Lucky Packet

by Trevor Sacks

‘Who do you want to bloody see it, Elliot?’ said Ma, dropping her Stanley knife.

  ‘She’s not interested, Elliot,’ I said. ‘I swear.’

  Elliot glared at me and I said no more. He lowered his tone and spoke to Ma. ‘Just the rest of the day. Let it stay up the rest of the day, then I’ll put it back on my own. I promise. Exactly like it was before. Come on – it’s really something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Elliot, no. It’s Saturday, it’s our busy day. And I can’t open the shop until this thing is out of here.’

  ‘Fine. Fucking destroy it,’ he said. ‘But don’t expect my help.’ At that Elliot left the shop, leaving Ma and me to avoid each other’s gazes.

  Ah fuck, I thought. I’m definitely going to have to work now.

  It took most of the day to clear the glitter from the base, and the mannequins were never the same after Elliot had violated them for his artistico-romantic purposes. By the time we’d finished, it was too late to open the shop.

  ‘I don’t understand him,’ said Ma, rubbing her numb spot. ‘You never do things like this.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve done other stuff,’ I said.

  ‘No. No, you haven’t. And Will – he’s caused trouble for himself. But you’ve always been sensible.’

  But neither Elliot nor Will, whatever the trouble they’d raised, had ever turned a man in and ruined their own family, I thought.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks for helping, my boy. You know, you deserve the best. I wish you were going to varsity. You should do something. Correspondence, maybe. Have you thought some more about what you’d like to be?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ma.’

  ‘You’re not stupid, Ben, and you’re dependable. Maybe something financial?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well, we’ll figure it out.’

  I walked to the home industries shop where Marieke worked on Saturdays and arrived at the Middestad Centre just in time to find her closing up. The remaining cakes puffed out their plastic bag bubbles in neat rows along the walls of the narrow shop. Koeksisters lined up beneath them, alongside Swiss rolls and butter biscuits.

  After locking the front door, Marieke took me by the hand and led me behind a concertina vinyl partition into a back room just big enough for a diminutive basin, a chair, and a shelf with ribbons, tape and various other supplies. Here we had sex for the second time in my life.

  Afterwards we sat behind the counter eating milk tart with tannin-stained teaspoons, my crotch still abuzz. We kept our fingers looped together throughout, scooping the sweet, cold, silken custard into our mouths.

  When the foil base contained just crumbs, Marieke went to fetch another from the shelf. ‘Shame,’ she said, ‘Carlien is so hungover she didn’t even go in to work today. I’ll drop this one off for her.’

  It was only then I remembered to tell Marieke about Elliot’s shop window display of love and mania. She listened as I explained the scene, and only after the second telling did she believe I wasn’t trying to sucker her.

  ‘He’s been trying to see her all week,’ she said, finally accepting it.

  ‘So she’s not interested?’

  She shrugged. ‘But she’s never cheated on Tjoppa, even when she gets like she was last night. And your brother said he had a girlfriend.’

  ‘So there’s no chance she went past Doren’s?’ I asked.

  ‘No way. We usually come to town together on Saturday – she works at CNA. But she wasn’t going anywhere this morning. Almost as bad as after the show.’

  ‘Poor Elliot.’

  * * *

  Even Victor took up a position against Elliot’s mannequins. ‘Well, they have suffered a loss of business. It’s unforgiveable.’

  Elliot showed his lack of remorse with barely upraised palms and a shrug.

  ‘Saturday morning’s the top day for retail,’ continued Victor. ‘If I was in retail I’d rather just have Saturday mornings and no weekdays, if I had to choose.’

  Elliot sipped lentil and vegetable soup from an oversize mug.

  ‘What’d you do it for, anyway?’ asked Victor. Ma was silent during all this, not yet ready to engage her son, or just unwilling to, having returned to the cover of her meekness.

  ‘The inspiration took me,’ he said.

  ‘I know why he did it,’ I said.

  ‘You shut up,’ said Elliot.

  ‘It’s obvious why he did it,’ said Nadine.

