by Trevor Sacks
Officially, he was ‘asked to leave’, not expelled, but it amounted to the same thing, except that Cullinan, in between his gloating, was willing to write a reference letter for Elliot’s next stop, the art school in Johannesburg.
It should come as no surprise that Elliot had real talent. He’d applied it in the shul grounds quite skilfully, after all. Whether or not the schoolteachers supported his politics, they couldn’t deny his technique. With the headmaster’s letter and a hurriedly assembled portfolio, he was easily accepted into the Johannesburg Art, Ballet, Drama and Music School.
It happened so quickly, Ma hardly had time to be angry or disappointed. She fell into pragmatic mode, even meeting with Cullinan to discuss the transfer.
Will came home from Joburg to take Elliot back with him. ‘Well, you really fucked up this time,’ he said.
‘You had to wait till you finished school to get out of this dump. Way I see it, I’ve been released early. Sentence reduced for good behaviour.’
‘Ja, well, fuck up again and it’ll be the army for you, loser.’
‘Ag, what do you know? At art school, it’s the teachers who smoke joints in class.’
When I was younger, Elliot refused to hold my hand crossing roads if his friends were anywhere near, and I had to grip onto his shirt. The toughest guy I knew was leaving town; I hung close while he packed.
‘So you’ll probably want my room now,’ he said.
‘Maybe.’
‘You can keep my posters. You gonna bring girls back here?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got a girlfriend?’
‘No.’
‘Who do you like, then?’
I wanted to let fly Georgina Melck’s name, but knowing that I ran the real risk of somehow being humiliated for it, I held on to it.
‘Okay, don’t tell me, then. Do you have protection, though?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘Condoms?’
‘Oh. Then, no.’
‘So, no girls?’
‘No.’
‘Well, come visit in Joburg. I hear those art girls are easy.’
‘Are you sad you’re leaving?’
‘Fuck, no,’ he said straight away. Then after a while, ‘You’ll get out of here, too, soon.’
‘Maybe I’ll also spray-paint the shul wall.’
‘That was a mistake.’
‘You did it twice.’
‘There’s shit going on right here in this country we should be thinking about. Not fucking Israel. That was my real fuck-up.’
When my brothers had left for Joburg, I went back to Elliot’s room. Shadrack was stripping the linen already. I wasn’t there long before Ma came in, too.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose we can talk about you taking Elliot’s room if you want it.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. The room was forlorn without his jeans and stud belts and rolled cardboard lying around. Shadrack balled up the linen and the motion floated a sheet of rough paper to the ground from Elliot’s desk.
Ma picked up the sketch. It was a heavily shaded picture of a Hasid at the Wailing Wall. The rugged stones must have crumbled from the charcoal stick as he drew it, and the figure’s hat and coat sat thick on the page. Somehow Elliot had captured the candy-floss wispiness of the beard, but also the sheen of a double lightning bolt SS insignia on the Lubavitcher’s lapel, and a skull and crossbones on the crown of his hat.
‘Thank God he didn’t put this one on the shul wall,’ said Ma.
In the time after Elliot’s expulsion, I felt that much more vulnerable. Elliot, I suppose, gave me a sense of the possible. Even if you got kicked in the teeth for it, you could still do something out of bounds – that was what he represented for me. Just being his brother gave me a sense of power, however small. He seemed, if not dangerous, then at least ungovernable and unquantifiable. Without him, we were somehow weaker.
More than ever, I kept a lookout for Leo Fein around town.
The congregation wasn’t as pleased as I’d been at the news of his resurrection. Too New Testament for their tastes, perhaps. Maybe Leo Fein had tangled with something too sacred to Jews – death. It wasn’t to be fooled with. There were deserving souls awaiting the pleas of Kaddish. Decent members of the community had wasted their petitions to God to absolve and receive him.
