by Trevor Sacks
As the service ended, I folded the tallis more carefully than necessary, making sure not one fringe of the shawl caught in the zip of its velvet bag. Leo Fein strode past me to shake hands, whether they wished it or not, with Julian and the Rabbi, while the others looked on. I don’t think anyone noticed me leaving the hall.
I still had Carol’s keys and I opened the little Uno. Without checking behind me to see whether she was outside the shul yet, I drove. I had to. I didn’t think about being stopped by police until I arrived at Carol’s house.
I left the car there and walked across the road to Victor’s. I cursed myself with every step, that I’d run away like that, that I’d left Carol there; that I’d left such a mess. Another mess was trying to find rest among my thoughts.
Inside the living room, Elliot was back, eating Ma’s stew while Victor and Ma looked glumly at the carpet. Nadine had her face turned to an arbitrary wall, and her arms were folded. It was a scene more awkward than usual.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
Everyone seemed reluctant to talk. Elliot finished chewing, then said softly, ‘Victor and Nadine are emigrating.’
I’m sure I looked shocked, but really it was still Leo Fein I was thinking of. I stared blankly for some time, then asked, ‘Where?’
‘Australia,’ said Victor.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘When are you leaving?’
Ma looked at Victor for his reply.
‘Well, there’s a lot of things to work out,’ said my uncle. ‘Papers and lawyers. Probably end of May.’
‘But maybe sooner,’ said Nadine to Victor.
‘Maybe,’ said Victor. Nadine rose and left the room.
‘Victor, is this all her idea?’ asked Ma in a whisper.
‘We both want it,’ said Victor. ‘I don’t think there’s a future here, Margot. If we can get settled there, maybe you should come too. I mean, you need points to get in, get citizenship and everything but maybe having family that side helps. You should think about getting out.’
I looked at Elliot pulling a fatty, yellow strip from the square of meat in his mouth and placing it on the edge of the plate. Why wasn’t he saying anything, I wondered, and stored for later the thought that I had to tell Will about Leo Fein’s return.
‘What about Jackie?’ I asked.
‘Well, Jackie’s studying so she may as well finish the year and then we’ll talk. I don’t want her staying here. After this referendum this country’s going to shit. They’re gonna fuck it up.’
Finally Elliot spoke. ‘It is fucked up. It was always fucked up. It’s got a chance to finally unfuck itself, Victor.’
‘Listen,’ said Victor, ‘don’t start your bullshit. You went to London. I’m not talking politics here. Think what the schools are going to be like, after. And the roads. You think they know how to run anything? You think they can run the airports and the hospitals?’
We knew who ‘they’ were without him having to explain. With anyone else, Elliot would not have let it pass. Ma’s old self would not have let it pass. But it was useless challenging Victor on his racism – in this moment even more so.
‘What about the house?’ I asked. I had the sensation of becoming my own mother just then. These are the questions she should be asking, I thought.
‘It’s going on the market,’ said Victor. ‘Actually, someone’s interested already. Look, it’ll be a while till anything goes through so there’ll be time for you to find something else. You might have a job by then, Ben. Or be in the army.’
‘I’m not going to the army.’
‘It could turn out to be the best thing for you,’ said Victor. ‘If you prove yourself to them, you can get training, and they’ll pay. They’re just waiting for someone to show some initiative, and then the sky’s the limit. You could be an engineer.’
‘I’m not going,’ I said.
‘Suit yourself, but you need to start thinking about your future. You all do. I can’t keep this up, not with what Bernice is bleeding from me.’ Victor stood and left the room. Elliot continued eating his stew and rice.
Ma went to the kitchen to heat a plate of food for me in the microwave and I sat thinking. Leo Fein’s return was not a matter I wanted to talk to Elliot about and, to deflect my thoughts from it, the primary cause of my perturbation, I brought up Victor’s news instead.
‘So there’s a referendum to end apartheid and he runs away.’
