Lucky Packet

by Trevor Sacks

Leo Fein opened the door and stood behind it. ‘Howzit, boy,’ he said to me. ‘Come, your mother has something she has to do today.’ After appearing and disappearing from my life, he now seemed to turn up everywhere with that car.

  ‘I can walk home,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not a stranger. Come, boy, hop in.’

  I got in and sat into the angle of the seat, my feet floundering in the space ahead of them. ‘Aren’t we going to my house?’ I asked as we passed my street and kept on up Grobler.

  ‘Your mother had to take Shadrack somewhere for his eyes, so there’s no one home.’

  ‘I don’t mind being at home by myself,’ I said. ‘I do it all the time.’

  ‘You can’t get in, boy. It’s locked.’

  ‘I know how to climb in through my mom’s window.’

  ‘Who do you think you’re talking to here? I know how well you can climb, don’t you worry,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You don’t say anything about that to your mother though, hey china? No, listen, she asked me to pick you up. And you’re coming to mine for dinner anyway so you may as well just stay till then.’

  My eyes settled on the door handle and I tried to imagine myself rolling like a ball on the tarmac from the moving vehicle, like I’d seen on countless TV shows.

  I tried to compare the feeling of this ride in the Mercedes to the one back from Roy’s Uptown Liquor. That day, we had a boot full of booze and I had a head full of questions about my father. I’d wondered then how alike the two were; I’d wanted to know what he knew about my father. But Leo Fein was nothing like my family.

  I glanced at him and tried to learn the man through his mannerisms. He didn’t squint when the sun hit his eyes like we did. He didn’t sit the same way we did. His jaw jutted around, as if he were having an unspoken dialogue.

  The examination of Leo Fein left me with no further knowledge of him. We arrived at his house with its lawn so green he had to be breaking water restrictions. ‘The last time I came here you were dead,’ I said.

  He didn’t react to this at all, not even a look, but simply said, ‘Come in, boy.’ I followed him through the rough-hewn wooden door under the coolness of long-stemmed plants. I walked behind the ghost I’d come to pay respects to only months before.

  Leo Fein introduced me to Annie, a woman in a spearmint uniform, and she brought us lunch. We sat down to eat in the cold room with enamel paint on the walls and a large framed picture in thick oils of two elephants and an acacia. He spread out two newspapers next to him, the local Review and The Star from the city. There were green beans and spinach and a hunk of very salty roast beef. He concentrated on the meat, cutting through the purple stamp in the strip of fat, and left a large portion of the vegetables untouched.

  ‘You got homework to do?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got work, too,’ he said. He asked Annie to clear the table so I could use it as my desk. She called him by his first name, too, a practice that struck me as peculiar.

  There were grades of discrimination reflected in just how much deference was expected of black people: baas, miesies, medem, mam, sir, and the substituting even of pronouns with these titles, a feature of our language that reinforces everyone’s position. How a white person spoke to the black people who worked in their house was an instant marker of the ease they felt with the system we lived in – even a twelve-year-old could see that.

  Once the food was cleared, Annie packed away the tablecloth and placemats. Leo Fein, meanwhile, had gone to another room across the hall and I heard him lock the door behind him.

  When Annie was done, she retreated to the backyard and left me under the wide ears of the elephants in oils. It didn’t take me long to finish my work. If I’d been at home I could have ridden my BMX or read something from the encyclopaedias. In this house, what was there? Small statuettes in a cupboard, a TV guide magazine from the Sunday papers, Reader’s Digests in a magazine rack. I got up to go to the toilet and heard Leo Fein on the phone behind the locked double doors of the study.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I dragged my feet back to the insipid comforts of the lounge. Leo Fein opened the door at the moment I was passing it and we both stiffened. He carried a brown paper bag, flat with documents, under his arm; behind him was the room with the birds.

