“I went with Annie,” I say, “to see the school where she’s working. In Jules. She invited me. Then the police came there and . . . he, like, arrested me.”
Isaac shows his teeth to the sun, takes a breath. “You did what?”
“He was not arrested,” says Oberholzer. “He was detained.”
Isaac puts his hands on his hips and drops his head and looks at Oberholzer from the tops of his eyes, speaking more quietly. “What does that suppose to mean?”
“If he was arrested, he’d be in jail. Then we brings a charge in forty-eight hours. But we don’t need charges to detain. Maybe you should ask your friend the brigadier to explain the Security Act for you. Section twenty-nine. Security police can detain a suspect for as long as they want. Which includes minors.”
“Are you security police?”
The question comes fast and makes Oberholzer blink. He sniffs and says no. “I’m uniform, you can see that. Security police is Special Branch—the SB. The SB don’t wear uniform. But—”
“So what the hell we even talking about then? I mean he went in to visit a school. He’s just a kid!”
“Listen, Mr. Helger, don’t play stupid also. You know it is illegal even just for a white to be in there in ordinary times, and Jules is a active unrest zone right now. Anyway, the new state of emergency this time applies everywhere in the country, ukay, I actually don’t need to be SB to hold your boy right now, if I want. Suspicious activity under the emergency regulations is good enough, section three, if you really wanna know. And I can hold him for a whole month to start, just on that.”
“Ach you talking such crap now,” Isaac says. “How many harmless white schoolboys are you holding for emergency? Come on. I’ll stick a complaint on you, man.”
“I can hold him, Mr. Helger,” Oberholzer says. “You better believe that.”
Isaac rubs his neck. “It’s that American girl anyway, who took him there, he said. So it’s her fault. Go talk to her then. My kid just went along.”
“That’s his story,” Oberholzer said. “That’s why I’ll detain him for questioning on the matter, hey. If I want.”
That gets Isaac shouting again. He tells Oberholzer he’s talking shit and to get the hell off his property.
“Know something, Mr. Helger,” says Oberholzer, “I dunno what it is with you people.”
Isaac stiffens. “What’s that suppose to mean?”
“I come here to do you a favour, and drop your boy off with a warning. A normal father, he would be concerned what his boy is getting involved in. You should tell me thank you for what I have done. Believe me, I could have had Martin sent up to SB. Where they don’t play games. Nothing you could do.”
Neither one moves or talks and all I can hear is the sound of both of them breathing hard, skeefing at each other. Isaac says, “What is this really about?”
Oberholzer starts rubbing his right palm up and down against his belly. “Tell you what, Isaac Helger,” he says. “You shake my hand. And you tell me thank you, Captain—for looking out so nicely for my son. And then I’ll leave him here. If not, no, I will not detain you. No, I’m not ganna do anything to you. No. It is exactly your boy who will be detained. Exactly him and no one else.”
“Who the hell are you?” Isaac says.
Oberholzer holds out his hand. “Shake my hand and tell me thank you.” Isaac looks down at the hand. Oberholzer says, “I am Captain Wilhelm Francois Oberholzer. Ja, Oberholzer is my name, Isaac Helger. Now shake my hand and thank me proper.”
“Oberholzer,” says Isaac and his voice is so small. It gives me a scare and I almost run to him. His shoulders curl down and he sways like he’s about to faint. “Oberholzer,” he says. I’ve never seen my father this way, I swear. The captain’s hand is pointing at him like a spear. Very slowly my father reaches up to it.
“That’s right,” says Oberholzer. “There’s it. Now shake.” My mouth is open as I watch the hands connect, my father’s all limp. “And tell me thank you for what I done for you. Say thank you, Captain Oberholzer.”
My father’s voice is not his voice.
