“What’s that?” I said, knowing very well what it was.
“I want to give you a little something.”
“You don’t have to do that anymore.”
“Here’s ten thousand,” he said, ignoring my protestation. “Count it.”
So I counted it and it was correct.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Don’t tell anyone I gave it to you.”
Like I was going to tell the whole world he’d just given me a pile of money; like the whole world was even interested.
It was a relief to stand out in the winter sun again and, as he locked up the garage, the dog started barking at me again. I cursed it and it rolled over and pissed itself, which was when I noticed that the paver had inserted a little hewn brick heart into my parents’ driveway. Like so many things, I didn’t mention this bit of kitsch to the old man and, after we’d gone through the mug speech in the kitchen, I asked him whether the dog was sleeping inside.
“You know,” he laughed mischievously, “sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s sleeping on the pillow, right next to my head.”
“Well, hopefully he’ll alert you if anyone tries to come into the house.”
“If anyone puts their foot on the property he barks.”
“Good,” I said, feeling my chest close up. “Could we go out now please?”
So we took our coffees and Lemon Creams outside and after a while he said the dog had almost gone berserk when “those other two” had been here.
“What other two?”
“Those bastards come here and ask me for work. I’m just sitting here and suddenly they’re standing there.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them to bugger off.”
“Dad, you can’t talk to people like that.”
“Do you think they really wanted work? They were looking for what could be stolen.”
“Still, you must be careful.”
“This is my property and those bastards can go to hell!” he said and gave his dog the last bit of his coffee in a saucer with a broken-up Lemon Cream as a Boeing passed overhead. After a moment or so he looked up and, listening, said: “I’ll probably never see those again.”
My Fullest Attention
* * *
Jay was back at work that night, subdued but getting better, Ruth was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t wait for Monday night, by which time Dolf would be out selling cattle muti to the farmers he targeted for one reason and killers for another. When the time came, however, I wondered what the hell I was going to say. The solution, of course, was to drive past their house and make sure Dolf’s car was gone and then have a couple of drinks for Dutch courage. So I did that and rang her bell under cover of the night. If he was there anyway I could always say I was drunk and had the wrong address or something; I’d had plenty of practice in my forty-two years on how to improvise, lie-wise.
“Hi,” she said flatly, let me in and Verdi started barking.
I said I hoped she didn’t mind that I came round so late (having ascertained that Dolfie was, indeed, gone and away for the week), but I had just finished work and since I didn’t have her phone number I was wondering whether her husband had appreciated the changes she had implemented. He hadn’t even noticed them, she laughed, which was typical, but then he had other good qualities. “Oh?” I said, encouragingly.
Unlike most men he was as reliable and consistent as the sun – “Verdi! Stil!” – and there was something to be said for that. I agreed, thinking about the old man. The dog wouldn’t stop barking, knowing full well that I was here to cuckold its master and she asked me whether I would like a drink and I said I would definitely like a drink and wasn’t she going to have a drink.
“I don’t really drink,” she said, “but I think I’m going to have one.”
“What the hell: we can have a Monday-night party.”
So she gave me a beer and a shot of brandy and poured herself one of those sweet, milky liqueurs. She said she had wanted to watch such and such a film on TV now, but then she really didn’t mind missing it; she could catch up on a rebroadcast. The dog would still not stop barking and she finally lost her rag completely and banished it out the back door, making it look utterly pathetic, chastised and united in separation anxiety with Butch. Returning she said “that effing dog drives me crazy”, whereupon the first melodramatic note of the twelfth quartet was upon me, for my IMP virtually flew to attention.
I now had to manage a semblance of reason, doubly standing in her kitchen, and asked her what film she’d intended seeing. She said it was a film I’d reviewed a while ago and I wondered how she’d known my name. No, someone in the park had told her who I was and I said I was glad to finally achieve my goal of being unspeakably famous and, like that mid-movement shift in the allegro – told her to kiss me.
“But I’m married,” she said, shocked but practical.
“I know, but I want you to kiss me.”
“No. You must go.”
“Okay,” I said, taken aback by an erotic directness I never knew I had, “but only if you kiss me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll give you a peck on the cheek, just to thank you for helping me move the furniture, but then you must go.”
“Okay,” I said, and when she proceeded to execute the peck I gripped her and tried to kiss her much longer and deeper. She half responded, but then pulled away and said I must go now; what would the neighbours think.
“The neighbours are watching TV and have been doing so since five o’clock, even though the weather outside is glorious, if cold, and I would never watch TV in broad daylight [a lie: I watched sport every Saturday afternoon, good weather or lousy] when there is such beauty to be had outside.”
“Go,” she said.
“What’s your number?”
She gave it to me.
“One more kiss,” I said.
