“You were just a teenager, Marcus.” Dr. Norm says. “You’re fantasising.”
“No.”
Dr. Norm shrugs and drives on, into town and then through Hillbrow. He tells Marcus to keep the window rolled up and checks the doors are locked. They drive down Claim Street and up Twist. A broken sign on a crumbling hovel says xanadu. Everything Marcus looks at is alien to him. “I don’t remember,” he says. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Neither do I,” Dr. Norm says. “You’re not looking at the past here.”
They are in the streets of an African city, the lanes jammed up with combi taxis, the pavements with crowds and people selling food and trinkets, people begging, people sleeping on the ground. Potholes full of muck. These are all black people but they don’t all have the look of those he knows or can recall. He sees the long-limbed light skins from the Horn of Africa and the deep blackness and round heads of the equator and western Africa. Strange, vivid robes everywhere. The buildings have boarded windows and there are piles of trash and debris in front. Broken bricks, crumbling walls, graffiti. As he looks he finds people are staring back at him and Dr. Norm. They are the only white skins in this world. They come around to Joubert Park. There are men cutting hair with electric clippers wired to car batteries in shopping trolleys. He watches a man with no shoes scooping his hand into a rubbish bin and eating off his palm. The whole front of the park is crowded with rag people. Men leaning on the iron fences, sleeping children. “We’re in danger here, you know,” Dr. Norm says in a funny voice. “I know a long list of people who’ve been carjacked. One was shot in the head. More than a couple were raped.”
“Who are all these people?”
“When apartheid fell, everyone poured in. Asylum seekers, what have you. We have a humane constitution now, better than Sweden. We also have the highest rates of HIV-AIDS in the world. We’re top of the pops in assaults and robberies. Murders too. We’re a democracy, ja, but we’re the world’s most violent one. You’d think we would have wanted to handle our own problems first before opening the borders.”
They were between tall old buildings again. Marcus was looking up. “Jesus,” he says.
“Ja, abandoned by the old owners. No electricity in there, no water. It’s three families per unit with candles at night, crapping in buckets. Chuck the rubbish out the windows or down the stairs. I’m showing you how it is. If we came here at night, we might get shot at from up there, or a fridge dropped on our head. Here’s the Carlton Centre, used to be the lap of luxury. Now barricaded, empty. What a disaster zone—ay!” A sweeping taxi has smashed into the back corner of the Mercedes. Dr. Norm winces and holds his expression like a paralytic. “What say we stop and talk to the gentleman, hey, swap licence and insurance info. What do you think, hey? Hey?” A forced guttural chuckle is full of sarcasm. “Okay, we’ve pushed our luck in here far enough.” He does a U-turn and accelerates up the street. “You had enough?” he says. “I know I have. I know I didn’t rot in a cell those years for this.”
12
He begins to remember more as they come down Joe Slovo Drive. He remembers taking other drives out this way, Sunday afternoons with his father. But it wasn’t called Joe Slovo then, they used to call it Harrow Road. Slovo was from Doornfontein, Dr. Norm says. This was the Jewish ghetto once upon a time, where they all settled from Lithuania. Slovo turned into a “big macher” in the communist party, a hero of the liberation. Marcus remembers Isaac showing him a house on the corner of Buxton and Beit Streets, where Isaac grew up. Remembers his father buying him a hot beef on rye at the deli on a street behind the Alhambra Theatre. When he sees the Ponte Tower he remembers it also, only it was clean and fancy years ago, not the dirty tube with cracked windows that it is now, looming over them like a vast gun barrel. He remembers the synagogue in Doornfontein when he sees it: the Lions Shul has green scaffolding around it now, but Dr. Norm says it’s still being used and nice inside. “I think my father went there,” Marcus says aloud, but he’s not really sure. Dr. Norm takes them past another shul, what had been one, on Wolmarans Street. The distinctive dome is still there, but it’s been converted into some manner of African church. “They have a leopard skin on a throne inside where it used to be the holy ark, the original Hebrew is still there behind. Outside here, see, you can buy curry goat and get your enemy cursed.”
