The Lion Seeker (32 page)

This?

This rock. This is where it happened, where I changed. This is Lion's Rock.

 

When they climb back out of the crater there's a clink of steel and Isaac looks up and across to catch the flare of a cigarette lighter, Andre's face under the homburg blooms. Isaac lifts his hand but the flame dies and Andre is gone, even the cigarette tip concealed, his bulk abutting a rock tree as indivisible as any other night shadow against the vast screen of massed stars behind.

They drive back in silence. At the house it is told that the Austin has been repaired and is ready to go; Mame is still out there grimly behind the dashboard. In the front hallway Isaac says,—What was it, distributor cap?

—Ay?

—One of your okes did something to that Austin. I know that engine was fine cos I checked it fore we left. You didn't want us going nowhere.

Avrom shrugs.

—Why do they have guns, cousin? What do they do here?

—What guns? There's no guns.

—Those okes of yours. That Andre.

—It's nothing to do with me if they do. There's bad people also in town. They just my staff, that's all. Business.

Isaac tugs his nose. —Listen, cousin, tell me. What was Hershel like?

Avrom squints at him. Who?

The puzzlement seems so real. —Your father, Isaac says.

Avrom shakes his head. —Never mind.

—Do you have a photo?

—I told you never mind.

—It's just. He's my uncle, but I never even seen a picture. Ma's got all the others—

Avrom walks off. When he comes back he says: —Don't worry yourself with uncles-shmunkles. He pulls out a folded wad of cash. —You know what is?

— . . . Is it Ma's?

—Yes. Now you take.

—She won't take it back.

—That's right. She will never take it. She will rather die, I know your mother.

Isaac shrugs. —That's how it is, then.

—Nineteen years old, Avrom says. You are the one who needs this.

There's a dropping feeling in Isaac, his guts sag in on it, a sinkhole dragging silence into his throat.

—Don't show her. Don't tell her. Take this and put in your pocket. I added a few extra. Use it for your future. Do you want that house?

Isaac has a feeling that is akin to standing up on the top of a high and narrow wall, looking down through his toes.

—Take it and put in your pocket.

There's a croak his words have to push through. —I can't, cousin. It's hers.

—No. It's mine. She gave it and she won't take back. Now I offer you. Tell me yes or tell me no.

—No. No.

His other hand suddenly rings Isaac's upper arm, digging. —Are you a lion or are you a sheep? Better decide it right now. For your life. Right now.

The feeling of teetering, the feeling of terrible height. His pulses chip at both eardrums.

—You decide how you want it, your one life. But decide now. This is it, you won't see this again. If you can't find the lion inside here now, then you don't deserve your chance.

Isaac bites one dry lip and starts to shake his head. No. Say no. But as the breath rises to his vocal chords another thought breaks into his mind. He hears her, her voice, her lesson:

Two kinds of people in the world
.

The Stupids and the Clevers
.

And what are you? Which one are you?

HIS FIRST SATURDAY BACK
from Lion's Rock he takes an early morning train out to the East Rand. Walks the last three miles on a dirt road with trash scattered on both sides in the brown grasses and the charred streaks from old fires. In the treeless distance lies a squatter camp where the Afs hunker in their tin kingdom with the dust and the sewage. Beyond them rise the lift heads of the gold mines and the chimney stacks of factories. Close in, a tributary of some forlorn mine reservoir winds through a dry trench gouged by flood waters, the water no more than a rusty trickle over rocks.

His destination is unmistakable for it stands alone on the desolate plain: a wall of stone with a stubby gruesome hedge of jagged glass cemented along its top. There is no front gate, instead what seems to be an old railway car crusted in rust plugs the gap in the wall, a crude way hacked through it by welding torches and filled with barbed wire. Isaac puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles shrill notes for three minutes before an albino watchman comes to move the wire and let him in. These albinos, they're double cursed. White as milk but still a Black inside; but then other Blacks cross the road when they see them coming. Nature's cruel: it's how it is.

