The Lion Seeker (31 page)

At the bottom Avrom steps to the rock and puts his palm against it. It's only a rock but Isaac has a dread of approaching, of even being here while Avrom is, as if he's seeing something he should not. Avrom turns, beckons. It's Isaac's chance to touch. He uses both hands. The day's saturated heat eases from the rough surface. The last of the sun is flush against one face of it, this rock that is shaped in two ungainly humps like mating elephants, with a great forked split down the middle.

Avrom sits down with his back to the rock, takes off his hat and closes his eyes in his sunflushed face. Isaac sits at his shoulder. Keeping his eyes open would be his choice but the glare is so strong he closes them too and in the warm darkness hears his cousin say,—I want to tell you what happened to me.

—Yes.

He waits, feeling the unmoving mass of this earth rock against his spine.

Now Avrom's voice dips into Jewish, dips deep: vibrations: the melancholy body music of their shared tribe, belly and heart and throat, the juicy-mouthed winding rhythms of family, words of womb and kitchen. He grasps in this blind moment why Avrom kept asking if he understood Jewish—because he didn't mean literally, he'd meant did he
understand
, did he
feel
, truly and fully; and he thinks, Of course I do, this is mother's tongue, home soil, heart's blood. It's the wind off Lake Sartai where he was born, snatching plumes of woodsmoke from the chimneys over the thatched roofs, the slanted timbers. That is his forestland also, his frozen rivers. Six, seven centuries of Jewish bones rest in that village soil over there, no matter what else he might try to tell himself . . . Avrom saying, It was a few years after the war when I was still just a boy that I started dreaming about Africa for the first time, about the lions of Africa . . . 

Yes, says Isaac, listening with all of his being.

PEOPLE IN SKOPISHOK HAD SEEN
aeroplanes during the war years before, but those had passed over like insects crawling the high blue dome of the sky. So when a flying machine swooped and growled low enough over the village that the faces of the pilots could be read under caps of leather with their earflaps and their goggles, there was a panic. Women grabbed for the children. Howling dogs ran with tails curled under. Men fetched sticks.

Avrom Suttner was fifteen years old and was first at the dock to watch the long-winged machine with the taut X-shapes of the wires between the wings slowly lower itself onto Lake Mituva, the waddling fuselage breasting the waters. By the time it had drifted in, a crowd was behind him. On the biplane, a man climbed over the windshield to balance on the nose, kneeling with a rope. Nearing, he flicked it underhand. It was Avrom who tied it up while the vessel bumped the dock fenders and the crowd helped the man across. He stripped his gloves first, not hurrying, then the leather cap, the goggles last. The skin of the face was suntanned and healthy. His moustache was rich, his eyebrows thick. He stuffed his gloves and goggles into the cap, handed them to Avrom: —Nu, ingeler, vos daynks du?

What do you think, young one?

The sound of Jewish out of his mouth turned Avrom into a dumb pillar. He took the cap as the Jews on the dock pressed in, shouting. Avrom heard the pilot's name then: Tannenbaum. Oyzer Tannenbaum. Hands flapped against him, as if needing to contact the dubious reality of his form. Men shouting to others at the back, all the voices coalescing to a sudden cheer. Oyzer, Oyzer Tannenbaum. He's back!

They wanted to lift him up onto their shoulders but he made them clear a path for there was another pilot climbing over the windshield. They watched him crawl forward and stand up on the nose, balancing well, long thin legs wearing khaki trousers and the same leather greatcoat as Oyzer. On the dock Nachman Kaplan shouted: —Nu, Oyzer, ver iz?

So Oyzer? Who's this now?

There were other shouts but then as if quashed like a snuffed candle, all voices ceased. Oyzer was grinning. The man on the machine had removed his cap. As he shook his head long caramel layers kept spilling out and lapping down over the shoulders. Now the man shook again, becoming a woman with beautiful eyes.
A woman in trousers
. The shock of it like a double slap that stung then heated the cheeks. Mrs. Katzenellenbogen grabbed her boy, Mendele, and tried to cover his eyes. Oyzer had out his hand and the woman took it and he helped her across onto the dock.

When the crowd started moving off with the two aviators, Avrom called to Oyzer, lifting the cap. What should I do? Oyzer shouted back: Look after for me.

