by Trevor Sacks
‘Ben, you still there? I need you to ask Victor. Say the money’s for you.’
‘For me? For what?’
‘A student loan.’
‘But I’m not studying.’
‘But you will be, when the investment matures.’
‘Is this for getting our money back, or is this about gambling?’ It was the first time I’d confronted him about it; Elliot’s inquiries on the Ferris wheel had made me brave enough to say it.
A pause followed. ‘Both,’ he said.
‘You know Leo Fein’s back.’
‘I know. I’m on top of it. Look Ben, this is the situation – I lost money on the karate; I owe a few people – it’s not important. But I need to clear that. As long as I’m on the base, I’m okay. But we need a lot of money. Not for me – for the legal guys, to go after the skatofatsa. If we raise enough, I’ve got a superb investment, really top class – we can make enough to clear everything and go after Leo Fein. Properly, this time. So, will you talk to Victor?’
‘I don’t know. He’s always going on about how much he has to pay Bernice after the divorce. And Nadine likes to spend his money. With the emigration he says he can’t help us out any more.’
‘Just try,’ said Will.
‘You ask him.’
‘Ja, right. I don’t think so. You know what he thinks of me. Listen, there’s one more thing.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘This girl, did you fuck her?’ Whatever strain Will found himself under, there was always enough reserve to probe and prod.
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘I’ll call you in a couple of days. I know how tight Victor is with the phone.’
I put down the receiver and heard Elliot shuffling down the passage.
‘Who was that?’ he asked, yawning.
‘Someone for Nadine,’ I lied.
‘Have you called Marieke yet?’
‘Couldn’t get hold of her.’
‘Well, you better get on it. Don’t let her get away.’
‘Why is everyone so interested in my love life all of a sudden?’
‘Call her now and set up a double date with her and Carlien.’
‘I see.’
‘You see nothing. Just set it up.’
* * *
Elliot and I sat in a booth on a vinyl bench in the San Antonio Spur, under a tomahawk and a peace pipe. We ordered beers and Elliot played with the spring-loaded lid of the BBQ sauce. Finally Marieke walked in, still wearing those mirror shades, chewing her gum and looking down on the plates of onion rings and surf and turf and thousand-island sauce and hot rocks and beef burgers as she went. I watched her round the Salad Valley and, when she saw me, she took out her gum mid-step and dropped it in the bean salad tub.
The lanky Afrikaans kid who’d serve us and refused to speak English seemed to know her and brought her a Coke and Malibu without her having to ask. She sat next to me and took off her shades.
‘Where’s Carlien?’ asked Elliot.
‘She’s not coming,’ said Marieke.
‘Why not?’
‘Her family’s very strict. She can’t just come out.’
‘They won’t let her come to the phone either?’ asked Elliot.
‘Just drop it, all of that stuff you’ve been doing.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The calling, and hanging around her front garden at night.’
‘So she knows it was me.’
‘Ja, boet, she knows. Just drop it, hey.’
‘Her parents are strict?’
‘Her parents don’t like it that there’s a Jew behind their bougainvillea at night. Ja, they know you’re Jews,’ she said, wagging a forefinger like we’d told her fibs. ‘They’ve heard of you.’
‘They don’t know what kind of Jews we are,’ I said.
‘Jew’s a Jew, I’m sure. Anyway,’ she continued to Elliot, ‘you should just drop it. You said you had a girlfriend in London.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Well maybe Carlien’s got a boyfriend.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You would if you knew him.’
‘See you later,’ said Elliot sliding out the booth.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ I said. ‘How am I supposed to get home?’
‘Want the keys?’ he asked, dangling them.
‘Go – I’ll walk.’
Marieke shook her head. ‘Won’t do any good,’ she said, but Elliot was already passing Salad Valley. ‘She’s not interested.’
‘She’s got a boyfriend?’ I asked Marieke.
‘Tjoppa Mulder. He’s in the air force.’
She gurgled the Coke and Malibu.
‘How come you don’t want to go to the army?’
