The Lion Seeker (26 page)

She laughs. His head jerks.

He studies her, but the laughter is real and bright, a new mood just like that. This strangeness of girls, it's like clouds that keep shifting.

—Serious Ize, serious Isaac, she says, rubbing his back. So grumpy and wumpy. So dead serious about life. Deacon Isaac.

—Hey watch it, I'm a Jew.

—A Jewy poo. Deacon Ize the Jewy poo.

He wriggles against her. —You tell me you want honest then you laugh me out.

She opens her mouth like a clown. —She does what?

He just shakes his head while she giggles. —You want more truth, I can tell you my arse hurts on this thing. My nutsack is ganna freeze and snap off like a ice cream stick.

She snorts, breaking the giggle. —This? Mate, this doesn't even define as cool, never mind actual cold. You should go to Switzerland in ski season.

—I should hey. Ja well maybe next season when there's a special on.

—Oh Isaac.

— . . . You really been to Switzerland?

She nods.

—I can't even try imagine.

—Verbier is one of Da's faves, it's near Montreux on Lake Geneva. Momsy adores Montreux. And it
is
divine. There's this castle where Lord Byron signed his name on the wall and you can touch it. And the mountains are right on the lake with snow on top and mist around and they give you hot chocolate in these big bowls, with cream that floats. The cold makes your nose feel—

Isaac's looking past her, to the side: it's Moses jogging back. What now?

—Hulloh hulloh, sorry sorry. He has a blanket; inside it is wrapped a bottle and an opener.

—Oh my gosh how lovely, how lovely and thoughtful, Moses. But where did you get this? His smile shows big white teeth and very pink gums with wide gaps at the back. —Is from me, my room.

—You shouldn't have!

But he's already moving off, bobbing his head low. —Because me, I'm too sorry, he says. Now I keep my eye for you.

—Look at this! she says to Isaac.

He takes the bottle, watching Moses disappear, then looks at it in his hand, the label. —It's milk stout, he says. S'like kaffir beer. They love this stuff hey, but they not allowed to buy it. I seen okes at the bottle shop get it for them.

She takes it back. —I don't care what, it's sweet of him, oh it's so
sweet
.

—He probably all scared what'll happen if we tell on him, spying on us all sick like. He's caught such a skrik he reckons the cops ganna come arrest his arse.

— . . . God but you say some horrible things.

He looks quickly at her and the full mouth has compressed to a tight point. The female has changed. The female cloud is a new shape. She hates you now but don't panic, just be still and it'll pass like any cloud shadow does. Gently he lifts the bottle and the opener from her, levers off the tin cap. Her curiosity brings her face down to sniff the sweet yeasty tang. He nudges the bottle neck at her mouth; she won't take any so he has a swallow. He groans, shuts his eyes. —Ah so good, nothing like it.

—I thought you said it was just for Africans.

—And for Jews too, did I forget to say. Commie ones specially.

—Haw haw.

But she takes the bottle and has a nip. They pass it back and forth. The bittersweet taste of the dark milk stout makes a warmth in his belly and chest. After a while she keeps it from his hand. —No more for you, working man.

He smiles. The female has shifted. The female has changed her shape and mood again. They spread the blanket on the windowsill and sit on its warm padding. He decides it best not to say that he is glad it is not a blanket of Moses's, full of fleas and lice and whatnot, no, it's a nice White blanket that he's brought them from the proper linens cupboard in the house, fresh and clean. Now comes a feeling of warmth from the blanket and the heat from their young bodies close against one another while around them the shade is cool and a soft breeze brushes at their faces. As he sits he feels the light come on inside his chest, white and piercing, filling him.

—Yvesy.

—Yes.

—Why am
I
secret?

—Secret?

—You talk about pretending but why can't anyone see us together? Your people.

She makes a guttural noise that to him means, Don't be insane. She says: —Oh you want to bring a young man into the house with you after school? Certainly darling, no problem there at all. Take him up to your room. Absolutely.

She's giggling hard.

— . . . Yvesy.

—What?

—I mean you not embarrassed of me, are you?

—Don't talk silly.

—Really?

