The Lion Seeker (61 page)

He turns to Andre. —There's kids there.

—Ja.

—You said just him. What else you lie about?

—Ach no man, those just some pickaninnies he teaching.

—Teaching?

—To read and that. Sums.

—Where they come from?

—Ach, they country kids. They around. Maybe some children from the herders he used to have. They come for lessons.

—What happens to all those head a cattle he had?

—They olden days those.

 

He watches them, outside the tent now, the man touching the heads of the Black children, bending to them, picking them up, throwing some of them high to giggle and sink back to his catching hands. The man with short pants and a cap of white hair and white hair on his face too now, his body much thinner. The children cross to the reservoir and drop their clothes and splash in the water. When they leave they go up over the far side as the man enters the shack. In time the chimney begins to sweat smoke; spheres of faint white that climb unfurling, that pass to nothing in drowning blue.

 

The three of them move down to the hut. A bound prisoner of mixed blood pressed forward by the barrel of a White man's gun and a circling flop-tongued hound bred for the hunting of lions: African tableau. Freed of all laws but those of veld and thorn and claw. None to exact judgment save the vulture's savage eye.

When they reach the hut Isaac puts the barrel of the Mauser over Andre's shoulder and raps with it on the sheet metal door then steps back with the rifle levelled.

Andre shouts: —He got a gun here, Av!

Isaac swears, swings the barrel into Andre's head. Then raises his own voice. —Come out, Avrom! It's Isaac Helger!

A silence.

Then his voice: —Andre, Andre, are you okay?

—He's ukay, Isaac says. He got a big bladey mouth, s'all. You come out now.

Chester won't stop barking.

—Andre, says the voice. Let me hear him if he's okay. Andre!

—Ja, I'm not hurt, Av, he says. He got me tied on the hands.

Av? Isaac thinks. How strange this familiarity rings in a servant's mouth.

—You get out here now, Isaac says. I wanna talk to you. Come out hands up. Come out or your boy's ganna get it.

—Don't! Leave him, leave him! comes the shout back, immediate. I'm coming.

—Well do it then.

Chester will not let cease his echoing barks. A sound like a chisel on the base of Isaac's skull. The door opens and the barking stops. Chester runs to the man who steps out.

AVROM SUTTNER IN THE DOORWAY
with short cargo pants and work shirt and beard of white curls to hide the pockmarks on the bulldog cheeks. A belly no longer. Dark-ringed eyes deep sunk and watchful; they hardly flicker to the gun but do linger on Andre where he is held.

Isaac says: —I come to see you,
cousin
.

—What for?

—I think you know well what for.

He says to Andre. —Are you hurt?

—Get over there, says Isaac.

 

He is at first unsure what to do with Andre and considers hog-tying him with the fishing line but tying a man that way can injure him badly so he settles for locking his hands to the coal stove. This is a stove of thick black cast iron set about in the middle of the hut. Seems Avrom was just getting a fire going, twigs thrown over old coals which must have been from the earlier fire, casting the smoke that Isaac had watched climb past the hawks.

He looks around the tight space: there's a sink with razors on the rim and a mattress bed, shirts on hangers from a string wired across the room, a table and some chairs, kerosene lanterns. Isaac studies it all for a while. The way he locks Andre is to use a padlock he takes from the door. He makes Andre sit before the stove and makes Avrom tie off the snare line. After he checks it's solid he puts the lock through a gap in the stove's cast iron front and through the snare line binding the wrists. The stove is bolted to a concrete base and will go nowhere. All during the last part of this procedure Avrom had to kneel with his head against the wall; now Isaac takes him outside, into the brightness. Isaac closes the door and closes the hasp then bends a teaspoon through the eye to keep it shut. He makes Avrom walk well out in front of the rifle. Avrom mumbling in his beard.

—What's that you saying?

—That's for God only to know.

—Ja, you better pray, Isaac says. I bladey would if I were you.

He walks him down out of earshot of the hut, Chester padding alongside. One seriously stupid dog so far as Isaac can tell, who cannot sense a friend apart from a stranger with a gun. When they reach the reservoir he stops and Avrom turns, stands there looking at him with no expression in his eyes. Isaac says,—How you living out here? Food and that.

