Lucky Packet

by Trevor Sacks

  They were married in a small ceremony and after a Mauritius honeymoon she moved into Victor’s house too. Having her around also made it difficult for us to talk to Aunty Bernice and Jackie, who were living in Johannesburg now. Mostly Ma and I were in Nadine’s way and I bet it vexed my uncle to have to extend a protective arm over his baby sister and give over his heart, wallet and spirit to his second wife at the same time.

  Though Ma and I didn’t discuss Leo Fein, that’s not to say the name didn’t come up in Victor’s house. Victor veered between a kind of misty-eyed admiration for the man (‘Not a lot of people would have the balls to pull off some of the things he did, hey Sis?’) and an older brother’s tut-tutting for her choice in men (‘What were you doing with a guy like that, hey Sis?’). I found both positions hurtful and I’m sure Ma did too, but neither of us said anything. It was calculated in the debt we owed for being taken in.

  Unspoken, like so much in our family, was the feeling that we were charity cases. Great North Diesel and Auto Electric had withered after the sale of the property. Nobody wanted it as a going concern and we couldn’t get our money back from Leo Fein.

  After we ran out of funds to pay Will’s lawyers, Victor promised us more lawyers but, after two meetings, Ma became disheartened and Victor retracted his support for the cause. ‘I can’t keep paying for these sharks,’ he said. ‘You know my money goes straight to Bernice. Or else I’d do it.’

  And Will, after all his stratagems for rebuilding an empire – well, now he had a fight all his own, one with the fetters of his compulsions, which, also, we didn’t talk about. Though Ma shut Victor up as best she could, I knew from the occasional gloating comment from my uncle that Will had lost a large amount of money – Ma’s money, my meagre bar mitzvah money too, I suppose – at the races.

  There was a lot we didn’t talk about. We didn’t talk about the fact that Ma gave away her pottery implements when she couldn’t sell them. Nor that she stopped seeing her friends, the few artists and musicians there were in town. In any case, Victor would not have been generous with his house if my mother had invited artists – least of all black artists – into it.

  Most of all, we didn’t talk about my part in the Aronbachs’ downfall, because I was the only one in the family who knew about the letter I’d written. For Ma, I can imagine that first the shock, then the shame, of what happened made her unable to talk about it. So we both kept our silence, and that Ma should feel responsible only added to my guilt.

  I didn’t escape Victor’s haranguing, usually over a lack of initiative and prospects. ‘Your father built that business without anyone’s help, you know,’ he’d say, beginning a grating discourse. In the four years we’d been staying with him (we had almost one year alone, Ma and I, in the townhouse complex near the municipal pool before the savings dried up), the closest he came to directing any respect my way was when I placed second in a school general knowledge quiz. It soon waned.

  ‘What’s the capital of Madagascar?’ he asked me when I returned home with the results of the test. I didn’t know.

  Ma was too distracted, I suppose, to buck me up; Elliot and Will were absent. The one thing I’d achieved in a long time felt trivial and pointless. Though the second round of the quiz was to take place in Johannesburg against other schools, which would have served as a welcome escape from Victor, I was deflated and pulled out of the competition.

  My prospects were limited. Ma’s job at Doren’s Outfitters wouldn’t pay for my education past high school, and my marks weren’t high enough for any sort of scholarship. With the Encyclopedia Americana gone along with the house on Jorissen Street, I spent many hours over Victor’s Britannica set, yet none of that knowledge translated into school marks. It remained general knowledge instead of, I suppose, specific.

  In the years after my bar mitzvah, I could forget about Leo Fein for great stretches of time. But there’d always be a pang, a stabbing reminder, when I became frustrated at a lack of something, and I’d always work its eventual cause back to our loss of autonomy as a family and, beyond that, to thoughts about my part in my family’s pitiable situation.

  * * *

  I was eighteen, a month out of school, and of an age that covets change. For someone about to grow into an adult, to leave home, to study something novel, the 1992 referendum and the anticipation of change might have felt exhilarating, like being pushed at the very edge of a wave. But while all that surrounded me was in motion, I sank like a weight.

