Wolf, Wolf

by Eben Venter

  Then, on the Tuesday before the Friday he wants to open Duiker’s Takeaway, he hears his father talking on the phone, which still surprises him, after the blindness, how he remembers numbers, Dominee Roelf’s, Aunt Sannie’s of course, Professor Jannie de Lange’s, it’s a long list. Mainly it contradicts any assumptions that the old man is on his last legs, he could stay on in that study until next year, as high and mighty as ever and almost cheerful on the trajectory of his sickbed: now sitting up straight, with flushed cheeks, chatting to Aunt Sannie about the old days, then dozing off or coming to after a dose of Oramorph, and the flood of images he was then subjected to. The hallucinations are so totally alien to his experience that he can’t help wanting to share them. Dwarfish creatures in a row on his windowsill, with dangling legs in knee breeches, discussing him in a confusion of tongues, it would seem, and always maliciously, or so it sounds to him. Mattheüs is fascinated and encourages his father to tell all, only too pleased that for once he’s been shocked out of his bourgeois complacency. Aunt Sannie, hands cupped under her chin, is convinced it’s all evil, and when Pa sometimes becomes too agitated as a result of these fantastical visitations, he hears the woman muttering a prayer over his father.

  The person at the other end of the line turns out to be Professor de Lange, who tells him: No problem, Bennie, it’s entirely up to you. It depends on how you feel. Remember to take the brown bottles along in case the pain suddenly overcomes you. Perfectly fit for a three-hour trip on the N1 to Laingsburg and then a further forty minutes or so on a dirt road that could be bumpy, to the family farm: Luiperdskop. He feels the need to see Sissy and the little girls. And old Hannes, his brother.

  ‘No, Pa. No. You know I want to open on Friday.’ (He’s talking to a wall.) ‘Friday has always been my target date and you know it. Friday is ideal. There are lots of people in the streets and they’ve been paid and want to treat themselves. It’s the psychology. I’ve thought of everything.’

  With a sick man in the car, things can go wrong; he sees it all in a fraction of a second with his special gift, call it what you will. He sees Pa screaming with pain when they drive through the Du Toitskloof Tunnel and the man still refusing to turn back. There’s a thermos flask of tea and sandwiches, sweet and with Marmite, and the subtle hints that he’s braking too hard or: are you sure it’s safe to overtake, Pa miraculously aware of where exactly they are on their journey, as if navigating with a third eye.

  Samantha is busy with a duster and vacuum cleaner in the study when Pa announces the weekend outing to Laingsburg. Mattheüs signals that she should leave, it’s private. Dusts here and dusts there, she doesn’t leave, silver DKNY logo across her chest.

  Pa clutches the sheet in his hand, the fingers contract and let go and do this again. He shifts a little and prepares to get up from his supine position to slowly sit up, his irritation clear from the glow on his face.

  ‘I thought Pa was the one who wanted me to start the business. I don’t understand this change of heart. We can go, don’t moan. I’ll take you. Just let me get going first with the takeaway. Everything’s ready, my lentils are soaking in the cold room. Everything’s ready to go. But I will take you, Pa.’

  He struggles into a sitting position in the bed. With his head at an angle, he slowly wipes his red forehead from right to left. The dusting behind them has abated. Bees outside hover over the frangipani blossoms. A deathly hush descends. And just before his father gets going – he recognises the signs – Mattheüs permits himself one last thought in this study that is now infected with the strange smell that the sickness has brought into it. Everything; he’s going to change everything.

  ‘Mattheüs, you have twenty years or more ahead of you to make a success of that business. My months – no, it must be weeks by now – I can count on my two hands. It’s not as if your father doesn’t understand you. Once a business has got its teeth into you and you start making money – it’s a wonderful feeling. Pa wishes you every success, Mattie, every blessing. All that I ask of you is three days, three, that’s all. It’ll be my last time at Luiperdskop, for all we know. I need to be with the little girls just one more time.’

  ‘And if something happens to Pa there?’ (Should they ask Samantha to go along?) ‘There isn’t even mobile phone reception there. There’s nothing. How do we get hold of a doctor? You’ve weakened a lot, Pa, I can hear it on your visits to the bathroom. All the way to Laingsburg and back.’

