The Lion Seeker (36 page)

She wrinkles her face. Her eyes turn green as the house lights come on. That other light comes on in his chest, clean and cold and bright. He shivers and kisses her, thinking of the first time he saw her that day at The Castle, moving her mother's art glass, Yvonne (Shookee) on the stairs by the boxes, and then at the garden table with her book of poetry. What a great distance he has covered, ready to propose; but not tonight, next time, at the right moment, almost there.

This feeling of a miraculous achievement is still with him as they kiss and grope afterwards in the dark Citroën. She lets him cover her between the legs with his hand under the skirt over the panties, caressing the soft mound till she starts to shudder and he can feel the wet of it. He slips one fingertip under the edge of the panties and feels the hair and the outer lips of her innermost flesh and her body jerks. She puts her hand over his but she lets him touch her for the longest time yet before slowly easing his arm away.

As he drives back to Doornfontein he is shouting along with the radio in his tone-deaf way, music still meaning little to him but somehow, tonight, it feels good to pretend that it does, like he's a character in a film. This kind of luck only happens to bioscope characters.

He runs into a police roadblock coming down Harrow Road. They wave him through but he slows anyway, to ask what's going on. They don't tell him, wave him into Currey Street with the rest of the diverted traffic. As he turns he sees in his rearview a convoy of trucks coming up. He slows to watch it pass, turning ahead. He sees the heads of people in the back, and bags and suitcases heaped up. Truck after truck goes up, the dark heads nodding in the open air. Farther east past Ellis Park there are more roadblocks. Again the cops won't say why but one makes a crack about sanitation duty. When the clouds shift and the moonlight floods down it shows a scrawl of dust or smoke over the rooftops out toward the railway line. There's a scent of ash.

Later, as he turns into the alleyway he sees a woman on the pavement. After he's parked he walks back around to have another look, make sure she's not a troublemaker. An old Black woman with vast hips, bent over and talking to what he thinks is herself at first but then sees as she comes up is a tall white dog, tied to her wrist with a string. She has bags in a knotted blanket around her, bags in her hands. She's breathing heavily and some blood shines on her face, the back of one hand. Her shoulders work over her hobbled steps, dipping and lifting in the ponderous see-saw manner of the obese. The pale dog watches her, her voice seems angry, the Black words making her tongue knock and click in her working mouth. Another mad shvartzer; Isaac turns away.

In the kitchen he opens a beer and studies the ring. A noise outside makes him step into the yard where he finds the Black woman resting her bundle on their low wall, taking heavy slow breaths and whining slightly between each. The streetlamp shine here shows the blood on her face is from marks like scratches. Above the titanic labouring bust her dress is torn.

He asks her what she's doing here. She lifts her head slowly. He goes toward the gateway in the low wall and the lanky dog steps through it, around from behind the wall, its hairs prickling up over the shoulders, the length of it going stiff as it points its muzzle with the black lips shrivelling from the teeth.

—He's growling at me. You get him out of my yard.

When she doesn't move, he tells her he's serious. —I don't wanna skop your dog hey, but I will if he comes for me.

—You not kicking who is your friend, she says.

—Hey? What you say?

—You mummy. Fetch for her. Can talk.

—Hey?

She lumbers along the wall till she gets to the gateway and she props herself there and bends, touching the dog between his pointed ears. One of these street mutts with no proper collar, wirethin and fearless, its teeth still showing: they don't waste energy barking or even growling much. They carry disease. —He is
your
friend, she says.

Something stops him then. A nameless feeling. —Who are you?

—I want speak you mummy.

—Oh shit, he says. Oh jeez.

—Ja. Ja, is me, she says. Can have some water.

He finds Mame already up, standing in the kitchen with her hand squeezing her nightgown under her throat, as if summoned from sleep by the call of this trundling phantom, this revenant with its canine familiar attached by a string. She's looking through the glass into the moonwashed yard and doesn't even glance at Isaac. Then he thinks that she wasn't asleep at all. Eyes sunken in caverns of bruise, her face around the scar is so tired it's as if the bones behind it have shrunk, new wrinkles have spread like devouring veins. It's been so long since he's taken the time to really look at her that he feels the shock of the change. Mame.