There's a big patch of open ground, of sunbaked soil stone hard. The building is made of concrete blocks with boards for windows and cracked front steps that Hugo Bleznik comes down as they approach. Hugo in a cream suit with two-tone shoes and powder-blue hatband bearing a single red carnation. —Tiger! Shake a paw.

Isaac nods, takes the hand. He's looking back around. —What's that sposed to be?

There's a flatbed truck with a winch parked against the wall beside the railway car.

—I'm just fine, thanks for asking. S'matter with you, man? What you so tense? Sounded same way on the telephone.

—I'm asking does that truck work?

—F'course it works, man. Pride and joy. Can haul five wrecks on that beauty.

—Then what's it sitting there for?

—Ach man, that's our gate. Truck pulls the train out the way when we need to open.

Isaac shakes his head.

—You don't know. We need it, ay. Those squatters, they steal anything they can wrap their thieving fingers round. Cops can do kuk-all. They stripped all the ironwork, the whole gate. Any face brick they could chisel out, any wiring, any piping. First thing I did was stick in a new gate and next day was gone, boy, hinges and all. So this what we got now. Plus a night watchman, and maybe we'll be getting some dogs.

Isaac is grimacing, scanning up at the building now.

—Deal of the century, Hugo tells him.

—That so.

—Used to be a reformatory for bad boys. The guts've been ripped out of it long ago. They say a few lighties croaked themselves here, was so bad.

—Jesus.

—No man it's sweet. Nobody wants to touch the place with a ten-foot barge pole. They scared of ghosts and kuk. The agent was only too happy to kiss my tochus for whatever I offered on a lease. Deal of the century. It's
huge
man. You'll see. Come in feast your eyes.

The interior with its boarded windows is gloomy and has a floor of damp soil specked with rodent feces, but the ceiling seems twenty feet high and the stone pillars are widely spaced. A portion of the back wall has been smashed out to give a view of the yard and exterior wall with it gouging semi-bottles against the desolate sky. About half the floor space is packed with wrecks, stacked up three high and maybe forty deep.

Isaac nods. —Where's this workshop, upstairs or not?

—What kinda question is that?

Isaac looks at him. —One that I'm asking you.

—Christ, what you so bladey aggro for all a sudden, what's happened a you? Why'nt you looking what we got here already man! And I haven't even started telling all the contracts I got. Tip a the iceberg man, tip a the ice. And here you being such a misery. Can't you even shine up a tiny bit?

—The workshop, says Isaac.

—It's sorted. Hundred and twenty percent. Don't you worry.

But when they get upstairs after Isaac has been made to look at the wrecks up close in the gloom, he finds only more empty space, more rat droppings save for one corner where a desk has a view through a cracked board of the dribbling river on the burned plain. Pinned to the board is a calendar, each square full of scribbles.

Isaac strokes some dust from the desktop. There's a few screwdrivers and one hammer with a cracked handle. —Equipment hey.

—Don't irritate me, junior. There's no twist here. Everything's going so fluent. Everything's capitalizing.

—Looks that way.

—Once I get renovations done you won't recognize the place. Main thing is there's no neighbours and we zoned industrial. Main thing the capitalizing is going so fluent.

Isaac is studying the calendar. The scribbles are names: finance companies, individuals with amounts due.
For Chev truck
8, he reads.
Jan Pienaar
310s 5d.
Cohen
7.

—Oh boy, he says.

—You wouldn't understand that, says Hugo.

—I know juggling balls when I see em.

—Listen to the big shot. Let me tell you something, most people would kill for your opportunity. You a lucky kid. Our own operation, man. Toes to the nose.

—Is that right.

—Boyki, boyki, don't you know sarcasm causes failure? Shiny side up if you want to shine. There's the only way.

Hugo falls into a chair, produces a bottle. Isaac dusts the desktop and sits. They pass the bottle and Isaac observes some swell-chested pigeons roosting in the steel beams above, the beams caked in a white crust of guano.

—Tell me summin, honestly, what's going on with you?

Isaac shakes his head.

—The female?

—No, it's not that.

Hugo puts his foot up on an open drawer. —And your people? How're they?

—My people.

—What?