‘I just don’t. School was enough. Drill squad on Fridays, Veld School, short back and sides, shooting, bivouacs. All our teachers were in the Commando, some used to be Recces.’
‘Yussie, you’d never get away with not going to the army if you were Afrikaans.’
‘I’m sure some Afrikaners don’t go, either.’
‘Maybe. But they don’t go back to their families.’
‘Well, it might all be over after the referendum, anyway.’
‘My brother thinks there’s going to be a civil war after the referendum.’
‘And why does your brother think that?’
‘He hears it at the AWB meetings. Goes every weekend.’
‘Your brother’s in the AWB?’
‘Don’t look at me like I’m something dirty you found in your salad, boet. Lots of people in this town go to the meetings. And it’s my brother, it’s not me. Are you like your brother?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ The waiter came back with more drinks.
‘No, I didn’t order one,’ I said. Elliot said he’d pay and now he’d left me without any money.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Marieke. ‘They won’t notice – we get free drinks here all the time. But you better drink fast. I still wanna go to the Action Bar.’
We finished our drinks quickly and walked out of the Checkers Centre onto Hans van Rensburg Street, the old site of Great North Diesel and Auto Electric behind us, subdivided now into a butchery (VleisPaleis, the Meat Palace), a Video Den, a Christian bookshop, and a giftshop.
The hotel Van Jaarsveld dreamed of putting up on our property, for all his wrangling, was never erected. It was going to be too costly, and when he shelved that idea a high-rise office block eight floors taller than the Nedbank building was planned. Then they shelved that too. What the town got instead was another strip mall.
We walked under the streetlights towards the Holiday Inn Action Bar, six or seven blocks away. Marieke seemed unchanged by the sex, I was thinking. Perhaps it was nothing to her. I found her slightly hostile, full of bravado, scary, I suppose, and I re-examined her as we walked, to find some of the tenderness I’d invested in my memory of her. I ventured to hold her hand.
‘Ag!’ she went, and flapped my hand away, grimacing and stopping dead in her tracks. She smiled and took it again.
The Action Bar was still the only nightclub in town unless you counted the railway bar. I’d been going there on weekends since I was fifteen, when I looked about twelve. At eighteen I looked fifteen, but I’d still never been asked for ID at the Action Bar.
There was only ever a disinterested bouncer at the door, not a beefy man but a very tall one with prominent bones, named Theo. Theo had girders for jaws, sunken eyes and a yellowish tone to his skin. He was always unshaven and sat on a bar stool at the entrance, hunched over a straw in his drink. Under the UV light the little blond hairs on his jaw could be picked out and the drink in his skinny glass radiated a cloudy blue.
Theo patted me down and waved me in after I’d paid the cover charge with Marieke’s money. We walked inside and looked around. It wasn’t a smart place. You couldn’t wear shorts or, for some reason, a cap but, besides that
, there weren’t too many rules. It was cavernous and sequestered, a cross between a cowboy saloon and a discotheque. The walls were carpeted and the floors linoleum.
Separating the bar area from the sunken dance floor was a sticky balustrade of turned wood. Below it were a few tables and chairs, then the dance floor and, beyond the dancers, a little stage. ‘I’ll get some drinks,’ said Marieke, and I went in the direction of the high stools by the balustrade.
A couple swept across the dance floor in a two-step langarm while AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ cavorted out of the speakers. The woman’s hand held the shoulder of the man’s peach shirt in a surprisingly formal way, her elbow sticking out like a weapon. The other hand was in his, and their conjoined arms pumped up and down energetically; there was only seriousness and concentration on their faces. The pair mowed up the dance floor while Angus Young shredded.
When the song finished, the AC/DC couple walked up to me. ‘Get off our chairs,’ said the man in Afrikaans. I didn’t argue, even though there were several empty stools right alongside.
‘Fucking arsehole,’ said Marieke, bringing the drinks.