  ‘Well, it might be obvious to you,’ said Victor. ‘Why am I the only one who doesn’t see it, then? I heard it was a woman giving a rainbow a blowjob. Is that true?’

  Elliot didn’t answer.

  ‘Just weird,’ said Victor. ‘I don’t get art. Your mom used to do some nice watercolours in art school. And that charcoal portrait of Jackie we still have. Why don’t you do something like that at least?’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Elliot. Perhaps at first he’d simply expected Ma to understand the egomania of the artist, manifested in his lunatic creation; but the destruction he’d wrought must have become clear to him now.

  During the week Elliot went to the University of the North, our closest, and arranged to give free, informal art classes.

  Since his return, he’d already made friends with carvers and painters, and used these contacts to draw together a group of young pupils on campus. It was a ‘black university’, an apartheid concession, a hodgepodge campus with cast-out or washed-up academics, radical-left student politics, and a dean dedicated to educating the non-white student population up to a level where they’d be useful to white society but no further.

  Rousing meagre funding, Elliot began a class teaching the basics to a loyal band of five aspirant artists and one grandmother. The university had no Fine Arts course of its own and, since it would cost them nothing (and wasn’t preparing the students for employment at the expense of whites), the dean allowed it.

  It wasn’t just an escape from the failure of his attempts to woo Carlien, to lick his wounds in a makeshift art studio; he laboured for Ma, to make amends, and when he wasn’t working, he doted on her. He cooked in the evenings, with a flair he’d learnt from someone other than our mother, he let her rest and brought her cups of coffee, he marked her favourite shows in the TV guide. Nadine held her tongue for the moment but I could see she felt Elliot was only encouraging her inertia.

  * * *

  Elliot worked through the night to restore the bodies in Doren’s. The man mannequin was glued and taped together and no one noticed his scarred torso under his shirts in the subsequent week. And the she-mannequin had her face scraped and reapplied so that she was fresh and timeless once more.

  Ma had to explain the absence of takings on Saturday morning by saying she’d come down with a one-day bug and had had to close the shop early. Benny Doren accepted this without too many questions, but rumours and reports began to arrive at Benny’s ear during the week.

  A pornographic scene, they said. Hallucinogenic. Satanic. Anti-Semitic. Anti-Christian. Communist. The Dorens undressed their mannequins and found the scars and the old glitter that wouldn’t come off. Then someone showed them a photograph of the scene.

  Ma had to explain. At this point she took the advice she’d always given us – she told the truth. She explained that it was her son – her very artistic son, not the layabout or the gambler – who, in a spasm of compulsion, created an artwork. It was without her approval and she’d rectified the situation herself. It would never happen again.

  Benny Doren, that coward, had his accountant phone Ma one evening at Victor’s to let her know she wouldn’t be required to show up at work any more, and perhaps to give up going near Doren’s for, say, the next six months.

  What made it worse was that the Dorens’ accountant was our old accountant, Morgan. ‘Tried to talk them out of it, Margot,’ said Morgan, ‘but he’s adamant.’

  Ma was stony.

  ‘That boy, Elliot,’ he continued, ‘needs something t
o keep him occupied. He’ll come to no good.’

  She didn’t put up a fight, and showed little concern, so I assumed she’d just find another job. When Ma began to spend her days at home with me, though, the ugliness of the situation revealed itself.

  Idleness wasn’t solely my domain any more. The nodes that filled my day became awkward because now Ma sat in their way. My lack of purpose was shown up more clearly, perhaps, when I recognised myself in Ma’s new lethargy.

  And then I began to worry. I began to worry because Ma had stopped worrying. She was out of work, we had no income and were sliding further into dependency on Victor, whose aid would soon dry up with his emigration.

  ‘Are you going to try to get another job, Ma?’ I asked one morning.

  ‘I just need a break,’ she said. ‘My numb spot is back.’

  I was beginning to form an unsympathetic scepticism of her strange bodily sensations and dizzy spells. ‘Do you think we can afford to wait?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it now, okay?’