  ‘I have to go out now, china. Business.’ I could see a hovering kestrel, an owl on a perch and a martial eagle swooping down on a shrinking dassie, frozen in action. Leo Fein shuffled out the door so that I had to move back myself, then locked it. ‘You stay here, boy. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Can’t I come with?’ I asked. That glimpse of the birds sparked again the buccaneering image I’d first had of Leo Fein. For a moment I forgot the threat he presented, and saw him as I’d seen him the first day he spoke to me; the desire to ride alongside Leo Fein was rekindled suddenly and unexpectedly.

  ‘No,’ he said, walking into the kitchen and lifting the keys off the counter. ‘No, it’s just business. You’ll be bored.’

  He was at the door already when the pang of being left in the faceless house urged me to speak again. ‘My mom wouldn’t like it if she knew you left me alone all day,’ I said. He paused at the door and I waited for him to turn and respond with an off-hand excuse, a threat, even. Instead, he walked through the door and left it open behind him.

  There were no words in the silver Mercedes as we drifted into the part of town I knew least, past Fauna Park and Flora Park. Riebok and Giraffe Street, Bosbok Avenue and into the birds, Pelican and Marabou. Flatland with low fences, a service road that allowed access to the squares and panhandles with their green-roofed houses and Mexican-style walls and elongated pots out front. Family names in ceramic hung next to front doors and two-litre, dog-repelling plastic Coke bottles glinting with water lay on brush-cut lawns.

  Then the road opened up over a gentle hump and we seemed much higher. I was settling into the hypnotic state the ride induced when we turned to the right, down a dirt road that led to some smallholdings outside town.

  The road curved with a sandy bank and the Mercedes wagged its tail in the dirt but ultimately held its course. We passed small crops of sugarcane and mealies, squared off, each to their own. Then we were at a driveway, a long one that led from a swing gate to a low house with a workshop to one side and a few other outbuildings with undulating roofs of dulled silver. Chickens chased each other away from the Mercedes’ grille.

  ‘Stay here,’ said Leo Fein, stepping on the brake.

  A young black boy, barefoot and about my age, came from the side of the house, wiping his hands on his shorts, and disappeared inside. Leo Fein went to the back of the Mercedes and took an old sky-blue Samsonite suitcase from the boot. He placed it on the ground and stood outside the car, holding the brown paper packet.

  A moment later a black man appeared at the door. He was wearing faded overalls, baggy, with the sleeves and legs rolled up. Besides the work clothes he seemed very neat, his hair being closely cropped with flecks of grey here and there. He wore spectacles with heavy black rims.

  Leo Fein stepped forward and shook the man’s hand. ‘Hello, Doctor,’ I could hear Leo Fein say to him, muffled behind the car window.

  ‘We’re inside,’ said the Doctor. They were about to turn towards the house when the man in the overalls noticed me. He spoke some words to Leo Fein, who shook his head. Then he came over to the car. ‘Come,’ he said.

  I walked behind them to the front door, where the man in the overalls paused. ‘Do you want to help me?’ he asked.

  I nodded, lying.

  ‘You know how to use one of these?’ He pointed to a panga that leant against the door, its tip in the sand.

  I nodded again.

  ‘Go with him,’ he said, glancing at the black kid. ‘Go get some sugarcane for us.’ He said something in an African language to the kid and the boy nodded.

  Leo Fein and the Doctor walked into the house and I walked behind the black kid around the side.
Behind the house was a small plantation, not big enough for anyone to make any money from, probably. It was planted, nevertheless in neat rows.

  We hadn’t said anything to each other, the black kid and I. The time had elapsed for saying hello. The kid bent and picked up his own panga, which lay on its side in a semi-circular clearing that had been hacked into the plantation.

  Black kids I’d played with until the age of twelve numbered no more than a dozen. They were mostly the shy young nieces and nephews of Shadrack, who’d kick a ball with me in the backyard or watch cartoons on our TV in the lounge.

  I remember, too, Jackie and I encountering four black children on the far side of the Railways Bowling Club. We must have been seven or eight years old and they were pretty close in age, I would guess. Jackie and I were probably searching for the detritus that formed the centre of many of our games (a sandwich green with mould and someone’s fallen pendant held equal fascination), and they were chasing one another on the dry path that ran under seeping pine trees.