‘He’s just scared,’ said Elliot.
‘You don’t think he’s racist?’
‘He is, but he’s Victor, you know?’
Elliot’s political ideas ran on different rails from Victor’s entirely, but this never seemed to get in the way of their mutual affection.
Victor had rallied behind Elliot when my brother had been expelled from school and had championed his career overseas, even though Elliot’s ambitions were plainly non-materialistic. Will, meanwhile, had overtly capitalist goals, had the gall and craft to be successful by Victor’s measure, yet Victor rubbished his achievements at every turn.
The bell rang and Ma, having just set my plate of reheated mutton stew down on a TV tray for me, went to the door. Carol was entering hysteria. ‘I almost phoned the police!’ I heard her say.
‘Why, Carol?’ said Ma. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘He took my car. I was this close to calling the police, Margot. And on Shabbes. I’ve got a good mind to call them still, though, Margot.’
I was at the door by this stage, as was Victor. Carol would surely reveal Leo Fein’s return to Ma, and I didn’t know what effect it would have on her. His abandonment had sapped so much from her; what would his return do?
‘I’m sorry, Carol,’ I said. ‘Here are your keys. I was just feeling sick.’
‘Sick my arse,’ said Victor. ‘You took my fucking car all night the other night.’
‘Elliot was driving, I told you,’ I said.
‘Blame your brother but this shows us, doesn’t it?’ he continued. ‘I never figured you for a bullshitter, Ben. Will, maybe, but you?’
‘I nearly called the police,’ repeated Carol.
‘Maybe you should have,’ said Victor. ‘The army will get him. Teach him a few lessons.’
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Carol. ‘Everyone goes in Israel, even the girls.’
‘Oy, Israel,’ said Victor.
‘And what do you mean, “Oy, Israel”?’ said Carol, hands on hips.
‘The problem with Israel, Carol,’ said Victor, ‘is it’s full of Israelis.’
‘Well, I always say, you can’t judge unless you live there.’
‘Bullshit. I can judge it quite nicely. Biggest bunch of thugs I’ve ever seen.’ This, of course, was unfair, especially because Carol had been married to an Israeli. Her late husband, Alon, had been no thug; he was a man who had infinite time for children, Shoshana and anyone else who wanted piggybacks or ping-pong or patient explanations about photosynthesis; but tempers were raised and reason had fled.
‘Well I never. You people, you’ve forgotten who you are. You married shikse number one and ran off with shikse number two. Didn’t give your children a chance. This one,’ she said, jutting her eyes at me, ‘he could’ve made a nice, good Jew but you people wouldn’t allow it, I suppose. And now look at him, stealing cars in the night. Well, I guess with no father, this is what happens.’
‘Get the fuck out of my house,’ said a voice behind me, hard and flat as a steel beam. It was Nadine, and we were all amazed, Victor the most. Elliot was peering from the end of the entrance hall at the scene too. We made way for Nadine. ‘You small-minded, know-nothing, bigmouth. You don’t know anything about anyone in this house. Leave now. And if you so much as look over this side of the road, I’ll show you what a shikse can do to your eyes.’
Carol took a step back. ‘I should have called the police.’
‘And as for that fucking Dinky car of yours,’ Nadine continued, ‘I know how to cut brake lines, so just watch yourse
lf.’
I could see Carol wanted to say something but she couldn’t form the words. She cast her eyes to the side and clasped her hands together and turned around. We watched her small, square frame dip into the light from the streetlamp and out and in again as she crossed the road without turning around.
We moved as a group to the living room and all sat down. Victor poured glasses of whisky from his cabinet and we all sipped together. It was perhaps surprising that he’d attacked Israel as he had, since I’d heard him bash the PLO vehemently before, railing against the intifada. I guess Victor just liked to pick a fight.
