The Lion Seeker (41 page)

A woman with a woollen cap is at the front door. —I am the wife of Moses, he hears her saying to Yvonne.

Inside is a small room with a big bed on which four children are sitting. A girl with braids covers her mouth, swings her feet. Mrs. Luthuli is naming them, Yvonne making girlish noises, aw how nice. In Isaac there is a deep immediate knowing of this place, these people: it's Auntie Peaches and Auntie Marie again, it's himself at seven or eight years of age in this same kind of tiny room, pressed with others, warm bosom and soft lap, skin warmth and rickety chairs. The feel of memories that live in the body.

Mrs. Luthuli wants to give them tea now and Yvonne keeps saying no thank you, keeps asking about Moses. Slowly they edge through another door, an opening into narrow gloom and powerful stink.

The space is no bigger than a large walk-in closet with a single mattress on the ground. Something shifts on this mattress and the stench that has pricked Isaac's nostrils gets stronger: the rotpong of old food gone squishy with rancid juices, vomit and excrement in this closed space. He has to force himself to squat as Yvonne has. There is the shape of a dark skull against the pillow. The skull turns a little and its eyes—strangely alive and flickering—look at him.

—Moses, Yvonne says.

Isaac's eyes are adjusting: not a skull, not yet, there's still the thin skin stretched over the bones, all the meat sucked away, just skin over calcium and living orbs sunk deep in the sockets.

Yvonne says: —He's been to hospital?

—No hospital, says Mrs. Luthuli from the doorway behind. Only one doctor here.

—And did he see him? The doctor?

—Yes. He put his bandage. We must change. He putting also some powder but is almost finish, we need more.

Moses whispers. His torso bare but for the loops of bandage about his abdomen. In his whisper are little heaving sighs of air. After a time Isaac realizes these are his coughs, and that between them he is repeating the words
thank you
.

—We want you to get better, Yvonne says to him. Her eyes are running.

You'd think you'd get used to the stink, Isaac thinks. You'd think the longer you have to sit here the more your nose would get numb and used to it but no it doesn't, it gets worse and worse. Jesus Christ. What must be happening to a man's guts to make them stink like this, so bad till it's like a gas. I swear to God if it doesn't stop I'm going to coch up breakfast all over this poor stinking bastard lying here three-quarters dead already. Oh Jesus imagine having to lie here and die like this. Dying in the stink of your own rot on a filthy mattress, chunks of your body already turned to fertilizer. He is such a bladey goner, the poor bastard. I wish that he had died that day. This is worse for him and I would not have to be here, nearly getting us killed the both of us. It woulda been so much better and cleaner if he'd just pegged, finished and over with. I could take her to his grave somewhere and put a few nice flowers and finished and klaar with it. Oh God this is dirty dirty, oh my God this is sick.

Suddenly his skin wriggles: Moses has touched him. Moses has put one hand out of the gloom and up onto his knee. He can feel the germs swarming off the sticky hot palm and onto his trousers. He spots the tin bedpan at the end of the mattress then, the gelatinous ruby wetness nestled there, quietly offering its contribution to the waves of unbearable smell. Then the skull whispers. At him, Isaac Helger. Yvonne hisses at him. Slowly, holding his breath, he brings his face closer to the skull.

—Baas, baas.

—Ja, Moses.

—Pasop. Is bad people here also. Watch for her.

—Ja, I be careful hey Moses . . . thanks hey. We'll be oright.

—Moses, Moses, Yvonne says, bright and loud. I'm giving your wife something, all right?

Isaac is quick to pull up and look around, to get his face away. He sees Yvonne pressing cash into the woman's hand. —Oh God bless you, Mrs. Luthuli says. The Lord God bless you forever and ever amens. Her eyes too start to run.

Lifting her voice for Moses, Yvonne says,—For the doctor. And she can buy medicine. You're going to be all right, Moses. You are going to be strong again and come back to us. Yes you are Moses.

The skull whispers.

Now the wife is saying,—Oh my husband, he has so too much pains.

—You tell the doctor. Tell him you want medicine for the pain also. Can you telephone?

—We have one telephone here in Orlando.

—Give me pen and paper. I will give you our number . . . You must telephone to tell me how he is doing. Moses, Moses. You're going to get better. You are.