23
Isaac drives me home, saying nothing, but I can tell how upset he is by how his lumpy knuckles keep flashing white around the steering wheel. At home he does his usual scrub-up at the sink in the backyard, sluicing the grease off while I fetch him a Scotch and soda and clean clothes. Like usual we’re all in front of the TV by six o’ clock for the SABC news. It’s Isaac in the big soft chair with his slipper feet up on the leather ottoman, it’s Arlene in the chair next to him, her long ballerina’s neck sticking up straight, it’s Zaydi in the corner, and it’s me with pole position as it’s been ever since Marcus left, lying on the couch. We watch old grey-hair, square-glasses Michael de Morgan for about ten seconds—“the government today announced special measures”—before Isaac shouts his first “Bladdy schmocks!” of the evening. His legs kick and thrash on the ottoman and the old leather creaks like it’s in deep pain. All these years of six o’clock abuse and you’d reckon the thing would have exploded into splinters by now. “Stupid bladdy idyats!” says Isaac to the TV. “Useless bunch of arseholes!” De Morgan reports another raid into Mozambique. Time on target eight minutes, twenty seconds, no casualties and eight terrorists eliminated. He moves on to another bomb blast, this one in Benoni, destroying an electric substation and killing two elderly women out for a walk. The women—Mrs. Eunice de Kok, seventy-eight, and Mrs. Marie Coetzee, eighty-one—were both white. Security police are investigating. Isaac yells and Arlene touches his arm and Zaydi says in Yiddish he must calm himself for the sake of his health but everyone knows that won’t happen. Isaac’s never exactly been a fan of the Nats, but the National Party have always been our government which is why he’s never stopped his shouting. “Stuffing morons!” he yells now, and he’s off again, his stubby legs chopping away like propellers.
After the news we wait for Annie for a while but it’s clear she’s not coming. Arlene says she could have phoned at least. Isaac has gone all quiet and won’t look at me. He doesn’t say anything about Oberholzer to Arlene. I wait till after supper, to get him alone when he’s doing the dishes (which he always does right away as if to prove the point against Arlene that she was wrong when she used to say he’d be too tired to do maid’s work). When I ask him if we should tell Arlene what happened, he shakes his head. “Don’t talk about it to anyone. Especially your ma. The only person needs talking to is this American. I don’t know who the hell she thinks she is.”
“It’s not her fault, Da. I went with her on my own cos I wanted to. She didn’t want to take me. I asked her to.”
“Why’d you do that?”
I shrug. “I dunno. I—I dunno.”
“You’re a sixteen-year-old kid,” he says. “She could have said no. She knew what she was doing. It’s a hell of a bladdy chutzpah to involve my boy.”
I watch his thick hand scrubbing a pan with steel wool for a while, and then I say, “Did you know him, hey? That policeman. It seemed like maybe you did?”
He mutters something, shaking his head. But then he says, “Some things never go away. They get passed down, from father to son. It’s in their blood and their mother’s milk.”
“What do you mean, Da?”
“What do you think I mean? I mean hating the Jews. I mean how it is a thing you cannot change no matter what.”
“Who are you talking about? Oberholzer?”
His hands jerk so I get splashed with soapy water and he looks hard at me. “Don’t you ever say that name in this house again.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Forget it and don’t think on it again,” he says. “I’ll talk to Hugo and we’ll sort it out.”
I don’t sleep well. My dreams keep waking me. I see Kefiya and Ski Mask. I see the legs of old ladies in the street. I am forced to eat cat food and I am lost inside a shantytown where cops are setting dogs on screaming little girls. Oberholzer and Annie lock me up i
n a blue cell that fills up with water. The only bad dream I don’t have is the Nightmare.
When Annie doesn’t come home I start to worry about her, but Arlene says it’s just rudeness, not letting us know if she’ll be home for supper or not. Then Isaac says she is probably just too embarrassed to show her face around here after what she’s done and Arlene says why, what has she done? So Isaac has to tell her I went to the township with Annie. Then Arlene asks me a million questions. I tell her it was nothing, just a visit to the school, that I asked to be taken. Isaac still doesn’t say anything about Oberholzer at the Yard. At the end of it all, Arlene tells Isaac she doesn’t want him to make a scene when Annie comes back. She knows his temper. Let’s just leave it and move on.
