The Classifier

by Wessel Ebersohn

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Just take it to school. Keep it in your case. Don’t worry about anything else. But don’t tell anybody, you hear? Nobody.’

  ‘I hear.’

  ‘You’ll tell nobody?’

  ‘I’ll tell nobody. But Mama said we won’t go to school today.’

  ‘Tell her I phoned, so there’s no need for you to stay home. Tell her you want to go. Tell her you have a test.’

  By the time I left the call box, it was not yet eight o’clock. That left at least an hour before I could make my next stop. But, with my father mobilising the police, walking the streets was still a bad idea. I persuaded the Zulu caretaker of the building where Mister Harvey had his offices to let me in early. I told him that I had an early-morning appointment with Mister Harvey and I had to be waiting for him when he came in. I also told him that Mister Harvey would be very angry if I were late.

  I waited on the landing of the second floor until Mister Harvey’s receptionist arrived to open the doors. She was a carefully dressed lady of about the same age as Mama. She was also a little plump, like Mama. Her curly hair was dyed brown, probably to hide the grey, also like Mama. ‘You want to see Mister Harvey?’ She sounded almost accusing. ‘You don’t have an appointment.’

  ‘I know, but it’s an emergency.’ Her eyebrows rose in unison. The emergencies of dusty, unwashed fifteen-year-old boys were not the sort of emergencies that usually warranted Mister Harvey’s attention. ‘Just please tell him that I’m here.’

  She nodded in the direction of a couch against the wall opposite her desk. ‘Wait over there. I’ll tell him, but he’s got a full diary.’

  A few other attorneys and clerks came through the doors and disappeared into offices, but paid no attention to me. Mister Harvey arrived at quarter to nine. He smiled broadly at the receptionist as he came in. He looked relaxed, a man at peace with the world. ‘Good morning, Jane,’ he said. ‘How was the weekend?’

  ‘Very nice, Mister Harvey.’ She looked in my direction. ‘This young man says he has to see you urgently.’ To me her voice carried an intonation that said, I know you cannot possibly have time for him, but I’m doing my duty by telling you.

  Mister Harvey’s showed his surprise at seeing me. ‘Chris?’

  I had risen as soon as he came in. It was only later that, thinking back, I realised how anxiously I had been massaging the knuckles of both hands. ‘I’m in very big trouble,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ He sounded almost as doubtful as his receptionist. ‘And I have a very full schedule. Come into my office and talk quickly.’

  I had no need of a second invitation. I started with my arrest of the day before and where I had spent the night. In a few minutes I gave him a heavily abridged version of the events of the previous two years. I ended by asking if it were possible for children to divorce their parents. I had heard about such a case in America and, if it were possible, could he help me do it, and would he handle the defence of Ruthie and me? I would pay him somehow.

  When I finished he looked at me for a full minute without speaking. Then he said, ‘You are certainly full of surprises, young Chris.’ Without taking his eyes off me, he reached out and pressed a button on his intercom. When Jane answered, he told her to come in and bring the diary with her. When she came in, he told her, ‘I want you to reschedule my morning appointments.’

  She looked and sounded stunned. ‘For this boy?’

  He ignored her question. ‘I’ll still see the Huletts people at two and Mister Schoonbee at four. I don’t want to be interrupted this morning.’

  When she had left, he started asking questions, more questions than I could ever have anticipated, and he wrote down all the answers. Eventually I told him how I had been present the night his party had won the by-election, about the vases we stole from the cemetery, about La Traviata, about my motorbike, the spot Ruthie and I had in the sugar cane, my father’s work, the refugees from Mozambique, the meetings with my father and the unmarried mothers who would not identify the fathers of their children, what he had told me about Epsom Road School, the members of Ruthie’s family, the way Abraham had died in the flooding river and, finally, the way Ruthie and I had been arrested and I had escaped.

  ‘And this is all true?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘That’s what happened,’ I said.

