by Eben Venter
He must have dropped off again. He’s startled by the sound he’s been waiting for as he lies there. Things are toppling off the bookshelf, the first on the right as you walk towards his bedroom, which means that Pa has lost his way; it’s miles past the guest toilet. He has no business in this part of the house. He waits for a few minutes more and sighs and slips into his trousers, stumbles into the left leg and hops to the door, which he opens in the meantime with his free hand, and peers out into the daylight gloom of the passage, his eyes heavy with sleep. ‘Pa?’ Nobody.
Three coffee-table books have fallen down, he steps over them. The guest toilet door is closed and he hears flesh rubbing against cloth, an old man’s sound from a mouth. ‘Pa, can I come in?’
‘Ag, Mattie, my boy, I thought you were never coming.’ The voice is that of a man sick and tired of struggling.
‘Pa, what’s the matter, then?’
His father is sitting on the toilet with his hands crossed over himself when he hears Mattheüs enter. The head remains bowed, the shoulders puny and afraid, so that Mattheüs, as so often at his father’s sickbed, blanches at the man he sees in front of him. The daylight through the ribbed glass above the toilet reflects some of the pink of the bowl and the seat – his mother’s idea of décor – onto the side of his father’s thigh, if you can still call it that, onto his hands and his bald, drooping head and contributes to the dehumanisation of this man, so that Mattheüs yanks down the roller blind (also pink) behind his father, leaving only the subdued lamplight on either side of the washbasin.
‘You know, I don’t even know if I can tell this to another person,’ he says, attempting something brave, something like a wasted smile, some remnant from the arsenal of this once fearless man. ‘But I suppose I can tell you, Mattie, you are blood of my blood after all. Man, I’ve been sitting here for I don’t know how long. Just water, that’s all. Just a little dribble. You’ll never know what it feels like, Mattie.’ He lifts his head and keeps his hands crossed over the sparse pubic hair. ‘Mattie, I can no longer produce what I have to every day.’ He’s on the point of crying, this man. He lifts a hand and grabs at air. ‘It’s a terrible thing, this, to have to endure.’
Mattheüs squats in front of his father. ‘Pa, I think the time has come for us to find a nurse for Pa. It’s the side effects of the Oramorph. Didn’t Professor de Lange warn that this would happen? There are ways. Enemas and things. We must find out. Why is Pa only telling me now? How long has this been going on?’
‘Mattie, no. I don’t want a strange person fussing around me. And I don’t want to squander your, your and Sissy’s, money. Listen carefully now. Go to our old bathroom and look in the cupboard there, the left-hand one, I think. Where your mother used to keep her things. There’s a flat box in there with plastic gloves. Go and fetch them for me and let me put one on and try to get this stuff out of myself. How long, you ask? From when I started having the chemo, that’s how long.’ The voice rises. A hand now on each pyjama knee.
‘Pa, I. It’s not the best, I mean it’s hardly the recommended way to get your shit, if you’ll forgive the word, out of yourself. Not if you’re a sick man. There are better ways. There are pills to loosen your bowels. Pa is very weak in any case. I don’t think you’ll even be able to.’
‘Man, you mustn’t underestimate your old father. Go fetch them for me, please. You say pills? My system can’t cope with even one more pill. Now go. I’ll wait here. Bring me the things and then go and make your father some tea. Without milk.’
Later, in the study, he’s sitting with his father having tea. He has his tea with ginger biscuits from Aunt Sannie. They don’t talk about the business with the blocked shit. And Pa doesn’t say whether his plan worked. Easy to talk about baby shit or dog shit on the lawn, that’s part of everyday life. About your own, and then with your son of all people, that’s more difficult. Pa keeps the honour of his personal life intact, and Mattheüs would never be the first to mention it.
He eats six ginger biscuits, and on his seventh he notices that the drawer of the bedside cabinet is open just wide enough for a mouse to get in. He leans across, suspicious, and yanks open the drawer and notices at once that the cheque book is lying at an angle and not lengthwise next to Pa’s fountain pen as he always puts it away, and as he knows Pa – neat in his person and his possessions – would do it.
Pa with the mug of tea. ‘What’s the matter, Mattie? You mustn’t upset yourself, man.’