I saw Leo Fein sitting in shul, at the back, looking the same as he had before. He’d come through death unscathed. The wavy forelock shock, the straight lips – all restored. I don’t know what I expected to see – perhaps that he’d changed in some way, come out of the harrowing of hell or something, come out covered in pink ectoplasm like afterbirth, the way that little girl in Poltergeist had. But he was just there, breathing through his nose, scratching an itch on his chin like a live human being.
Though a few of the men downstairs were wary at first, soon they were talking business and Leo Fein was listening in again. But looks dropped from the gallery where the wives sat and the following week the men sat away from him.
I’m not saying the congregation’s displeasure with Leo Fein drove him towards my family but, since we were both on the outskirts anyway, it must have made it more natural for him to gravitate there.
6
SUMMER GAMES
‘Time to tighten our belts, I’m afraid,’ said Morgan, closing his telescopic pointer in on itself till it was back to its pen size. I had just returned home from school and watched him present his anaemic forecast for the year ahead to Ma, Will and Hans the sales manager in our living room. It was very impressive, this pointer, I thought, even though there were really no charts for Morgan to point at whatsoever.
‘Is it that bad, Morgan?’ asked Ma.
‘Not good.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘Have to take action.’
‘Action?’
‘Yes, Margot. Have to cut.’
‘Oh, God. I can’t do that.’
‘Have to, though.’
‘Oh, God.’
If Morgan had been left unfettered, Ma would’ve been driven into a vortex of anxiety. Will stepped in to arrest it.
He’d absorbed all he could about accounting, finance and investment, and even before university he’d educated himself deeply in a scepticism for Morgan. ‘We’re always tightening belts,’ said Will, who made sure to sit in on Great North meetings whenever he was home from varsity. ‘We’re going to run out of belt at this rate. What about plans for expansion? Are we doing anything positive this year?’ This was directed at Hans.
The sales manager cleared his throat. ‘We’re getting in the new brake pads this month,’ he said. Hans’s fringe was pasted to his forehead at an alarming stretch, which gave him a tense look at all times. ‘They’re ceramic,’ he added hopefully.
‘What about promotions?’ asked Will.
‘You mean, like the raffle?’ said Morgan. Will pretended nobody had said anything, and kept his eyes on Hans, waiting for an answer.
‘The golf day?’ said Hans.
‘Have to cancel the golf day this year,’ said Morgan. He’d often begin his sentences halfway in, as if the words were already running before his voice engaged them, quite like a clutch, in fact.
‘We can’t cancel the golf day,’ said Ma. ‘If only for the staff. We have to keep that going.’
‘Have to find somewhere else to cut then, Margot.’
I followed the details of this conversation as if it were a sports match on the brink. The Standard Five Tour was imminent and I worried it would be the first victim of budget cuts.
The Standard Five Tour was going to be the biggest event of my twelve-year-old life and I didn’t know that I’d be able to bear it if I were the only kid in my year left behind. It was to be a five-day trip, educational, via some of the most important sites of our country’s history (those that pertained to Afrikaners and in accordance with the Christian National Education curriculum, at any rate), ending on the N
atal coast at Umdloti.
Bigger than the Standard Five Tour itself was the age-old rite of asking a girl to go on the Standard Five Tour with you. What that meant beyond the actual asking hardly occurred to us. We’d travel on separate buses, stay in separate hostels, and only be together in museums and at mealtimes. But there was the crucial cinema outing that, to us, would be the culmination of the tour, with its unrestricted seating arrangements and darkness and the excited confusion it drew out of us.
I was thinking about the tour still as we all sat down around the dining-room table. Shadrack brought in the fried fish and brown chips, which had been cooking for most of the morning. This was our regular Friday-afternoon meal, and Shadrack was Catholic in his enforcement of this rule, even though he belonged to the Zion Christian Church himself.
‘Was at a party at the Milners the other night,’ said Morgan, sending a hard-fried chip skating almost off his plate. ‘Guess who was asking about you?’
‘About me?’ said Ma. ‘Who?’
‘Leo Fein,’ he said, at which Will sat upright.