—We don't need much, Avrom says.

We, says Isaac in Jewish.

—We shoot buck. There's gemsbok, impala. Kudu. And Andre goes to town once a month.

—I went through your house. What was a house.

—That doesn't matter to me anymore.

Thinking of Hugo Bleznik Isaac says,—What doesn't matter that you lost it all? What, was it the races? Cards?

Avrom shakes his head, his face screwing sideways to show disgust. —I never gambled. And I never lost. I gave. I understood.

Isaac slants his head. —What the hell you talking now?

—I got rid of that life, says Avrom. Voz too heavy to carry, so I put it down one day. We live simple here, alone. The world can have its wars, its madness. We stay out of it. Try to do good every day and to thank God.

Then he speaks a line of Hebrew that Isaac misses. —Hey?

—From Torah, says Avrom. Don't you know it? The only way to cancel old bad is with new good.

Isaac snorts. —That why you teaching these pickaninnies?

—I try to do good, Isaac.

—Ja such good. Like send your lawyer shark to Joburg just to take a rip out of my mame and my life. For what? What
good
was that hey?

Avrom says: —She deserved to know. At least. And you too.

—What does that mean?

He shrugs. —I got rid all my things. They weigh too much. And things on my mind also.

—Got rid of. That's horseshit. You still got plenty.

—Neyn. Almost all I gave away. I don't want. We don't need it.

—
We
again, says Isaac. Funny, I saw clothes for two in there, two razor blades. But only one bed. Where does your boy sleep?

—Andre's not anyone's boy.

—You live out here with no women. The two of you.

—With no one, says Avrom.

—Summin not right, says Isaac. And you talking religious to me? That's chutzpah. Meanwhile you plot to mess up my life but good. I think you sick in the head, man.

There's no evil here, says Avrom in Jewish. I made my peace with God and He understands me. And I never did anything to you.

Isaac feels his face tighten. He lifts the rifle. —Never did nothing to me! You liar! You sent that Papenopo-prick to my mother just to tell her I took that money, just to give me a shtoch. From spite! What else! Something I did nine years ago when I was just a kid, just trying to survive. You even told me to!
Eat or get eaten
you said. All that lion jazz. Here by this rock. You the one who even gave me her money in my hand! Now you send your Greek to her after everything. Just to tell her what I did. You don't even know what you've done you bladey bastard! What I been through! When I was just ready to give her the house. You sick, man. You a sick sick bastard. What you have done to her. And our family.

Avrom lifts a hand to his beard and the stocky fingers probe in there, at the pockmarks beneath the springy grey. The shouting and the rifle do not seem to have bothered him; he moves his jaw sideways, sawing one way then the other, a thinking gesture, apparently. Then, still in Jewish:

What did you think? That the truth would never come out? You ask me why. Because new truth cancels old lies and I felt it was time. There's been too many lies around Gitelle for too long. But you're the one who should ask yourself the question why. After Gitelle left I couldn't sleep or eat. She started something in my mind. I saw I was wrong. That lion. Listen, we don't have to worry about lions in this country. It's money that eats you up here, not lions. I chased it all my life. There's a lot I have to be sorry for. Maybe I deserve you coming back on me, for what I put in your head.

—Man if you cared so much you could've sent more money for them afterwards.

Avrom is shaking his head. It was too late. By the time we found out what had happened, the war had spread. And the truth is I didn't want to lose more then, for nothing. I thought: I gave, I tried, it was enough. But don't try and paint over the truth. Their blood is on your hands, Isaac. No one else.

Isaac has a raw pang: he could cry. —I did what I had to do! Like you taught me!

It's better that she has the truth. She needed to have the truth.

—Truth.
You
the fucken liar. You not even my cousin! I don't even know what you are!

The mouth in the beard crimps, pressing blood from the lips so that they pale. Why do you say that?

—Because there's no Hershel. Never was. You and Mame both bullshitted me to my face. You not even family. Just some big macher she asked for a favour. So you got no business at all telling them things now. Getting your nose in my real family. You nothing to us.

He's shaking his head again. Look, you've got it all mixed upside down here, Isaac. I

—Shuttup, Isaac says. You killed her.

