The Lion Seeker (5 page)

 

At the railway bridge a long time passes and then someone comes from the other side to where they are waiting, a woman with vast hips who looks like a maid, with her checkered blanket wrapped around the great belly and a blue doek tied on her head. When she gets close she says: —Mevrou Gitty, hulloh.

—Hello Mama, and how you?

—Oh medem is not so good, business time. My husband he put so bad now also. Who is? Your boy?

—Yes. His name, Yitzchok.

—Hullo, Itziok.

—Yitzchok, this lady is Mama Kelo. Say hello Mama Kelo.

Isaac is shy. He looks down. —Hello.

—Mama, his mother says, today is ten shillings. No more seven and six.

—Heh?

—Ten shillings, ten shillings.

She holds up all her fingers as she is saying this. Mama Kelo seems to sway back from this. Shrinking from this squat wide figure before her, a third of her size, shaking those plump digits.

—Ow! Mama says at last. No no no.

—Yesh.

—Why put for me this? No no.

—I put, Isaac's mother says. She repeats her price. Isaac looks at her: her face is stone, scarred stone. She says,—Mama, if you like you take. Otherwise I go.

—Oh but is too too much. Why is so hard you put for me today? Why is?

His mother doesn't answer. She puts up her chin in a way that Isaac knows well, stretching the scar tissue a little where it runs to the jaw, showing the tendons in her strong neck, and what it means is that she has made up her mind and will not change it, never. —Ten shillings.

This other one huffs and sighs and shifts her huge shoulders. Finally her dark round face dips, she mumbles into her palm.

—Nu? You take or you not?

—I . . . yes.

—Veruh nice. And you have for you this present also.

—Present?

—Dis little doggie here.

— . . . Oh. Is not you boy for this one dog?

—No, no, you take him. Present.

—No medem.

—You take it. Can give it someone by where you are. Nice present. For free, I give.

— . . . I not . . . 

—Take.

They look at each other. His mother so much smaller. But when she pushes her chin up and stretches her pink scar the other woman only sighs and Isaac watches her great bulk deflate, watches her fold herself that much closer to the earth. She pulls out a small purse tucked under the waist blanket. Upends it to tip out coins. Counts off two half crowns, three sixpences, three one shilling pieces, and then, slowly, all the rest in the dulled brass of pennies and little farthings. She holds these out on her palm and his mother takes them and counts them all again, then hands over the bottles. The white pup is looking at Isaac as it is dragged away. It yaps only once, maybe because the hairy string is cutting into its throat. Isaac sees Puppyman in his mind, that long leg swinging, the trembling pup on the wet brick. His mother is staring at him. —Are you cry?

—No, no, I'm not. Not.

Listen, she says. Come walk this way.

They pass under a lamplight then another.

She says: Mama Kelo has a shebeen for them to drink over there where it's not allowed. In the Yards. She can't get brandy in the shop like us. She needs us but we don't need her. Am I a bladerfool not to charge?

Bladerfool: a serious insult of her own. He knows she got it when someone important in the news one time called someone a
bloody fool;
the words were explained to her and soon after she started bladerfooling. The most Stupid of the Stupid is what it means to her—the worst of the worst—and Isaac is already nodding.

Mame stops. Isaac faces her. She puts her warm square palm on his head. Believe me, she also will take everything from us if she could. A nice woman she can be, but give her the chance and she would take and take and leave us with nothing. That's who people are. We have to be strong.

Like the couchers, he thinks, who gnaw at the walls.

His mother hefts in a breath, lets it out slowly, looking away. Isaacluh, Isaacluh. There's a low wall in front of them and she leads him to it. —Zitz.

Sit. She helps him up and he settles before her and she bends, her face coming out of the lamplight. Looking up, it is the scar he sees first. Now her eyes, fixed. She holds his face from both sides so that he can't look away.

I want to say big things to you. It's time. You are nearly in school. But you run all day with Coloureds. You don't even know why you don't have shoes. I want you should be awake. Life is good but it is very hard. Where we are is no playground. Give a look. This is like a jail, but hard work escapes. To live one day in a house far away, quiet and nice, a house with no bond. Who can buy this house? Can you buy this house for your mame?