She puts her cheek on his shoulder. —Don't talk silly, silly Isaac. Deacon Isaac. Deacon worrypot Isaac silly talker.

So strange this is real, he thinks as he feels her shift against him like a cat. How afterwards it'll just be like a dream he's had, he'll be back at work in the clanging and the shrilling. You can't hold on to anything. —Don't pretend, he hears himself say. Don't you pretend with me.

—Never ever, she says softly into his neck.

—Then how about I come to the front door one of these days hey? Proper. No pretending. No sneaker.

—Hey?

—No more sneaker.

—That's right, he says. Only straight and proper.

—You want to come to the front door, ding dong.

—Straight and proper.

Her breath is hot on his skin. He closes his eyes.

—Yvonne Linhurst, he says. Will you go on a date with me? A real date.

He feels her eyelashes brushing his skin, then she moves against him and her lips touch his ear. —Yes I'll go, she says. I'll go with Isaac, I will. Straight and proper on a real date.

—Ding dong.

From around the corner of their blanketed nook there comes a low soft whistle, pitched sharp: their warning. Giggling, juggling the blanket and the bottle of stout, they hurry to get inside and upstairs.

NIGHTFALL COMES SO LATE NOW
, Blacks have time to stand on hot Doornfontein corners after work, trading loud voices, gambling with worn cards, laughing. The air smells of cooking. Isaac Helger stops at Fleishman's to buy flowers.

From the buckets full of long stems he chooses roses and then he discards the non-perfect one by one. He doesn't need to ask prices because his pocket is full of cash; it was his name that came up at work for the kitty this month. He chooses the most expensive—proteas—and then discards the proteas and then decides to get the proteas after all, with lots of strelitzias and daisies and then, what the hell, white and pink roses also. Lovely. He doesn't like the pattern of the fancy paper. He makes Fleishman get another kind from the back. These are the first flowers he has ever bought, this gift for his mother. The outcome of a struggle between offending her sense of economy—because flowers are frivolous, useless—and doing something nice with his bonus to try to break this dragging mood of hers, for it is beginning to alarm him, no, is alarming him already, even more than he can admit to himself. Walking up Buxton Street, he burps whisky fumes into his left fist, his right hand holding the cone of pretty flowers out before him like a torch, perfectly upright and never squeezing too hard.

A sound makes him start to look and there's a shape in the door at number forty at the edge of his eye: the male bulk of it, the cruel watching. He keeps walking. Behind him reverberates the long rasping note of a big man hawking up dark slime from deep inside then the plop of it spat hard onto asphalt. There's a word spoken that he does not hear. It's possible to muscle your ears shut, a feeling like holding your breath.

 

Friday evening means Abel and Rively have left for shul already and it's also the reason he came home early, leaving the okes at the Great Britain Hotel to argue over the social acceptability of sideburns. When he steps in through the front door he finds his mother coming toward him wearing her good dress, the white one, with her dark ginger hair wetted and combed and clipped flat. He holds out the flowers. Both hands. —For you, Mame. Then he waits.

She only nods and motions, moves back to the kitchen.

Behind her he hears himself saying in Jewish, Don't you like them Mame? The upright cone is still in his hands and he despises the high pitch of the question.

Hugo Bleznik is sitting at the kitchen table. Hugo in his white shirt sleeves and starched collar, with a fat yellow tie knotted under his overlapping chins.

The Sabbath table is laid with the silver candlesticks and the wine goblets; the good smell of the fresh-baked loaf of kitka lifts from under the embroidered cloth.

—You shouldn't have hey Tiger. They beauties, but am I really worth it?

—Aw Christ.

—Ha ha. How're tricks, boychik?

—Tricks are your department.

—Nice one. He's a sharpie your boyki hey Mrs. Helger?

Mame has gone to the other side of the room to fold her arms and watch Isaac. Sit, she tells him.

He looks down at the flowers, wondering what to say. At last she takes them from him. Not even a kiss. The exchange feels soiled with Hugo watching. Hugo and his giant head, his fleshy face that settles in a rubberized grin as its natural posture, his quick easy blue eyes that watch everything, like some form of lizard life they seem to need no blinking.

Sit with Hugo, Mame says, turning to the sink.