  ‘And you did have intercourse with this girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you told the police that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you ever had intercourse before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. She told me so. It was also hard to get inside and she bled a bit.’

  He smiled at me, the kind of warm, but knowing smile that Uncle Stefan had. ‘You get into things early, don’t you, young Chris?’

  I shrugged. What was there to say?

  ‘You’ve had a busy two years.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I always wondered about that Epsom Road School. I’ve picked up a few strange things about it in the past. And as for La Traviata, I rather liked the Eoan Group’s rendition myself. Interesting girl, this Ruthie of yours.’ He looked at me for so long, a little smile around his eyes and mouth, that I started to feel uncomfortable. I moved in my chair under the pressure of it. ‘So there are two urgent matters: you want to divorce your parents and you want to be defended against the charges of having intercourse with a coloured girl, one who happens to be under-age – but then, so are you. And also escaping from police custody?’

  I had not even thought of the latter charge, but there was something more important. ‘And Ruthie,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘And Ruthie. As for the first matter: are you sure about your relationship with your parents?’

  It was something I had not thought about during the night. It had just seemed obvious to me that it was the only possibility. ‘I think so,’ I said.

  The look in his eyes suggested that he was less certain about the matter. ‘I have to tell them that you are alive and well. I will take no further action on that matter for a few days. As for divorcing them, it doesn’t usually happen. But there is such a thing as being an independent minor. If you can support yourself, a case can be made for your independence. How much money are you making from Dog Box Flowers?’

  ‘Seventy or eighty a week.’

  ‘That’s almost what I pay my receptionist. So, you could live off that.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said.

  ‘And where will you go from there? Live off Dog Box Flowers for the rest of your life?’

  ‘No. Just until I come up with something better.’

  Mister Harvey seemed to have the need to stop and think after every answer I gave him. I doubt that he had ever had a client anything like me. ‘All right, Chris,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a place to sleep for a few nights and I cannot afford to know where it is. You are still on the run from the law, after all.’

  ‘I’ll find a place.’

  ‘You’ve got money?’

  ‘I’ve got one thousand two hundred in my savings account.’

  He nodded, as if he had expected that. ‘You find a place to lie low, not at a friend’s home, and phone me every day at about half past five. I’m alone in the office then. I’ll tell you when to come in.’

  ‘And Ruthie?’

  ‘I’ll get her out of police custody today.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mister Harvey, are you sure?’

  He looked at me seriously. ‘One thing I want you to understand: I will not tell you that I can do something unless I am certain I can.’

  I looked at my watch as I went down the stairs to the street. It was already past one. I knew that getting to the cemetery from Broadway in broad daylight without being noticed would not be easy, especially once everyone knew about what had happened. I consoled myself by thinking that, at worst
, the news would have reached school by now. It would take till this evening for my schoolmates to tell their parents. I took the simplest solution and ran all the way. I reasoned that only the police might be looking for me and, if they were, the less time spent on the road the better.

  I got to the cemetery without any alarms being raised, ran down the main pathway between the graves, turned at the end of the row of cypresses, and took the rough footpath that passed next to the bamboo thicket. Then I slipped in among the bamboo and stood still, looking back in the direction from which I had come. No one was following me. Michie and Annie usually used the path I had taken and that passed within a few steps of where I was waiting. I had about an hour to wait.

  Looking up the path in the other direction, I was faced with an altogether different thought. Another fifty metres or so up the slope would take me through the last line of brush to our back fence. I was almost home. But now it was Michie’s home, Annie’s home, Mama’s home and my father’s home. I had just told Mister Harvey that it was no longer my home.

  An hour can be a long time. I spent almost as much time staring up the slope towards Mama’s house as I did looking down the path for the approach of Annie and Michie. I could go up and look at it one last time, I thought, and be back before my sisters came.