He opens his mouth but she shakes her head.

Rively is a girl, she'll get married. Your father is too good for this world full of miserable takes. A thousand little biters on every side. You have to be so strong against them. If someone is taking, put him away from you. Someone wants to play with you, remember it's not a game, a playground. You are young and healthy, not like your father. You are the son and what will you do? One day. Tell me.

—Zog mir.

—I will.

—Zog mir.

—Ich vel.

—Zog mir
.

I will buy us a house, Mame. I promise you.

Yes you will. Parasites you don't let klep onto you. You don't listen to crybabies and nochshleppers. People they will try to stop you and be jealous, to trip you. But you go forward and make and do. You don't play with Coloureds and poor rubbishers.

—I won't Mame, I promise.

You don't give to takes.

—Neyn, neyn Mame.

At last she smiles. Half a mouth, half a scar. Two kinds in the world, she says to him.

The Stupids and the Clevers.

The Stupids and the Clevers. And what are you?

I'm a Clever, Mame. I'm your Clever.

—Ot uzay, meiner sheiner, meiner klooger, ot uzay. That's it, my beautiful one, my Clever, that's it . . . 

And when she hugs him this time it's so tight it crushes the breath out of him, fills his head with floating and dizziness. A house for you Mame, I promise, I promise so hard. He squeezes back but his arms are so weak against the warm bulk of her loving self. The dense power of her unmovable being.

 

The next day when he goes out walking he stays away from those certain streets; but a few days after, he passes close to the strip of veld behind Nussbaum's. They are there. His mouth dries. He pretends he doesn't notice their waving or hear their whistles. That Charlie is bouncing up and down and smiling so hard. He turns quickly and he runs the other way, fast as he can, runs home, to his mother.

THOUGH SOMEHOW HE MAKES
it to high school, the way Isaac sees it, him and schools were never meant to mix. Even swotting for his barmy when he had to learn his Torah portion from that Rabbi whatsisname, Saltzenburger, up in the attic on Van Beek Street, he managed to get himself expelled. All he did was glue the old topper's beard to the desk after he'd fallen asleep snoring for, what, the tenth time already? Rabbi's getting paid—supposed to be teaching them izzen he? Ukay, maybe Isaac shouldn't have then screamed the word FIRE into his ear loud as he could. Maybe that was a bit much.

They've said the same thing in all the schools he's passed through, that he always goes too far. They called him Rabies Helger cos of that time he used a chair on Johnny Marks and Stan Allan and the name stuck (well they shouldn't have said what they said about Ma, right?)—Rabies Helger: son of that scarfaced axe lady on Buxton Street. But he didn't mind it so much, he minded more how upset Da got when they kicked him out of Jewish Government and those other two primary schools. Ma, she wasn't so worried. She knows what he is; she's always wanted him to get out and start earning.

Ma is a bit of a whizz genius when it comes to that, always pointing him in the right direction. She it was who noticed that so many boys were constantly playing pinball in the cafis and encouraged his avid researches into the phenomenon till he discovered that Wilson's XXX Strong Mints, filed down with fine sandpaper, would work on the machines just as well as pennies. She got him free envelopes from the Barclays Bank on Smit Street and, for a few weeks, he gave her daily reports on his sales of the little packages, until the Greek cafi owners got sick of finding their machines stuffed with white discs and learned to chase him away and to sniff their clientele for the telltale odour of peppermint dust.

No matter, she had a backup scheme all ready. She had heard how the Slavin boy had learned to make free telephone calls at a tickey box. Isaac bribed Slavin with a toffee apple and found out how to outwit the operator in any public telephone booth just by scratching a copper wire to emulate the sound of dropping coins. As per Mame's suggestion he started selling trunk calls around the neighbourhood, but in two weeks flat everyone knew the method and no one would pay. Then the phone company wised up and the trick wouldn't turn at all.