‘This place is full of them.’ I was wary of most people in the Action Bar, since there was often fighting. Only months before there’d been a full-blown bar brawl when Northern Free State rugby players were in town to play our very own Far Northern Transvaal. Even Theo had been hurt in that one, losing an eye tooth in a prop’s knuckle. It was big news, and in a way I was sorry I’d missed the scrap, even with my great aversion to pain and humiliation.
We sat down further along the carpeted wall, talked a little and French-kissed at length. Bojo was on stage and the place was filling up. None of us knew whether Bojo was the musician’s actual name, his stage name, or an overall name for the performance: a man with already-receded hair pulled back into a ponytail, singing and playing guitar to backing tracks of whatever you like as long it’s Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Eddie Grant and Midnight Oil.
Women in high-rider jeans that pulled their buttocks up like hams in a butcher’s window forced their men onto the dance floor. ‘Hey, isn’t that your friend?’ I said, noticing first the cowboy boots and then the rest of Carlien. She was dancing to a rock anthem, shaking her hair and stomping her boots, and riling up first a man on the left who danced surprisingly lithely for a guy of his size, and then another who stood and smirked and gave his best James Dean against the balustrade.
‘Which one is Tjoppa?’
‘Neither. I told you, Tjoppa is in the air force.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘She’s just teasing. Ag, Tjoppa’s a doos, anyway. Cheats on her all the time. Come on,’ she said and led me by the hand to the dance floor.
The three of us grouped together on the floor, Marieke and Carlien performing an obviously familiar dance routine with each other. I couldn’t help but be aware of the two men on opposite sides of the dance floor watching Carlien out of the corners of their eyes.
The men in their individual capacities tried to up the vigorousness of their shoulder dips and foot shuffles, even the one who’d been playing it cool against the balustrade. Something plastic and cheap streamed out of the speakers. It was the kind of music that made you drink more, or vomit blue cocktails.
The dancier of Carlien’s admirers had her by the hand, although she quickly slipped away from him and performed a turn in front of the non-dancer. The non-dancer was now forced into exposing the limits of his capabilities. You felt sorry for him and when Carlien returned to her groovier suitor, the non-dancer was clearly wounded and withdrew his smile and his floppy moves.
Ruffled, he went over to the other man and pushed him. The dancer fell into someone else and was pushed back into the non-dancer. This was when the first punches flew and we fled the dance floor.
‘Let’s get the fuck outta here,’ I said, but Theo had pushed his way into the little group and was putting his arms between the men. He had his giant hand over the dancer’s face and shoved him back, like an athlete putting a shot. Then he bear-hugged the non-dancer and lifted him, even though this man was almost as tall as Theo himself, all the way to the entrance. Theo came back for the other man and dragged him out by his collar.
Marieke looked at her watch. ‘I have to go. My mom’s picking me up at eleven-thirty. She thinks I’m still at the Spur.’
We left Carlien talking to another man at the bar, one with cavalier, spiky hair who was making her laugh. Theo was adjusting the neck of his jersey and his gold chain, and sitting back on his stool under the UV light.
A little further along the outside wall, just five or six metres away, the two ejected men were still fighting it out. This time the non-dancer got a good hook right into the crook of the dancer’s jaw. While the dancer was doubled over, the non-dancer took the opportunity to knee him in the face. We stopped watching when he dropped to the ground and the kicking began.
We ran back to the Checkers Centre to make it in time for Marieke’s mother, and only unhooked our fingers when her yellow Mazda 323 approached. In the front sat a boy I recognised from somewhere. He glared at me in the parking lot from the passenger seat.
Marieke introduced me to her mother, Mrs de Bruin, in sweet, respectful church tones, and to her younger brother, Hannes. I recognised him then as the boy who’d called Elliot and me moffies from below the Ferris wheel.
Mrs de Bruin insisted on dropping me off, so I sat in the back with Marieke. Mrs de Bruin’s red bouffant peeked above the headrest as we drove past the sleeping figures of the young black kids who’d made their home behind the Checkers Centre. Hannes turned his head to follow them; he shut one eye and raised a pretend pistol to the other, tracking the sleepers over the barrel his index finger made. When he’d turned fully to bring my face into view, he stopped.