—Ich vell, said Avrom. I will.

At their return two hours later Avrom was still there, breathing hard through a bloodied nose, his left eye fat and purple, his shirt torn. He came forward to Oyzer, took the cap and goggles out of his pocket, returned them to their owner's hand.

I looked after it for you like I said. No one touched. Not one finger.

 

Inside Tzvi's Inn only three people were allowed to sit at the big corner table while Tzvi pushed the rest back, the open windows full of craning faces. At the table were Oyzer and the trousers woman, Oyzer telling Avrom how he had grown up in this tiny place and gone away before the war, to Africa. The woman was not his wife. She was tanned and had big hands and those glistening eyes and all that hair and she spoke no Jewish. She was from Africa too; her name was Coleen. There were beautiful women over there and there were human beings with skin as black as coal dust who walked around with leopard skins and spears, there was an animal called a giraffe that had a neck as long as a tree and a heart as big as a suitcase in order to pump the blood up that long neck to its tiny eyes and brain. Oyzer had made a fortune there in that mystic country in only a few years, and claimed he would make a second when he went back. In that part of the world (he said winking), it rained gold and it hailed diamonds. All you needed was a bucket and a will. Oyzer's own fortune was rooted in the ostrich, a giant bird whose expensive plumage made hats and other accoutrements of beauty for the women of the world's richest countries. This was a bird that could kill you with one kick. A bird that did not fly (unlike Oyzer!) but was ridden by men like a horse, the riders tucking their legs under the stubby wings. He had so much land that to survey it all he had learned to fly and had purchased a flying machine (not a Lohner like this one outside on the lake, but a De Havilland Tiger Moth). He also owned six automobiles and a stable full of Arabian horses. He had one house on a beach and another on a mountain. The air in Africa was pure and dry, never cold or damp, and it made you strong in your body and healthy in your thoughts. When you hear about America, New York or Buenos Aires, throw that idea in the rubbish, young one. London, New York, these are not places for a human being, they are giant kennels full of wild starving dogs in human skins all biting one another. In Africa there is limitless space and freedom and a Jew is not a Jew, a Jew is a White man. And in Africa the White man is king. Labour is cheap and the country is rich. What more could you want but to go to Africa?

He made Avrom so excited that it was hard for him to sit still at the table. His knees jiggled. He wanted to get up and pace, to run. It was like an itching fever.

Oyzer said: I like you, I see my own younger face in yours. He gave Coleen a kiss and a squeeze that made Avrom's cheeks hotter still. Oyzer dropped into a whisper: Women like her are there for the taking. Gold and land.

Oyzer had been drinking Tzvi's brandy, he too was flushed. This day was a triumph of which he had dreamed for a long time, his return to Skopishok. And he had
swooped from the sky
. Had delivered enough money to rebuild the synagogue, refurbish the school, open a new poorhouse for the needy. His funds would pay the living expenses of travelling yeshiva students who'd do nothing but study Torah in his name, day and night, for years to come, accruing good deeds for his immortal soul. His name would be engraved on copper placards, would be called out in shul whenever the Torah was read. Generations yet unborn would sing of him, his portion of paradise in the world-to-come secured beyond question.

He leaned forward, banging his glass. Avrom, he said, you come to Africa and I will give you a job, I guarantee.

Truly?

I'll write it down!

He took out a card with English written and scribbled on the back, signed it.

He said: I will take you hunting lions.

Lions!

Yes my friend, lions. Not like King David who used that sling when he was a boy, but with proper rifles. The big Winchester like that President Roosevelt. The Remington three seventy-five.

And he told how they would ride horses in the veld looking for the lions to flush: not hard to find, for though the dry country was huge, the lions were numerous upon it. And lions are proud and do not run away. You get off the horse and you walk in. If you wound him, he will hide in the brush and wait for you and charge when you come. When they charge their ears are out and their mane is flared and the tail is straight and stiff and whips like a cane. Their claws rip dust as they come out of a sandstorm of their own making like some errant shard of heat lightning. A lion will break your neck with one swat, crunch your skull like an eggshell. Hundreds of pounds of muscle packed on a frame of bones like steel—the god of big cats. But they have dead yellow eyes. Eyes that Oyzer has looked right into, Oyzer saying they were so fast they would cover the distance to you in the space between heartbeats. You have one shot. You miss, you die. It happened one time, he said, that I shot him so close in the brain I could smell his hot breath and feel his spit on my face, and he died but still knocked me flying.