The explosion of feelings came as a relief after the news of their emigration. Elliot was brave enough to repeat some of Nadine’s phrases and we were brave enough to laugh. Until then I’d always thought of Nadine as an uncomplicated bitch of a woman – uncomplicated, I say, because her single-minded intent to squeeze every last drop of attention, finance and will from my uncle had been clearly laid out by her from fairly early on.
In some respects I can’t blame her for the way she behaved towards us, since Ma and I had been living with them, relying on them, for four years now. At a time when Ma and I needed support, Uncle Victor had come through, and it was plainly a burden on the newly married couple.
Nadine had barely spoken to me in the time we’d lived together, a woman in patent-leather high heels having little to say to an eighteen-year-old unconscientious objector and general layabout (what, after all, could I offer her?); and when Ma had taken the job at Doren’s Outfitters, Nadine had sulked for a week, finding it embarrassing to have to shop at a place where her sister-in-law worked as an assistant, and she’d be expected to exert an unnatural politeness. (Her mood picked up significantly when she leaned on Victor for a budget that allowed shopping trips to Johannesburg.)
So it felt like a great boon that she’d swept Carol away so briskly in our defence. It occurs to me now that the void of feeling we always assumed Nadine had for us drew out a yearning in Ma and me to please her, and when she acted charitably in our favour, we were grateful.
I like to remember that night as perhaps the only occasion we were all happy at the same time in that house, but truly Ma was only half-happy, and sat kneading her numb arm, and I had a few discomforts of my own.
Carol hadn’t mentioned Leo Fein’s reappearance, so caught up was she in the altercation with Victor and Nadine. Ma was spared that night, and I was too, though I knew it couldn’t last.
It was only a matter of time before his return was revealed, and I feared what Leo Fein himself would reveal, in this new era of amnesty and truth. It was easy to imagine him using me to explain his disappearance with the family fortune – why wouldn’t he?
I struggled over the idea of telling Ma about him, everything about him, that night in bed. In my cowardice, I placated myself that the time wasn’t right, that the right time would present itself, a moment alone with Ma: no Victor with his wrathful judgement, no Nadine with her silent one.
Even if it were just Ma I talked to, there was still much to fear. In my feverish half-sleep, I pictured how she’d receive the confession: I was the fulcrum in our misfortune. I could see her numb limb go limp with the news, unable to fold her lastborn son into an embrace ever again.
And what of the other sons? Blind as Will might be to the foolishness of his betting and scheming, it was plain to him that our troubles had their roots in the loss of Great North. And though Elliot cared little for the family business, he could see what its loss had done to Ma.
Confession would risk banishment, I was sure, but with Leo Fein’s return the tangled and slippery mess might be dredged up into the light of day anyway.
4
ACTION BAR
Elliot had been out the house most of the week and I suspected it was Carlien – Cowboy Boots. I was used to an entire week indoors by now, out of the reach of military police (although they could find me without much investigation – Victor himself might have handed me over, given the chance).
I still liked the indoors more than the outdoors; hiding out suited me just fine. I had a source of knowledge thanks to Victor’s set of Britannica, and his records weren’t bad – Bach, Handel, Schubert and Schumann, Simon and Garfunkel.
I used the time to consider which road to take should I have the opportunity to further myself. The priority was getting out of town. Studying was appealing since it would take place elsewhere and it would provide me with the knowledge I needed for a career. But what career?
Education was admired and encouraged in our family but never with the purpose of gaining knowledge for its own sake; it was merely the ticket that got you in. There was always an end goal in mind, so even the very first step was laden, for who could say where it would lead me?
It was important. I didn’t want to settle for just anything and if it took laying low – and, yes, laying about – to make the right choice, I believed it was worth it.
I wasn’t doing nothing, exactly. Divide the day up into nodes and it’s easily filled. Like a drop of dye in the clear liquid of the morning hours, the node soon spreads.