He follows her into the yard, hears her say,—Yes. And vhy you come?

—They brek for us, says this woman whose name, Isaac remembers now, is Mama Kelo.

—Brik?

—Break for our houses. Finish, all finish. So bad.

—Who brik?

—The police, she break.

—Nu? Vot can I do?

—Can put for me. She swallows, pants, the thin dog looking up at her. —Can put for me. Letter.

—Letter?

—Writing say I work for you. Here. Otherwise must go already far. No.

Isaac doesn't need to look at his mother to see the head shaking; he can read it plain in her moonshadow.

—Say I work for you, for maid.

—I don't vunt maid.

—Is okay. Only put for letter to put. I'm go. I'm not stay here. Only letter. Have my son here, in Fietas, otherwise must go so far other place. Nothing there. Bad place.

—And where can you stay here? There's no room.

—Only put for letter. I go. Letter, for show.

— . . . No, his mother says. No.

They are looking at one another, eyes to eyes. Isaac looks at his mame. It's just as it was, years mean nothing. She lifts her chin, stretching the web of scar tissue. Just as it was over there by the rail bridge when she made her take the puppy, like a little lamb it was, now look at it, hard as the streets, all teeth and bristles. She had to pay the brandy price then and she'll have to go now without her letter. When Mame lifts her chin there is no other way.

—I make for you business, says Mama Kelo. Years.

—Is finish. You go now.

—What I do for you, too many years. Only one letter.

—I say no.

She takes Isaac by the arm and draws him back inside. He thinks, But I didn't give her water. Through the kitchen window he watches Mama Kelo slowly gathering up her parcels off the wall, her great bulk. She moves off bent with the weight of her things, the dog with its nose and tail pointing down, moving behind her. She pauses. Looks back at the house and starts to shout. Her strong sudden voice penetrating the walls. Mame rushes through the back door. —I call police for you! You go!

Isaac goes down after her, stops behind his mother in time to see Mama Kelo put down a bag and raise her arm with fingers widespread. She spits deliberate words in another language, the one that is hers, the tongue of this land, seethed up from its red soil, its glinting rocks, ancient. Her eyes swell in her skull, seem to protrude. Her hand passes across his mother, the house, then himself. He feels a heat in his chest and his mouth dries. He waits for his mother to shout, to smash this moment. The heat in his chest becomes choking. Slowly the dark arm falls. She moves off. It is Isaac who ends up taking his mother's elbow this time. Inside, he wants to say it's over. Wants to hug her and break back through to what was before, when he was little and she was there with him; but in silence she turns her back and closes her door.

 

On his way to work early, seeing the police roadblocks are gone, he takes a detour through the empty Sunday streets. At the end of the road of compacted dirt he finds that the Yards are no longer. All is flat, a field of scattered sheets of corrugated iron, their rusted backs strewn like monstrous autumn leaves. White children are picking over things, charred rubbish piles still smoulder, a few adults stand looking.

He parks and gets out, trying to remember if this is where he played as a boy. No, the Coloured Yards are farther south. Skots, Nixie, Charlie and Davey—where might they be now? Auntie Peaches and Auntie Marie and Auntie Sooki. He thinks of those trucks the night before. Thinks of Mama Kelo and feels the choking heat beginning in his chest again and muscles it down.

There's a pair of oldster Jewishers nearby, a round fat one he thinks works at Rippleman's hardware and a tall thin one with a hairy wart on his chin. He wanders up to them. —Shit hey, he says. All gone.

Like a storm came, says tall.

The time was passed years ago already, says fat.

What do you mean? Isaac says, switching languages to theirs.

Fat has a smug and oily smile. What blinder man couldn't see it was coming for how many years. These kaffirs and half-breeds and coolies and all their drek should have been gone long ago.

—Geven menschen!
shouts a voice behind. These were people. These were human beings.