  There’d been very little change for me at all. My release from school was a great anticlimax. I’d be staying in this town, not preparing myself for a new life, not learning anything new at a university, and all this while my friends each left town to fall into their own futures.

  I listened as they discussed after-school holidays I couldn’t go on, I watched as they showed one another their university acceptance letters; I received my conscription papers. My male friends all received theirs too, of course, but they had the legitimate excuse of study, and qualified for automatic deferment.

  Markos was going to university in Johannesburg, Sean to technikon in Pretoria, Joss to Israel. Even Shoshana had been accepted into hotel school, and Jackie was with her mom in Johannesburg, already enrolled at a university there.

  I began almost to hate them since they were passing me by, leaving me behind. I resolved I wouldn’t stay in contact; I didn’t need them. But I also couldn’t bear sitting in the depression of Victor’s sunken lounge forever. I longed to leave town.

  With no study deferment, I was meant to report to 7 SA Infantry at Phalaborwa. Instead, I hid. I’d registered for national service under the Jorissen Street address, as much out of pride as evasiveness, and I hoped the military police wouldn’t bother to track me down at Victor’s.

  Though by 1992 many people were tearing up their army call-up papers, Will had decided to obey his. It wasn’t clear at the time why he’d done so, although he’d been vague about many things of late.

  He reported for duty at Voortrekkerhoogte military base outside Pretoria, and it didn’t take long before he’d pried his way into a job selling advertising space in the officers’ magazine. Throughout, he kept a part-time job at the bookmakers of Skamandrios, who (it was never clear) was either employer or creditor or both, and maintained he was still engaging with lawyers over the hunt for Leo Fein.

  Will skipped much of basic military training by arranging sports leave to compete in karate tournaments (none of which he went to because he’d never taken more than three lessons of karate with his friend, Pete, a real black belt), and spent most of his time out of uniform, conducting unspecified business of his own, or in his girlfriend’s flat.

  While my friends were away on after-school holidays in Margate and Southbroom for ten-day binges I couldn’t afford, I took a bus to Pretoria to visit him. He and Angie met me at the terminus and took me to their flat in Sunnyside. Angie wore Indian skirts and Will dressed like a business executive. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant, hot as a boiler room, where we drank too-warm red wine from carafes. Will flipped his tie over his shoulder as he ate and talked about his ideas to haul Ma and me out of the town and into the city; he made it sound as if salvation were just around the corner.

  ‘How come you went to the army? Are they even serious about call-ups any more?’ I asked, as much for myself as for him. ‘Isn’t it over, just about? Mandela’s out now and everything.’

  ‘Six years in jail, if you don’t show up. Plus there’s big shit going down in the townships. They need the army now. They’re serious about it.’

  ‘You don’t go to the townships, do you, babe?’ asked Angie.

  ‘No, not me, babe.’

  ‘I got my call-up,’ I said. ‘Phalaborwa.’

  Will breathed in a hiss and winced. ‘Ooh. The worst.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  He poured more of the wine from the carafe.

  ‘Six years in jail?’ I said. ‘Really?’
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br />   ‘Ag, you’ll be fine,’ said Will.

  I froze when I thought about what I was going to do about my call-up. I didn’t want to go to prison but the thought of the army scared me just as much; there wasn’t much between them, in my understanding.

  It’ll make you into a man, is what the teachers always told us. They made it sound like a threat. Whenever a teacher said it, I pictured being forced into some kind of extruding apparatus, a machine like a hand-cranked mincer. They’d jam you through it with brute force, and out the other side would emerge a violent, snarling, chauvinist, wife-beating, child-hating, racist, tanned hunk of meat with a moustache (for this was the kind of man those teachers represented to me); it was either that or mincemeat.

  I didn’t have Elliot’s bravery, and I didn’t have Will’s talent for negotiation. I didn’t want to serve the system, but I was still in fear of it.

  That I found myself, a draft dodger, on the way to Will’s military base the next day should confirm that my brother hadn’t lost his persuasive powers since his call-up. He had to report to his commanding officer and, since Angie would be working, he convinced me to tag along.