Avrom laughed, Oyzer cocked his head. You don't believe?

I do I do.

Look at this. He unbuttoned and dipped a hand into his shirt, brought out a pale curved shape like a stone on the end of a leather necklace. Avrom was allowed to touch: not a stone but just as hard yet smoother. Slowly he recognized it as a claw.

That's him, said Oyzer.

It was the same as a house cat's, differing only in scale and not substance, like a needle compared to a chisel. Handling it, the raw force and size of the beast was imprinted in Avrom's chest, his guts. His blood was charged and he knew he wouldn't sleep that night. Africa, he thought.
Africa!

 

 . . . After a time, Avrom's voice in the sundrenched dark, eyelids lit by the orange solar fire, asking Isaac this question: What is it that makes men do things?

Isaac mumbles. Don't know. Money.

Not money, not land, not women, not children, not anything outside. What makes a man want something is a picture inside of himself.

A picture?

A picture so clear in your mind. That's what I had after Oyzer Tannenbaum left the village. Pictures. A picture of the lion hunting. A picture of the flying machine, and me as the pilot. A picture of a woman with big tanned hands and a wild laugh. Those I had, plus a signed guarantee in my pocket; but I didn't know it was worth less than toilet paper because once I got here I couldn't even wipe my arse with it. It was that worthless.

He didn't—

Didn't even want to know me when I landed, he had sudden deafness and sudden weak memory. Avrom who? What? The piggish crook. I think Oyzer Tannenbaum is dead now. I hope so. I heard a story he died in an aeroplane crash. If there's some lesson in that I'm too thick to learn it. Lessons. When I got here I found no such a thing as a diamond rain; no easy ways at all. Nobody called me a king, White, Black or Coloured. But before I came it was that picture in my head that had me like a fever. A picture of a lion, a charging monarch of a lion. But that was not how he looked, my first one, when I finally put my eyes on him. It was like the end of a dream, but it was also the start of another one, different . . . 

 

Avrom telling how when he started out at the diggings all he had was a half-blind mare and a cart to smouse with, to go around selling varied goods to the prospectors. One night he got lost, ran out of water. Thirst swelled his tongue. He rode past a great rock, had a feeling like a voice inside. He stopped and looked into a crack in the rock and there found a hollow full of rainwater. So he made camp. In the night as he sat by his fire a shadow untouched by moonwash moved on the rock, moving slowly down, and his mare began to snort and pull against her tether. Then he heard it: that forced groaning that climbed to a barking cough, and the trickling noise in its heavy breathing between each roar, a sound like a stick being dragged across the hollow rails of an iron fence.

When it came to the level of the firelight he saw it was an old tom with the heavy black mane of a desert lion. He favoured one of his back legs and Avrom could see his ribs and knew he was injured and alone and hungry. He could smell the rotmeat stench the lion gave off, his wound and the carrion in his fangs that he must have been surviving on, and the wave of it was so potent it brought the acid gorge of Avrom's fear to the back of his throat.

I had a decision to make (Avrom says): get away and leave my horse for the lion to make his supper or to try and stop him. I didn't have a rifle, not even a good sharp knife. But there was a long branch of firewood on the ground and I picked it up. This lion was watching me with gold eyes. Never will I forget his eyes in the firelight. I lifted the branch and I put it to my shoulder, here, like a rifle. You see, I knew old lions know men and their rifles, and what rifles can do. So I aimed that wood at him and I went forward. He looked at me and he roared again. I could have run but I kept on. Found something deep in me to do it. I even started roaring back. Listen. A lion takes what he wants. Nobody gives a thing in this world. Be a lion or be a mare—it comes down to our decision. The rest is commentary. Understand?

Isaac digests this, silent. Then: What happened?

I went up to him. A few feet. Shouting, roaring. Last second, he flinched. He jumped away and went running back up over the rock. I stayed up all night by the fire but he never came back. In the morning when I looked at the rock I said one day I will own this place, this land. I was different from then on. And here it is.