The Lion Seeker (47 page)

—I've got work to go to, Benny.

—Man, there's too many Greyshirts in there already, we need to make sure army stays with Smuts. You ever thought about it like that?

—Can't say I have, Isaac tells him.

—Rabies, man. The hell's happened to you? Come with me.

But after the conversations he's had lately with Mame he won't even consider it. Mame afflicted with back pain so bad it doesn't even help to lie down. Tutte says it's from all the sitting she's done bent over by the wireless all day. And all the worry.

When Isaac speaks to Mame now he tells her that the news of war is not all bad. Firstly, it hasn't affected backhome directly yet, nobody's invaded Lithuania. Soon the British and the French will come in and sort Germany out once and for all. And then, more important, Jan Smuts is Prime Minister again and he, Isaac, is sure that Smuts will let the Jews who have families in South Africa come here; he'll do it
because
of the war. Mame nods when he says these things and gives him a look that is skeptical but also has a sad kind of hope in it, as if she wants to believe but can't bring herself to. There's a fierce, almost desperate energy to Isaac's little speeches to her, fuelled by the secret of what is stored out back in the sewing room like some slow-ticking time bomb. —Listen, Ma, he says. This war is ganna make the business into a gold mine right. Like Hugo says it, we ganna be milking the cream soon. And I'm working hard at the shop also. So we ganna have that house soon, Ma, so soon. And then when Smuts lets them in . . . It's ganna happen, Ma, I can
feel
it, I just
know
it, it's
ganna
happen. When they let them in I am ganna have that house all ready for them hey. We'll choose one up in Linksfield all larney. Highlands North. We ganna have a front garden and a back garden too hey ma. We ganna have rooms for them, Ma, so many rooms . . . Are you listening to me Ma? It's ganna be oright, it
is
.

 

But it works on his nerves, the pain in his mame's face, so that he wakes up often in the middle of the night and goes to the sewing room and takes out the forms and broods over what he has written there. How long has it been since Papendropolous gave them to him, how many months exactly? The attorney telling him to hurry up and fill them in, then lay back and be patient for the deal to come through or not. So easy for him to say. And that was before war broke out. What worries him is that the war could have changed everything. The question gnaws. What is going
on
over there? When the pain from Mame's back gets so severe they have to call Dr. Allan to come prescribe her pills, Isaac goes to a tickey box.

Enough monkey business—this Papendropolous, who in hell is he anyway? Avrom is
my
blood. He asks the operator to place a person-to-person call to Avrom Suttner at Lion's Rock farm outside Bakerville. Like any trunk call, she says she will ring him back with his party when the line is available. He fills the booth with tobacco smoke, waiting half an hour, and when some idyat keeps tapping for a chance at the telephone, he tells him to eff off before he gets hurt. The idyat looks at him, then goes away. Maybe not such an idyat after all. The phone rings.

He picks up with his stomach full of what feels like broken glass churning around. But the voice on the end isn't his rich cousin, it's the attorney Papendropolous who asks him what the hell does he think that he is doing.

—I wasn't ringing for
you
.

—I speak for him. And you were told never do this.

—Ja, but that was before it was war, man. We just supposed to sit all lardy-da?

—War doesn't change it. You tried to contact.

—Well what was I supposed to do? We fucken dying over here!

—Shouting doesn't help.

—Ahh stuff you! And eff him too! You were never ganna come through with anything anyway!

Papendropolous says nothing and Isaac can hear his own hoarse breathing in his ear. Waiting to be cut off.

But Papendropolous says, —You lucky. Normally I would have put down on you by now, but.

—What?

—Truth is, I was about to get in touch with you.

Now his own breathing stops in his ear; he's biting down on his lip, close to blood.

—We're in our rights to call it off, but it's set now. Listen carefully. It's going to be sometime between the twenty-fifth and the twenty-seventh of this month.

—Twenty-fifth to twenty-seventh.

—That's right. That's a Monday to a Wednesday.

—When's twenty-fifth, two weeks?

Papendropolous doesn't speak and Isaac has a clear picture of the man grimacing there on the other end of the line. —It's . . . thirteen days.
Listen to me
. Don't say a word. Operators, other people, they listen in to calls. So don't speak, don't say any names aloud, just listen. There's a place you go after work sometimes. You know what I'm referring to?

—Ja. I think so.

—On the eighteenth of this month, a message will be left there for you to pick up.

—A message.

—That's right. Monday the eighteenth.

Isaac laughs. —You reckon I'm swallowing all this kuk, what am I, a Stupid? You seen too much bladey Hitchcock, man. This is just more a you stuffing us around.

There's a clicking sound, the man snapping his lips on his teeth, getting angry. —I'm about out of patience with you, he says.

—Oright, oright. Don't catch a hairy, mate. Just saying it sounds like a lot of rubbish what you telling me, messages.

The line is filled with Papendropolous's heavy breaths for a time. Then, saying the words clearly and separately: —You go to the place. You pick up the message. It will have the time and location. Read it and burn it.

Isaac snorts. —Burn it. No, you definitely charfing us. Tell me true now. You charfing us, man.

All of a sudden it's Papendropolous's turn for shouting. —Quiet! Quiet already and bloody listen!