But Annie doesn’t come back the next day or the next and we reach the end of the week, Friday, and Arlene lights the candles and Zaydi says the kiddish for Shabbos supper and we sit down and start eating. But all-a-sudden the gates open and crash shut outside. It can only be her, she’s the only one with keys. We all wait, not looking at each other. Annie Goldberg strolls in like a day at the beach. Hi, how are ya, guys. She takes her seat and starts piling salads on her plate. I get so tense my stomach doesn’t want any food and I have to force the mouthfuls down. I keep checking Isaac and I don’t like the way he keeps his head down, plus that vein in his neck is starting to twitch like mad. But the silence goes on to the point that I almost relax, like that’s how it’s going to be for the rest of supper. Then Isaac speaks up with his rough voice. “You know, uh, Annie. It’s a funny thing, hey. I do the clean-up. I dunno if you noticed, we do not have a girl here.”
“Sure,” says Annie. “Arlene told me you guys prefer not to have a maid anymore.”
“Gloria,” says Da, “was with us since I bought this house in ’forty-eight. Now I decided a while ago, because I don’t agree with the government we have, I don’t agree with this full-on apartheid, that we will not participate and keep a girl in the back like every other white family. We will do our own cleaning at home. But we kept Gloria on here still, and the last I dunno how many years—hey, Arlene?—she couldn’t even do much work, too old. So I was already doing a lot of the cleaning on my Sunday mornings even then. Izzen that so, Arlene?”
“It’s true,” Arlene says.
“But, see, I told Gloria, always, if you want to retire and go back to Lesotho, well and good—I’ll settle you up with a nice lump sum for that. But if you want to stay here, also, if you happy in your room as things are, I said you’re welcome to that. Her choice. Because I said one thing—ask Arlene—I said I will never kick her out of here, Gloria, never. I keep a loyalty to good people. And you don’t know the times when the cops came here to look for her husband and I told them to get stuffed, they can’t come in my house. I even hid the black gentleman inside my own home. And it’s same thing as the Yard. Ask any a them. In Vrededorp there, you don’t know this, but in Vrededorp when other businesses give the boys their pay packets, there’s some of em will make em do a little dance before they get it, ja, just to rub it in. And I say that’s disgusting. Other ones, you’ll see some fat manager come out and shout at em, ‘Load faster, load faster.’ I say, ‘You try it, fattie. You go ahead try.’ Cos I do. Always have. By us, I bladdy work in there with my boys. They respect me. And I pay em a very good wage they would never smell anywhere else. That is why in forty years they never stole one cent from me, my boys.”
Annie smiles into her plate. “Aren’t they men? Wasn’t the girl a woman?”
“Ukay, men. My men. You don’t like my terminology, that’s fine. It’s just a way of talking. Maybe I’m ole fashion in my talking, but what do you know about real work, getting down in the hard dirt there and grafting hard with the men? There is respect you have to earn. You can never buy it. Ask them.”
Arlene says, “Ize, maybe not, hey? This discussion for another time?”
“Do you mind?” says Isaac. “I’m explaining something to her here.” To Annie he goes on, “Like I’m saying, I do the washing up after supper here cos we don’t have a girl. Sorry, a maid, is that better? And also I put away the leftovers you know. I put it all in whatchacallits, and I cover with tinfoil. I put the meat, the cold chicken. And it’s a funny thing you know. When I get up in the morning, I don’t eat any breakfast, I just take some tea. But when I open the fridge for milk what I see nowadays is the tinfoil is open and the meat is usually gone. It’s bladdy licked clean in there. And I think that is a very odd happening. Cos I know what was there when I went to bed and when my wife was in bed and when Martin has gone to bed and my father also, I know what was there—so izzen it funny how the next morning the meat would be eaten up, and I wonder by who, if everyone else went to bed and you were the only one not home? Who came home at God knows what time and decided on a midnight snack. But then you’re supposedly a vegitenarian, am I right?”