  ‘Where are we gonna get money?’

  ‘We haven’t been kicked out yet. Something will come up.’

  ‘Will it? Everyone says there aren’t jobs any more.’

  ‘I’ll start looking soon,’ she said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon,’ she said and sat in front of the TV.

  In the evenings Victor would hint at places Ma might try to find work. One night, Nadine was far more direct. ‘Well, you’d better find something quick,’ she said. ‘Victor found a buyer for the business. We’ll be leaving for Australia in just over a month.’

  Perhaps Nadine had thought this news would have the necessary punch to rouse Ma. Instead, she took it in silently, checking the time and changing channels on the TV for the start of some programme. My head turned, as did Victor’s, between their faces as if watching a tennis match.

  Sure enough, there was a new shot. ‘You know Leo Fein’s back in town?’ said Nadine, keeping her eyes on Ma. Victor clearly knew, since he didn’t react. But neither did Ma, and finally Nadine gave a curt shake of her head and left the room.

  And so the news was out. Victor and I kept watching, but Ma didn’t break down and weep, or rage, or even question. The drama of revelation didn’t have the shocking effect Nadine had clearly hoped for. The news was like a creeping poison inside her. If anything, Ma was shocked into inaction and, if she’d been listless before, she was paralysed now.

  After a movie with Marieke, I returned home to find her lying on the carpet in the lounge, her fingers over her eyes. Elliot was at her side, and he sent me across the road to Carol to fetch migraine tablets (I was sure she’d have some, less sure she’d share them). Carol answered the door just a crack to talk to me and made me wait outside while she fetched the drugs.

  How could I confess now, with Ma in this vulnerable state? Her numbness spread with the poison, her lethargy grew heavier. Without a second thought, Elliot took up the task of looking after Ma, never leaving the house, except to go the university. He’d always had a capacity for care, even if it was sometimes clouded by his own obsessions.

  I didn’t have Elliot’s natural way with looking after her: I still felt like a child, in need of care myself. And I had no idea how to begin clearing my debt with Ma.

  5

  ELECTROLUX

  Nadine began to pack up around us. Or rather, she directed staff seconded from Victor’s business to do it, among them Shadrack. At least we got to see him again, even if he was carrying away our erstwhile furnishings.

  I was left with no cupboard and my clothes sat in piles on the floor. The reading lamp, which stayed only after a negotiation, lost the small chest of drawers on which it had rested and now had to direct its beam straight up into the ceiling for any light to fall on the page.

  The dressing table in Ma’s room also left and she had to clutter her bottles and brushes into the bathroom. Elliot was the only one unaffected by the riptide. He was used to living in a shambles, but he must have noticed the weakening effect it was having on Ma.

  She began to lose things, and would accuse me or Elliot of taking them: a tortoiseshell hair comb, or a Wedgwood brooch, her mother’s wedding band, an auction catalogue from an art sale, a volume of Heine’s poetry, her toothpicks – suddenly it distressed her not to have these things within reach.

  I came home one day to find her in tears; Nadine whisked out of the living room, shouting, ‘I haven’t packed your things, Margot! Not by accident, certainly not on purpose. What the hell would I want with your perfumes, anyway?’

  Most of Ma’s things turned up when Elliot or I helped her look for them but she began to believe other things had been taken, things like her pottery implements, or wedding presents and tea sets, things she convinced herself she’d kept but in fact had sold or given away when we moved from Jorissen Street.

  We were losing our home for the second time and Ma showed no sign of bouncing back, of getting back out there in the workplace, of bringing home the bacon. I needed Will.

  I tried phoning him at Voortrekkerhoogte army base but they told me there was no Aronbach registered. So I called Angie’s. ‘Didn’t he even tell you?’ she said. They’d broken up two weeks before. ‘That brother of yours is a liar and a shit. He’s got some big problems … and I’m not even talking about the debts. If there are people after him, they can have him. He doesn’t call it gambling, but it is. I know it! There’s always a ‘big opportunity’ around the corner – well, the only big opportunity is for another big fat lie.’