  This time there was no running. I walked slowly and watchfully up the path that led to the rusted remains of our back fence. Once I reached the fence, it took me a little while to find a place that was both shadowed enough to hide and gave me a clear view of the house. All the windows were closed. There was no sign of life at all.

  I remained in the shadow of the tree for all of half an hour, keeping careful note of the time. I was about to turn away and go back to the bamboo when I saw a movement through the kitchen window, little more than a dim outline against a shadow. It was Mama. She had been sitting down and now she rose slowly, leaning her weight on her hands where they rested on the kitchen table. She seemed to be struggling to support her weight. After a while she started doing something that took an even movement of arms and shoulders, perhaps rolling out pastry. But after just a few seconds, she stopped, rested on her hands for a while, then sat down again as slowly as she had risen, disappearing from view.

  After another ten minutes, she had not reappeared. The girls would be coming and I could not afford to meet them so close to the house. It was time to return to the bamboo thicket. As I made my way back down the path, I had no idea when I would see Mama again.

  fifty-one

  The girls had come up the footpath through the cemetery, looking down at their feet and talking in undertones. I was surprised to see how worried they looked. I had expected Mama to be worried and confused, but I had no idea that my sisters would be this concerned about me. Most of the time we hated each other. At least, I thought so.

  When I stepped out of the bamboo and into the path, they hesitated for only a minute before rushing to me. Michie was the first to speak. ‘Is it true?’ she wanted to know. ‘Is it all true?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s all true.’

  ‘About this coloured girl, Ruth Peterson?’ She looked more eager than outraged.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Annie said. Later that day, thinking about the look on her face, I thought I must have looked that way the day Abraham died. ‘You’re going to get into the most terrible trouble. I don’t know what Papa’s going to do to you.’

  They were like two birds fluttering around me with quick little movements, firing questions at me faster than I could answer them. ‘Is she the one from the flea market? But that was so long ago. Have you really done it with her? But you’re the youngest in the family. We haven’t done it yet. Did the police really arrest you? How did you escape? What are you going to tell Mister Matthews when you come back to school? And what about the other kids? When you said you were going to the opera, were you going to sleep with her? How long have you been doing it? Has she got her own place?’ Michie’s imagination was more fanciful than Annie’s. ‘I told Annie you probably climbed a drainpipe and ran across the roof to escape,’ she said.

  I shook myself free of them. ‘Have you got my savings book?’ I asked Annie.

  She took it from her bag and handed it to me. ‘Thanks,’ I said. Then, ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.’

  ‘Why?’ Michie asked. ‘You don’t need money. You can come home now.’

  Annie broke in. ‘The police are still looking for him.’

  ‘When can you come home then? Have you told Mama?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I’m not coming back. I’m not ever coming back.’

  ‘But you can’t go,’ Michie said. ‘Papa won’t allow it.’

  ‘I have to.’ Now I spoke to Annie. ‘Will you look after the Dog Box Flowers clients that we’ve already got and put my share into the bank account?’ She nodded slowly without speaking. Speaking had suddenly become too difficult. ‘I’ll make contact again,’ I said. ‘I promise I will. But I have to go now.’

  I looked back only once. They were standing in the shade of the bamboo. Annie was weeping and Michie was holding her. To my surprise, I was crying too.

  I got to the bank ten minutes before closing time and drew two hundred rands from my savings account. A late-afternoon bus took me into town after the buses that carried the school kids had passed. In the Daily News I found an ad for ‘furnished rooms for men, special low prices’.

  The prices at Hollywood Heights were low because the furniture was old, there was no bedding on old innerspring mattresses from which the hard steel ends of some springs protruded, carpets were worn through, the window in my room was jammed closed and the whole place smelled bad. The communal bath at the end of the passage was discoloured and decorated by scattered pubic hairs, and the lavatory cistern filled very slowly, leaving the previous user’s excrement often still bobbing in the bowl when you came to use it. An open door I passed on my first day revealed a lined, grey-haired man reading a paperback book with a front cover picture of a naked woman, a bloodied knife plunged into her chest between her breasts. His room was decorated densely with what looked like Playboy centrefolds arranged round a framed exhortation to ‘Look ever to Jesus’.

