Isaac’s hands stop moving. “Who told you that?”
“Hugo.”
“Big mouth. Big mouth, Hugo, never bladdy changes.” He goes back to lacing.
“Da, can I be honest? I also heard rumours, myself, about Dube and Orbert and them.”
“You heard a rumour. Why didn’t you tell me? Nobody tells me a thing in my own Yard.”
“This is exactly why, Da. Cos it’s probably not true but you fly off the handle. You need to calm down, Da. Please. People didn’t tell you cos they’re scared you’d even close down the whole Yard. Can’t you see this is what Oberholzer wants?”
“Don’t talk bladdy crap. I’d never shut this place down, ever.” He knots the last of it and stands up in those heavy boots. “This place is us, Martin. If there’s a cancer, I’ll cut it out. I know how to deal with it. The way we always have. Me and Silas.” When he says that name his eyes get shiny. Then he bends and picks up the glove and the pinion shaft. “Da, wait,” I say. “Da!” But he’s already banging through the doors and all I can do is run after. I follow behind him through the wrecks and as he’s marching he starts shouting for Thomas, for Winston, but they must still be at the funeral cos only old Oscar comes instead, all quiet and serious. “Yes, baas?” And Isaac tells him, “Get everyone who’s here. I don’t care what they doing. I want them all over there by the crusher. Right now. The lot.” I have to jog every few steps to keep up with Isaac even though his legs are so short compared to mine. It’s like he’s walking on springs. “Da,” I say, “leave it, man. If it is true what they did, then it’s for the police. We can report.” He snorts. “Don’t make me laugh. Oberholzer is the cops. They even have a file, he said, you heard the man. Nothing will come of it except my boys will lose respect for me. That can’t happen.” He looks at me and it’s almost like he’s surprised I’m still there. “What you doing? Go back inside, Martin. This is not for you to see.” I don’t say anything, just keep on walking behind him and then he stops. “Martin. I said this is not for you.”
“What is for me, Da?”
“What’s for you is that good school I send you to. What is for you is a good education and a nice office one day. Where you can keep your soft hands clean and spend your days talking nicely. That is what’s for you, Martin.”
“Maybe this is my office, Da. If it is not ganna be Marcus.”
He squints at me. “Martin, there’s a rough side to how things work here. Running this place. You have to have it in you or you go under. It’s not so nice, but it has to be.”
“I know, Da.”
“Do you?”
“Ja, I do.”
“We’ll see,” he says, and goes on and I follow. We reach the crusher near the back wall and the sliding gate to the street, open now. Isaac stands there waiting while I keep back. After a while he sees my shadow because he waves for me to move back more which I do. The staff arrive in little groups, standing around, looking nervous. Most of the older guys are still at the funeral, so it’s a young group that Isaac addresses. “Right. I want Dube and Orbert and Sammy. Come.” He points, and the three step forward. “These men know exactly what they done. It was them who put Silas in the hospital. Messed up his brakes to make an accident. Why? Cos they wanna start up union shit right here in our Yard, in our family, don’t think that I don’t know all about it. Now. I always treated you all bladdy well. It was me and Silas here at this beginning. We built this place from nothing. I’ve always paid you better than anyone, took you on with no papers . . .” Then he switches languages, I think maybe it’s Zulu but it’s more probably that workplace mishmash, what they call fanagalo, and then: “. . . so Silas is gone now. Silas is dead. The funeral is over, he has passed on. These three here—quiet you! shut your mouths!—these three are the ones that done it and I been waiting to settle up. Now it’s the time. Number one, you all three are finished here for good. You bladdy lucky I don’t send you to police but we settle this in the family here.”
