Wolf, Wolf

by Eben Venter

  You can say today, yes Pa, it was only a door, after all. Your cars came first, then your family. And perhaps that’s how it was. Pa just wanted to teach you appreciation of the outstanding technology of the Mercedes car. In the end it may have been a way of understanding something about your father. After all, it was those cars that earned us a living, that sent you to university and overseas, everything we have.

  You’ll say you understand me, Mattie. And I suppose that’s also true. You’re right. You’re an intelligent person with a soft heart. Ag, I find this such a sad business. I’ll have to say more about it next time.

  I simply wanted to tell you about my appreciation for the door of the Mercedes, so that you can understand. And old Kallie, the show-off. You know, Mattie, if I really have to be straight with you today, I was sometimes jealous of my cousin. His way with women, man, that takes some doing. Now I don’t know how it works with you people, but it’s not easy, Mattie, to be with only one woman all your life. That’s a thing that becomes a real burden for a man when he starts pushing middle age.

  Now I’m tired and I’m going to finish off for now. You’re a good son to me, Mattie. That’s what Pa wants you to know, my child. Pa is by no means perfect either.

  Pa.

  It’s the day before the opening of Duiker’s Takeaway. While his lamb-and-tomato stew is simmering, and the pot of lentil dahl (with boiled butternut for a bit of sweetness under the chilli) is cooling on a special rack, he slips away to have his hair cut at Chauvel’s. ‘Jeez, Matt, why are you so tense?’ he’s asked when Vaughn washes his hair, massages his scalp and also gives him a bit of a shoulder rub.

  He wishes he could say he’s not scared. He’s scared his business concept won’t come off, he’s scared he doesn’t have the stamina for all that standing and cooking, on your feet all day long, and he’s scared all his father’s generously donated money will go down the drain – and what will Sissy say then? – and he’s scared his father will finally give up on him. Just this once, he thinks. If not for his own sake, at least for the sake of the old man so that he can go to his grave contented. And the one thing he’s always been confident of, the flavour of his food, he’s even scared about that. While Vaughn is rubbing product into his hair and starts styling it, standing back and checking and working his head again with nimble fingers, he texts Jack (chilly ever since he and his father returned to the city on Monday) please to drop in at Duiker’s to test his food.

  Mirror behind his head. He has to be off, no more time for this shit; and as he leaves: ‘You must remember to come and support me, you lot!’

  ‘But you’re the one we’re after,’ shouts Vaughn, pulling his lower lip down with a long finger.

  Into his bakkie, changing radio stations and changing to another again, and still Jack hasn’t texted him back. It’s four o’clock; he stopped teaching long ago.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘The person you have called is not available.’

  He races to Zilverbosch, and concentrates on shifting his attention from his disappointment about Jack (which could trip him up) to the savoy cabbage pickle with chilli, fresh ginger, and sesame oil, rather like the Korean kim-chi, which he wants to get done before this evening. Red-faced, he knocks at Jack’s door, walks in without waiting for a response.

  Jack is standing in the middle of his flat like a person who has just moved into a bare space and now has to decide what to do next. It is bare indeed, everything has been taken from the walls. Jack’s stuff is all lined up: one large suitcase, one medium-sized suitcase, and a small one lying open on his bed for the last few things, one box with books, and another box with all his pictures and smaller stuff. But that’s not the point, and he sees it written all over Jack’s face. In the rush and bother of driving to the farm and the opening of his takeaway, he’s forgotten to remember that it’s Jack’s last day; he has to clear out of Clarence by tomorrow. Mattheüs doesn’t know what to say. Jack didn’t let him know either whether he should give him a loan for a bond on a flat. Jack is killing him with his criticism.

  ‘Ag, Jackie, man.’

  And he hugs Jack from behind and kisses his neck with a body that smells of food. Where will he stay? Jack shakes his head against his lips.

  ‘With Charnie?’

  He refuses to say. Jack frees himself from his embrace and says he’s okay, he’s worked it all out.

  Does he want to come along to the takeaway? Mattheüs is embarrassed to ask him to come and taste his food, but he does need someone for that, he’s feeling sick to the pit of his stomach and in Jack’s presence – inexplicably – even more scared that his business will fail.

