Hugo sighs. “Ja, Magnus was his name. I told you already.”
“You said Da sorted him.”
“Well he did and he didn’t. Let’s just say if you bite you can also get bitten back.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened much later, it was in the seventies, this Magnus had quite a big mechanic shop going and your father heard about it. What he did, he decided to give Magnus some payback for all the stuff what had happened long ago, like I told you, before the war. Isaac saw it like a chance to see him right once and for all. I told him forget it but he wouldn’t forget.”
“What’d he do?”
“It wasn’t hard. Magnus wasn’t good in business. Isaac had me speak to some friends of mine who were supplying him, tell them open up the credit lines, and they piled him with goods. He couldn’t say no. I mean it’s not like we held a gun to his head. We just gave him plenty of rope to hang himself with. We quietly bought the property and owned his lease, we bought up his debts. He had no idea we were the ones who held all the bonds, that we owned him lock, stock, and barrel right up until your father gave the word and called them all in and put him into bankruptcy, boom. Then he had me ask all our suppliers and customers not to do business with Magnus Oberholzer again, had me spread some stories which wasn’t hard because they were all true—it was just a question of letting everyone in the trade know not to do business with him or give him a job. So that buried old Magnus. I’m not surprised to hear from his son now that it broke him. But I don’t shed a tear and neither should you. Like I say, the man was an absolute Nazi. They weren’t called AWB back then, they were Greyshirts before the war. But there were a lot more of them. Storming round the streets of Joburg. They used to smash windows in Bertrams and Doornfontein. They backed Hitler to win, they had a lot of support. They bashed up Jews in the street. Those were rough days for the Jews in Joburg, lemme tell you. And this Oberholzer senior, he was a Greyshirt deluxe-deluxe. Huge bladdy ox of a man he was too. And he made your da suffer back then. So he got what he deserved in the end, for messing with Isaac Helger. Your father had the last word.”
“Except that his son Bokkie is speaking up now,” I say. “Isn’t that so, Hugo?”
Hugo mutters something I don’t catch and we drive all the way back in a strange silence. I’m supposed to be home by ten and it’s late but when we get to Joburg Hugo ignores this and takes us to his house in Hyde Park, a big Tudor place with a thatched roof. The garage used to be stables. At the back is a workbench and a small fridge with enough dust a finger could sign. After Hugo parks, we sit down there and Hugo cracks open two beers from the fridge and hands me one. “This is one helluva bladdy twist,” he says. “This is the twist of all twists.” He looks off and shuts his eyes and rubs his face. Then he drinks some beer and says, “But lucky for us, your Uncle Hugo is a man who plans ahead for twists.” I swallow some cold beer. “It’s my fault,” I say. “If I’d never gone to Jules with Annie . . .” I’m sort of counting on Hugo to tell me that’s not true, that it would have happened anyway or something like that, but he only clinks cans and says, “Such is life, young man.” Which makes me want to cry, though I don’t show it, trying to smile instead. Hugo maybe sees something in my face. “Love does tricks on the mind,” he tells me. “You followed that American bird. Don’t blame yourself. I mean even your da—when your da was young he fell for a shiksa girl from Parktown, but she wasn’t for him. Different league. Different world. You asked me about that old Cadillac he keeps around. It’s because that girl’s family had a Cadillac just like that and he still remembers. That’s why it’s there. Between you and me.”
There’s so much I don’t know about Isaac, so much of the past that’s still at play but he’ll never talk about it. I sip some beer to cover my confusion. Hugo drinks too, then he puts down the can and slaps his thighs. “Right. Well. Let’s lay it all out. We started today with one helluva problem on our hands. Then you and me, we went all the way and did our very best to try and fix this thing, like reasonable people. Nobody could ask for more. But it didn’t work. The opposite. Now the problem is so worse it’s not even funny—”
“Shouldn’t we tell Da?”
“Don’t be mad!”
“Why not?”
“Boyki, I don’t think you understand yet. This is a police captain who is wily as they come. The only reason he had us out there was to make a point, and what is that point? That nothing can persuade this man to stop. Not money, not anything. He is ganna do his best to ruin us. But you can’t tell your father. I can guarantee Isaac will go charging straight at him and it will not be pretty. For us, I mean. Oberholzer is waiting for him, he expects it. Your da could end up in prison, or worse, I swear. No, don’t look at me like that. I’m a hundred per cent serious. I know what I’m talking about. A situation like this, there’s only three ways. You can try to fight or you can pay the man off. We tried paying. Fighting? This bugger will win that game, big time.”
“What’s the third?”