‘The dead man?’ said Ma. I hadn’t told her, but she would’ve heard about Leo Fein’s return by then.
‘Oh that. Big misunderstanding, I believe. Unfortunate. Very much alive, I assure you. Saw him just the other night.’
‘A misunderstanding?’ said Ma. ‘I went to commiserate with his son. He didn’t tell his son he was alive. Did you hear this, Will?’
I felt like defending the man, but rarely spoke when this group of adults was gathered. Hans, too, concentrated on his food, grateful the attention wasn’t on him or his sales figures any more.
‘Problem was the son,’ said Morgan. ‘Fact of the matter, Michael didn’t handle it well at all. Overreacted.’
‘There’s still the generator. I don’t know what to do with it now.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Will, ‘don’t start with that again.’
‘He won it fair and square,’ said Ma. ‘Whatever else he’s done.’
‘I’ll contact him and congratulate him, if you like. Anyway, was the idiot son’s fault, the death matter. But he was asking about you, Margot. That was the point.’
‘Asking what?’
‘How’s the business, if you’ve found someone else since Eddie – all kinds of questions. Taking an interest.’
‘I don’t think I’ve said two words to the man,’ she said, banging the bottom of the tomato-sauce bottle.
‘Leo Fein,’ said Will. ‘What’s he do again?’
‘Businessman,’ said Morgan.
‘That can mean anything.’
‘Done very well for himself. Property. Investments. International connections.’
‘Wasn’t there a thing with NASA?’ asked Will.
Morgan didn’t acknowledge or deny it. ‘Talent for negotiation. Kind of man who attracts investors.’
‘Attractive too?’ said Will.
‘They knock down his door, I hear,’ said Morgan, in a rare conspiratorial jest with Will.
‘A desirable bachelor, Margot,’ said Will, waving his knife in the air. ‘That would solve our problems.’
‘That’d do it,’ said Morgan, trying to skewer a varnished chip.
‘Could let the belt out a little, wouldn’t you say?’ said Will.
‘Chuck out the old belt.’
‘Yes, maybe we could find the budget for a whole new belt for Margot,’ said Will. ‘A whole new wardrobe, perhaps. Put it down as promotional costs.’
Ma faked outrage then laughed along with the other two. Embarrassed, I smiled down at my plate. Hans stared at his, too.
What were they laughing at? I did my best to hide my unease. Until then, Leo Fein had been mine. His name had always come with a rush of exhilaration, of pride at having been mixed up with him, of admiration at his swashbuckling return. Over the next few days the name turned cold with threat.
* * *
In the afternoon, Ma dropped me off at Markos’s house. Markos Markides was Greek; Greek Cypriot, to be accurate; South African, to be even more accurate, but the few Greek families in town clung to their origin, language, food and passports regardless.
The Markideses had arrived in town only months before my father and they’d known each other well. They operated the Tattersall’s, where we placed our annual bet on the Durban July based on pictures of horses in the newspaper. The Markideses gave Will his first holiday job at the Tattersall’s where he earned a bit of pocket money and a feel for the odds.
Markos and I had been friends since nursery school. He, Sean, Roger and I spent almost every Friday afternoon at one another’s houses. We were playing Summer Games on the Commodore 64 and it was Markos and Sean versus Roger and me. There were only two joysticks so we took it in turns. Markos chose the USA as his team and I, because Roger didn’t care, chose the Soviet Union. I always went for the underdog; perhaps Elliot’s politics played a part.
The Soviet national anthem, even as played in the simplified orchestration of an 8-bit processor, was solemn and proud. There was still something secret or subversive about hearing this music in those times, because there was so very little we heard about the Soviet Union besides the fact (as if this were sufficient condemnation) that it was an atheist state.
‘They don’t believe in a god,’ kids would say. I even defended the USSR on the playground once, saying I bet it wasn’t as bad as they said in the movies – I was paraphrasing Elliot here, for sure. The other kid retorted that they weren’t Christians, and I said, neither am I, which seemed to scare him. (Engendering this kind of fear was a rarity for me, which is good enough reason to remember it, and record it here.)
