“What’s your problem, exactly?” she says. “Look at me, please.” When I face her she says, “This isn’t date night, Martin. I’ve slept maybe twelve hours this whole week. I’m teaching classes and running my ass ragged all over the East Rand all the rest of the time, trying to conduct Fireseed. Meeting with the Comrades and getting your tapes out there. I’ve been shot at, nearly arrested, and so far I’ve seen two schoolkids die right in front of my eyes for this cause. So let’s get real, okay?”
My voice is shaking. “You shouldn’t take me so for granted you know.”
“What’s bugging you, Martin? You don’t like the pay, uh? What do you want?”
My throat is so thick now that I can’t speak at all, I just shake my head, putting my fists on my hips and rubbing my chin on my shoulder. Annie looks at me for a while and then reaches out and puts her warm hand between my legs, just like that. “This what you need? I’ll give you that if it’ll keep you happy.” And she unzips my overalls and starts to tug on my belt, bending down. I slap her hands away. “Stop it.” She looks up. “No? What, then?” She straightens up and looks me full in the eyes and then she shakes her head slowly.
My eyes are leaking. I open the grate and worm down into the pipe. On the other side I strip off the overalls and shove them back in my satchel. I walk over to the sand wall and kick it and punch it, scraping my knuckles. After a while I hear her slithering down, breathing hard, and I quickly wipe the wet off my face and try to look bored as she climbs out and starts stripping out of her overalls. Then, instead of hiking back in the direction of the soccer club as we always do, Annie walks the other way, taking the riverbed deeper into the park. I follow behind her, puzzled. We climb out and head downhill into a clump of ash trees till I can see the low fence of green logs at the edge of the park and hear the traffic noise beyond. There’s a small municipal shed in the trees. It’s locked but Annie peels back the fibreglass panel just under the roof and waves me closer. On tiptoes, I can just see into the space up there. “Dolf can’t handle tapes anymore, just messages. So put the tapes in a garbage bag and shove em in here instead. Someone will collect. Okay?” I nod. “Good,” she says. “So we’re good? We’re back on track?” I nod again. “All right,” says Annie. “High five.”
44
Morning mist is oozing from our lawn which has little piles of sand all over it. The mole crickets are back. We deal with them by pouring detergent water. They come crawling out to lie on their backs and die, drowning in the poison bubbles. When Marcus and I were little that was our job but I remember now that Marcus wouldn’t do it, he felt too sorry. This man who comes home with a chunk of human ear stuck to him, he used to be a kid who didn’t even want to hurt some bugs. Now I’m the dawn returner like he was, with my own big secrets. One of the biggest is there in the Sandy Hole, just like it was there in the safe buried under Volper’s carpet when Annie and I discovered it that night of the flood. I stare at it for a while. My God. I really have this. Such power. But it only adds to my sadness, makes it wider and deeper. A hopeless feeling. I put it down and put away my satchel and pipe togs and creep quietly along the giant hedge we share with the Greenbaums. There’s a wall beside the back of Gloria’s old room which I climb to, drop down into the backyard, and wash myself at the outdoor sink, again like my brother and my father.
Suddenly: “Shut that bladdy dog up! Shut it up!” I straighten up and run to the back fence. I know what’s coming next if I don’t act fast. Through the gaps in the planks I spot Mr. Stein about to start swinging a huge bladdy bell. He’ll wake my folks and get me busted. I hiss like a snake. “Mr. Stein. Hey. Stop. Stop.” The old guy pauses and screws up his face all suspicious. “Over here, Mr. Stein, man. Here. It’s me. It’s Martin.”
“Eh?” he says. “Who’s it there? Show yourself, you swine.” He’s wearing a pale flying-saucer-shaped helmet, the one from the Second World War with the mouldy chinstrap, and a raggedy bathrobe tied with a piece of onion-sack string. He lifts his brass bell. “I’ll brain you, you try anything,” He’s got eyebrows like two fat hairy caterpillars, I swear. I’ve never seen eyebrows that hairy. Maybe they’re a symptom of insanity.
“Mr. Stein, it’s me, hey. Martin. Martin Helger.”
“Well you tell that bladdy dog to shut up her yapping, boy.”
“We don’t have a dog, Mr. Stein.”
“All day the bitch yaps.”
“Mr. Stein, Sandy died years ago.”
“What you say?”
