Apart from me, everyone in the building was over forty and looked at least sixty. Strange to say, they were all impeccably well behaved. There was not even much drinking. ‘You make a sound and old Jordan kicks your arse out the door,’ Solly told me. All the other tenants, twenty or thirty of them, were men. Uncle Jordan allowed no women on the premises. ‘Mix this lot with women and you have chaos,’ he told me.
I learnt from Solly that almost all the men paid their rent daily and, if anyone fell behind by more than two days, he was evicted. As soon as he could muster the price of a bed for the night, he was allowed back. Most of the tenants were veterans of many evictions. Almost all of them spent their days trying to raise enough for that night’s dinner and the two-fifty for Uncle Jordan. Some did odd jobs and committed minor crimes like shoplifting, but most were more successful at begging than working or stealing. I soon realised that it was not fair to walk through the building with a piece of fried chicken, a hamburger or a hot dog. The smell was enough to bring some of the men out of their rooms. After one such experience, I started eating my food at the place where I bought it, usually at a roadside cart.
When I phoned Mister Harvey on Tuesday, he told me that he had nothing to report yet, but to phone again the next day. When I tried to press him further, he said that he was working on it and I should trust him.
By Wednesday morning, I had had enough of waiting. I remembered that our bicycles had been left in the scrub at Burman Bush. Wearing one of my Coca-Cola T-shirts and my new shorts, I caught a bus down Umgeni Road and walked up the hill to the place where we had left them. It was a working day and there were few cars on the road and no one at the picnic spots. Ruthie’s special place was so well concealed that I took a while to find it. When I did, I saw that her bike had been taken, but mine was there. One of the Petersons, perhaps Uncle William, must have come to fetch Ruthie’s.
I picked up my bike, lifted the back wheel off the ground and kicked one of the pedals. The wheel spun beautifully. I checked to see that the tyres were still hard. Before setting off, there was one more matter that interested me. I had to take another look at Uncle William’s house. After all, Uncle William had said I could go to him if I ever needed help.
Although I had more reason to hide now than when I had crept through the scrub on my belly with Ruthie, I walked right up to the fence. I think I felt that Uncle William’s house was one of the few safe places left to me. But, like the home I had just deserted, the windows and the glass doors were all closed. Most of the curtains were drawn and no lights burned inside the house. Again I waited, as I had at my parents’ home, but this time there was no sign of movement in the house.
I freewheeled down the hill from Burman Bush, then cut through Stamford Hill to avoid the Durban North traffic on Umgeni Road. It took me just fifteen minutes to get back to Hollywood Heights.
‘A bicycle?’ Uncle Jordan asked. This was not the sort of request he received very often. ‘There’s a store in the back. It can go in there, I suppose.’
Until then I had slept well in Hollywood Heights. That night I struggled to fall asleep. The silence that surrounded Mama’s home and Uncle William’s was like that of twin tombs to me. And yet, the stillness surrounding both was surely by chance. There was no connection between the two.
Then I realised what the connection was. I was all they had in common.
fifty-two
The next morning I was awake and dressed before sunrise. Sleep had been sporadic, punctuated by long waking interludes in which I tried, with little success, not to think.
While the city got moving in the early-morning twilight, I made my way down to the public telephones at the railway station. The phones in the Post Office were inside the building that would not open for another two hours or more. You had access to those at the railway station at any time. The first commuter trains were already arriving, people from the townships were getting off the trains and streaming across platforms to places of work in the city. They were the cleaners, drivers, messengers, waiters, dock workers, street sweepers and labourers. The office workers would come later.
I had to speak to Ruthie. None of the phones were in use and, after a brief search, I found one that both worked and had no bodily substances clinging to the handset.
I dialled the number and waited for the ringtone to reach me from the other side. I counted a second, two seconds, perhaps three, then hung up. This was not something I could do. I remembered Ruthie saying that her mother was always up first. If that were so, she would answer. Then I would hang up. If Ruthie answered, her mother would know who the caller was. And if she had had doubts in the past about my relationship with Ruthie, how would she feel now? But how could I go on like this, only hearing snatches of news from Mister Harvey?
As I dialled the number a second time, I considered that there was a chance Ruthie would answer. I needed her to tell me that nothing bad had been done to her. If she said it, it could be that the guilt for what had happened to her would not be mine alone.
With a soft click, the phone on the other end stopped ringing. ‘Yes, Chris?’ It was Auntie Pearl’s voice, but uneven somehow, without the confidence I usually heard in it. It sounded tense and brittle, as if something inside her was cracking. ‘Is it you?’
‘Yes, it’s me. How did you know?’
‘I thought you’d be calling. I felt it was you.’
‘Is Ruthie there? Can I speak to her?’
‘No, not now—’ Then I lost track of what Auntie Pearl was saying.
From somewhere at a distance from the phone, I could hear Ma Peterson demanding, ‘Who’s that? Who’s calling?’