  ‘Ag, bugger you, Mattheüs. Laying down the law to me. You’ll take me to Sissy and the little girls if it’s the last thing you do for me. You can open that business of yours at the beginning of next week. How many years were you away overseas, it’s not as if there’s such a tearing rush right now. I won’t make it to Luiperdskop again. And old Hannes, he won’t come here. Terrified of the city. He probably won’t even attend my funeral.’

  Mattheüs listens with his head tilted to one side like a bantam, a stuffed bird on the mantelpiece that you can move around at will, put away, even; he’s of no account in this house, and Jack wants to move in, here. All he knows is that he knows for sure, like before, as always, that he must switch off from what he hears, otherwise he’ll say or do something (that’s the only wisdom he’s acquired with age) that he’ll regret almost immediately, just like Benjamin Duiker.

  ‘Shall I go and make Mr Duiker some tea?’ Samantha coos behind his back.

  Mattheüs goes to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a drink. Why can he no longer tolerate the pact between Pa and Samantha? He knocks back one drink and pours a second. And what does it really matter to him?

  ‘We may as well leave tomorrow morning, early, I thought. Remember to check the tyre pressure for me, Mattie. You know it’s written on the inside of the door.’

  ‘Yes, Pa.’ With his finger, he wipes a spilt drop of brandy from the wooden surface and then licks it off.

  Never say die, as spoken and performed by Benjamin Duiker and emulated willy-nilly by Mattheüs Duiker. Luckily, the welder is coming this afternoon to install the security door, he starts strategising. He’s had a special steel door made with an ornate ‘D’ at head height, and on either side of it two laurel branches with leaves, all of it in steel, very attractive and much more expensive than your usual steel door. In his damn condition all the way to the farm. Okay. He gulps. He’s powerless. Okay.

  A few years ago and exactly one day before he was due to leave for overseas, his father invited him to Duiker’s Motors for a guided tour: just for you, Mattie, so that you can see for yourself what happens there, Pa doesn’t think you really know what he does. (Pa is as excited as a little boy.) They started in the workshop with the impressive hi-tech machines connected to cars to diagnose the engine, just as you would a patient. He was introduced to John and the old man, Oubaas Smittie, and to Syd Dlamini and Dave and Benji, Vepi and James, all the grease monkeys who in their red-and-grey overalls with the red Mercedes star on the chest didn’t really look like grease monkeys at all; and they all looked at him either curiously or amiably (Oubaas Smittie) or sneeringly, son of the boss, well, well – spanners in their back pockets – what kind of boss would he make. Then on to Spare Parts / Onderdele, all along the steel shelves, every spare, big or small, each with its own serial number, filed in pigeonholes. He had no idea where all these things fitted into a motor car; some of the parts he found beautiful, miniature sculptures, and there, too, he was introduced to the spares specialist, Novak the Serbian, with a square head and crew cut, a real porn look, who assured him that Duiker’s Motors stocked only authentic spares – go and check in Goodwood if you want generic cheap stuff – and then he was introduced to Providence, the spares assistant with a sucker in his cheek who nod-nodded at everything; these people, he must say, were very friendly, probably on account of their work with the public, where you have to maintain a pleasant facade or you’re out. After that to the showroom with its green polished floor; a
g man, you could eat off that floor, that’s the way he likes it, says Pa. His empire. His life. And who will take over from him? A lifetime of calculated advance planning and shrewd transactions. There is only one, the first-born, the son, his, and he is proud of him, he’s the one who’ll be able to take it further. Must.

  By this time, Mattheüs was feeling like he did as a child when, at Goodwood showgrounds, they entered the ghost tunnel on a mini-train with flapping apparitions every now and then, right there in the dark on the rails, which never scared him, not even once; only right at the end, suddenly, the hand of a ghost, bigger than any human hand, limp and clammy suddenly around your neck just when you thought or hoped it was over, the ghastliness of that hand belonging to an unknown creature existing somewhere outside his life, and it was that same ghastliness that he experienced that afternoon in Duiker’s, more and more so as the afternoon wore on. It was as if it wasn’t even his father any more who was carrying on like that, but rather an apparition of almighty proportions immortalised as The Arch-Antagonist, present only in his head.