  He was in his brown uniform, a sight that seemed to perturb Angie as we left in her Toyota Conquest, the boot of which held a box of Klipdrift brandy – not the only detail of that visit that was reminiscent of Leo Fein. The guard at the gates greeted Will like a long-lost chum. The private opened the boot and took out the box of brandy, waved at me and opened the gate for us to pass through. ‘In a place like this,’ said Will, ‘you need as many friends as possible.’

  Inside a red-brick government-issue building, he greeted a secretary in uniform and presented a bottle of perfume to her in the palm of his hand. Her sturdy jaw underlined sweet dimples in her cheeks, both of which vanished at the appearance of a man of about fifty in stiff uniform at the door of the office, Kolonel Nel.

  Will saluted. ‘This is my brother Benjamin, Kolonel.’

  The Kolonel shook my hand and puffed out his lips while he assessed me. He was nothing like the General, the man in Aviator sunglasses who’d promised Joss and me a flip in his Cessna and had given us forty bucks for a few raffle tickets.

  The Kolonel was a serious military man, I could tell, rigid as his collars, whereas the General had been flamboyant and at ease. Maybe men of greater rank had greater liberty, I theorised. Or maybe the air force was just more fun than the infantry.

  ‘Are you in school?’ the Kolonel asked.

  ‘No, sir.’ He was a terrifying man even in his small talk and the fear made me forget that I needed to lie.

  ‘Call the kolonel “Kolonel”,’ said Will softly to me.

  ‘Kolonel,’ I said.

  ‘Why aren’t you in the army?’

  ‘He’s studying, Kolonel,’ said Will. ‘But he wants to do his national service straight afterwards, so he’s coming to have a look.’

  The Kolonel nodded silently and we followed him into his office. ‘Where was your call-up for?’

  ‘Phalaborwa, Kolonel.’

  ‘The best! That’s where I started.’ The Kolonel nodded.

  He ignored me for the rest of the meeting while Will took him through the sales figures for the officers’ magazine. The Kolonel looked with equanimity tending to boredom at Will’s results (which, the way Will presented them, sounded spectacular to me).

  ‘What about your karate, Aronbach?’ said the Kolonel. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I don’t like to brag, Kolonel,’ said Will, pulling out a rolled sheet of paper. He’d gone so far as to have karate certificates printed and had a collection of gold-painted plastic trophies for all his fictitious victories at tournaments. All of it was to impress Kolonel Nel.

  The Kolonel was inspecting one of the little gold trophies in his great brown fingers when Will pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich. The Kolonel put the trophy down forcefully onto the desk. His eyes fixed Will in their gaze, then the thick fingers curled around the bottle of single malt.

  Perhaps the presentation of the liquor served to remind the Kolonel that Will too was getting something out of this relationship. It was an exchange, one which – if only for a moment – put them on an equal standing.

  It’s understandable that a man in his position, who’d literally fought to attain his rank and level of respect, didn’t want to be seen or even to feel that he was being taken advantage of. He was a kolonel, which meant he had the kind of power over Will a mere employer didn’t. He could make Will do things he didn’t want to do. That Will, a smooth-talking Jew kid, could saunter in here and exert influence over the Kolonel – this must have been hard to swallow.

  ‘Ja, Aronbach,’ said Kolonel Nel, unfurling the freshly inked second-place SA Karate Championship certificate. ‘Very impressive.’

  ‘Thank you, Kolonel.’

  ‘How do you do it? What’s the secret?’

  ‘It’s focus, Kolonel. It’s all in the mind, actually. You have to centre your energies and then … release.’

  ‘Wonderful. You should give our boys a lesson about it someday. Our hand-to-hand guys. It’s a real asset to the SADF, having a chap like you. We don’t want to waste that, now, do we? You proud of your brother?’ asked the Kolonel in a sudden bark.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’m nothing special,’ said Will. ‘Anyone can learn, Kolonel.’

  ‘Is that right? Why don’t you give us a demonstration?’

  ‘A demo?’

  ‘A demo, ja.’