“But we didn’t!” says Dube suddenly. “We diden do it all. It was those other—”
“Shut up!” shouts Isaac. “You know you did! Be a man!” And then Sammy beside him speaks a few words. His voice is deep and calm and Dube goes quiet. “You know you done it!” Isaac is shouting. The veins in his wrinkled neck are sticking out and his face looks like it’s boiling over with hot blood. “We all know it. As sure as God made little green apples you bastards are the ones who cut those brakes! Now maybe you didn’t mean to kill him dead—that is the only reason you ganna get off easy. But you will pay the price now. We settle like men. What you know you deserve.” While he’s speaking he is taking the heavy glove from his back pocket with one hand and the pinion shaft in the other. Then, as he gets to the end, he flips up that heavy shaft underhand. He pulls on the welding glove and grabs the pinion out the air and rushes across fast and punches that gloved fist with the steel core straight into the middle of Dube’s face. There’s a crunching noise and Dube’s head flies back and he hits the ground stretched out, his eyes rolling back. I see teeth and pink blobs of blood on the dirt. Meantime Isaac is moving fast on his scuffling boots, kicking up red dust and going for the other two with that fisted glove cocked back behind his shoulder and his left hand reaching out. The closest man is Orbert and he sort of yelps as he tries to cover his head and turn away. Isaac grabs one of his arms and punches at him but misses cos Orbert is all hunched up and bending over. He’s wailing and he goes down on one knee and Isaac swears and boots him in the side, thumping his ribs like a drum. The sleeve rips off in Isaac’s hand. Orbert jumps up and runs, holding his side. All the others are behind and as Orbert runs at them, Isaac tells them, “Hold him, hold the bastard.” He says it like an order, the same way he might tell them to move a front-ended Ford to the crusher. But when Orbert, making a whining sound, reaches the men, none of them do anything to stop him and he rushes through them and heads for the gate, running full stick. Isaac shouts, “What are you doing? Get the bastard! Hold the bladdy bastard! He’s getting out! Hold him!” But the men just stand there in their Lion Metals overalls, they look at each other or at the sky or their feet. “He’s getting out!” Isaac shouts. “He’s a murdering bastard! Get him!” He stands there panting, glaring around all wild. Sammy Nongalo has meantime moved over to Dube lying there. Sammy kneels down and holds his head and talks to him all softly. Isaac is calling out names, pointing at different men. He seems sort of confused. Orbert’s gone now, disappeared through the open gate. “What’s wrong with you all?” Isaac says. “Why . . . why . . .”
Then he sees Sammy. Sammy looks up as Isaac goes at him, not running but taking deep quick steps. “You!” he says. “Wena! Umshaya wena!” Man, I’ll beat you, man. “You the one, the big one behind it all.” Sammy stands up straight and Isaac rushes him. Sammy sticks out his long arms and catches Isaac’s shoulders and stops him. Sammy is very lean and strong. Isaac is breathing hard, the soles of the heavy boots slipping on the dust. “You can fire me,” Sammy says. “I go. But no hitting.” Isaac tries to headbutt him, but he’s miles away. He tries with the heavy boots, going for the shins. Sammy dances smoothly and they go around. He says, “You stop it, I will leave. Stop it.” Isaac, all red and shaking, says, “Bladdy murderer! You cut the brakes. You cut his brakes!” Then he fights hard again with his head down. After a while he shouts to the others, “Help me! Get him! Hold him!” And some African words. But no one moves. Isaac says, “What’s the matter with you all? He’s a murderer!” Then his voice breaks and he just keeps shouting, “Silas! Silas! Silas!” And every shout is like it’s being ripped out of him, I swear. And I see the tears running out of his eyes over his tough old wrinkled cheeks. I start to run forward to help and Isaac sees me and shakes his head. “No! Not you, Martin. No. My boys. My boys. Help me, my boys.” I stop. Sammy pushes Isaac off and steps away. Panting, Isaac sinks to one knee. Sammy looks at the men. “Silas is finish.” He speaks in English, as if to make a point of using my fath
er’s language. “Is a new day now. No more baas who hits. I am going, but this place is not his. This place is yours also.” On the ground, Dube is sitting up. Sammy goes over and helps him to his feet and the two of them walk through the staff who move aside for them, and then they go on out through the gate.