‘Has Pa been looking for something? Someone’s been busy with the drawer.’
‘There’s something for you, son. Open the cheque book and have a look. Pa’s been thinking about you a lot.’ He slurps the lukewarm tea to corroborate it all.
Mattheüs flips to the last, recently written cheque. In a fraction of a second his eye scans every jot and flourish. His hands tremble as he holds it, the sanctified-by-his-father cheque book, and he’s glad that Pa can’t see him. He blushes, he’s overcome. His legs feel light, his arms take flight; in the wink of an eye the takeaway on the corner of Main and Albertyn becomes a reality. Duiker’s, the logo in a warm orange-red on the window, he sees it all as if the shop has existed for years, he even smells his food, lamb chops and lemon and thyme with small white cannellini beans, his first stew in a stainless steel casserole. He sees a line of people all along the pavement digging into their purses for the right change and licking their lips and looking up to see if the queue is getting any shorter; he sees Duiker’s Takeaways in Plumstead and Muizenberg, eventually even in Khayelitsha and Langa, fucking Stellenbosch, everywhere, he sees it more clearly than he can ever imagine his own life or his personal history or any aspect of himself. He’s leaving behind his pathetic limbo existence; he’ll get real. He’ll trim his wick at night, and all cravings suppressed once and for all, he’ll fall asleep exhausted like ordinary people, his hands still smelling of turmeric, no matter how much he’s washed them. For the first time in his life he’ll enter the realm of the hard-working. He’ll be happy, Pa already is.
He takes the mug of tea from his father’s hands and hugs him and holds him for longer than he can remember ever doing. He is, as they say, dumbstruck. He is far too embarrassed to mention that it is more than he had hoped for. He is overwhelmed by the gift, by the generosity of it. (How did things go so totally wrong with the allocation of his mother’s monthly allowance at the end of her life?)
‘You see,’ his father says against his shoulder. ‘You think I’ve forgotten you. You think I don’t know you, Mattheüs. But I know who you are, even if you don’t believe this.’
‘Ag, Pa.’
‘I wish you every success, my child. This is your big chance. What are you going to call your place?’
‘Duiker’s, Pa. Just Duiker’s.’ And looks over his father’s shoulder at the curtains that are too tightly drawn for this time of day. Cry, he won’t.
‘Heavens, Mattie. And you’re only telling me now. Give me my tea so that I can finish it.’
Mattheüs flops down with the cheque book still open in front of him and then he realises what it is that bothered him: who wrote the cheque? He examines the handwriting on the cheque, pages back to the counterfoil, and almost chokes. The low-down brown-noser.
‘Pa, you didn’t really get Sannie to write the cheque, did you?’
‘But how else would I have surprised you?’
‘Aunt Sannie, of all people. There’s Samantha. Dominee Roelf. I’d prefer it if Pa kept money matters between us.’
‘Sannie wrote, and that’s that. You know, you mustn’t underestimate her part in caring for me. You’re not here all the time, and now with this thing of you setting up a business. What am I supposed to do with myself all day and every day, Mattheüs? You tell me. I can’t lie here the whole blessed day counting sheep.’
‘I was just saying, Pa.’ And how she’ll shoot off her hypocritical pr
issy mouth about him being thirty-two already and never having had a proper job: what kind of a man is that?
‘I see a fine future for you, Mattie.’
‘Thank you, Pa.’ He’s already texting Jack. He wants to get blind drunk tonight with Jack and persuade him to do the thing men do best with each other, for the first time, the man’s going to have to get over that little violation against him. Outrageously, mindlessly dead drunk for the very last time, and after that it’s all work and no play.
‘There’s enough there for a bakkie as well. You’re going to need a bakkie with that type of business. Or how did you think you were going to cart all that stuff around?’
‘I noticed that, Pa.’
Pa laughs, his hand cupped around the mug of tea. Light flush on the cheeks. So it must have gone well with all that scratching around in the backside. To flush out everything inside you after months of hoarding: may the gods be thanked.
Mrs Lucinda Symes, second floor, Media Building, Roggebaai. Had garlic last night, he can smell it under the musk-flavoured Beechie. Oh, she’s ever so pleased to see his face again. She knew it was a winner, that idea of his. Told her husband, she did: somebody should do it here in the Cape. Junk food is taking over and everyone’s getting fatter and fatter and diabetes everywhere. Go and talk to Health if you want to hear about all the misery.