“What are you trying to say, Mr. Helger?”
“Call me Isaac.”
“I don’t think I see your point.”
“I’m just looking at things,” says Isaac. “I mean maybe, you know, maybe the Tokoloshe is the one that’s chewing up all that meat, hey. You know about the Tokoloshe, hey? The African ghost that lives under beds and comes out creepy every night. Ja, maybe it was Tokoloshe ate the meat.”
Annie says, “Or maybe it’s someone from a starving family in Jules, who broke in to get a little something so their children could eat.”
“Very funny,” Isaac says.
“No,” says Annie, “it is absolutely not.”
Isaac sits up, his chair creaking. “You know the police brought my boy home from Jules on Tuesday, you know that, hey? The cops. My son.”
“Izey,” Arlene says. “Let’s leave it. Friday night Shabbos.”
“No, we are not ganna leave it. Because, Miss America, this happens to be my family here. My flesh and my blood. And if you ganna be schlepping my own son into your political gemors there, lemme tell you, you got another bladdy thing coming!”
Annie frowns. “And what exactly,” she says, “is my political . . . chuh-what-is-it?”
“Gemors,” says Arlene helpfully. “It means a mess.”
“My mess, huh?”
“He’s a kid,” says Isaac, pointing at me with his fork. “And whatever it is you involved him with in that location on Tuesday—”
“Have you ever been there, to Julius Caesar township, Mr. Helger?” asks Annie.
“My name is Isaac, and missy, I been into the locations before you were wearing nappies. As a matter a fact I grew up playing with coloured boys, so don’t try open a big bladdy jaw on me at the table in my own house.”
“Ize, please,” Arlene says. But I think we all know he isn’t going to stop, not now. The fuse has already burned down.
“You think I don’t hate the apartheid?” Isaac says. “Is that what it is? You think I’m for the Nats. Jezus Chrise! I was fighting and having the shit knocked out of me by Greyshirt Nazi bastards before you were born! Those are the ones who became the Nats, who were for Hitler back then! And I remember when they came in power in ’forty-eight, how we were crapping ourselves, the Jews—”
“Yeah,” says Annie, “but it didn’t work out too badly for you-all now did it? I mean admit it. Jews pretty much have it made here. Just like all the whites. Even better, mostly. Under the Natis, it has been a great life at the top of the heap for ya. Now you say you hate em, the Natis—”
“It’s Nats! Not Nat is! That how much you know!”
“Nats, okay. Well if you are against em, and apparently you are, then logically you should be for the African National Congress—”
“Oh, God,” says Arlene softly.
“You are bladdy well kidding me!” Isaac shouts. “You think I want those communist animals taking over? They would stuff this country out of sight in two days! They’ll shut the whole economy down and send us all one-way into a ditch that we will never climb out of, black and white and yellow a
nd blue, everyone!”
Annie is taking the shouting well, I think, her voice still calm. “Have you read the ANC’s Freedom Charter, Mr. Helger?”
“You mean the same ANC that sets bombs to blow up little kids on their way to school? Ask my son sometime about what happened to school bus number five. You mean that ANC?”
“I just asked if you read the charter, Mr. Helger.”
“Don’t lecture me, lady. I’ve seen all that commie stuff from before the war even. Nationalise the mines. Take away everyone’s property and give it to the state, the wonderful state. Have one-party rule and comrades this and comrades that, wow-wee, what a paradise, just like Cuba. Ja, just brilliant. Lemme tell you—communism makes countries into shitholes faster than anything on earth, because it is a shit idea because it is against what human nature is, and human nature never changes.”
“It seems to be doing fine for most of humanity.”
“It’s what now?”
“Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, plus China, I mean that alone is well north of a billion people who live in the communist system.”
“Ja, and how bladdy well are they doing?”
The Mandela Plot Page 11