We drove past the VleisPaleis and Video Den where Great North used to be. ‘Do you live at home, Ben?’ asked Mrs de Bruin.
‘We live with my uncle,’ I said.
‘That’s nice. Having family together like that.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Well, you must come to visit our family also for dinner soon, nè Marietjie?’
‘Ja, Ma,’ said Marieke. She gave me a shy look, a look in her repertoire that was new to me. I took her hand in mine on the car seat.
‘Agge nee,’ said Hannes, noticing this with annoyance.
‘Hannes,’ said Mrs De Bruin in a clipped voice. The boy crossed his arms and looked out the window as we passed Doren’s Outfitters.
* * *
I was awoken by the phone on Saturday morning. ‘Where is Elliot?’ said Ma without saying hello first.
‘Sleeping, I think.’
‘Get him up now. Hurry up,’ she said.
I knocked on Elliot’s door and went in. It took a few shakes to bring him into animation. He lumbered through and croaked a quizzical ‘hello’ into the receiver; I lingered, since there was apparently about to be some kind of confrontation.
It was the most forceful I’d heard Ma in many years. I could make out her voice quite clearly a few steps away from the phone.
‘Did you do this?’ she asked.
‘What?’ said Elliot.
‘I think you know, Elliot. I had to cover the whole display window.’
‘I was gonna come in this morning and put it back,’ said Elliot. ‘I just overslept. Don’t freak out.’
‘So it was you,’ she said in a strangled shout. ‘I can’t believe you, Elliot! Thank God the Dorens are away.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘How did you get in here?’
‘I took the shop keys last night. You were asleep, or I would’ve asked.’
‘Bullshit. You come here right now and help me clean it up. Immediately. I haven’t been able to open up the shop today. Jesus, Elliot! The mannequins! I had to cover the whole window.’
‘You covered it? Why?’
‘Elliot, this is a small town. People don’t like seeing this kind
of thing. Not when they’re shopping, with their children. I saw a woman pull her child away from it and swore never to shop here. Someone else was taking photos. I could lose my job. Jesus Christ, Elliot.’
‘Okay, okay. I’m coming.’ He put down the phone and stretched his arms.
I had to weigh up the prospect of being put to work against a chance to see what Elliot had wrought in Doren’s Outfitters. I decided it was worth the risk of labour and went into town with him.
When we arrived, a black sheet covered the window and the door was shut. Ma let us in when we knocked, locking the door again behind us.
She’d already started taking the scene apart but it was still impressive. How Elliot had managed to make a stream of glitter emerge from the mannequin’s mouth, I don’t know.
The girl mannequin had one hand on her hip, the other raised in benediction and her head tilted upwards. She was clothed in white and silver flowing fabrics, combined from several Doren’s outfits, and, significantly, cowboy boots (or, rather, ordinary boots with Western designs painted down their flanks).
Elliot had modified her features, widening her mouth so that the rivulet of multi-coloured glitter arced from her lips, up into the air and down into a striated glitter pool on the floor, in which the man mannequin bathed.
He was lying back in the glitter pond, arms outstretched to the sides, his eyes closed, a look of total peace on his face. The lower half of his body really looked like it was beneath the surface of the pool and Elliot could only have achieved this illusion by sawing the torso diagonally from the solar plexus.
The torso was naked and the mannequin had two dreadlocks, fashioned from a faux fur collar, which almost dipped into the holy pool of glitter below. Why anyone would want to create a fairy-dust rendering of Elliot and Carlien’s first bilious night together, I don’t know, but here it was, lovingly executed, a mixed-media sculpture serenade.
If Elliot had left for Doren’s that morning to aid the dismantling of his installation, he changed his mind about it now. ‘You’ve ruined it,’ he shouted. ‘Do you know how difficult this was? And you want to cover it? Who’s going to see it now?’