Hugo takes a swig. “Lemme tell you a story,” he says. “There was a doctor called Teddy Shapiro that I knew from my shul. Sweetest chap you could ever meet. Would not harm the wing on any fly by nature. He was also the biggest specialist in medicine of infecting diseases in prolly the whole world. Now this Teddy was a typical liberal-type Jew and he donated all his spare time to this free clinic he had in Soweto. He used to get tears in his eyes, I promise you, when he was talking about the blacks he was helping. It went on for years, we talking. I am saying this man was more than a mensch, he was a bladdy saint. And what did they do to him in ’seventy-six? At the clinic where Teddy Shapiro did nothing but the horrible sin of caring for them for free?” Everyone knows how bad the Soweto Riots were, in June 1976, how the police rolled in force into the townships and opened fire. Hugo says it was on the very first day of the riots that a mob ringed the little brick clinic where Dr. Teddy Shapiro was on duty. They set fire to the cars in the parking lot. Hugo explains there was a black reporter from the Star there, who put it all in the paper—how Dr. Shapiro recognised the faces, and knew their names and went out to speak to them, how they stripped him naked, beat him with bricks and iron bars. “Then they chucked him into the clinic and set it on fire,” Hugo says. “Now think about it. That is what they did to someone who helped them. Imagine what they’d do to anyone else. I mean, boyki, am I a schmock? Am I a bladdy fool? No! I made up my mind then and there. I am going to leave this place. I am going to emigrate. The ship is going down. But first I had to organise things nicely . . .” Since our government makes it illegal for South Africans to move their own money overseas, Hugo says he started cutting under-the-table deals with his foreign suppliers in Japan and the States. He flew over to the U.S. and found a good lawyer, Altenberg, who has an office by Battery Park, New York City. They set up a system where the overseas suppliers would give an inflated invoice and the extra money ended up with Altenberg, who funneled it to different accounts for Hugo.
“Is it a lot?” I ask.
“Boyki, I been schlepping hard since ’seventy-six. What do you reckon?”
“Does my father know about it?”
“Absolutely no ways. He’s not interested. He’ll never leave this country. But me, I’ve always known these days would come. You asked what is the third option. The third option is obvious. To get the hell out. I have been on the verge of making the move for I’ve just told you how long. This thing now with Oberholzer, it is just the last whatchacallit that breaks the camel’s leg.”
“You’re going to leave the country?”
Hugo stares at me. “Don’t you understand? I thought you were a bright boy. This is about you. Martin Helger.” He fishes in a jar full of bolts and brings out an Allen key. He sticks the key into a knot on the workbench and turns it and pulls a whole section of a plank right off. There’s a long metal box hidden inside. “Clever, hey?” Hugo says. “Had it made special by a
carpenter in Bez Valley.” From the box he brings out an envelope and holds it across. I take it and I see my name typed. Inside is a letter with an imperial-looking eagle. United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. I scan the words Re: Petition for Alien Minor and then I see, clipped to the bottom, a card like a credit card. It has my name on it, my birth date. alien registration receipt card, it says. I turn it over and see a photo of my younger face next to a seal and a fingerprint. The top says resident alien, in blue. Hugo asks me do I remember the time, long ago, in his office at the Yard when he got me in to give a fingerprint for insurance? Well it wasn’t insurance, it was for this. “I told you I’ve been getting ready for this day since ’seventy-six.”
“What is it?”
“Important little card that, Martin. They call that a green card, don’t ask me why, doesn’t look bladdy green to me. Took years to get for you and for Marcus. Took bucks, plenty. It gives you the right to settle into America any time you like. You can work there, live there, for as long as you like. And it never expires. They tell me that will change, new kinds of cards coming down the pipe later this year will have expiry but yours—this one—is already permanent. Signed and sealed. Nobody can take it away.”
“You’re telling me you got this for me?”
Hugo says, “You know I’ve never had kids of my own to pass on to. My South African assets will go to some of the wunnerful women I have known in my lifetime which I am grateful and it’s been a helluva ride, but for true blood to pass on, I’ve got no one. I don’t know if your old man ever said, but I was raised an orphan, you know. I left that bad place when I was thirteen and never looked back. That was my only bar mitzvah. All I knew was working on the road. Sales. Being a rep. That was my life. Then I crossed paths with your father and we started in the motor game. I owe your father a lot. If I’m honest, everything. So you two—I feel you’re both . . . you’re like my own sons, Martin and Marcus.”
This is too much, I have nothing to say, my mind spinning like a yo-yo. Hugo says come outside for some air. We follow a path into the garden and Hugo stops by a tall palm tree, half lit by the security lights. He points. “You see em?”
“See what?”
“Keep looking.”
Hugo bends with difficulty and comes up with a stone. He chucks it at the palm, there’s a whoosh of rushing wings, a lifting wave of those Joburg black birds with the yellow beaks. “See that. That’s us, boy. That’s like Jews. A tree is stuck here with its roots, see? Roots kill you. Roots gets you hit with stones. But the Jew birds fly. They are just fine. We know flying is survival. At least the clever ones do.”
Hugo tells me his own plan is to disappear, not tell a soul, just go. That’s the best way, a clean break. He says I should do the same. I have my passport, my parents got them for us that time we went to Israel to visit Auntie Rively and Uncle Yankel. I should go to New York, see Altenberg. There is a bank account waiting. “Everything is laid on for you like cake icing.” It all sounds nuts to me but Hugo is serious. “Where is your adventure?” he says. “You seventeen. I was on the road for years by the time I was your age. Think about America, man! At your feet for you. You’ll have your own place there, your own money. You can go to school and swot any subject you like, you can get a job, get yourself a car and drive the whole country. You know how massive America is? America is a world by itself. America—it’s the opposite of Africa. You can forget about the mess we have here. America is a future. Africa is nothing but one long past that drags us down and down.”