  Jack says he has to pack a few more things, arrange some stuff, until what time will Matt still be there, he’ll come by later. Mattheüs leaves the place with the echo of Jack’s very specific tone of voice in his ears, brusque, low, threatening rather than accusing, and the whole way, in thickening traffic, focuses only on the ingredients of his cabbage pickle.

  So then fate chooses the little guy as his food taster. The metal roller shutter over the counter is raised and Mattheüs is chop-chopping when he spots him among the pedestrians: Emile, the Congolese. He has a huge dog with him, a Rottweiler cross, only bigger and more brutish, tugging at his chain, Emile’s hand still covered in the leather glove with the half-fingers and the holes for the knuckles. Emile calls to him excitedly, ties the monster dog to the lamppost and comes to lean on the counter with folded arms, his head only just visible.

  Is he going to use cassava leaves in his food, he could let him have some? No, he says, he really is open to all suggestions, but for now he’s only going to prepare the food he knows. The short-arse won’t leave. Behind his shoulder, on the pavement, the dog is huffing and puffing, slobber drooling from his gums. There’s a slight prickliness between them, and Mattheüs inevitably reacts with caution. He wishes he would leave now. No, no food for sale yet. Tomorrow.

  At one stage, he has to fetch something from his bakkie parked behind his premises in the four-bay parking area. But he first has to lower the roller shutter, and gestures to the folded arms to get off the counter. Wait, wait, Emile signals, one hand without, and one hand wearing a leather glove: he’ll keep an eye on the place while he’s gone. There’s his dog. Diamond is his name, nobody will come in here.

  At this, Mattheüs feels a terrible anxiety, followed by a sudden urge – involuntary, as sudden urges tend to be. ‘Watch out,’ he shouts, and drops the heavy shutter, the short arms pulled back from the counter just in time. From behind the closed shutter – it’s one of those with a steel bar along the bottom that you screw into the wall on either side with a key – there’s a howl of indignation. Mattheüs remains standing where he is in the glow of the neon – he’d selected the warmer, daylight type – and tells himself the hell with him, he did the right thing. He has a drink of water from the bottle next to his chopping block, goes out by the door, double-locks it, closes the steel door too, and pretends not to know that Emile is standing right there with the dog that is by now tugging hard at its chain.

  ‘It’s my business,’ says Mattheüs as he walks off.

  In the meantime, Emile has lit a cigarette, holding it between thumb and index finger in his cupped gloved hand: ‘Je te comprends.’

  Mattheüs, in turn, understands exactly what he means. Emile implies that he understands everything, more than the takeaway he sees in front of him, whereas in fact there is nothing more to understand. And that’s what Mattheüs instinctively doesn’t like.

  Back with the grater, a piece of kitchen equipment that you grip comfortably with the left hand while grating lemon or naartjie peel against calibrated grooves, everything must be unlocked again and the roller shutter raised. The small guy’s still there, squatting next to the rump of his dog, eyes fixed on him, unblinking.

  Mattheüs opens his iPhone for
a last check, a photo posted on his Wall, no comments. Jack snapping himself in his empty bathroom, middle finger raised in front of him in the traditional up-yours sign. Crude. Okay, if that’s his attitude. He’s certainly not going to come and taste. So let him spend his last night alone in the hostel. But in spite of his efforts to persuade himself, he can’t shake off the chill. All right then, life goes on, and he decides, against his better judgement, to call Emile closer.

  Again he comes up to the counter to lean on it with folded arms, the face now open and friendly – the power of persistence – and one after the other, Mattheüs dishes up tablespoons of the tomato-and-lamb stew, the lentil dahl, the chicken curry with coconut milk and fresh coriander, and the cabbage pickle that still needs to soak a little. For each dish a fresh spoon, to prevent saliva on the licked spoon, heaven forbid, from fermenting the food; it’s standard hygiene for a commercial kitchen. And maybe it was destined to be this way, he laughs with sheer relief, everything’s okay and everything’s going to be okay, with none other than the midget Emile, the ordinary street eater, as his first taster.