“You don’t stop, do you?”
So she gave me that slightly longer kiss and I didn’t even try to keep my pelvis away from her: I wanted her to know she had my fullest, hardest attention.
On Falling
* * *
Contrary to the information I’d received, Dolfie returned home the next day and I had to content myself with getting off on every single little look, word, expression, hint of perfume and, of course, touch I’d experienced with his wife, Klara. I’d lie awake and hear the way she’d used the word “mount”. What a magnificent word. Mount, as in mare (yes), mountain (no), mountebank (yes). I must have heard the way she’d used the word a thousand times, unable to sleep, regardless of whether I’d taken myself in hand or not. Talking of which, I’d get into a swoon about our first handshake and what she’d do with that firm, dry hand. Every pore on my body was receptive to that rough hand. Grip my left foot and I’d come a kilolitre. Christ, it was driving me completely, exultantly insane. I imagined fucking her in every conceivable position and state of dress in her house, with or without her husband (and a barking Verdi) watching, while out in the supposedly real world people were still dying like flies or living like the turds upon which those flies feasted. All I could and wanted to think of was Klara’s hand, or that word, walking and sitting and talking with a perpetual hard-on, the bytes on my screen dissolving into that middle-aged, middle-class woman, getting herself into a Teutonic fit about that absurd, narrow-eyed Alsatian representing every boring, responsible little clerk – except the old man – on the planet. I knew I hadn’t fallen in love so I suppose you could say I was, in a word (or two, or possibly a hyphenated compound), cuntstruck.
Somehow the week passed and I finally drove through to Lyttelton on Sunday and the old man wasn’t waiting at the gates anymore, though when I opened them the dog came charging. After exchanging our usual pleasantries of threat and counter-threat, I drove around to the back and the old man’s saggy black longs, frayed jersey and shredded grey windbreaker were hanging on
the wash line like ragged memories.
He was busy sweeping the cement apron, wearing his usual HPs and a pair of suit socks, the calves pale and hairless from years of wearing suits, the flesh around the formerly athletic knees sagging and creased. For pants he was wearing a torn and faded pair of once-blue PT shorts, and for his wrinkled torso an old white T-shirt that looked as if it had been holed by a German machine gun. You could walk around half naked like this of a Highveld winter’s mid-morning, if the sun shone, which it usually did, and the wind didn’t blow: it was pleasantly warm and still.
Apart from the cotton wool that was still over his eye, he had an additional bit of bandaging around his one shin. The beanie was still keeping his fine hairs under control and, after he crushed my hand, he asked what it was that I had in my hand, though it was quite clear what it was.
“I bought you a nice warm winter jacket.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he said, taking the padded corduroy jacket and looking extremely uncomfortable about it.
“Why not? It’ll keep you nice and snug.”
“Ja,” he said dubiously.
“Shall we have some coffee?”
“Good idea,” he said, relieved.
So we went through the usual routine and I was about to comment on the house reeking of dog when I noticed that he’d opened all the windows. Very attentive, for such a deaf, seemingly selfish old man. Back on the apron I found the dog’s chewed old cricket ball and threw it to the bottom of the garden. Off it waddled at pace and the old man looked particularly pleased about it. After a few of those it came and sat on my foot, exhausted, and he said he had a cupboard full of old clothes – didn’t I want to have a look at any of them? I gently but firmly told him his clothes weren’t my style and he accepted that, shaking his head slightly.
“So what is that bandage around your leg for?”
“Nothing,” he said, uncomfortable.
“Dad, what is it?”
“I fell the other day. I completely misjudged the pavement,” he said, starting to unravel the bandage.
“I don’t want to see it.”
So he did it up again and I saw it was bloody and it transpired that this wasn’t the first time he had fallen on his way to the bank or the supermarket, where he got his monthly pension and weekly groceries, respectively, respectfully.
“All right, from now on I’m going to come a bit earlier and I’m going to get your groceries. When I call you on Thursday nights you can give me a list of what you need. Do you understand me?”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not being a bother,” I muttered, hoping Uncle Vern would take him to the bank.
“What?”
I repeated myself a little louder, impatiently, which the dog interpreted as aggression and started grumbling, whereupon the old man leant forwards and picked up the miscreant, which was still imitating the universe and expanding rapidly.
“Dad, the doctors said you’re not supposed to bend and pick up heavy things!”
“Man, doctors know bugger all!”
“Whaff!” the dog agreed, safe in its doting owner’s arms, after which we sank into one of our usual, awkward silences again, letting our vast differences simmer down while I tried hard not to think of Klara, which of course just got me thinking hard about her in that place that now seemed to be the permanent seat of my intelligence.
“Do you know what?” he finally said.