‘It’s a wrong number,’ I heard Auntie Pearl yell to her. Then she whispered to me. ‘There’s a Wimpy in Murchie’s Passage. Do you know where it is?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘Meet me there during my lunch time. One o’clock.’
‘Can’t I speak to Ruthie?’
‘One o’clock at the Murchie’s Passage Wimpy.’
‘I’ll be there.’ But she had already hung up.
There was nothing left to do, but to go back to Hollywood Heights and wait for one o’clock.
Most of the morning was spent lying on my bed on top of the sleeping bag, staring up at the ceiling, wondering why Auntie Pearl’s voice had sounded the way it had and why Ma Peterson wanted so urgently to know who had called. Six hours had never taken so long. Twice I went to the kiosk downstairs to buy a cold drink and I even showered unnecessarily in the Hollywood Heights showers where the cubicle doors latched poorly, the water gushed straight out of a pipe from which the shower head had long since disappeared, the hot water came and went without warning and the invisible organisms that cause athlete’s foot stung at the cracks between your toes.
Eventually it was half past twelve and I ran for Murchie’s Passage. It took me only five minutes to get there. I ordered a fresh orange juice from a Wimpy waitress who had been trained to serve customers fast and get them out of there so that the occupied place could be filled by someone else. In ten minutes I had finished my orange juice, she had removed the glass and presented me with the bill. As I saw it, the only way I could stay was to order another orange juice and nurse this one. From time to time the waitress looked at me seriously, seeming to suggest that I had no business taking so long over an orange juice. But she said nothing.
The relief I felt when Auntie Pearl arrived early only lasted a moment. There was no sign of the care that she usually took with her appearance. I had never noticed lines on her face, but I did now. There were red rims around her eyes in a face so pink that even my father would have found nothing suspicious about it. Apart from her lipstick, she seemed to be wearing no make-up. She was talking before I could say anything. ‘What’s happened to you?’ she asked. ‘You’re not at home.’
‘I ran away.’
‘Why?’ She looked bewildered at the thought of my flight. ‘How old are you?’
‘F
ifteen, like Ruthie.’
‘You can’t run away. You’re not allowed to.’
‘I had to. The police—’
‘I know about the police, but Ruthie’s at home.’
‘Is she all right? Did they hurt her?’
‘Yes, she’s all right.’ She laid an emphasis on she that suggested that perhaps Ruthie was the only one who was all right. ‘Who’s Mister Wilson?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘Do you know Mister Wilson?’
‘Snake Wilson?’
‘Snake Wilson? Is that what they call him? Why do they call him that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Who is Snake Wilson?’
‘My father’s his boss.’
‘Oh, Christ.’ She had clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking.
The waitress had paused next to us and was pointedly waiting for another order. ‘Coffee for my friend,’ I said. ‘Do you want coffee?’ I asked Auntie Pearl.
She nodded, a quick, fitful movement. ‘Anything.’
‘He came to our house yesterday while we were at work and took Courtleigh away and I don’t know what he said to him, but afterwards Courtleigh went to stay at someone’s place, someone he knows in Overport. He left a message with one of our neighbours, but he wouldn’t give me the address. He said in the message he’s not coming back.’ She had been leaning over the table with the intention of speaking softly, but the further she went in her story, the more her voice rose. The waitress and some of the people in the café were looking at us. Auntie Pearl glanced round at the other customers and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I don’t know what Snake Wilson said to him, but I’m afraid. Why did he take Courtleigh? Is he allowed to do that? Is he a policeman?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s not a policeman.’
‘What is he then?’
‘He just works with my father at the Department of the Interior.’
‘What does he do there? What did he do to Courtleigh?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. But I had some idea of what he could do. And yet, the Petersons were living in a coloured group area. Ruthie went to a coloured school. ‘He can’t do anything,’ I told her. But even as I said it, I knew it to be a lie.
‘Don’t tell me that.’ Auntie Pearl was leaning towards me across the narrow table and I could see the whites all the way around her eyes. This time she had managed to keep her voice low. ‘Don’t tell me he can do nothing. Why did my husband run away? Why is he hiding from me in Overport?’
‘Snake Wilson can do nothing,’ I lied again.
‘And your father – what can he do?’
Lying about that was not possible. Until recently, my father had always seemed invulnerable. Even now, I knew too little about his work to have any way of knowing just what he would be able to do.
I was still looking for an answer when Auntie Pearl read it on my face. ‘Oh, Lord Jesus,’ she said. ‘What have you done to us, Chrissie?’
She was starting to rise when I hurried to get in the one thing that was important to me. ‘Can I see Ruthie?’
‘You fucking young madman,’ she said under her breath. A moment later she was through the door.
I ran to pay the bill, but by the time I entered the arcade, there was no sign of her.
fifty-three
The next day was Friday. By then I could not wait till half past five. The week had gone by and, as far as I could tell, Mister Harvey had accomplished very little. It was not yet lunch time when I phoned Mister Harvey from the Post Office and, to my surprise, was put through immediately.
‘Chris,’ he said, speaking in his elegant, careful way. ‘I’m glad you called. Can you come round after five?’