  Emile grabs the plate with all four spoons in it, wanting to squat on the pavement and eat it all. But Mattheüs says no, he has to rinse his mouth between each taste, here’s some water, so that he’s tasting each dish on its own merits, understand? He nods and takes the plate again, raises the spoon with the lamb stew, his black shirt lifts, and Mattheüs sees his ribs, the taut skin darker than that on his arms and face. He bolts the portion and rinses so that he can try the second one, the chicken and coconut dish. That one’s gone too, then the last two. Greedy, like someone who hasn’t eaten properly for a long time, everything tastes délicieux, délicieux, délicieux to him, he says. (Is he totally out of his mind, having his food tested by a famished hobo?)

  Then he dishes some of the chicken-and-coconut curry into a container because he does after all have pity on the human being (the ribs), and manages to wring it out of him that this was the tastiest one – the creaminess of the coconut milk, of course. He must go now, Mattheüs tells him, he has to finish and lock up.

  Emile is already taking the last mouthful of the food that he’s just given him, sticks his tongue into the container, chucks container and plastic spoon aside, the dog straining on its chain towards it all. Dustbin, says Mattheüs, but not before Emile has cadged a cigarette from him too, and encourages him again to leave, which he’s actually going to do now, the dog chomping at the plastic container, its head reaching almost to Emile’s chest. Three, four times he looks around and grins toothily at Mattheüs, and he really does hope that it’s nothing more than ordinary friendliness.

  Another one from Jack: @ Clarence House. Early to bed tonight. Got two DVDs from the boys to watch. They won’t let me go. Good luck for tomorrow. Will come check it out. :-)

  Pa is already settled when he gets home and peeks in. There are slips of paper with messages from Samantha and Aunt Sannie; the latter wasn’t supposed to come today already. Pa’s week is divided up among him (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Sundays), Samantha (Wednesday and Thursday afternoons) and, against his will, Aunt Sannie (Fridays). Dominee Roelf has agreed to take Pa to oncology for his radiation tomorrow. The dominee is an old family friend, not all that young himself, but still amazingly open-minded for his generation, not a bad preacher, a man he trusts with his father. There’s also a bowl of soft Hertzog cookies, ‘for your father’, from Aunt Sannie, and Samantha has made a list of the week’s food that she’s prepared for Pa: vegetable soup; tender chicken pie, the filling only, Pa doesn’t like the crust any longer. Every dish marked, on the second shelf of the fridge. And: Will you please cut his nails?

  He reads Jack on Facebook while he’s drying his hair: Meryl Streep is seriously the best, and while he’s getting dressed he’s got his computer on his favourite porn site already and quickly checks through the day’s additions, and there and then decides on a video, his deferred reward, and walks barefoot to minister to his father’s needs.

  ‘You’re so warm, Mattie,’ Pa says when he helps him sit up to drink his glass of Sustagen. He holds the back of his father’s head, the scalp moves gently under his hand as he takes small sips. His father knows he’s looking at him.

  ‘I can see a future for you, Mattie.’

  In the dim light of the desk lamp, his father looks beautiful. The sunken cheeks, the just-visible stubble on the chin – odd how the beard is apparently also inhibited by the chemo – the soft, sparse hair like that of a newborn, the movement of the eyeballs behind the lids as if still trying to make out something in the dusk, even if only the heat radiated by his son’s body. And it’s his father who makes him feel what it feels like the night before opening his own business: a sensation he can compare only with the jumpy but throbbing-thrilling anticipation before you-know-what.

  He says he knows Mattie doesn’t actually have any kitchen hands yet, and that’s good, in the beginning one has to put one’s own shoulder to the wheel. (He’s glad his father can’t see how tired he is; and he’s only just started.)

  Hard work’s never killed anyone, says his father. One of his golden rules was always to greet all his staff in the morning as he walked in. One by one. He always made sure to look them in the eye and in that way he could tell whether they were still happy or not. The words are uttered in measured tones and remain hanging between him and his father; what might once have been a handy hint now becomes something intimate between the two of them.

  ‘I rely on you, Mattie,’ he hands him the empty glass, ‘help me to the toilet, then you can carry on with your own stuff. You must have plenty to think about. Remember to be careful with your money, son. Pa knows how it is. But feel free to speak if you’re really in a tight spot.’