—Yes, the crying wife says.

Yvonne bends down and touches the skull. The skull slowly shows teeth. —I'm so sorry, Yvonne says. Her shoulders start to shake.

The skull rolls from side to side. Rotting whispers float up. —No, no, my medem. No, is not you.

Now Yvonne is dragging her sleeve across her eyes. —Don't be sorry Moses. You know I'm not a medem, I'm just a girl, I'm just Yvonne, I'm only . . . 

The skull's eyes have closed. Mrs. Luthuli is holding on to Yvonne's arm. —He must to rest, to sleep, I think, she says.

They go back into the other room where Yvonne writes a telephone number. There is noise in the street outside. Yvonne is saying she's going to try and find a hospital. Many faces are at the window, the door. Someone pushes through to say that Minister Tshabelala says to come. Isaac has to pull Yvonne out. Mrs. Luthuli, crying into a hanky, follows them outside with the four children behind.

A crowd is around the Cadillac and the minister waves at Isaac and Yvonne with the whole of his right arm. —The other ones are coming, he says. You should go now.

—Which way to get out?

—That way, that way. Keep right. At the end, go left.

Isaac has to lead Yvonne around to the passenger side. She is shaking and she can't see, she has her hand against her face. When he puts her in he catches his shin on the running board. The pain is like a spark into his belly where the tinder of his irritation starts to flare. Her blubbing is so useless just like this whole nutso trip. A pair of bladey Stupids. He starts driving fast through the wider lanes between the concrete huts. Anger crushes out the other feelings that were in him from the sickness. Rage has always been this kind of an inner cleanser for him. With rage he can think properly and, stuff it, if Moses Luthuli wanted to get himself stabbed that's tough tits for him no one asked him to and what about Greyshirts that stab Jews what is that, nothing? And look at this, how they live, can't she see it? Why must they blame themselves for this? I mean another second and that Chlistmas box joker would have stabbed me in the neck with a sharpened bicycle spoke like they do and it woulda been me like Moses Luthuli, with
my
bowels full of pus. And Yvonne, man, they woulda been like dogs on a cooked chicken, ripping her up. What do you expect if you bring your White arse to Orlando one fine sunny morning
in a fuckun Cadillac
. I must be mad. I must actually be insane meshuga in my head, what am I doing here,
what am I doing?

He bangs the steering wheel hard. He shouts.

—What are you doing? she says.

He keeps banging and shouting. —We're alive!

—What's wrong with you?

—Alive!

She turns away. Ahead is a berm with a fence topped by concrete planks. He recognizes it: the other side is the main road they came here on. Now they reach the berm and he turns so they run parallel with it and ahead of them he sees the young men with the flat caps, spread across in a broken line. Some of them are dragging things across or rolling tires. —Oh look it's them, Yvonne is saying. We should—

He's already changed down and she is punched back in her seat as he flattens the pedal. The distance collapses with her scream, like a telescope snapping closed so that suddenly the young men are there, diving hard away, mad swimmers in a sand race. Some junk smashes off the Cadillac's massive bulk: a bed frame whirls, a rusted oil drum bounds, warbling. Something metal gets churned under. Swerving, he hits the berm and comes off and starts to fishtail; he has to brake hard. As he rights it again, there are thumps on the roof; the rear window coughs a half brick onto the back seat. He crushes the pedal flat: the Cadillac makes slither noises at the rear then the tires bite and they are pressed back in their seats again by sixteen roaring cylinders. One tire is gone in front, the rubber slapping and the steel juddering. Isaac fights the wheel against the slewing of it but he does not come off the gas and the car is also dragging something under, a tin can rattle like some demented wedding flight. Ahead, maybe another half a mile, is a break in the berm. He turns through it and they scrape onto the tarred road, the White road.