“Died. Sandy’s dead. Long, long time.”
His mad eye stares at me through the slit. I say, “Ten fingers on my Jewish Torah, Mr. Stein—she’s gone. We put her in a plastic bag. Ma drove her up to Dr. Kruger. He has a cremator there.”
“What happened?”
“She was just old, Dr. Kruger said.”
“And you don’t have a new dog?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’re lying, boy. I hear her.”
“No, I’m not, for real. Listen—there’s no barking. Just listen.” Mr. Stein turns his grizzled old head on its side. Then he drops the bell, it’s heavy enough to dent the soft ground and I’m so relieved I close my eyes for a second. When I open them, he has his forearms on the fence, his head against them. He starts to sob. It frightens me cos I’ve never seen an old man crying before. “Mr. Stein?” I say. “You okay, Mr. Stein?” He doesn’t answer and now I’m double-worried that he’ll start wailing or freaking out, maybe pick up the bell again, so I climb up the fence, the same one I always never quite get to in the Nightmare with Zaydi on my back and Nazis smashing behind. I realise I haven’t had the Nightmare since the night Annie told me what it means, on the pomegranate bench which itself is starting to feel like a dream, a different Annie.
From the top of the fence I can see all the way across Mr. Stein’s property. His house fronts onto Clovelly Road but has no high wall unlike most on the street. Instead he’s covered his lawn with fishing lines tied to tin cans. On the flat roof he keeps sandbags piled around, ready for his last stand. Looking down, I see the top of his helmet coming away from the fence. He turns and starts shuffling back to the house, leaving one slipper and the bell behind. I hesitate for a bit and then I hang by my hands and drop. Picking up the slipper and the bell, I follow after him as he zigs and zags, careful to stay in his footsteps, you never know what booby traps lie outside his safe passage. At the back door Stein shouts for Elizabeth, his maid. “Lizbeth! Lizbeth! Come make tea!” He presses his thick fingertips to the mezuzah on the doorframe, then kisses them. If Stein wasn’t such a hermit he’d probably be a major shul-goer. He takes off his steel hat and sits at the kitchen table, looking at me from under his caterpillar eyebrows like he’s not surprised to find me standing there in the least. After a while I put down the bell and the slipper and take a seat. Mr. Stein starts talking about Gloria. We still don’t have a new maid, he says. Elizabeth told him. And our gardenboy Isaiah, he doesn’t come anymore. What’s going on over there? I tell him it’s my da, my da’s choice. After Gloria died, Isaac just didn’t want maids or gardeners anymore, doing our housework for us.
“Why not?” says Stein.
“Good question,” I say. “Better ask him.”
He gives me a sudden look. “Your brother? Where’s he?”
“Army,” I say. “All this stuff, Mr. Stein, what you’re saying—it’s been for years.”
“I don’t see him anymore either.”
I nod. Stein leans forward and his voice changes, gets all low and spooky. “Your people,” he says, “are not replacing anything.” It’s like he’s making a horrible accusation. “Things,” he says, “are running down.”
Elizabeth shuffles in, sniffing. She boils water and fills a teapot, adds Five Roses teabags and a huge pour of sugar. She bangs down a plate of rusks and leaves. Mr. Stein pours. “She forgot the milk, the bladdy twit,” he mutters. “She’s getting all ibberbottle in her old age.” He doesn’t get up so we sip our te
a black. All-a-sudden he bangs the table. “Have you got a new dog, a puppy?”
“No.”
“A new maid?”
“No.”
“Gardenboy?”
“No.”
“If you don’t replace things when they go, that means what? Means you are disappearing. Then what are we doing here? Disappearing ourselves.”
I try to smile. “Are we, hey?”
