has to say. You going round like a dreamwalker. You think this goyish girl will fix everything but you don't know the goyim. What they do to us in the end. Never trust anyone but your own, Isaac. Family.

—Ma.

You have forgotten what you promised me all your life.

He starts to pace, hands on his hips, like someone walking off pain. —Who told you about her? Was it him, was it Bleznik?

She shrugs.

—I'll skop him in his fat belly, says Isaac.

It doesn't matter who.

—It's a secret, he says, his voice twisting. Another bladey secret. I'm sick a your bladey secrets!

He picks up the cashbox and shakes it at her.

What are you doing?

Now he has the box in a headlock with one hand and he's stabbing it with the forefinger of his other, his voice lifting and at last thrusting back into the intimacy of Yiddish. In here, in here, isn't it, all your secrets that you won't tell anyone. Uh? True? Do I lie? You heard about a goyish girlfriend, well I heard about
this
, yes!

And his hand, his angered demon hand, jumps of its own will to his chin and pokes there.

Mame makes a noise—
oosh
—that is the sound of someone being elbowed in the belly. She sags against a workbench.

He drops the cashbox back. There, it's done now.

When he looks up her face is like chalk, her face too has sagged. He watches her move slowly away, hears the door of her room close, softly but solidly.

 

He goes out and walks in the washed streets where steam is already beginning to lift as the sky clears. He needs a drink. He still needs a cigarette. It gives him pain to ignore these needs and the pain is good. He feels it would be good and satisfying to drive a steel nail into his gum or to scratch flesh from his forearm with a wire brush till it runs.

At home, Mame's door is still shut but he can hear her shifting around inside, thumping. He knocks very gently. He expects the door to open a crack and to see half of her chalk face, her sad eye. He must apologize from his heart, he must explain everything.

The door swings wide and Mame is there in a clean pressed skirt and a good blouse, with her hair clipped down. Her handbag dangles from the crook of her left arm and in her other hand she is holding the cashbox by the handle.

Can you borrow a car from your work? Otherwise I want you to go to the Altmans' and ask them for their Austin.

Mame?

Me and you—we're going for a trip.

What about Tutte and Rively?

I left for him a note, don't you worry. We'll be back by tonight. Tomorrow morning latest. Go and get the car.

Mame?

Hurry quickly now. It's time for this. Past time.

 

 

 

 

Part Two

AFTERWARDS, PARKED IN FRONT
of the Standard Bank, nine o'clock in the morning with a little dew still evaporating at the bottom of the windshield, and yellow-beaked birds peeping and cawing in a nearby palm tree, Mame asks him if he understands, and he can only shake his head. She has the cashbox on her lap and she unlocks it and lifts out the cash tray. He watches her put the bank savings book back into an envelope, down amongst the secret papers. Five minutes ago he was with her inside the Standard Bank with its cool marble floor deserted, the two of them the earliest customers already waiting as the manager unlocked the door. He watched Mame use her bankbook from the cashbox to obtain eighty-five pounds, two shillings and threepence in cash, the lady behind the wicket counting it out twice because Mame wasn't happy with the first time. Draining the bankbook account of every penny so that they can be on their way, except that Isaac still has no idea where to.

Now Mame—calmly, slowly—is showing him the secret papers. There are letters, many letters (his old suspicions are right about that); there are her and Abel's immigration documents from years ago; there are copies of title deeds; copies of Lithuanian citizenship documents; of birth certificates for her family in der haym; of all their passports.

It's their lives all here. Everything. Now you understand?

Yes.

Did you steal a look into my things here?

I would never do that, Mame. How could you even ask?

She doesn't answer, bends around to put the cashbox in the back as it was before, under a blanket. He looks forward while she works at this, grunting a little. Then she says, So you talk about me behind my back. Gossip. Your own mother.

He starts to say I didn't, but there's no point. She's sitting back level in her seat now, neither of them looking at each other. After a time she says, Tell me what it is you think that you know about your mother.