Isaac turns and sees three of the Bernstein boys, Yankel in back of his two brothers. Yankel half lifts a hand as if ashamed to be greeting. The older Bernstein is pale and his lips twitch.

Human beings? says fat. He spreads out upturned palms. What is he making speeches about human beings, the madman. Those who shit in their living room, they should have houses like Whites? Give them yours.

Leave them, says thin. Can't talk to Communists.

But fat seems inclined to lecture: his arms lift, along with his volume. Listen, you Red know-alls, council's been trying how many years with this. It needed cleaning.

But the grease, says thin.

Who was greasing? Isaac asks.

Who? says the older Bernstein. Exactly! Our own, our own. Bastard landlords squeezing misery for profits.

Lies, lies! says fat. Not us!

No, says thin. He's not so wrong. That Weisser was one. And Greenburg.

What are you, commie in the cupboard also? A man can't be allowed to make a living? They were only too grateful to live here, you think they wanted to leave? Ha! The police had to
drag
them out, and you tell me was so bad. Then why were they crying? They can always go live in the bush like they always did . . . 

The Bernsteins start shouting. Arms flail and spittle flies. Yankel steps around and shakes Isaac's hand. They walk off, the argument getting louder behind them: four Jews, nine thousand opinions.

—How you keeping? says Yankel. I never see you.

—I'm working a lot.

—Ja, Rively says you got a business going on and all now.

—Ja, but keep that under the hat, ay. I don't reckon my boss would be too happy if he knew.

—Hey, joo ever talk to old man Blumenthal? About that Dusat thing?

—No, says Isaac.

—I could organize for you if you like.

—No.

Yankel looks at him for a moment, then stops and turns to the field of wreckage. —They'll stick up new buildings, be like this never happened.

—You know where they took them all?

—Down south, I heard. That township there, the locations getting so huge, they stick em all in and pretend they don't exist.

Isaac nods. —Oright, well, I gotta go to work.

—Hang on a sec.

—What?

—I just wanted to say . . . tell you . . . 

—Whatzit?

Slowly, two mysterious pink blotches materialize, one on his cheek, the other on his neck.

—What is it man?

—Like about your sister, I want you to know, I'm like serious about it hey.

It takes a few seconds for Isaac to understand, then he half laughs, half snorts. —That's your indaba, mate. Don't get me all shlepped in. Long as you treat her good.

The blotches keep spreading, as if groping to meld with one another. He makes an odd sideways ducking motion of the head. —Ja that's what I'm tryna say. It's what I want . . . 

—It's oright, says Isaac. I get it.

He says goodbye and walks off, looks back once to see Yankel scampering back to his brothers. Another poor shmock in love. Join the bladey club, my mate. Look at him go. We don't have a chance, once they get hold of your kishkes with those feelings we might as well sign surrender with the female right here and now. Overs-kadovers.

FOR THE FIRST TIME
, it's hard for him to concentrate on what Yvonne's saying to him, up in her room; inside he's vibrating with his proposal plans. She won't be around this weekend but they make a date for the following, the last of the month.

His head is so full of how he's going to break the question to her that when he stops at the Permanent Building Society to draw money he doesn't at first understand why the teller keeps saying sorry. He needs the money to give to Silas for the wages.

—Sir, this account, it's been closed.

—Whatchoo mean?

She checks the file. —Mr. Bleznik closed it out last Friday, the fourteenth.

—He what?

He drives fast out towards Brakpan, the East Rand. Hugo's not around at the Reformatory and when he finds Silas he has to apologize. The money's coming, he tells him. Silas does not have to say what is in his eyes, the slight tremor there is enough. This is a man who left his former job—
I have so loyal for Mr. Morris
—because Isaac persuaded him to, and now after a few months things are already looking shaky. He'll never be able to go back to work at Morris Brothers again, that's certain, and good jobs are rare and he has five children and two wives depending on him back home in Natal.

Isaac works with his jaw clenched that night, tearing into the wrecks as if they are the guts of an enemy. On the way home, near midnight, he stops at a tickey box and calls Bleznik, wakes him. —What the bladey hell's going on man? And where were you tonight?