Her next idea was a trade in counterfeit tram tickets but before that goody could get off the ground, Abel found out what had been going on and gave them both lectures. Ma told Abel he wasn't opening his eyes: the whole world was sliding down and down with the Depression, the few customers they had weren't paying, she was having to feed the family mielie pap and thin gravy almost every night (in case you haven't noticed) which is no good for growing children and their bones, specially, and look at all the boarded-up shops on Beit Street, look at the
White
beggars now . . . This didn't seem to matter to Abel who started waiting for Isaac after school and still does, making him sit down in the kitchen with his books, counselling patience and calm attention to his homework, before limping back to the workshop and hours of tranquil absorption in his own labours. But Gitelle lets him slip out the back door when she can. His bar mitzvah present was a second-hand Raleigh bicycle with wonky wheels, which he's now too big for (what he wouldn't do for a car!) but still uses to pay visits to people who owe them money. He stands there looking sad and hungry and accusing till they give him something, or if they don't he might come back later and put a stone through a window. He shares Mame's view of people who don't pay their debts. Parasites. No-goodniks.

When he can't get out and is forced to sit in the kitchen or the classroom his mind goes out for him. For hour after hour all he'll do is fantasize about automobiles: all the models and all the makes that he doesn't own and has never driven in. A red and black '31 Pierce-Arrow; a new Chevy Roadster, all cream with the neat hood of the leather top down; a big '33 Hupmobile, jet-black with whitewall tires and that long vertical grille—just a beautiful brute of a machine. Or the opposite, a sporty lightweight GM or a racing Talbot tourer, the new '34 Talbot built for pure speed with the engine cooped in that narrow front like the fuselage of an aeroplane. Eventually these automotive cravings lead him to try start up a weekend car polishing business but such manual work doesn't pay well in a market saturated with cheap Black labour. He hangs around some garages in Braamfontein instead, where he fetches tea and they teach him—savage thrill!—how to drive, then even allow him—can you believe?—to park some of the cars.

But when Gitelle finds out he's doing this for no pay she makes him quit. He's being a Stupid. She has a better idea. In this summer heat, specially now that the convertibles have their tops down, how about offering the people exactly what they want? Be close to cars that way. She provides the start-up capital and he invests it all in col'drinks. Bottles of cola and cream soda and fizzy granadilla, Bashew's ginger beer and raspberry. He packs them in tin buckets with chipped ice from the iceman and waits for rushhour traffic to dam up when the robots turn from green to red at the bottom of Harrow Road, wearing a bottle cap opener on a string around his neck. When the sun makes the cars hot enough to sizzle spit, his iced bottles beaded with the sweat of their own coldness begin to sell themselves even at a steep markup. Farther down are the Black boys in their rags pushing copies of the
Star
or the
Rand Daily Mail
as they always have; he's making more cash from his col'drinks in a day than they will see in a month, if that, the Stupids. He smiles at them sometimes and they smile back. He starts to think of hiring a few, of expanding . . . 

The next week the police charge him for non-possession of a municipal street vendor's permit and his (and Mame's) dreams of building a col'drink empire are crushed.

That night another argument in his parents' room: Tutte saying he's too old for this nonsense, he has to be studying seriously now, high school. Mame saying not everyone is like you and can sit all day like a stone. Tutte saying if he wants a good job he better learn to.

Mame makes a guttural sound: Guch! A job! He is more than a job!

Rively shakes her head at Isaac, the two of them listening at the door, her mouth a funnel of twisting pity. She's not wrong: all during this time he's been failing his first year at Athens Boys High School out in Bez Valley (a good White government school, picked for its disciplinary reputation, full of mostly yoks, English Christians, and a few like him from emigrant backgrounds), and he started off already more than a year behind the others. But he can't change; classroom is prison. All those bluh bluh sums and bluh bluh numbers and Greek and Latin names, flower parts and bluh Shakespeare bladey blah.

Nights he sleeps as always on the same folding cot that's unfolded in the workshop at the end of every day, only now he rolls onto his belly and presses his hard prick against the canvas, grinding it there while he thinks of women's bodies. His own has matured fast into first manhood and the bush of red hair at the base of his thing is a thick clump now. If only there were girls at school—it might make it all worth it, he might have a reason more than his father to stay there, to endure.