  In a corner visible from Buitenkant Street, a gigantic arrangement of proteas and strelitzias and greenery, always fresh, and then he was introduced one by one to the Mercedes models on the floor as if they were characters, and that was where his resistance, which had been mounting all afternoon in the brightly lit, air-conditioned, slightly rubber- and pine-airfreshener-smelling rooms, melted away. There his father displayed his love of cars, his knowledge of every detail, his admiration for the sophistication of German technology, his love so true and strong that for a moment it relieved the ghastliness, almost completely he would say, so that he was no longer aware of it. You’d have to have a heart of steel not to succumb to such enthusiasm, and he’d have liked to bid the afternoon farewell in that haze of exhilaration to go and down a double Klippies and Coke in the bar lounge not too far from there, but then Pa played his trump card.

  He took him into the nerve centre of Duiker’s, took him right inside his office, surrounded by the luxury that came with such a long and exceptionally successful career in the motor game, as his father put it. One of the two secretaries fluttered in, and Pa was at that stage so involved in his story that he introduced her to Mattheüs only in passing. ‘On a plate, Mattie. You can become a millionaire here, man. We can do up the office next door for you just as you’d like it; Pa won’t begrudge you a cent. It’s all yours, and then, then, you’ll be able to do as you please. Have you thought of that? For a man who earns money, nothing can come in his way. The world is at your feet.’ And then everything, everything came back. ‘And what about my overseas ticket?’ Pa gave a kind of snort-chuckle, like a very rich man looking at a poor man counting the coins in his hand for the single cigarette he wants to buy. ‘Your overseas ticket, forget it, it’s money down the drain all in a good cause.’ Mattheüs walked his index finger up and down the blood-red suede upholstery of his easy chair, saying nothing because he had nothing to say. His heart was raw, his insides gutted because of the man in front of him in his elegant suit, every seam straight and every button in place. Nothing to say to him. And he would never go there again, that he knew. He’d go overseas, and when he came back his father would be retired. That was the last visit, Pa’s very last stand. He was limp and lame. ‘Mattie, but can’t you see the potential?’ And it was as if the whole office, an extension of the man Benjamin Duiker, was proclaiming his father’s taste, was talking to him. He felt completely lame. Thick-tongued. And sad, very. ‘Forty, fifty years I’ve spent building up this business. Not for me. For you. You are my only son.’ He couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to get away from the domain where his father grew larger than life and powerful enough to persuade him to do something he could not or would not do. He pulled his handkerchief from his jeans pocket and blew his nose and walked out – he could still manage to do that. He could flee his father’s physical presence, but he couldn’t switch himself off from his wish, this final attempt. He was completely overwhelmed.

  And that’s when he opened the door of one of those brand-new Mercedes models and got in, turned the key once to switch on the radio, Cher was singing ‘Believe’, perfect timing, as if it were meant just for him, because he was totally shattered, and he sat slumped like that, his head on the steering wheel, for the duration of the song.

  ‘Mattie, so who did you decide to use as your butcher, you never told me?’ asks his father, sitting up in his sickbed in the study.

  ‘I used Uncle Hentie. Pa knows him. Not so? He does halal, everything. But not kosher. I’ll always do lentils or something for Jewish customers or for Hindus and anyone who doesn’t touch meat. I’ve thought of everything.’

  ‘Yes, I can see you have. Ah, here’s the tea now.’

  Mattheüs recovers from the shot of brandy. In his father’s presence issues a string of instructions to Samantha about the journey, that’s the only way to get her to do things for him.

  He pours a last shot, leaves the study and cancels the Friday meat and vegetable order for Duiker’s Takeaway, postponing it to Wednesday; he’s so calm he actually feels cold, and he phones Jack to tell him about the complication. And he says to him, excited, ‘Do you know what, Jack, I’ll pay your bond for a flat. I’ve just thought of it. I’ve got money now, haven’t I? Why didn’t I think of it earlier? See if you can get hold of a flat this weekend.’