Marcus is remembering how that shul was. The elders wore top hats and sat in the front of the bimah in a kind of wooden box, like the pilots of some strangely landlocked ship. The bimah—something there, a flicker, then it’s gone. Somehow they’ve ended up in Killarney again, parked opposite the apartment block. Dr. Norm is crying, his face in his hands. “Janine,” he says. “Oh God, Jamie! Simone!”
“Why do you keep coming back here if you want to forget?”
“Because I can’t forget,” he says. “That is why.”
“You should try,” Marcus says. “I’m a champ at it. Maybe I can help you.”
“Good idea. Smash me in the head.”
Wouldn’t it be good if memory were like a load of sand? he thinks. Dr. Norm could unload his onto me. Win-win all round. He says, “Dr. Norm, don’t forget this is the miracle country, right. You told me. The plot has a happy ending. Fairy tales come true.”
Dr. Norm sniffs, puts his sunglasses back on. “You really think so?” He seems almost pathetic then, all raw. Wanting to believe it, that Janine is coming back, and the kids. Marcus could tell him it’s true, make him feel better. Instead he says, “Dr. Norm, I reckon it’s time for you to take me to my old house to find my people. Really. It’s time.”
They drive north and west toward Greenside, but Dr. Norm takes a wrong route and they have to come back down through Regent Heights first. Something fierce blooms inside Marcus’s chest. Then he sees the pale concrete security wall with the perching cameras like vultures on top. “I know this,” he says. Dr. Norm doesn’t speak but he slows and swerves onto De Villiers Road. They drive along the high wall, and then very slowly past the thick steel gate at the front with an archway above, black iron, the school crest and motto. Wisdom of Solomon High School for Jewish Boys.
Justice Is Togetherness, Togetherness Strength.
“You said your da was a scrapman and you lived in Greenside. I doubt you went here.”
“I went here,” Marcus says.
“Genuine?”
“Ja, this was my school.”
They drive along slowly. “Just keep looking.”
“It’s all the same. Wall wall wall. More wall.”
“Nothing but the best, hey,” says Dr. Norm. “I could never have gotten in here. My old man was a dentist, Ma stayed home. The Boers never bothered us Jews, so long’s we kept our heads down like good little white boys and girls. Plus they did some nice arms deals with Israel for a while. But now that we’re post-racialist and Mandela’s retired, you hear a lot of talk. Israel and Jews. They say the word Zionists but they really mean bladdy Jew. Hurts me, hey. I gave up years of my life, I mean Jews were basically the heart of the whites in the Struggle for a long time. But nowadays I got old comrades who look at me like I have to spit on Israel and denounce other Jews just to prove my loyalty to them.” He shakes his head. “Maybe that’s what happens to all miracles, hey, they start to rot. Like those fish that Jesus made.”
He turns the Mercedes around and drives back to the gate, where he pulls up. A guard steps out with his assault rifle. “Let’s hop out and make nice,” says Dr. Norm. Marcus takes a breath and starts to reach for the handle. Through the iron archway he sees the top of a building, angles of stainless steel and soaring glass. He stares and then he cringes over, his arms squeezing his abdomen.
“What’s the matter—what is it, Marcus? Marcus, can you hear me?”
Wheezing, he tries to explain. Something inside.
“Are you frightened?”
“I’m fucking terrified.” That’s what it is—he knows once he’s said it: there’s a terror inside the walls, a r
adiating Thing.
“Ahh,” Dr. Norm says. “Excellent. Jackpot. Now we definitely go in.”
“No.”
“Marcus, there are big-time associations in there that you need to explore.”
“No,” he says. “Drive.”
Dr. Norm gets out of the car. Marcus watches him talking with the guard, the guard nodding, pointing back, tucking his assault rifle on the sling with his other hand. Dr. Norm comes back and bends at the window. “I told him you were a Solomon old boy. We’ll sign the register and go up to the office.”
“No.”
“Chin up, man. You’re having stress symptoms, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with you. You need to be strong and force yourself.”
“I need to shit. I’m ganna vomit.”
“All a good sign. The stomach is another brain.”
“What?”
“Neuron-like cells in the digestive tract. Come on, out.”
He opens the door and Marcus starts to scream.