Isaac doesn't speak; he notices his free hand has pulled a button off his shirt. It takes a while for Papendropolous's breathing to calm. He goes on in that separate-word way: —We've already contacted the other gentleman. Understand? Does that sound like charfing? It's been done. Now I'm warning you for the last time: Do not. Try to. Contact us. Again. All right?

—Ja oright man, oright.

—You remember everything else I told you, before?

—I . . . ja, I do.

—Good. So wait for it. Then take you-know-who. Step one and step two. All right?

—I'm not deaf, says Isaac. I can hear.

 

The following days feel dreamlike. Too much of a numbing dream to even think of running to share with Mame, he'd have to tell her how he's kept this secret for so long, he can't even imagine doing that yet, first make sure it's real and not truly the waking dream it feels to be. When he goes to the Great Britain Hotel he stares with dream eyes, wading with dream legs through air that feels as thick as the blood driven by his heavy beating heart. In the entrance, as he passes the reception desk, it seems to slowly tilt, all the cubbyholes and the hanging keys behind the man in the waistcoat tilting with it. You go up there and ask is there a message, do it in the daytime when no one else sees, slip it in your pocket to unseal later or else do it here, in the toilet.

A time and a location.

 

Charlie Steenkamp comes to him at the start of lunch break, Isaac swilling the rust flakes from his brow at the tap out back. Steenkamp is a short wiry man with teeth coated beige, the edge of a blue tattoo showing just over the collar. Rumours have always hovered like a bad smell about his person that he's really a Coloured passing as a White, for his hair is bush thick, his skin a bit too yellowish. Bit of coffee in the blood, Mame might have said.

Since the beating, he's been spending lunches sitting with Magnus Oberholzer who no longer needs to take his nourishment through a straw, whose stitches have come out, though he is still pale and bruised and reduced. What Charlie Steenkamp says to Isaac now is, —Man, old Magnus, he wanna shake his hand with you hey.

Isaac looks at him. He lets the bitterness in him touch his face; it's not hard.

—Says he sorry. Genuine. Wants it to be another way, fresh.

—So let
him
come tell me.

—Ach, don't be that hey. He duzzen wanna try it if you don't want. He got some pride still hey, ha. But why not make chinas with him and put aggro behind. Overs is overs and that. He not such a bad ou. Genuine. I feel sorry . . . 

—Well and good. Let him keep his side. I keep mine.

Charlie shrugs. —That's not very Christian hey.

—Ach, piss off, Isaac says. Go on, piss off.

He watches Charlie slouch away. But the gesture raises an unease that stays with him. A bad feeling akin to guilt that makes no sense, not until he's reading the paper and comes across an item that makes his hand freeze as he turns the page. A photo of girls and one oke standing in a row. The girls have tennis racquets and white skirts with sleeveless jerseys. A pile of clothes in front and in the centre of them he sees her—like a visual scream—the doll's face etched in the grey dots, her pale hair band above. There is a tall fellow beside her who has on a suit and tie. His arm is around her waist all the way and her free arm is around his neck and they are tight together and both of them are smiling.

 

 

Lower down Isaac reads how Miss Linhurst is
strikingly attractive
as well as
bright and well-spoken
, and with an interest in
affairs well beyond the feminine sphere
which makes her
one to watch
, with plans to enter the University of the Witwatersrand next year in order to study political science and history,
with a view to one day joining the Bar
, like her
beau
and her father, senior partner at Linhurst Blackwell. The firm started in the last century by William James Linhurst, Miss Linhurst's paternal grandfather, himself son of Robinson Ernest Linhurst, founder of the country's largest private railroad, later purchased by the government.

Isaac stares at the face of the man in the photo. A slim nose, a slicked side part, nicely cut suit with narrow waist and wide shoulders. After a long time he closes the paper and goes back to work.

 

At the end of shift they get their pay packets and Labuschagne comes round with the infamous Quality Street biscuit tin, the round tin painted with a jolly Christmas scene of the olden days, top hats and carriages, and packed with cash, for the bonus payout is due to be drawn the next day. They add even more notes and go wait outside as always, smoking; inside Labuschagne's locking up.

Charlie Steenkamp approaches Isaac again with the same shit about making sholem with Oberholzer. Isaac looks at him full of pain, the crazy need to hug someone suddenly on him like thirst or hunger. He shrugs and says okay. That bad feeling around Oberholzer from before that's like guilt, he knows what it is then: it's from bringing the woman into it, that was bad, to take away a man's woman from him is to generate an unspeakable pain.
This
pain. Oberholzer needed to be taught a lesson, ja, but there wasn't any need to mention the man's wife also, humiliating him with it in front of everyone. The panties. The way it seems to Isaac right then is that nobody deserves that, not even a piece of kuk like Magnus Oberholzer.

Steenkamp is coming back with Oberholzer. Where the stitches came out has left a livid crescent on the pale face. They shaved his moustache and he hasn't grown one back; without it, he seems a reduced presence. A face that wants to belong in a shuffling crowd, not even trying to stand out.

—Isaac, I only want to say lez make overs overs. Oright? He puts out his hand. Isaac glances at the other one; criss-crossing scar tissue is still fresh there. Charlie has drifted up to Isaac's side, he presses his back.