  ‘Well, you know, karate season’s over now. My sensei – that’s my master – he says it’s vital I rest now. Let’s talk about it in a month or so, Kolonel.’

  ‘No, come now, Aronbach. For your boys here – a demo. I think it’s a fantastic idea.’

  ‘I’m not sure, Kolonel.’

  ‘I am, Aronbach. Done. Consider it an order.’

  It was just for an instant, but Will’s eyes engaged mine and communicated something, not anything specific, but just enough to establish a conspiracy.

  ‘Great. Great idea, Kolonel,’ said Will with an enthusiasm that came all too naturally to him. ‘I like it. Where should we do this demo?’

  ‘The gymnasium?’

  ‘We can only fit, maybe, two hundred in there, Kolonel. What about the fields? We can get the stands, invite the whole battalion, some of the wives,’ said Will, upping the ante. While Kolonel Nel was certainly above Will in the chain of command and, according to Will himself, had proved his worth as both a bush survival expert and a strategist in the Angolan conflict, my brother had the advantage of a straight face.

  ‘Well, all right,’ said the Kolonel, sounding for the first time a little unsure of where this was going. ‘But this had better be some demo.’

  ‘I’ll make sure of it, Kolonel. I’ll bring some of the other boys. We can make a day of it.’

  ‘Fine, speak to my secretary,’ he said, swivelling his chair away from us. He’d pushed Will into a corner, but not the one he’d aimed for. ‘You’re dismissed, Aronbach.’

  Will was silent as we walked through the corridors and back to Angie’s car. He ignored my questions about what he was going to do, about where we were going. This silence was new – he’d always had a ready answer; now he chewed his lip and steered the Toyota past the guard hut without waving.

  If Will failed, maybe even if he pulled it off, the arrangement, based as it was on an unspoken truth, would fall apart. He’d lose his cushy job with its time off for other pursuits, equine or otherwise; the Kolonel would lose whatever it was he was collecting from the arrangement, too. Perhaps Kolonel Nel was like a man out of control, swerving the car into a lamppost to stop the ride, to call attention to the lie and end it.

  We sat down to lunch at a steakhouse in Pretoria central and my brother kept his silence as he tried, I suppose, to rebalance himself. The idea of competing in karate hadn’t come from nowhere. His friend Pete was a genuine black belt and Will had accompanied him to a few competitions a
t the beginning of his army stint. He could convince the dojo to put on a demo; but that wouldn’t be enough to avoid a wreck.

  Our meals came and the restaurant owner, an advertiser in the officers’ magazine, joined us at our table, smoking and chattering, trying to reconstitute himself in the aftermath of a boozy night. It was he who mentioned The Ox.

  Our hungover companion told us he’d hired a heavy to go after his ex-business partner, who’d run off with a large sum, and that the heavy was none other than ‘The Ox from Boksburg’, the former heavyweight champion who’d made a shift into professional wrestling, then into heavy drinking and, finally, debt-collection services.

  ‘Found him in the Yellow Pages,’ he said, ‘just like that.’

  Finally Will sparked. He prodded the restaurant man to find the number in the Yellow Pages for him; within a few minutes, he’d booked The Ox for the demo, convincing the worn-out heavyweight with two promises: ‘It’ll pay, and it won’t hurt a bit.’

  Will brought me to the base for a second time to hand out flyers and tape up posters that read:

  Martial Arts Demonstration

  featuring the SA National Karate Team (Springboks)

  and

  THE OX FROM BOKSBURG!!!

  Only R12 entrance

  We’d almost handed out the lot when a private said the Kolonel wanted Will. Elsa the secretary, with not a trace of a dimple, waved us in.

  ‘What the hell is this, Aronbach?’ said the Kolonel flapping a poster.

  ‘It’s for the demo, Kolonel.’

  ‘This has got out of hand.’

  ‘I’ll take care of everything. There’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘We’re the SADF. We’re not in show business, Aronbach. You can’t charge entrance.’

  ‘We want to do something worthy of the base, Kolonel. There are expenses to cover. And if we get enough people, maybe there’ll be something extra.’

  ‘Extra? And where’s this money going to?’