Apocalypse
51
It’s like for the first time in my life I am seeing him as truly old. Something went out of him and now he sits crumpled in his soft chair under the full weight of his seventy years, drinking Scotch, saying nothing. The days of stamping on the ottoman are gone and never coming back, I’m sure. I mean they’re talking about Botha offering to meet with Nelson Mandela and Isaac should be roaring at that screen, shouting it’s all a bladdy con, a bunch of crap, Mandela’s problee dead long ago! But he doesn’t, he just sits slumped and drinking. He hasn’t gone back to work since Wednesday and it’s Sunday now and I missed school for the rest of last week also and Arlene says nothing about either of those things because—well, I mean we are all still in such total shock. For my dad it’s a triple hit: first the death of Silas Mabuza, then what happened with his staff in the Yard (which Arlene does not know about in detail, and I don’t plan to tell her), and now what has happened to all of us when the man in uniform showed up at our gate with an envelope we needed to sign for. A message from Die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag, the South African Defence Force. Addressed to the family of the trooper with the magsnommer—the forces number—88350343BA.
Arlene read it first, and Isaac read it over her shoulder, and then Isaac held it in one hand and held Arlene up with his other arm as she sort of fell against him in a way I’d never seen before and that’s when I ran out into the garden and started Playing like mad. I hadn’t done any Playing in ages but I kept Playing and Playing, trying to block out everything and pretend I was someone else, a superhero that can fly back through time and change things, but it wasn’t happening, the old Playing feelings wouldn’t come, wouldn’t sweep me away and make me feel light and happy again, just would not, and I don’t think I’ll ever do Playing again. I only felt dead and flat inside—as dead and flat as I was sure my brother Marcus now was. My father had to come out and get me and tell me, he had to physically pull my hands from my ears and say listen to me, listen to me, Martin, the message didn’t say that he’s killed. And I said well then what is it, then? What the hell is it?
That night I put it into a poem, my first poem in ages. It’s a short one and I wrote it in one go, with no cross-outs.
MIA
By Martin Helger
Missing in Action
Missing in Action, man.
The best that can be said,
It’s not the same as dead.
52
Getting colder. The leaves that’ve changed colour are falling off the trees all dry and there’s frost on the ground in the mornings. Arlene kept pouring Isaac’s Scotch down the sink but he just got more and put the bottles in the shed and now she’s given up trying. I’ve never seen him drunk that it showed but he puts it away like water, and his old eyes have bloody veins in them and sometimes he doesn’t shave or smells bad. He talks a lot too, going round in circles in a way he never used to, talking about how he tried and tried with him, my brother, to drum some sense and make him bladdy see what shit the army is and how you gotta be mad in the head to join up. But Marcus didn’t believe him, why didn’t he believe me? Or else it’s how could it be that a nice Jewish boy with everything of the best that gets sent to the very best school, how could it be that he would drop out of university? For what reason, why, why? To go and be cannon fodder for chutis? Can you explain that to me? Can anyone? The army and war—it’s the very worst thing to Isaac, it’s what he always wanted most to keep us clear of and why he sent us to Solomon. Because he was in that other war, the big one, against the Nazis, and things happened to him over there that he will never ever talk about but still I’ve always known they’re in him. I can feel it. A raw secret, like an ulcer on his soul that never heals.
Meantime Hugo has gone on the road and Arlene takes pills Dr. Slavin gave her and her face looks pale and bumpy like a mushroom. And I still haven’t gone back to school. What’s bizarre is how this house is full of insomniacs now. I used to be the only one, the secret tape maker—now I’m the only one who sleeps. Well, me and Zaydi. Isaac sits up with his bottle and his paper, Arlene walks around in her pyjamas like some ghost from an old English novel, her hands pinching each other, brewing up cups of tea and then leaving them around the house to get cold without drinking them. Zaydi seems the only one who hasn’t changed much, maybe he prays a little more. He keeps mixing Marcus up with someone who is I think his brother from when he was a kid, in Dusat, that Jewish village that only exists in his head. I don’t much listen to his stories anymore because they make me think of what Hugo told me, the bodies rotting in a pit—all those Jews murdered and other people living in their houses that they stole. But if they had left before the war they wouldn’t have been killed, if they’d been able to—like I am able to leave if I want. And I need to talk to someone about it other than Hugo. Anyone. But I can’t.
I’ve even missed two Wednesday visits in a row to Viljoen’s, to check for Annie messages, and I do not go out at night. I just can’t. Or won’t. I know they’re expecting bagloads of copied Fireseed tapes to be stuffed into that shed in Brandwag Park but they can get stuffed right now for all I care. I sleep like a log all night—I have a lot to make up for.