Mr. Stein doesn’t get that I’m being funny. There’s anger in his face, his hairy hands fly up like two jumping tarantulas, his chair scrapes. “They coming for us,” he tells me. “You better get ready. I’ve seen it—had visions like the Nevi’im, our holy prophets, you understand? It was given to me. It could be morgen in der free, tomorrow morning, or it might be tonight. The electric will be gone. The radio will be out. You won’t be mocking then, believe me, boy. The water cut off. We’ll wake up and look out and they’ll be coming down that road, right outside, a hundred thousand, a million of em. Like the waves of a dark sea. They’ll be singing and doing their spears and whistling like they do. Yom Ha-Din, my boy. Day of Judgement. They’ll come down turning over every car in the road and setting them on fire. They’ll go into the houses, they won’t leave out even one. There will be nowhere for us to run. A million of em. A million is nothing. Ten million. The justice of the Lord is sharper than any sword. They’ll drag us out from wherever we’re hiding. The gutters will be running red. The swimming pools will choke with bodies and the trees will snap with the weight of the hangings. They’ll burn everything white from this land. There’ll be nothing of us left. Like the story of Melech Shaul and the nation of Amalek. Old King Saul was supposed to wipe em off the earth. That’s what the good Lord commanded him to do. But see, we are like Amalek to them. They will smite us and burn us. Unto the last drop of our seed. Cursed is the white man in this cursed place. Cursed is he unto the end, unto Judgement Day . . .”
Maybe I should excuse myself, but he’s not going to stop and his eyes are closed now as he goes on and on, rocking on his chair, so I stand up and creep out and make my way back to the fence, feeling lucky not to get booby-trapped on the way. Madman Mr. Stein. Living alone after the wife died of cancer. Living on a pension, wearing his old tinpot helmet. Isaac always used to say he’s got guns and dynamite and probably God knows what else stored away in that place. Keep away from him, Martin. One day it might all go bang.
45
Tuesday morning and the Gooch is reading roll call even though our class is so small a blind man could see who’s not there. Berman, Manfred, he says. Cohen, Charles, he says. I feel something poking at my leg. Spazmaz is jabbing me with a steel ruler under the desk. I look down and see a piece of paper stuck to the end. I ignore it but he goes on poking and now I notice how all the faces nearby are watching me and they all seem to have the same compressed smile on them, like they’re waiting to explode, like that piece of paper must have the greatest joke of all time written on it. I take the paper, but I’ve got the feeling that if it is a joke it’s going to be on me. Davidson, Peter, says the Gooch.
To Johnny Lohrmann, esq. St. 10C
From Martin Helger (The Real Strongest Lad)
Dear “Crackcrack”
You are a cowardly queer. I could mess you up anyday with one hand behind my back if I wanted. But you would not have the balls to face me. In actual fact you do not have balls at all but a vagina!
I will meet you in front of the tuck shop at first break but I know you will not be there because you will chicken out, you lousy cunt.
Signed, very sincerely,
Martin Helger
The “Real” Strongest Lad
A piece of chalk cracks against the prefab wall above my desk. “Helger, Martin,” says the Gooch. “Third time. Helger, Martin.” I look up and the Gooch is staring at me. “Fourth time. Helger, Martin.” I hear myself saying here, sir, but mostly what I hear is a tidal sound of blood washing through my ears. “It doesn’t seem like it,” says the Gooch. “Your carcass might be here but your brain is apparently absent as bladdy usual. Better wake up, my mate. I won’t tell you again. Get your thumbnail out your arsehole or we will do it for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kaminsky, Stephen.”
The note is a photocopy. When the first bell jangles, right after the Gooch leaves, I stand up with it in my hand and my heart drumming. “Who wrote this, okes? Where’s the original? Seriously.”
“What’s a matter, kid?” says Turdster. “You looking a bit tense, bru. You looking a little bit concerned.” Everyone howls—the explosion they’ve been holding in.
“Was it you?” I say to Schnitz. “You write this?”
“What are you talking about?” says Schnitz. “That’s your note, china. Anyone can see.”
“This isn’t my writing, who wrote this okes? Come on. This isn’t funny, hey. You okes didn’t actually send this to him did you. I mean come on.”
“I heard a rumour,” says Baffboy Noshkin, “that note of yours, it got delivered after prayers. I heard it was pinned on Crackcrack’s classroom door.”
“You okes didn’t,” I say.
“Not us!” says Mouth. “It’s your note, china. Don’t blame others for your problems, hey. Take responsibility for your actions.” And everyone booms again. The way balding Boris Levin is grinning he’s like Jack Nicholson in The Shining when he finally gets his maniac hands wrapped around the axe in the end. “Helger, you schmock,” he says. “Crackcrack already sent a message back. It’s a done deal. You the only one who doesn’t know what’s what. The rawl is booked. First break. The whole school knows, the prefects are ready. If I was you, I’d start warming up.”
“If you were him,” says Stan Lippenshmecker, “you’d be changing your undies right now.” He looks at me. “I feel sorry for you, Helger. Crackcrack is a total animal.”