He stops once only to change the wheel and to drag loose an old bicycle frame snagged with rusted wires, cutting his hand in the process. Yvonne will not speak or look at him. At The Castle she gets out and opens the garage door. He is waiting behind the wheel to put the car in but as soon as she steps in she pulls the garage door down. He gets out and bangs on the door. He goes back to the Cadillac and stalls it out. He walks around it, the mauled bodywork, the broken windows. He cocks his head: a two-week job, in his most considered professional opinion. Maybe leave a Gold Reef Panel Beating card for them under the wiper except there is no wiper anymore ha ha. He smirks a little but a joke needs someone else to ignite into real laughter; otherwise you're just a solitary madman. When he rings the bell at the gate there is no answer. He knocks twice more on the garage and he waits, sucking on his cut hand, and then he goes away.

HE BUYS A BOTTLE OF BRANDY
and sips it from a paper bag on the bench at the train station. In Brakpan he buys another one then takes a slow sipping walk. When he finishes the bottle he can see the shape of the Reformatory risen from the burnt plain to bulk against the silken noon sky. The sun is bright on the white parts of the wall where the old plaster hasn't cracked and fallen away. The gate is open under the LION MOTORS sign. Isaac drops the bag with the empty and walks in and sees a ring of workers in their blue overalls sitting on the grease-stained earth around a small fire. They have a plate of salt and are dipping intestines in the salt then turning them with twigs on a grille made of rusted wires.

Isaac looks past them at the wrecks, the broken cars on top of each other in stacks with pathways left between, like some demented library of industrial decay written in volumes of rusted steel. The stacks stretch out all the way to the walls and up to the building now. In front are the greased chains and pulleys on a heavy steel frame for the lifting of the wrecks. This is hard naked work here in the yard; this isn't at all the fine modulated skill of panel beating, it's butcher surgery and heave-ho, the small of the back aglow with constant pain and the skin of the hands getting thick as nicked leather gloves if it wishes to survive.

While he stands there looking with his brandied eyes, Nangi comes up, stepping quietly.

—What you all up to?

I see you, baas, says Nangi in Zulu. He squats calmly; Isaac sinks too. Nangi takes out a twist of snuff and Isaac watches him push a knob of it into one of his big nostrils then the other. He snorts hard, scrubs the nose with the pale flat of his palm.

—You supposed to do from that truck all across to the Ford by the other side. They haven't even been started, them.

Baas, nobody has worked today.

—The hell's going on?

Nangi takes off his cap and puts it on the earth and bows his head over it, the hair stands from his crown in brittle tufts. He starts to trace the sand beside the cap. —Baas, is it that you don't like how we are working?

—Hey? Whatchoo mean?

—Is baas not liking the working we are doing?

—Why?

—We are always working so hard baas.

—Ja, you are.

—Nobody is take for you, baas.

—I should bladey hope not.

—Baas, we are wanting to know why is it there is no more money for our work.

—Didn't Silas give you?

—No, baas. Silas, he not for here. He in Free State.

—Still?

—He was here, but baas Hugo, he send him again.

—And he didn't give you pay last week?

Nangi scrubs his nose.

—Hey?

Nangi holds up three fingers.

—No!

—Yes baas.

—You charfing me.

—No baas.

—Didn't Silas give it?

Nangi strokes the sand, slowly and evenly, back and forth, studying the motion.

—Oright, says Isaac.

 

Upstairs, Hugo is at the desk with his feet up, one hand toodling with an adding machine, his eyes hooded and tie undone. Isaac picks up a paper spike. Hugo puts his soles down; his grin still intact. —You shika aren't you.

—Ja, I'm a drunkard, Isaac says, climbing the desk.

—Careful with that thing. Hugo backs the wheeled chair away.

Isaac jumps down and Hugo stands. —You know, Isaac says, I have had but one helluva day. And you know what it is that will make me feel better? Sticking this right in your fat guts.

Backing away, Hugo expresses a desire to know what the hell it is that is going on.

—I don't like being bullshitted. Where you going, gunif?

Hugo stops. —I'm a gunif now?

—Three weeks' work, Isaac says. Not a penny. What else you call that?

—I think you better sober your head and put that thing down. What happened to your hand?

—I think you better not blink, says Isaac. He weaves the spike and Hugo jerks at it with both hands, very quick for such a rotund fellow; the spike falls. Isaac sinks a meaty slap across Hugo's ear. Hugo walks sideways, rubbing.

—That bladey hurt, you dick.

—Remember it, says Isaac. Those boys have got chuym loksh for nelly a month.