Now we’re trying to eat supper and Arlene is picking at her food and then covering her face with her hands. Isaac gets up without a word and walks to the back door. Arlene says where are you going. In the window onto the backyard we watch him moving into the shed. He comes back with the tall wood axe. Heads straight up the passage to Marcus’s old room. Arlene runs after him and I follow her, only Zaydi stays at the table with the gefilte fish. Isaac lifts the axe at the padlocked door. “I want to see it,” he says. “I want to see his stuff. I want to look at my son’s stuff.” But Arlene grabs hold and won’t let go and for a few seconds they struggle and then she swells up like I’ve never seen before. “Only him,” she says. “Only he will.” Isaac looks at her and then he drops the axe right there on the carpet and Arlene hugs him and I’m embarrassed to see the way they’re hugging, it’s too private. I return to the table, sit with Zaydi. When Arlene comes back, she tells me it’s time I go back to school. Tomorrow morning. Enough is enough. I nod.
53
From the minute I get on the school bus, it’s there. It’s with me when I pass through security and as I walk up through the corridors and it follows me into the synagogue all the way to my pew. It’s like the whole school has become this one enormous organism, a jellyfish with a million eyes all around me, watching and whispering. See that oke? That’s Martin Helger . . . Is that him, Martin Helger? . . . Seriously, hey, Martin Helger . . . Check, there’s Martin Helger, check at him . . . doesn’t look like much but . . . I promise you, hey, he’s . . . you don’t ever wanna . . . Martin Helger . . . the oke is . . . Martin Helger. Martin Helger. Martin Helger . . . It’s not about my brother anymore. It’s me. I’m the kid who put Crackcrack Lohrmann into hospital and he’s still absent but I’m back and nothing has happened to me, untouchable Martin Helger. I can feel their rumours, their conspiracy theories. Did you hear, his brother is missing in action. For real. I heard Marcus was a Recce, a top commando. He got captured and is being held. On the Border. For real . . . There he is, hey, Martin Helger . . . Do not fuck with that oke . . . he doesn’t look like much but he is a killer . . . he’s ice cold, hey, he’s insane . . . nobody can touch him . . . he runs this place, hey . . . even Volper is scared of the oke . . . But it’s not until Nilly Rossbaum, the school cantor, comes up to me in shul rubbing his hands all nervous and asks me in a whisper would I like to have the honour of doing hagbah this morning that I realise I have done it. I mean I have made myself a Name like I always wanted. A thing of power like the ma
gic words that saved us years ago at the Emmarentia Dam. Martin Helger—the youngest one to ever do hagbah, the new Strongest Lad.
I climb the bimah stairs (the only one there who knows what’s underneath) and take hold of the carved handles of the Torah scroll on the slanted platform, roll them apart, and pull on the long weight of each scroll and I know I’m not going to be able to make this lift, there’s no way, the scrolls are too heavy for my thin wrists, but I don’t care. I look up at the sunlight streaming through vast windows and I hoist the thing as hard as I can. The holy Torah raises up to about thirty degrees and then it starts to collapse. I hear the school gasping and sucking on teeth. Shouts. Nilly jumps across in front with both arms out. He pushes up from the far side and gradually the scrolls come right. I get it all the way over my head, balanced, and stand there grinning. And then I start to laugh. People hiss at me, they boo, but I keep on laughing. I can see everyone down there looking to Volper, waiting for him to shut me up, they need him to punish me. But Volper just looks away.
When I get to class afterwards, the Gooch is waiting for me, wants a word around the side. “I am sorry to hear about Marcus,” he says, “which is the only reason I don’t klup your face. Don’t look all smug. What’s the matter with you? What do you think you are doing? This mockery in the shul. And in the first place, how d’you get into my athletics shed? You nearly killed someone with my javelin. You stole that key from my office.”
“I found it open,” I say. “You should tell your guys to lock up better.”
The Gooch grabs my shirtfront. “Clever arse. You disgrace your name. You better wake up!”
The Mandela Plot Page 27