All-a-sudden my breakfast comes shooting up my throat and I have to grab my mouth as I run for the door, the okes howling and shouting after me. “Go boy!” “Get him, Helger!” “Sort him out, bru!” I make it outside in time to coch up my breakfast on the red dirt. As I wipe my mouth I hear footsteps crunching and the first-period teacher, Mrs. Snopes for maths, is there asking if I’m okay. I tell her I’m not feeling so hot and she glances at the vomit and gives me permission to go to the sickroom.
I head down the stairs off the Pimple and start to run at the bottom. I’m moving fast but thinking even faster. There is no way to avoid this—once a rawl is booked it is booked and the whole school will carry me to it if they have to. Even if I duck it now, they’ll just reschedule and get me later. I’m going to have to handle this. But if I do it like I’m thinking I can, I’m going to need to get home and get the secret thing I have in the Sandy Hole because I’m going to need it afterwards. That’s crucial, the afterwards. The time has come. I race to the tickey box in the corridor behind the synagogue. When I dial Arlene’s office at the Yard she answers first ring. I tell her I’m in big trouble cos I left my homework at home and I need a huge favour or I might fail the whole year. Arlene’s busy but after some begging she agrees to give me a lift. When she arrives at the main gate she signs for me and the camera logs my exit. At the house I run straight to the Sandy Hole and collect what I came for, placing it carefully in my blazer’s inside pocket. Arlene drops me back at school with plenty of time left in the period. The classes before first break are an agony, every tick of the minute hand feels like another twist on an invisible rack. Ten minutes before the break bell, I head for the door. Adon Spitzer, our Hebrew master, shouts at me but I ignore him and start running, my satchel bouncing on my back. I force myself to slow down when I hit the stairs up to the rugby fields, I don’t want to get so exhausted that I’m not thinking properly. I count the stairs to occupy my mind. Sixty-seven, sixty-eight. Even holding myself back, I’m still panting at the top. I slow even more as I walk across the wide rugby field of browned dry grass. I realise I’m still counting steps. Two hundred
and eleven. Be calm and think properly. The tuck shop is a yellow-brick building with a flat roof, in front is the slasto square. But the area behind it is a patch of raggedy weeds that everyone calls the Mielies cos it looks like a patch of dry cornstalks all yellow and droopy in the sun. On the other side of it is the big athletics storeroom. When I reach its doors, I check the number on the lock, and then head up to the Gooch’s office, saying a little prayer. I have my copy of his office key, but the door is unlocked and my little prayer has been answered cos I don’t see anyone as I duck in and fish a key off the row in the passage behind the office.
By the time I get back to the storeroom, I’m starting to sweat and the break bell goes off. In a few minutes the whole school will be foaming up onto the rugby fields like a bubble bath overflowing. My hands are shaking so badly it takes a few tries to get the key to work. Inside, I find what I’m looking for and bring it out and lock the door. I wade into the weeds and put my satchel down and squat low and set the thing. Then I stand up, patting the bulk in my inside pocket. I take the blazer off and fold it carefully and put it down on top of the satchel. I walk out of the weeds, unbuttoning and rolling up my sleeves as I go. After a few seconds I go back in to check the thing again and then I make a mark with my heel in the ground at the edge of the weeds. Far away, across the rugby field, the first ones are starting to bubble up now, off the stairs. I step into the clear and stand there feeling my legs vibrating under me and watching the purple blazers multiply. One law of our school is that you must always wear your blazer outside of class. If you’re busted without it on you get punished by Volper—three strokes from a cane of his choice. A lot of the blazers start pouring down toward the tuck shop, but some of them see me and stand there, staring, pointing. It takes a while for the word to spread, that Helger is over there by the Mielies. The first ones to reach me are excited, a bunch of Standard Six lighties bouncing around, some of them with cans of col’drink in their hands. “Are you seriously ganna rawl Crackcrack Lohrmann? You must be off your skull.” “He’s ganna stuff you up, china.” “You sailing for a nailing, bru.” I ignore them and they comment on that too. “He’s the silent-type hero, he reckons he’s Dirty Harry.” “Dirty Harry was staunch, this Helger’s like a twig. Bet you okes five bucks Crackcrack snaps him in half in like under ten seconds.” “Nooit, hey. He won’t last five . . .”
The Mandela Plot Page 24