—Nothing. They ukay. Old lady's a bit low. Actually very low. This war talk and that. Worried about her family back over there.

—Ja, it's too bad about that, says Hugo. On the bright side, a war's ganna make a lotta people a helluva lotta gelt. Might as well be us hey. I knew you'd click on sooner or later. Now you see the big picture, you don't wanna do shoch work for bupkas for the rest a your life. But I don't hold it against you that it took you a while to see it. You young—

—Hugo—

—Listen. The other two trucks are on the road, they'll be back tonight with a fresh load. You can start in straightaways. Put down on a paper what equipment we ganna need—

—Wait, Hugo.

—You can have a look in the back, we do got some other tools there to sort—

—Hugo, I didn't say I'm chucking in with you that way.

—Hey?

—I haven't told you what I came here for.

Hugo's foot comes down hard, puffing dust. —Well shit! What the hell you doing here then? Waste my time.

—Listen. I gotta proposal.

—Proposal! Eff that, Tiger, I'm not the marrying kind, case you diden notice. I don't need proposals.

—What I been thinking is I come work here every weekend and every night in the week—

—Forget it. You insulting me.

—That way I still keep getting my panel beater's ticket. If this starts taking off, then—

—Boyki, let me be polite as I can. You can take that part-time half-an-arse horseshit and stick it deep where the sun never shines, pardon my parlee voo. You either in or you out. Otherwise you just stuffing me around.

—Such a big macher.

—Ja, well, this isn't fish and chips we dealing in. Alls I can say is you'll be sorry in three years' time, be blubbing away while you bang out dents with your fellow African colleagues. Too late, she cried. And cried.

—I can do a lot on weekends, Hugo. And every night. Probably the same in hours as I put in at Gold Reef.

—I don't wanna part-timer ukay. You just not worth it.

—You sure?

—Tiger, if I want part-time I'll hire part-time. I'm offering a share for a partner. You put in the graft now, you a rich man later.

Isaac scratches his temple. —See the thing is, I reckon you got a slight problem here hey Hugo.

—What's that?

—You accumulating a lotta wrecks now and that's costing, but you got nothing coming in. What I can see, you're all stretched out. You're borrowing one to pay the next. And you've gotta wait till the market kicks up before you can start making back.
If
it kicks up.
If
there's a war.

—Don't you worry—

—I don't have to worry, Hugo. It's your business and it's constipated. Blocked solid.

—Do I look like I need your medical opinion?

—I doubt you can afford wages for a real mechanic for long. Meanwhile you got your three trucks going on hire purchase. Then there's the Blacks' wages. There's rent on this bladey chuloopuh of a property, this monstrosity the middle a nowhere—I hope not much, like you say, but still you gotta pay it.

—He's got it all worked out. Never you mind what I gotta pay. I'm capitalizing so fluent.

—That's right, I do have it worked out.

—Well not so well as you think you cocky little pisher, cos I'm not interested in any part-time shit. And I don't think, being honest, that I like this new whatever this attitude of yours is at all. All pushy and whatnot all a sudden.

Isaac stands and sticks his hand into his pocket. Hugo's blinkless blue eyes follow the gesture.

—You get my free labour. I know which parts to get out first and how to do it fast and what we can do to sell em. And I'll also skip in cash from my wages. Been giving to my ma to save but she won't mind for a business.

—Chhh. Your
wages
. Listen to him. What's that ganna buy us hey, bubble gum and pencils?

—I think maybe a little more than that, says Isaac. His hand comes out with a wallet. He opens it up and thumbs cash latkes onto the desk, twenty-pound notes included. —Plus this, he says. Take it or leave it.

When he looks up he takes the time to remember Hugo's expression, the drooping chin under the slackened face: like a man in need of smelling salts and a soft place to land.

 

An hour later they have the basics of their agreement written out on the back of an old circular advertising Miracle Glow (
latest wonder product from America, no electricity required—ever!)
. Isaac gets one-third of the enterprise and Hugo, the founder, takes the rest. Hugo fills a bottle cap with a shot and Isaac gets the bottle.