But Hugo Bleznik is already rising, saying that it's okay, lifting his jacket, tan cashmere with ivory buttons, off the back of the chair, he wants to have a cigar anyway and they'll get out of her hair while she makes her delicious supper. Isaac, reluctant, goes with him only after his mame makes nudging eyes over her shoulder.

In the night air: —You got some chutzpah coming here.

—Why's that?

—After that Miracle Glow shit, I'm surprised Ma didn't kick your tochus into the street.

Hugo bites off the back of his cigar with that ferocious grin. He lights up, runs a palm over the hairs plastered to his skull. —Boyki, what exactly is it you are tryna incite about me?

Isaac picks up a stone and throws it hard; it chips off the outhouse. —What are you doing here man?

Hugo gnaws the cigar. —Such aggro. You won't listen on the telephone, what else is the option?

—You the one who won't listen. I've told you clear as a bell I dunno how many times.

—Tiger, you haven't even heard the proposition.

—I'm not interested, Hugo. My days are chockablock.

—Listen to this little grease monkey now.

—What did you say?

—All right, get off your high horse, Mr. Not Interested.

—I don't need you, Hugo.

— . . . Don't talk down on me, junior. I've had more in my change pocket than you've seen your whole life.

—Ja, and wherezit now?

—Woo boy.

—And what do you know about the motor game anyhow?

Hugo pulls the cigar from his mouth. —Oh shit, he says. Oh shit, I see it now.

—What?

—Something's happened. Tell me I'm wrong.

—Nothing's
happened
.

The cigar hovers like a pointing finger. Isaac pushes it down.

—The female, Hugo says. That's the bladey twist here. The female has gotten hold of him. Tell me I'm wrong.

—Hugo, says Isaac, go and get stuffed. He walks to the door. Behind him Hugo rumbles: the bass chuckle of a very knowing man.

 

The plan gets outlined on the Sabbath table. How many fingertips formed like birds' beaks have thumped tables over such proposals in the life of a man like Hugo Bleznik? The decimated plates of sweet herring and chopped liver sprinkled with powdered egg pushed aside, the last balls of gefilte fish and the bones of the roast chicken gone cold with pumpkin mash. The candles have burned to stubs that will soon expire. Abel and Rively have sung the grace after meals. The bronze samovar smokes and steams and Mame pours out more glasses in silver holders of amber tea with the seedy jam that sinks to the bottom. Even Rively has been held by Hugo, by his impending Great Idea. Only Isaac leans back with folded arms.

Hugo tips salt onto his fleshy palm. A fat man in shirt sleeves with the sleeves folded up, hairless fatman forearms. That giant globe of a skull with the side part plastered down. He blows on the salt to show its cheapness. —But say, he says, say there's no more salt in the world. Then every grain becomes a gold nugget. He picks up the shaker. What is it that will transmute the pale grains of salt into shining gold? It is war. Hugo thinks there will be a war.

Isaac hisses at him, looking quickly at Mame—but her face is calm.

This war will not be quick, Hugo is saying, it will be longer than the last one and it will be fought with bigger machines, enormous machines. The last one will be a tea party compared to this.

—That's bull, Isaac says. Such bull. You don't know. They signed for peace!

Mame shushes him.

Hugo chuckles. Now he comes back to how it started with Isaac. Isaac's really the one. Isaac stands at the root of this transmuting dream: he showed how all those rusted scrap vehicles that they saw on the farms in the platteland, those corpses of steel and glass, were truly repositories of hidden value. They are full of working parts and they are made of scrap metal. When this war gets rolling, Hugo says, I bet that there will be no new metal and no new parts—all of it will go into the fighting machines. Now the scrap vehicles are salt; tomorrow, soon, they will be gold.

Mame says, But those farmers, they can also sell for more then.

Hugo rubs his hands. The objection like a dessert dish placed before him. His tongue moistens the wide grin. Mrs. Helger, I'm so very happy that you asked that.

From his jacket he brings out folded documents. Contracts in a rich sheaf. Just a sample of many hundreds (he says). What he has done (he says) is gotten the farmers and other country gentlemen to sign with him for the removal of their junked vehicles from their said properties. —Best part is that I got
them
to pay
me
.