His hand drops from his beard, his chin dangles and he stares with naked wide-open eyes.

—No, she's not dead yet but she is dying and you are what done it to her. Instead of the house I was going to give her you give her news like that. She'll never talk to me again. My father neither. But I found out how sick she is through my sister, from stuffing Palestine all the way it had to come. How they found a cancer in Mame, a big one. They can't do nothing and she's ganna die. And she won't even see me cos she thinks I killed her sisters. That's what you've done.

—Didn't
you
?

—Stuff you. I didn't kill nobody. You gave her this shock.

—Hashem knows the truth, Yitzchok.

—Don't God me. Since when are you going around Godding all a sudden? I see right through you man. You not my blood, you just some scum I don't even know.

—Yitzchok—

—I'm here to settle with you, Avrom Suttner.

Avrom watches him. —What does that mean?

—Get in the water.

Isaac, better listen to me.

He lifts the rifle. —Close your mouth. I won't tell you twice. Get your arse in that water.

WHEN AVROM IS IN THE RESERVOIR
, he clutches the side to keep his head above water, the reservoir sunken so that Isaac stands over him. Chester the clueless hound wanders near with a fanning tail. Isaac kicks dust at him and he moves off. He looks down at Avrom, sees a wet man shivering in bloodwarm water, a man trying to keep the fear out of his eyes. He fires into the water beside him. Avrom twitches, the surface bulges and slaps over the rim. The shot is numbingly loud and the sound zigzags high-pitched off the rock walls. Behind him Chester begins to bark and there's another sound, a raw shout from inside the hut then a wild banging that becomes steadier.

Stop, Avrom says to Isaac. Stop. Stop.

He has one hand up, the palm aimed at the barrel as if it could shield him from an eight-millimetre bullet.

—Please, he says.

Isaac works the bolt, aims at the chest. —Go under, he says.

—Ah vos?

—Under.

Avrom takes a breath and submerges. Isaac puts the rifle down. Behind him in the hut the banging accelerates; Isaac glances back. The dog is frozen halfway between hut and rifle, one paw lifted, one ear bowed, its nose switching sides.

Isaac rolls his sleeves and watches the form through the ripples. Time keeps passing. When Avrom starts to rise, he jams his hands through the water and grips the white hair and holds him. Avrom fights at once. Isaac holds him with all the strength of his hands and arms toughened by years of manual labour, with the leverage the height gives him. Avrom pulls hard on the side but Isaac keeps twisting his neck over and down. After half a minute he lets Avrom's face break into air and gasp maybe a tenth of a breath before shoving him under again. One of Avrom's hands claws at Isaac's face and he looks away to protect his eyes and the fingernails scratch his neck.

This time he holds him till he can feel his strength oozing away. He lifts the face and Avrom heaves in air and starts to cough, Isaac's fingers still bunched in his white dark-rooted hair. —Don't, says Avrom. Don't please.

—Who are you? How'd you know my mother?

Not like this.

The words spark in Isaac, fire off a movement of red anger, and he forces him under again as if performing some demonic baptism, holds him till he feels him slackening, then lifts again. —What's a matter? he says. You don't want to live, you had enough, you want to die? Hey? What you saying? Hey?
Cousin
.

—You cruel, says Avrom, coughing.

—No, Isaac says. The world is. When he starts to push him down this time, he tells him: —Better hope there's someone ganna say Kaddish for you.

It's this invocation of the death prayer that seems to hit him hardest: Isaac sees it light up his eyes with a spurt of new terror. He fights hard again, locking his neck, clamped hands hauling on the lip of the reservoir, his feet kicking at the side. Isaac twists and slowly forces him down.

At the last, when his mouth is half under, he shouts: —Okay! I'm not. Cousin. I tell you! I—

Isaac presses him under. Holds him stiffly there. One more good dunk to be sure. One more good measure of payback then let him up and let's have the real truth that you say you love so much.
Been too many lies around Gitelle for too long
. My arse. It's you who's the liar. These thoughts lend new rage to his tough hands. Avrom tries to buck up in waves but it doesn't help him. Water churns. From behind, the banging sounds like steel on steel now and Isaac looks around to see the dog at the hut, sniffing at the bottom of the door.