  Both groups, us and them, stopped their activity and approached the barbed wire fence. Perhaps because they’d been warned by their parents, they came forward hesitantly. We looked at one another for a while before the nearest of them gave out a laugh and ran off, the others following in his dust.

  They were rare, these kinds of meetings, for, however boneheaded the philosophy and fatuous the decrees of apartheid, it was to a large degree successful in executing its design – to keep people apart. There wasn’t much communicating on any of these occasions, language usually being a problem. But that meeting made an impression on us, and probably our imaginations filled in the details: how friendly, how gentle, how very much like us those children had been.

  I watched the kid with the panga grab three plants, curling his arm around the stems, which bent high over us. Then he swung the blade low down with his right. He struck a second time and all three tall stems tipped into his hand. Throwing them off to one side, he nodded to me to do as he’d done. Not gentle, and in fact not much like me – I’d never in my life been put to work, adult work, as he had.

  I stepped in and took two thick stems in one hand and swung the blade. The first swing struck the cane, the second one grazed it and I almost turned the blade back on my legs. It took me five or six cuts to take down the bruised plants.

  The kid began chopping again, not looking at whether I was doing a good enough job or cutting my own legs off. He was much faster – the plants didn’t seem to hurt his grabbing hand the way they did mine and his cuts were precisely angled and powerful. This kid, though slightly smaller than me, knew how to work.

  And that was just it; cutting cane, for me, was a novelty, an experience, play; he was working.

  I decided to stop looking at him and concentrate on swinging the blade harder. Eventually my shoulders tired and I had to quit. To disguise my break I tried to make conversation, even though we’d been in the field for some time without a word passing between us.

  ‘Do you live here?’ I asked.

  The kid carried on swinging.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘I’m Ben.’

  ‘Johannes,’ said the other kid. He paused his work but stood with his panga hanging at his side and didn’t even look at my hand.

  ‘You’re good,’ I said. ‘How did you learn?’

  ‘Every day, this is what I do,’ he replied. ‘I know how to use it very well. I can cut this sugarcane, I can cut grass, I can cut wood. I can cut you, too.’

  He pivoted and slashed at a cane stem at neck height and watched the head topple over. Then Johannes laughed and carried on his work.

  A little shaken by the threat, I swung too, albeit with less vigour. Leo Fein approached, led by the Doctor, and I discontinued my task while Johannes hacked away.

  ‘Let us strip one,’ said the Doctor. ‘Hold on here, my friend.’ He made me pick up one of the long stalks from the ground and hold it out in front of me. Then standing behind me, he gripped his hand over mine, the one I had on the stalk, and took the hand holding the panga into his too.

  My heart quickened at being captured like this, in his grip. It made me call up a memory so diluted by time it was almost forgotten. I was sitting next to my father, in his car. He pushed the gear lever forwards, and he had my hand under his. It was the same happy pain.

  The Doctor brought the blade down briskly, taking the end off. ‘Let’s turn it around,’ he said, and without letting go he flipped the cane so that he could lob the other end off too. He worked quickly. The handle dug into my hand, inside his hand.

  I fought back the burn of tears, from the pain of the panga handle, the nearness of the blade to my fingers, the ache of my shoulders. We had a short section of cane then and the Doctor rotated it in my hand and stripped the skin from it, working the blade away from us.

  ‘Try it,’ he said. I stood frozen with the sugarcane in my hand and the Doctor finally released me. I bit into the fibres and tasted the purity of its sweetness. The Doctor was carving a piece for himself and bit into it too. He pulled the fibres out with his teeth, mashed them in his mouth, then spat out the pulp on the ground. ‘Good,’ he said.

  I was happy to be in the Mercedes again. The chickens parted before us and we mounted the dirt road once more. It was only when we were back on the tar that I spoke to Leo Fein.

  ‘Who are those guys?’ I asked.

  ‘Just some friends of mine, china. Doing some work for me.’

  ‘And Johannes?’