13
They stop at the Greenside shops, to use the toilets, to get a coffee and something sweet. To regroup. At the table Dr. Norm starts “reframing” the event. That panic attack was not a defeat, it was a “bold first step.” Dr. Norm renames it “aversion therapy” and says they would “treat it like any phobia,” with “increasing exposure to the trigger site.” In other words go back and try again. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Not your fault.” When the waiter’s not looking he tips a mini bottle of Johnnie Walker Red into his coffee. Marcus doesn’t argue with his analysis. It wasn’t just a line that it wasn’t his fault, it was literal, his body had shut him down. But he had retrieved no concrete memories from what he’d seen. He shivers in the sun. Outside on the pavement he pauses to take in the sweep of the shopfronts along Greenway Road, the hookah lounge and the post office and the Woolworths in the little mall down that way, and something else, tucked in the mall, yes, a bookshop—and it was important to him, wasn’t it . . . but it’s gone. He gets in the car.
They drive on, Dr. Norm looping back to the main road. A reluctance there to rush on to Shaka Road, maybe fearing another episode of screaming and retching in his Mercedes. They pass a mosque complex with a huge tower and broad dome that never existed before, because looking at it Marcus remembers there had been a little park there. Dr. Norm says large mosques are popping up all over the map nowadays, most all restaurants have halal menus. Saudi money, he says. “Where slaves get lashed and women bagged. But there’s no sanctions for that. Can’t even say a word about it, that’s just their culture. Everything is culture now. Used to be if you whitey you’re all righty, now it’s if you are browny you can never do wrongee.” He mutters things Marcus can’t quite hear. They keep driving, Dr. Norm sips his whisky-enhanced takeout coffee. “Ach, screw it,” he says. “I just feel like it needs some truth. I’m tired of the bullshit, you know. I’ve stopped caring about what’s correct. All we have now is right words. If you slap the correct term on the thing it’ll go away. A shithole becomes developing. A murderer is a disadvantaged victim. A death cult is a culture. Man, it used to be so bladdy clear. Black and white. Evil apartheid and the good people against it. Now nobody knows which way is up and which way down. It’s just a chaos of opinions. Nobody even agrees on what the enemy is. I think that’s why religion is back so strong. People need their invisible god in the sky more than ever.”
Marcus says, “Jews too?”
“Oh ja, more religious. The ones that haven’t left. But not around here. See, what I wanted to show you . . .” They drive past some sort of office complex. “Used to have a different roof. See it? Remember?”
“No.”
“That was your great Emmarentia Synagogue, Marcus.”
Marcus nods, shutting his eyes. A feeling of dim coolness from an expanse of polished stone, a bottlecap sliding. Boys’ voices that echo in the high dark dome. Dr. Norm makes a U-turn and takes them back. “Shuls go down, mosques go up,” he mutters. He makes a right and a left onto Clovelly. Marcus is getting more flashes, they come fast. That’s the library down that way, yes, and now the long straight road between the twin rows of jacaranda trees. Used to drive it sitting next to his father in the rattling bakkie and in November all the jacaranda flowers made a purple tunnel of astonishing beauty. But these jacarandas look haggard and bare. He says, “So where’re the Jews now, if they’re not here?”
“The Yiddluch pulled up the shtetl walls in Glenhazel there. Walking distance to the shuls, kosher restaurants for a nush. Here we are. Shaka Road.” He stops the car, examines Marcus. “How you feeling this time?”
“I feel oright.”
“Sure?”
“Ja.”
“Let’s go.”