“No,” I said, expecting a set of stock stories, maybe even ‘Pete the Piddling Pup’.
“I saw a programme on TV the other night about a man who’d been treated so badly on Robben Island that he’d lost an eye.”
“And?”
“That’s not right.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Bastards.”
The Couch Lothario
* * *
Nothing happened that night because dear old Dolfie was at home (and Ruth was nowhere to be found) so, thinking of ravishing his wife while he snored next to her, I went solo again. Twice.
The next night I was just getting ready to call Klara when the phone rang. It was the old man, who never called me because he never knew what to say and didn’t understand cellphones. The amount of times he’d visited me (with Ma) could be counted on a butcher’s hand – Johannesburg’s traffic terrified him – but now he was calling me because he had some bad news for me.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Your Aunt Esther has died,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“You must go to the funeral,” I said, equally.
“No,” he said instinctively.
“Dad, you have to go. I will book a flight immediately and I will take you to the airport and I don’t want to hear any arguments about it.”
There was a slight pause on the other side of the line and, once again, I thought he might explode, but he thanked me, as subdued as a chastened child. I immediately called Karla after that and asked her whether I could come over. Okay, she said, but only if you behave yourself. Of course I’m going to behave myself, I said, and put the phone down, shakily.
She let me in as if were a brother and we went through all the idle chatter of family members as Verdi barked at me incessantly and she finally locked it out and asked whether I would like something to drink. I followed her into the kitchen, where she told me about how depressed Dolfie had been.
“Why?” I said, leaning against a low cupboard, half blind and faint with desire.
“He’s not used to sitting for so long in a car. His back is killing him.”
“How old is he?”
“Sixty,” she said, wearily.
He’s impotent, I thought, socially castrated, but then he’s probably been smoking, drinking and eating so much meat it’s no wonder he looks seventy.
“Ja, it must be hard,” I said, hard myself, wishing Dolf would die of a heart attack or in a car crash. Actually, no, I wanted him to carry on doing exactly what he was doing: going away often so that I could come and remind myself what it felt like to be a man in the most primal sense again. Beyond that I couldn’t quite think right now.
“And you?” she said, taking a beer from the fridge.
“What about me?”
“How old are you?”
“I’m forty-two,” I said as she held the beer out to me and I put my hand on her breast.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m fondling your breast,” I said, not sure whether she was going hit me with the bottle or not.
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“I know,” I replied, taking my hand down to her middle and slipping it inside her blouse. “But I am.”
“Len, this must stop.”
“I know,” I said again, taking my hand up to her sagging breast and realising that she wasn’t wearing a bra and just had a light vest on under her blouse, wondering whether that was a coincidence or not.
“Len, stop it.”
Now I had that full warm orb in my hand and could feel her responding.
“This is wrong.”
“Then step away,” I said, but she didn’t.
I slipped my other arm around her waist and pulled her towards me, pelvis first.
“You must go,” she said.
“All right, but then I want a decent kiss this time.”
“Okay. Then you go.”
“Right,” I said, feeling as if I was about to explode.
So she tried to brush my lips with hers but I wasn’t going to have any of that and kissed her full on the mouth, cheeks and neck, moving my left hand down and gripping her flattish buttocks.
“Get out of here,” she finally half shouted, even though it wasn’t very convincing.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll behave myself. Let’s go and sit down and have a drink.”
“That’s better,” she said and adjusted herself as we went back to the living room.
“Put the lights down,” I commanded.
&
nbsp; “The cheek of it,” she said, but did as told.
“Can I put something on?” I said.
“Yes.”
I put on that churchy second movement of the twelfth, starting with a low, dark note that has to concede it can’t stay that way and starts moving. It felt like another Sunday in my youth, but at least the conversation here was more interesting. She was waiting for me to sit on the couch before she lowered herself onto a single chair opposite me.
“Come and sit next to me,” I said.
“No.”
Okay, I told myself, I would have to regroup: “So tell me about yourself.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” she said.
“I’m sure there is. How did you meet Dolf, for example.”
She had come from Windhoek and he had come from the old Northern Transvaal and they had met at a party, an opskop, at the teacher’s training college in Pretoria, where he was studying. She had been studying bookkeeping at the technical college. He had still had all his hair then, but the moustache was there already, had always been and, though they had been very different, they had instantly clicked.
“There’s no end to life’s riches,” I said.
He loved his rugby, his braaiing and his beer and did she replace those I drank, I wondered.
“Of course,” she said. “I might be stupid but I’m not that stupid.”
I could just see him getting himself into a suspicious froth about a missing beer and not believing that she had suddenly felt like drinking one of his precious bloody ales. But what were her interests beyond opera, I wondered.
“Not much, really. I’m quite involved with the church, helping the aged.”
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