  The building seemed to have no more than thirty tenants. Despite its name, it was only two storeys high. It was doubtful that anyone living there had ever seen southern California. My new residence had one overriding advantage though. The old, thick-neck uncle by the name of Jordan who ran it charged only fifty rands a month, or two-fifty a day, if you could not raise the monthly price. ‘Son, if you have trouble with any of the other tenants, you come to me,’ he told me. ‘I throw a few of them out every month. It keeps the rest in line. Leave it to me if you have problems.’

  After I had secured my room, I went downstairs where the shops were still open. I bought a tog bag, the sort in which I carried my rugby kit, two cheap T-shirts with Coca-Cola advertising on them, a pair of shorts and two pairs of underpants. One pair of underpants took the place of the pair the police had taken as evidence and the other was a spare. I also invested in a sleeping bag, now that bed linen had become a luxury. A block away, I found a small chemist, little more than a kiosk, and bought a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and a small bar of soap. Finally, I purchased dinner at a roadside hamburger cart.

  By the time that was done, it was almost half past five and I ran the four or five blocks to the Post Office to call Mister Harvey. He answered immediately. ‘First, the news you most want to hear.’ He spoke in his usual leisurely way. ‘Ruthie’s at home with her mother.’

  ‘Thank you. Oh, thank you,’ I stammered.

  ‘Don’t thank me, Chris. It had little to do with me. Her mother paid a five hundred rand bail for her this morning. I have offered my services to Mrs Peterson.’

  ‘And?’ He was just too slow.

  ‘She accepted. I will be defending Ruthie.’

  ‘Oh, t
hank you.’ I hoped he did not notice my embarrassing inability to say anything else.

  ‘Ruthie is in shock and she’s worried about you, but she’ll get over her shock and I will do my best to keep her at home with her mother permanently. I don’t think that’ll be too difficult. I’ll also keep her updated on your doings.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’ I sounded like a recording. I wanted to say something else, but thank you was all that would come.

  ‘As for your parents, they know that you are safe. When I spoke to your mother, she told me you had seen your sisters this afternoon. I told you to lie low. Do you remember that?’

  ‘I do.’

  For the first time he sounded annoyed with me. ‘Are you sure that you want to go through with splitting from your family?’

  It was not that I wanted to do it. I knew that there was no other way. ‘I have to. I went to say goodbye to my sisters and get my savings book.’

  I heard his sigh over the connection. ‘As for yourself, the police are not happy with you. They hate looking like fools.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so, phone me again this time tomorrow. I’m working on it.’

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Above all, do nothing and stay out of sight.’

  ‘I will.’ Before he could answer or hang up, I spoke again. ‘Mister Harvey.’

  ‘Yes, Chris.’

  ‘Thank you very much, very, very much.’ I felt a fool, thanking him again, but I had nothing else to say.

  ‘Stay out of sight.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And phone me tomorrow.’

  The little I saw of life at Hollywood Heights was a revelation of a stratum of society that I had not known existed. One of the inmates, a man called Solly, offered to take me with him on his regular Saturday morning excursions. ‘That’s the best time,’ he said. ‘The people in the flats throw out the remains of their fast-food meals, chicken and hamburgers they bought on Friday after work. You can eat yourself full.’ I turned down the offer, but I spent time with him in his room a few times to break the boredom. He talked about the big money he used to make, buying and selling on the stock exchange, before a streak of bad luck reduced him to his present level. He told me how you could not go wrong with gold mining shares, but they grew in value too slowly for a man like him. He was always after quick gains – and you could get them if you knew how. It soon became clear, though, that he thought the stock exchange where he had made and lost fortunes was located in Durban. Even I knew that it was called the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.