  The steel gate with the fancy ‘D’ for Duiker’s Takeaway – that monster of an account still has to be paid. The welder cheated him, that’s for sure.

  Inside his room, he involuntarily prepares himself even though he’s knackered; a pile of cushions against the headboard, computer to the right next to his side, his breath just beginning to race. Either he’ll sleep very well tonight – he’s warm, the sustained physical labour still heating his skin – or he’ll toss and turn, reviewing the day’s events. He gazes over the flickering images at his room, his nest: the photo of Kafka; a CNA poster of Michael Jackson that he’s always wanted to take down; a photo of a wild fig tree with a bonobo monkey, on its own for once and yet clearly on the prowl – it’s the ape species that humps incessantly (not for procreation, purely for pleasure); the string on the blue-green wall with his sunglasses; a small framed photo of his mother that he knows without quite being able to make it out, she’s on Blouberg Beach on a clear day, and she’s running at an angle with her arms stretched wide like somebody pretending to fly, set free, in the moment. If only he could hide in this den of filth for ever and ever, his hand always at work. He drifts off with his hand gone to sleep by his side, the computer also dormant, the security of the room overwhelming.

  From far away and detached from his craving brain, the sound of the intercom comes buzzing down the passage, into his room and all the way right up to him, animating his slumbering body. The first thing he does is reach down to the towel on the floor and wipe both his hands. He shuts the computer. Listens. Whoever it is has stopped ringing for the moment. There it is again. Pa will wake up if he isn’t awake already. He picks up his pants from the floor and puts them on, and again the buzzer sounds. Chances are slim that it’s one of the ADT guards. They phone you on your cell or on the landline, as instructed by the client.

  He presses the button to activate the screen of the CCTV system: two sharp-pointed ears. A dog – except that a dog doesn’t reach that high. He keeps pressing the button and peers at the blue-grey night scene of the pavement and section of road covered by the cameras at the gate. The dog’s head, larger than normal and wolf-like, stares straight at him. Ther
e’s something about the hairiness of the dog hairs and the oddly impassive gaze of the dark pin-hole eyes that doesn’t look quite right. And where’s the rest of the dog-creature’s body? He knows who it is before the deliberately hoarse voice comes over the intercom.

  ‘Matt,’ says the dog-mouth, ‘it’s me. Please open up.’

  ‘Jack, are you crazy? What are you doing here this time of night? What have you got on your head? Wait, I’m coming. Stay right there.’

  Barefoot, he runs past the half-open study door with the desk lamp burning (all night – Mattheüs’s decree), no rustling or snorting coming from there, which means absolutely nothing, and out onto the paving, silver-tracked by nocturnal snails, the lawn ghostly white with dew that’s just starting to smell of the fresher autumn dew.

  He slides the gate open to the breadth of a man, and there Jack is, dressed up in his pitch-black, bulging-in-the-fly jeans, cowboy style shirt with rivets for buttons, and the pièce de résistance, the dog’s-head mask fitted to his shoulders where it fans out hairily like a luxurious fur collar, slopes up to a neck with tufts of silver hair, followed by the head with its extra-long gleaming snout, a bit moist with dew, even, and inside it the eyeholes that Jack peers through, his real human eyes glittering as he lifts and lowers his snout and turns it this way and that for Mattheüs, to make him laugh, to win him over, and then come the pricked ears, attentive and muscled with fine ear veins and hairs for better hearing, wolf’s ears, no less; and last of all, cheeky and right between the ears at the top of the forehead, a stiff tuft that shivers lightly in a breeze that has just come up, or possibly as a result of Jack’s inner state, his pent-up anxiety about this moment, the true nature of which Mattheüs only realises when he notices what’s to the right of the gate: Jack’s pitiable pile of luggage moved close to the wall to escape the gaze of the two CCTV cameras – the big suitcase, the medium-sized suitcase, the small one and the two boxes tied with rope, each with a cleverly made rope handle, and finally a Checkers bag containing bits and pieces. (It’s both pathetic and admirable that Jack’s earthly possessions are reduced to three suitcases, two boxes and a plastic bag.)