Licence to trade as a restaurant issued by the City of Cape Town / IsiXeko saseKapa / Stad Kaapstad. Stamped and filed in the mighty system of the Municipality of Greater Cape Town, with only someone like Lucinda Symes and a password having access to it and being able to change it, say for instance by transferring it to a new owner or somebody, or if you have rat dung in your storeroom, to suspend your licence, or if you sell salmonella chicken and poison twenty customers, take it away from you, Mattheüs Duiker, ID number so and so.
It went quickly. Every afternoon Jack turns up, shirt tucked into his trousers, and without the smile that melts Mattheüs’s heart so. He’s carrying a six-pack of Windhoeks. The two of them stand on the sidewalk – not too close to the street or a taxi will slice off your backside – unscrew a beer and watch the progress. And Jack, without looking at him squarely, keeps up the frown of so-where-do-you-think-I’m-going-to-stay that he’s using to try to force him into a thing that cannot be, not before his father passes away. And Jack knows that.
The signwriter arrives; it takes him two days. He arrives every day with two little kids clinging to his legs. Things have gone crazy at home with his wife, and his mother isn’t all there most of the time either to be able to cope with the two; you can see he dotes on the pair of them.
The logo with the little man and a spoon that’s bigger than his body, the spiral of steam curling up from the spoon, he draws it just as it is on the sheet of paper. Talented. The children play with a doll and his mobile phone, and there are two bottles of chocolate milk for them, all on a tarpaulin he’s brought along. Next thing, he puts the apostrophe after the ‘s’ of Duiker’s Takeaway.
‘That means there’s more than one Duiker. It’s just me, Kosie. This is my business. It should be between the “r” and the “s”.’
‘I thought it’s Mr and Mrs Duiker together in the business.’ And when he sees Mattheüs says nothing, Kosie says, ‘It’s like that with signwriting, Mr Duiker. You look at the letter in front of you and forget it’s a word.’
He laughs loudly and changes it at no extra cost, his mistake.
Cash. Everyone wants to be paid in hard cash. Including the guy who installs the walk-in cold room.
‘My problem is that I want to claim back from SARS, that’s how it works.’
‘OK, sir, I’ll let you have an invoice, no problem. I bring it tomorrow in an envelope and everything, addressed to Mr Duiker.’
‘That’s when I’ll pay you.’
‘Hey, Mister Duiker, you can’t do that. Services delivered, services paid for.’ And it’s true, the cold room’s up and running and set to the correct temperature.
He walks out to where Jack is chain-smoking and asks what he should do. People walk by and stand to watch Duiker’s taking shape. And he hopes it’s starting to look like a place where they’d want to buy food on their way home, to get the wife out of the kitchen for the evening. Jack says he’s trusted the cold-room man this far and should trust him all the way. He’s got his number, too.
So then he pays him seventy-five per cent of the costs just to make absolutely sure that everything’s in order with the cooler motor and everything, and the man – Sam de Beer is his name – pulls off in a huff in his dilapidated bakkie. Learnt it from his father, Mattheüs explains. Nobody’s going to do him in.
‘You’re going to have to relax, Matt. That’s all I’m saying. You’re the one who says food tastes like shit if it’s prepared under stress.’ Jack is moody as hell.
When it starts to get dark, they sit with the last two beers on some crates inside where, Mattheüs thinks, it smells of paint and steel shavings spat out by an angle grinder, of a promising new business.
‘I’m thinking I’ll move in here. I’ll sleep back there in the storeroom on a blow-up mattress.’
‘Jack, you’re crazy. How long do you still have in the hostel?’
‘A week and a half. Maybe you think I’m joking, but I’ve got no money, as in zilch, for a flat.’
‘Jack, man.’
Mattheüs suddenly gets up and walks outside into the air, blown clean by the wind for a change, there are still quite a few people around at this time of night, which makes him wonder how late he’ll keep the takeaway open. For now, though, he wants to get away from Jack, much as he loves him, just to stand back once again and to look at his new baby.