He remembers a carport. There is no carport. He remembers a lawn. There is a swimming pool and concrete paving. He remembers a garden but there is only a little of it left, enough though to make his heart jump. Not fear like at the school, but a pulse of calm joy. The walls—yes, those were them, except for the electric wires on top. An elderly woman named Mrs. Siddiqui has let them in. She is overseeing four little ones. He remembers—suddenly—a pomegranate tree, but it’s gone, a jungle gym in the corner. The inside of the house is painted bright colours and the smells are of cumin and curry, the furniture low. Wait. His old room had a padlock, down at the end of the passage on the left. He hurries and finds a room with no door at all, bunk beds inside. “The girls,” says the old woman, as if that’s an explanation. The backyard makes his stomach tighten. There is a sink in the corner where a maid is washing clothes. He washed there, bending over shirtless, splashing and scrubbing. Feel of hot soapy water on the skin and the cool of the air. Night? And something else. But no. He turns away. It’s this double life belonging to all things here—that which he is looking at in the sun and the other that repeats in him like a thin shadow, a familiarity that is gone when you look at it directly. Or try to. Back in the garden in front, he asks Mrs. Siddiqui when they bought the house. She starts to complain about the awful condition it was in. A disgrace. The grass this high. “We invested tousands.” He asks her who she bought it from, if she’d known the Helgers. She squints at him. “Why are you asking this? We bought at auction.”
“Of course,” he says.
“You go now.” As they are on the way out, she says, “You is Jews isn’t it?”
He nods and she makes a waving gesture with both hands. “All moved out. Except the old ones. They go in Israel. They take Palestine.”
Dr. Norm snorts. “I doubt that. They go to Australia.”
“They have plenty money,” the woman says, laughing. “They have all the money.”
At the car Dr. Norm sighs. “Ja, it’s everywhere. They’ll teach you all about yourself. It doesn’t matter what you say.” He drains his coffee and shakes his head. “Just forget it. What else can you do?”
“Did you just tell me to forget?”
“Hardy har.” He unlocks the car. “Marcus?”
Marcus is frozen, hit by a flash. “Sandy . . .”
“That was your dog, right? That came back first.”
“I need to go back in there.” Sandy had red fur and he rode her with his nappy on. But ants crawled on her black lips when he poked the amber eye. The old woman dressed in her shalwar kameez is standing with her arms folded now, issuing clucking noises. Dr. Norm hands some money through the gate. Marcus goes in quickly and sees at once that the papyrus patch is still there, on the far side of the pool that never was, in the corner, only looking smaller and with the fibreglass bulk of a pool filter eating into one side. “You must not be stepping on my flowers!” shouts Mrs. Siddiqui. The kids are interested in his doings. Mrs. Siddiqui calls them away as she comes up with Dr. Norm. Marcus goes around to the far side of the reeds, squats on the mud, and feels carefully. When he exposes the gap he finds it much tinier than the shadow in his mind, his shoulders scraping. He can hear the kids through the stems and Mrs. Siddiqui is shouting h
e must come out. Dr. Norm says here and she says, “Fifty rands. What can you buy for fifty rands these days?” The humming of the pool filter gets louder as he crawls over mud and finds an open patch and digs his bare hands in, the cold feel of the moist soil like a whisper telling him go on, go on. A wooden board against his fingertips doesn’t shock him—shadow and real have merged. He hears Dr. Norm: “The old girl’s getting a bit hairy out here, hey Marcus. We better make a move.”
“I’ll phone police!” comes the woman’s shout.
“Almost,” Marcus says to no one through gritting teeth, his fingers working. Almost.
14
He doesn’t open the plastic bag in front of Dr. Norm, just sits with it in his lap, saying nothing, all the way back to the institute. Dr. Norm doesn’t push the issue. Marcus unpacks it carefully in his room. The bag had lined the sides of the hole under the board; it contains a tin of Quality Street sweets, a set of dirty overalls, a miner’s hard hat, pads for knees and elbows, goggles. The tin has only a few things at the bottom: an ancient, frayed condom, a bank bag with a hard nut of something blackened inside, an old Afrikaans tabloid newspaper called Vryheid, a notebook which he picks up with excitement but then finds empty—until a photograph falls out. He stares at that image for minutes at a time. Through a sleepless night he keeps getting up and switching on the light to look at the things, handle them. Dr. Norm doesn’t come to the institute that day and Marcus fears he’ll be absent for one of his long stretches.
When he sees Dr. Norm’s Mercedes parked outside the following day, Marcus rushes up to his office. Doesn’t say a word to him, just hands the photo across. Dr. Norm stares at it. “Where’s this from?”
“You know where. I had it when I was a kid.”
The Mandela Plot Page 38