On the screen Sean’s athlete stopped and started and finally stood heaving in the coloured blocks that formed his rudimentary body. My Soviet Olympian clicked through the finish line. The anthem soared.
‘Fuck, Sean,’ said Markos. ‘Are you pushing the button?’
‘I am,’ said Sean.
‘Don’t push the button. You’ve got to move the joystick, dumbfuck.’
‘Hey, are you guys gonna take someone on the Standard Five Tour?’ asked Sean, handing the plastic control to Markos.
‘You can do that?’ asked Roger.
‘Ja, dumbfuck,’ said Markos. ‘I might ask Diane. And you?’
‘I already asked Yolanda,’ said Sean. ‘She said no, she’s going with Greg. I might ask Angelique.’
‘What about you, Ben?’ asked Markos, the tic of his joystick launching an American pole vaulter over the bar.
For the past week I’d been occupied with the problem of asking Gina Melck. Every morning Gina, Barry and I looked behind pot plants and curtains, and stood on tiptoes to see on window ledges. There weren’t many hiding places for limpet mines and plastic explosives in the foyer, beneath the photographs of our prime ministers and presidents, past and present.
It was a drag having to be at school early, and to get on your hands and knees to look on the dusty green-grey linoleum behind things, but I looked forward to it because Gina was there, under a gloom. She glowered and pouted and sneered at the stupid, stupid job we’d been given.
Every day I made a show of hating the senseless assignment too, but the truth was that it was the first time in my existence I looked forward to coming to school. Besides the black hair and the mystique of suicide, I was attracted to her spiteful attitude towards authority; I read it as rebellion against conformity, rather than self-centred brattishness, and longed to be swept up in her dust-devil impertinence.
I still hadn’t found the courage to ask her. She might think the tour was as stupid as the bomb squad. Or she might say no, and avoid the bomb squad because I’d asked her and I wouldn’t get to be near her at all any more.
‘What?’ said Markos, ‘Are you scared of girls?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I just don’t think I wanna take anyone.’
* * *
I couldn’t be sure about it, but I began to suspect that Ma was going out
to meet Leo Fein. I became suspicious of her late-afternoon movements, and I bet she could tell I had an itch to interfere.
There was a budding protectiveness in me, some kind of disgusting Oedipal thing I tried to avoid thinking about, having read the entry in the Encyclopedia Americana. However, I think she played on all my insecurities – I guess she couldn’t resist, and I can’t blame her. So if she caught me straining to hear the voice on the other side of a phone call she was on, she’d pause the conversation midway, holding the receiver in both hands in her lap.
‘Yes?’ she’d say, smiling, eyes wide. She delighted in it, and I’d have to turn my head and move off and, in the Aronbach way, try not to show my perturbation.
But I was perturbed. It was my life too, dammit! And if it was going to have a snap right-angle change in course, I should like to know about it. And Leo Fein! I mean, Ma – the guy robs liquor stores with minors! Is this the kind of man you want influencing your impressionable child?
I just felt she could do better. If she had to take up with another man, couldn’t she aim higher? But on the other hand, I reasoned, if it were Leo Fein she was setting up a future with, would I actually be in for a life of adventure, clandestine fun (the best kind), escapades, hilarity, happiness? Well, even if it were so, I didn’t have to be happy about the happiness.
Will was home again and we drove through the town towards the bank. He was more patient with me than Elliot ever was, although much more active in his persuasions, whether for his own purposes or for what he believed were the Aronbach Empire’s, and thus my own, best interests.
But I could speak to him about things without him blowing up at me the way Elliot did. ‘Do you think Ma will ever marry again?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know, buddy. Do you want her to?’
‘I don’t know. I guess if it was someone cool. And she liked him.’
‘I think it’ll be hard for her to find someone like Daddy.’
‘What about Leo Fein?’
‘Jeez, I was only joking about that. Why, has he called her?’