It’s not that he’s not thinking of Jack’s dilemma. He’s just fully preoccupied with his business, that’s all. And when he looks at that little orange-man logo with his big steaming spoon he’s almost scared to be proud (what if it all capsizes again). And yet this time he’s displaying something, at least something of his father’s entrepreneurship.
The next day, supplies start arriving from wholesalers, one twenty-litre tin of sunflower oil and cans of tomato purée and fine sea salt, and so on. At the Atlas Trading Company in the Bo-Kaap, he selects his dried beans himself, as well as rice and whole spices. He carries the stuff from his bakkie into the storeroom, the bags of rice and lentils and split peas and cannellini beans are placed on a wooden pallet to protect them from the damp. Precautions against everything. He thinks of everything because the whole time it feels – he can’t shake off the feeling and maybe that’s what it really is – as if this is his last chance.
A stocky little bugger comes up to him and asks if he can help, and Mattheüs has to stop and think, doesn’t want to put a foot wrong (the last-chance anxiety). He checks the guy up and down, this man who speaks bad English with a French accent, Emile from the Congo, he says his name is, as hand-on-hip he cockily waits to see if his offer is accepted; then his finger points at the logo. Oh okay, the little man on the logo with the big spoon looks like him, get it? Oh well, okay then.
He watches closely how and where Emile puts the stuff as he also checks out his appearance. He has perfectly rounded biceps, though on a miniature scale, and broad hands, one stuck into a black leather glove with three-quarter fingers and holes for the knuckles. No, he doesn’t want to be paid, only when the bakkie’s empty. He can give him some food once he’s opened his shop. So then Mattheüs fetches him one of Jack’s beers from the cool-drink fridge. But he flaps his hands, protesting with laughing white teeth. So, is he a Muslim? No, not that either, and accepts the Coke that Mattheüs holds out instead and takes elaborate leave and expresses gratitude and waves, thank you, thank you, as he walks off, a weird sort of a person and just a little too good to be true, with the knuckles of the right hand peering through the four holes in his glove.
> During Jack’s last week at Clarence House he starts posting messages late at night on his Facebook Wall. Little ball-biters while he’s watching porn, and when the message arrives he can’t stop himself from looking each time. Jack with three open suitcases, half-packed, and a box full of books. He took the photo with his mobile phone so that you can just see his bare legs and his Jockeys and the luggage. Caption: Jack and his earthly possessions prepare for departure.
At first, he thinks Jack may be losing the plot. Then, as this carries on night after night, he reckons it’s Jack’s way of dealing with the eviction. A journal of the last days at Clarence House. Jack in front of the main entrance of Zilverbosch (Altius et Latius) captioned: Shortly after Jack van Ryswyk formally resigned as housemaster of Clarence House in the office of Mr Richard Richardson. Jack is looking straight at the camera and comes across as emotionless, scary, so autistic.
It becomes almost impossible to watch, say, a twenty-three-minute video uninterrupted, without receiving two or three Facebook messages from Jack. Once, he actually comes while Jack is on-screen in front of him, the video minimalised. It’s Jack in front of his shower curtain with its plunging dolphins, water drops on his bare shoulders, and the caption: Just finished showering on my seventh-last night in Clarence. Two notes from boys pushed under my door. Too personal for Facebook, will share later. Gist of the messages: Sir, we need you. Go slow don’t go – stuff like that. How do you think I feel?
What to say? While’s he’s daubing the last spots inside Duiker’s with the deep-orange paintbrush – he’s chosen this food colour for the wall behind him, it attracts hungry people – or while he’s sharpening the two Füri knives on the fine whetstone bought from a Chinese wholesaler, or while he sits with his pen brainstorming daily menus, Jack haunts the back of his mind with his logic of the twin-gabled house in Rondebosch with its two bathrooms and four bedrooms of which three are currently vacant. What crooked logic in a city of three million people with a mixed first- and third-world economy, and what kind of out-dated decree is it that forbids him such a house? And while he’s picking pebbles as big as insect eyes and just as grey as the lentils, from the lentil heap, he thinks of how impossible it is for someone like Jack, who never grew up rich or privileged, to understand a decree founded on his father’s religious convictions, and besides, there’s Jack’s deliberate refusal to want to understand it, his reproach, and where it could take their relationship, possibly on to the rocks: you don’t want to help me, Matt. What kind of a person are you?