“And you? Where will you go?”
“Ach, New York is for the young. When you’re an alter kukker like me you have to think of a quiet life somewhere small, with plenny of good doctors around.”
I say, “You’re being serious that I should just go.”
“I’ve never been more.”
“And I’m supposed to tell my parents what?”
“Are you not listening to a word? You tell them exactly nothing. The only one you tell is me, so we can both disappear at the same time, and then you get on the flight and you get off in New York and you can send them a letter. Dear Mommy and Daddy, I am a man and this is my life and this is what I have decided.”
“Da will butcher you, Hugo. If he finds out about this.”
“Are you ganna tell him?”
“What about Marcus?”
“When he joined the army he made his choice to stay. There’s a card for him also, I was going to show it to him one day—but there’s no point now.”
In the end I tell Hugo I’ll think about it. I won’t take the envelope with me, not now. He tells me he’ll keep it right there for me. “But you better hurry and make up your mind, Martin. Might be one day when the phone rings at my house and I’m not here to answer. Fershtay?”
“I understand.”
“Don’t put it off, Martin. I was there when your father and your late granny were battling like hell to get their relatives out of Lithuania, in ’thirty-nine. But they couldn’t manage it, it was too late. And you know well what happened there. The bladdy Germans and the Lithuanians shot all the Jews like dogs and chucked them in a hole in the forest to rot. Babies and women also, the lot. I’m saying these things happen. This is the world. I’m saying when you see a stone thrower like Oberholzer taking aim, you don’t wait. Boyki, Martin—it is time for you to leave the nest.”
If Not Now
43
Back at school on Monday morning, the okes are all jabbering about Saturday night at the clubs. The poonie that was pulled. The shots of flaming sambuca downed. The legend rorts—the instant-classic fights—witnessed. Schnitz is the biggest talker, according to him he was the last person to leave the Thunderdome at dawn and stepping out he saw with his own eyes a naked man standing on the roof of a moving Mercedes 500SEC, swear to God, riding it exactly like a Durban surfer on a bladdy wave. Me, I’m standing in the doorway watching this when Stan Lippenshmecker notices and looks around and everyone else turns and the class goes quiet. I walk past my usual desk, saying nothing, and take a new seat by myself in the corner. I get a book out and bury my nose in it. Gradually the jabbering starts again.
Between classes I stay in my corner desk. At first break I head for the library, but outside big-headed Spunny is waiting. He sticks his hands in his pockets and watches his shoes. “Nice to see you’re oright,” he says.
I say, “Where’s your chicken friend Mouth? Running practice? You should go join him.”
Spunny flushes. “Hey. I’m just saying I’m glad you okay.”
“I’m not,” I tell him. “I’ve been in hospital. I had emergency surgery. My testicles are all messed up from what happened. The doctors say I’ll never have kids.”
“Jesus Christ!” says Spunny. Then his eyes crinkle. “Ach, you bullshitting. You fine, you never went to hospital.”
“How would you know? It’s not like you bothered to check up on me.”
“Charity, there was stuff-all we could have done, man.”
“You could have gone for help. Could’ve stayed and tried to find out what happened to me at least. So could the rest of the okes, having their nice fun at Thunderdome. Could have phoned my parents. Stead you pissed off and left me to get murdered in an alley.”
“Hey, check—you didn’t have to run over to those bouncers, china. We told you not to.”
Now I feel myself flushing. “Ja, it’s all my fault. I deserved.”
“Be that way if you want, Martin. We were tryna be nice, inviting you with us to the clubs. Maybe the others are right about you.”
As he walks away I put my fingers in my mouth and whistle hard. “Hey, big hero!” He turns and I lift my shirt, showing my stomach with its purple bruise the size of a cabbage. Then I pull a zap sign with my middle finger.
When Annie picks me up in the night I can see how nervous she is. She tells me she’s checked the weather forecast like a million times and when we get to the pipe she just about vomits before she
can bring herself to climb in. But the climb up goes smoothly. In the video lab we work hard together, editing down the Fireseed tape to ninety minutes, and when we’re finished she hugs me, all happy. I try to kiss her neck, but she jumps up. “So great, Martin. You’re all set now with this new master tape. Two tapings a night, baby!”
“Yes,” I say. “We’ve done it.”
“You can put in four sessions a week, right?”
“We can,” I say. “Easily.”
“We, sure,” she says, as if I’m kidding. “Twenty-four times four, that’s one hundred a week.” She grins. “Boy, I’m really gonna miss slithering up that filthy pipe.”
I’m developing a thick feeling in my throat and my smile feels stiff and stupid as my face gets hot.
“And you can work on the sixteen-mil too,” she says. Then: “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing. You’re not coming back.”
She frowns like I’ve baffled her. “Martin, you can handle it all. I have full confidence.”
“Thank you,” I say. I turn around and walk fast all the way across the school, to the pipe where my satchel is waiting. I’m strapping the pads on when Annie catches up.
The Mandela Plot Page 23