  I let her continue like this until she told me ‘Bull’ was after him.

  ‘You mean The Ox?’ I said.

  ‘Whatever. That big lug came here looking for him, saying he owed him. And I’m supposed to lie for him now? Anyway, I wasn’t lying because I don’t know where he is. He’s bad for me – all my friends told me, and I didn’t listen.’

  I didn’t like hearing this about my brother so I hurried off the phone but not before Angie begged me to tell her where he was, then screamed at me when I said I didn’t know. She called me a liar too, and slammed the phone down.

  So I looked up Skamandrios’s bookmakers at Turffontein in the phone book but no one would talk to me the first time. When I finally had Skamandrios himself on the line (at least, I think it was him – the name sounded different when he said it through the noise in the background), the man told me he hadn’t seen my brother in months. In fact, Skamandrios (or his proxy) said if I saw him first, he’d like to know himself just where Will was. He could make it worth my while if I gave him any information I came by.

  Then I thought of phoning Kolonel Nel’s office. Elsa, the Kolonel’s assistant with the dimples, answered. ‘The Kolonel’s been looking for him too,’ she said. ‘I hope they don’t send the MPs after him. Tell him to call me.’

  I’d never had to worry about Will before. Now the Kolonel, The Ox, Skamandrios and who knew what other hordes were after my brother. It wasn’t supposed to be this way – I was meant to depend on him, not the other way around. Besides the worry of the real danger Will was facing, I worried about who would pull Ma out of her inertia. And selfishly, who would pull me out of this town, if not Will?

  Those usual stay-at-home nodes not already disturbed by Ma’s presence were thrown into disarray by all that phoning. My anxious activity was winding a mainspring in me. I caught Elliot at home and thought I’d better instigate a conversation about Ma’s future and, if I could work it in, mine too.

  ‘I can’t get hold of Will,’ I said, beginning the discourse by way of concern for our eldest brother. ‘I think people are after him.’

  Elliot merely raised both eyebrows and kept them there. Why does this surprise you? they said.

  ‘I’m worried about Ma,’ I said. ‘She just lies there. She’s not even trying to find a job.’

  ‘Hmm, that sounds familiar,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘I’m serious. She’s, like, dep
ressed or something. Victor’s leaving us; Will – who knows? And you don’t care.’

  His face darkened and took on an intensity I was wary of in Elliot. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what you’re really saying is, what am I gonna do about it?’

  I swallowed. ‘Well, you lost Ma her job.’

  ‘Did you notice,’ said Elliot, ‘the only one you left out of that little summary, the only one not mentioned, was you?’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I’m trying to hustle some paying work at the university. But in a couple of weeks the referendum will be over and I’m going back to London. What are you gonna do, Ben?’ Elliot stood and left the room.

  How had so much responsibility fallen to me, the least prepared to carry it? The walls screwed tighter on either side.

  I walked into the lounge and took another look at my mother. She was sleeping with her mouth gaping like a baby on the La-Z-Boy.

  ‘Mum is tired,’ said Shadrack, carrying a box of Nadine’s knickknacks.

  ‘She just lies there all day,’ I said.

  ‘Getting old?’

  ‘I don’t know, Shadrack.’

  ‘Who is going to look after her? Elliot?’

  ‘Maybe. But he’s going back after the voting.’

  ‘Not William.’

  ‘He’s trying.’

  ‘Trying what?’

  ‘To get our money back.’

  ‘He’s working?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about you? You can work.’

  ‘I don’t know how to do anything. But we need money.’

  ‘Try it,’ he said, handing me the box.

  ‘How much does it pay?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Well, we need a lot, and fast.’

  Will was meant to rescue me, and now he’d disappeared. The desperation of the circumstances were enough to overcome my natural indolence, and I decided I would have to do something.

  Whatever Elliot and Shadrack thought, I couldn’t get a job. I’d be sure to be asked about my call-up. Eighteen-year-olds were supposed be either studying or in national service. Besides, the kind of money Will was asking for would take more than a job.