  No response from Jack at the other end of the line.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it first. You make deals with me, I know you. If you give, there’s always something you want in return. You say that’s how your father is, but you’re just the same, Matt.’

  ‘Fuck you, Jack.’ He cuts the connection.

  An hour passes while he packs his weekend case and can’t get Jack out of his mind. Samantha packs for Pa: ‘But of course, Mattheüs,’ she says when she sees how he’s ordering her around. She knows exactly what he’s up to, and doesn’t sulk. Simply gets on with the job. Helluva mature, that he must grant her.

  Then he’s off in his second-hand bakkie to Zilverbosch, with a cigarette that he lights and then immediately chucks out, and he pulls up in front of Clarence without parking in the proper place and marches into the hostel with its characteristic boys’ hostel smell and arrives at flat number 2, Mister Jack van Ryswyk, and takes the packet of cigarettes from his pocket and clutches it so as to have something in his fidgety hands, doesn’t think about what he wants to say, just the raw emotion (for Jack, at his sexiest then), so that he hammers on the wooden door without thinking.

  ‘Jack,’ he shouts. Where is the bastard?

  A door opens further down the passage. Pitch-black curly hair and pitch-black eyes peering out: ‘Mister van Ryswyk’s gone out, sir.’

  ‘When did he leave?’ It’s none of this guy’s business. And yet.

  ‘Can’t say, sir. Maybe half an hour ago. Can I take a message for Mister van Ryswyk?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ And he turns back to the light falling through the entrance onto the wooden floorboards of the passage with its linoleum runner. The curly-top, probably a grade tenner, will have noticed that he’s there for a reason. This generation is damn intuitive.

  In his bakkie, he lights up at last and phones Jack on his mobile phone that’s switched off and stays switched off, every quarter of an hour Mattheüs phones him, phones him till he’s crying with rage when he drives into their garden (he’s been to Carlucci’s, asked the guard at the gate of Zilverbosch, everything) and keeps phoning, but now at intervals of half an hour, an hour, and eventually two hours, during which time he makes spaghetti bolognese garnished with chopped celery for him and Pa.

  On the hour that night until about two o’clock or so, there’s stuff on his News Feed from Jack, nearly every time with a photo. The redhead, the English teacher Jamie, is in three of the four photos.

  Must clear things up
with Jamie, Jack writes. He avoids me in the corridors. Thinks I’m a fool. To Sea Point for a beer or two. I think you’ll understand, Matt. With a photo attached of him and Jamie at La Perla, outside on the terrace. His place, that. He introduced Jack to it.

  On his rumpled sheets, with the blue glow of his laptop screen on his face, Mattheüs gets more and more worked up with every Facebook photo. The one that Jack sends now was taken at dusk next to the Sea Point swimming pool, precisely when there’s an apricot glow on the Atlantic Ocean and the calm water of the pool. Jamie stands in the light, Jack’s arm draped around his shoulder, against the railing of the promenade that curves past the Sea Point pool with its symmetrical paving, palm trees behind the two heads and late-night gulls, thousands of them swooping and swerving just to drive him mad; and that’s what Jack manages to do, a jackal through and through, and if he thinks, if he just thinks of everything he’s invested in that man.

  Every one of those places he showed to Jack, Jack cooped up in that hostel flat until he, Mattheüs, met him and restored him to life. Jack, who polishes his shoes at eight every evening, real small-town loser, a glass of box wine from his mini-fridge, empty except for the chocolate Jack can’t live without, alone, just him, nobody else with him or in his life, okay, the hostel has two floors of boys, but that doesn’t count, just Jack on his ownsome watching that miserable show, Muvhango. And he keeps clinging to the scar of that night during his ‘wild time’, to the fatal thing that befell him against his will and without his knowing anything about it. (Is that possible, Mattheüs wondered, but without saying it.) Whatever the facts, Jack’s shy about that night, he had to fill in the details for himself. He understands what a painful thing it must be to process, and funnily enough, Jack doesn’t really want to process it though he’s long since healed, Jack is strong. He persists in clinging to it and punishing Mattheüs with it: you’re not going to have your way with me. That’s Jack.