‘Of course I can come. What’s happened?’
‘Come a little after five and I’ll tell you everything.’
‘But what’s happened?’
‘Come after five. I have meetings with clients now. I’ll talk to you later.’ He hung up before I could press him any further. And this time when I called back, I was not put through.
Perhaps I needed the sort of support I could get from an adult man or perhaps I just thought that Uncle William might have heard something. Whatever it was, in a directory that had lost many of its pages, I found the number of the Umhlanga Surf Hotel.
A young female voice answered at the second ring. ‘Umhlanga Surf, Rosanne speaking. How may I help you?’ It was the voice of our former headgirl who, on my only visit to the hotel, had not been able to believe her boss would see me.
‘May I speak to Mister Peterson please?’ I asked, doing my best to sound older, at least ten years older, than I was.
‘No one of that name works here,’ she said.
‘But I’ve visited him there. I know he works there. He’s the hotel manager.’
‘The person you are referring to no longer works here. He has left and we don’t expect him back.’
As soon as I hung up, I went back to Hollywood Heights to get my bike. Uncle William not in his job any more? This was a man who, when he had suggested to the other members of the Umhlanga Rocks Chamber of Commerce that they sign up with Dog Box Flowers, they had done it to a man. He was a man who had complete confidence in himself. It was not the determined confidence of my father, but an effortless certainty that he could deal with any crisis. At least, that was how I saw Uncle William.
I set out for his house, dodging the traffic in Umgeni Road. This time I took the road onto which the front gate of the house would open. It turned out to be easy to find. Most of the other houses had the standard red roof tiles that were common in the area. Uncle William’s house stood out from the others, partly because of the steeply pitched slate roof, but also because it was a much grander house than those of its neighbours.
To my surprise the motor gate, a steel lattice construction, as high as the wall, was standing slightly ajar. The doors of the four-car garage were all wide open and the cars were gone. I entered without paying attention to the security company vehicle parked with two wheels on the grass verge in front of the house.
I wheeled my bike through the gate and leant it against the inside of the garden wall. As I stepped away from it, two Zulu men in the uniforms of a security company came through the front door. ‘Yes, who are you?’ one of them demanded.
‘I came to visit my Uncle William,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘He’s your uncle?’ the same man wanted to know. Both looked to be about thirty and carried themselves with the usual arrogance of armed and uniformed men.
‘Yes. Where is he?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No. He said I must come and visit today.’
‘You don’t know where’s he?’
‘No.’
‘The alarm went.’ He waved a hand towards the house. ‘But there’s nobody.’
‘You found the front door open?’ I asked accusingly.
‘True’s God,’ he said, sounding a little apologetic this time.
‘Let’s go have a look.’ I led the way back into the house. Behind the front door, a red light was blinking on the burglar alarm panel.
‘We only looked downstairs,’ the guard told me.
‘We’ll have a good look this time,’ I said. I had them on the back foot and intended to keep them there.
We went from room to room downstairs. This was the first time I had been in a house like Uncle William’s. The rooms were large by any standards. Even I could see that the furniture was expensive. The pictures on the walls were original artworks, not the prints that we had in our house. Uncle William lived well. Or, at least, he had lived well before this week.
A newspaper was lying on the floor next to one of the easy chairs in the TV room. An empty whiskey bottle and two glasses that held traces of the spirit had been left on a coffee table. In the kitchen there were dirty dishes and a few knives and forks in the sink. Otherwise everything was as if a very tidy family was still in residence.
T
he bedrooms were upstairs, but the security guards did not follow me this time. A domestic worker had appeared downstairs, as surprised as we were at the state of things, and the guards had gone to speak to her. Now I could see signs of hurried packing in the master bedroom. The same sort of activity had taken place in the children’s bedrooms. Some drawers, that had been emptied, and wardrobe doors where a few items may have been removed, were standing open. Far more of Uncle William’s clothes remained in the cupboards. It seemed that, wherever he had gone, he had not taken much with him. The thought came to me that he might be back in Greenwood Park, sharing the house with the rest of the Petersons. Perhaps they were all there now.
I found a telephone next to the bed in the master bedroom. I knew the number of Ruthie’s home without looking it up.
I needed to hear something different from the Petersons. Auntie Pearl’s panic was worse than hearing nothing. Above all, if I could just hear one of them say, it’s all right, Chrissie. The crisis is over. Ruthie’s home, everyone’s fine. Even Courtleigh came back. Uncle William dealt with it. He and Mister Harvey handled it. There’s nothing left to do. You know where we live. Come round on Saturday afternoon. Ruthie will be at home. Come round now, if you like.
I was so absorbed by my thoughts that I did not immediately realise that the Petersons’ phone had stopped ringing. ‘Hello.’ It was only one word and it was quivering with doubt. The speaker’s voice shook more than Auntie Pearl’s had when I last saw her. I knew immediately that it was Ruthie.
‘Ruthie …’ I doubt that my voice sounded any more confident than hers.
The Classifier Page 39