  ‘That boy?’ he said.

  ‘Is the man his father?’

  ‘No, it’s not his father,’ said Leo Fein.

  ‘Is he really a doctor?’

  ‘Not the medical kind.’

  ‘Why does he wear overalls if he’s a doctor?’

  ‘He’s lots of things. Listen – Ben,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ I think it was the first time he’d used my name and, until then, I thought he didn’t even know it. ‘I wasn’t supposed to bring you along today. Those guys are in a bit of a dangerous situation. I’m trying to help them.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They’re friends. Like you and that boy now – Johannes? You’re friends now, right?’

  ‘Ja.’ It didn’t seem to me we were, but I knew adults often refused to see that two kids of the same age might not get along, as if it were only the complications of adult life that interfered with two people forming a fellowship.

  ‘Well, friends help each other when they’re in trouble.’

  ‘Why are they in trouble?’

  ‘You know, Ben, this is a sorry country. Seriously fucked up. I can say that to you, hmm?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Whether he meant he could swear or that he could talk politics with me, I didn’t know; I appreciated his effort on both points.

  ‘I know your mom doesn’t think like most people do in this town. She knows it’s not right, the way black people live. You know too.’

  ‘Apartheid.’

  ‘Exactly. She talks to you about it?’

  ‘Sometimes. My brother says it’s a crime against humanity.’

  ‘He’s right. It’s a crime against humanity. Trouble is, most people here don’t think of blacks as humans exactly.’

  ‘I know. I hate it here.’

  ‘Well, here’s the situation we’re in. You’re not supposed to know about them. You can’t tell anyone about them. In two days, they’ll be gone. You still can’t tell anyone about them. And I need you to do that, otherwise they’ll be in danger and they might be put in jail. No one will ever see them again. It’s serious.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to them?’

  ‘They’re going away, that’s all. But if they get caught, it’ll be bad.’

  ‘What if you get caught?’

  ‘It’s “us” now, kemosabe. We won’t get caught if we’re quiet. It’s our duty now to be quiet. That’s how we can help.’

  ‘Elliot – my brothe
r – he says Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years, so they … so we have a duty to stand up when we see other people being persecuted.’

  ‘He’s got a point.’

  ‘Is that why you’re helping them?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s like when you’re bullied. Every day you’re in primary school and a big bruiser takes your pocket money and your peanut butter sandwich and biffs you one in the guts. Then you get older and stronger. You see him bullying a little kid. What do you do?’

  I thought about Brian. I fantasised about ambushing him in the corridors of school, pushing him over the balcony railing outside Mrs Verwey’s classroom. In reality, I merely stayed away from him. ‘You stop him,’ I said, guessing this was the answer he was looking for.

  ‘That’s right. You stand up to him. You don’t let him do to that little kid what he did to you, if you have the strength to stop him. So, it’s like that – black people are being bullied and we’re standing up.’

  ‘There was a black man in shul – they didn’t let him stay.’

  ‘I don’t know who that was,’ he said. ‘Even if he was white, though, and not a Jew, they wouldn’t let him stay. Judaism is not a proselytising religion. You know what that means?’

  ‘But he said he was a Jew. Why didn’t they help him? Julian Gross spoke to him, and then he never came back.’

  ‘I don’t know this story.’ His straight mouth clamped shut while he sucked in air through his nostrils, and we were silent as we came into Fauna Park again. ‘For some Jews, they don’t want to draw attention to themselves, in case we get the same treatment again. It’s enough suffering already. They don’t want to get involved. I guess the bullying can work out differently for some. Some people are bullied every day, and it breaks them – not just their bodies, you know, but inside them. Maybe you end up scared of bullies your whole life if that happens.’

  ‘So they’re scared?’

  ‘Everyone’s scared of something, hey? But they don’t see that things can’t go on like this. It’ll be scarier in the end if we don’t do something. And we have to make friends now with the right people. Friends for our future. The little guy being bullied today, he’ll be stronger in a few years. And we’ll want to be his friend. You see?’