A cup-of-tea node. Before the tea: filling the kettle, placing the teabag, measuring the sugar. Waiting for the kettle to boil. Pouring the tea. Steeping the tea, a full three minutes. The milk, stirring … fetching a rusk, perhaps. And this before you’ve even sat down to drink it. (For brevity’s sake, I’ll leave out the post-tea node.)
There’s a certain discipline in doing it right. And so my day was easily filled with the nodes of routine. This week was somewhat different, however, since I had something besides my draft-dodging and my future career path to fret over.
All week Leo Fein’s return made me think back on our lives before I wrote that letter – when we had our own house, when we had our own business to provide us with the life my father had intended.
Then there was Marieke. I ran over every detail of the night of the town show. She was adorable. I mean, she’d given me sex. How kind! How generous! How sweet. And she wasn’t ugly, either; even Elliot had conceded that. There was, admittedly, a certain amount of flabbiness around her midriff area but Elliot had delicately avoided talking about that and it was, in any event, incredible to me.
It was the softest bit of flabbiness I’d ever laid hands on, satin-smooth. You could lay your fingers onto it and it would billow through them like warm clouds.
No, she wasn’t ugly. Sure, not classically pretty either, but actually not embarrassing. Maybe slutty-looking (and only when she was out of the house, I’d learn), but when was that ever a disadvantage to an eighteen-year-old? Her kind of sluttiness, it was adorable.
I had a ‘she’ to think about. ‘I wonder what she’s doing now?’ ‘I wonder if she likes the Rolling Stones?’ Just the word – ‘she’ – was a marvel to me. That I had my own she to think about, and that she might be thinking of me, was astonishing.
I recalled all week every snippet of conversation, every look she gave me, the feel of her billowy skin and every sensation on the couch in front of Back to the Future.
The phone-Marieke node had spread itself all over my week, although there’d been very little actual phoning and the node had dissipated due to cowardice. It was one of the afternoon nodes, since she was in school in the mornings (I was finally allowed to ask, in our single, brief phone conversation before her mom called her for dinner – she was in her final year). I sat by the phone, ready to call, when it rang of its own accord and Will said hello.
One side of me wanted to tell him Leo Fein was back so he could unleash whatever furies and mechanisms he’d kept dormant for the day of his return, when we could reclaim our wealth.
The other side wanted to forget all about Leo Fein, never have his name mentioned again, for fear the confrontation would expose my cowardly betrayal and mark me as the ultimate force behind my family’s fall; even if it was Leo Fein who’d run away with our money, was I not the one who’d kicked the chock from under the boulder?
>
‘Do you know Elliot’s home?’ I said, grabbing at another subject.
‘Is he?’ said Will. ‘Oh, that’s good.’
‘Want to speak to him?’ I asked. I was surprised by his response and sought to test its sincerity.
‘Is he there? In the room with you?’
‘No, he’s sleeping.’
‘No, leave it. Let’s just chat, you and me.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Got a girlfriend yet?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Have you done it with her yet?’
‘Is this what you wanted to talk about?’
‘Actually, there’s something I want you to do for me.’
‘Okay.’
‘We need a little cash injection,’ said Will.
‘What about the money from the karate demo?’
‘We didn’t make much out of that, buddy. I had to pay The Ox three grand, not including his beer bill, and I had to hire that MC, and the girl, the stage, sound. Then there was a donation to the dojo, plus the printing. And the bulk of the profit goes to the Kolonel – so not much left for us.’
This was all rather deflating after the highs of the karate demo. ‘So what’s the cash injection for?’
‘There’s an opportunity that’s come up. I can’t say too much about it, but I can get us in on the ground level. We’ve got a little money but I need you to ask Victor.’
‘Ask him what?’
‘For a loan.’
‘No, I don’t know about that. They’re emigrating.’
‘Where?’
‘Australia.’
‘Fuck,’ said Will. ‘Ben, I didn’t want to worry you, but this is serious. I need money; and I kinda need it now.’
He’d said ‘I’ and not ‘we’; he’d never done that before. It had always been our fight.