by Trevor Sacks
As much as it sickened me, I needed to see Leo Fein. With a foggy intention to confront him, I set off for Bendor.
If I’d been a stronger person, like Elliot, I’d have resisted conscription brazenly and forged my own path, away from Leo Fein; if I’d been a better hustler, like Will, I’d have known how to coax something out of him. Instead, all I had was fear, flimsy prospects, and a shame that soaked through me for returning to him.
As I walked the roads between the swollen gardens of Bendor, I hoped a course of action for dealing with him would coalesce, but by the time I found the house, I was still unsure of what to say. There it was again – the face-brick tower with the porthole, rising over a wax crayon lawn. I pressed the doorbell and the door opened, sweeping the heat from my face for a moment.
The same woman in the spearmint apron – Annie – sat me down at the same light-oak table in a tall-backed chair I’d sat in years before. ‘Leo’ was busy, she said, but I could wait. She set a highball of passion-fruit squash mixed with water on the table, with ice freshly dispensed from that mysterious orifice at the front of the double-door fridge.
There are reflections of events and objects all around us if you’re open to receiving them. The double doors of Leo Fein’s study dispensed a pair of ice-cold eyes belonging to a hulk of a man with white hair and a full Voortrekker beard.
‘Howzit, my boy,’ said Leo Fein warmly, coming out from behind the other man. ‘What a nice surprise.’ I’d been about to introduce myself again but there’d been no need: just like at Meyer Levinson’s party all those years before, Leo Fein had known who I was.
What did that say about my significance in his life? Was it simply a factor of who my mother was and his connection to her? Or did he have actual knowledge of my betrayal?
The great white hulk with the blue eyes drove his shoulders around to me like yoked oxen. ‘How do you do?’ he said in a voice thick with bass tones. His metacarpals were buried so deep in meat I couldn’t feel them in the oversize handshake.
But it was the eyes that were truly outstanding. They were a complex and delicate light blue, cool but almost too lovely to be engulfed as they were in thick, creased skin. Even among the gargantuan features scrumming together on that square face, they demanded to be noticed.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I said automatically. It didn’t seem quite real that I was suddenly face to face with the leader of the right-wing military organisation who’d been in the news so much. He was a kind of Hitler figure to the country’s Jews, though not to Leo Fein, it seemed.
‘Thank you,’ said the hulk, back to Leo Fein. ‘A very good meeting.’
‘Very positive,’ said Leo Fein. ‘You know, my grandfather fought in the Boer War. On the side of the Boers.’
‘He fought, you say?’
‘Well, the commando leader made him look after the horses. He said to him, ‘You’re the only Jew we’ve got. We can’t have you killed in action.
They would have called him ’n agterryer. But Meneer Fein, you have a chance to be more than just an agterryer in this. You’ll be a hero to a proud nation. We will remember.’ The hulk blocked out all light as he passed through the doorframe. Leo Fein turned to me.
‘Come into the study,’ he said.
I followed him through the double doors of the room he’d barred me from years before. The birds were still there, immortal and frozen in their murderous acts. The dassie still cowered by the glazed rock on the carpet, the black eagle still had its wings hunched forward, its talons spread and its beak agape, ready to shriek or rip.
There was a desk to the side with two columns of drawers and a green leather writing inset, but Leo Fein didn’t sit behind it. We took the two stern-looking chairs with the candy-striped silk seats instead and peered at each other.
‘Carol Richler wanted to have you arrested the other night.’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said.
‘How is your mother?’
So, we’d begun. ‘My family has had a hard time of it since you left town,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘My mother lost a lot after you went.’
‘I see.’ He took up an empty envelope from the desk and began softly tapping the edge of it on the surface.
I wasn’t a gambler. It was Will who should have been having this negotiation. I had no idea whether Leo Fein knew about the note I’d given Mr Coetzee, that it was my hand that had betrayed him. Did I push now or humble myself? ‘We lost it all,’ I tried.
‘I’m sorry. Especially for your mother. It was unavoidable. But if you’ve come here for money, don’t think I have any to throw around. I lost everything, too. I have to start from scratch.’
‘At least you still have this place. We don’t even have our house any more.’
‘You don’t understand finances. The bank owns this.’ He gestured over the room, the birds, with the envelope. ‘I have nothing left.’
‘Well, whatever you are now, you’re above us,’ I said. ‘I’m asking for your help. I know once you tried to help my family and you couldn’t.’ There was a physical pain that tapped at my chest with these supplicating words.
He raised the envelope in acknowledgement and I continued.
‘My mother has nothing left. She lost the one shit job she had; one of my brothers lives in a squat with no money, an artist; the other one I haven’t heard from in weeks and he’s in debt.’
‘We’ve all suffered,’ he said. It was a line that was, on the face of it, sympathetic, doled out perhaps to elicit sympathy, too, but it plainly conferred an unwillingness to help. He’d brought down the gates with delicate charm. I had to try something new, to dig in another spot.
‘Ma’s sick. She needs a doctor.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘She needs an operation.’
He peered at me; I turned my eyes to those of the dassie.
I’d extended too far. Where was Will, godammit? ‘Listen, my mother is sick. You can ask Carol Richler if you like.’
He tapped the envelope once on the desk.
As I dug further I turned a new sod and founder anger welling beneath. ‘The point is, you left with my family’s money. You took advantage of my mother, swindled her. Whatever hardships you’ve suffered, you’ve brought upon yourself. But us – you owe us.’
‘Now hang on. You don’t know the situation. She invested in a business deal and it was never completed because I had to leave the country.’
‘You owe us,’ I repeated.
‘I do not owe you. You’re mistaken.’
‘So, what – you’re going to give us nothing?
‘Now you comprehend it.’
‘I can’t believe this.’ I’d switched to aggression without trying any other angles, and I’d shown my weakness as a result. There was nowhere else to go. ‘You’re a crook. You’re a skatofatsa.’
‘You’re a very rude and foolish young man. I think I’ve had enough of you.’ His usually straight lip animated into a snarl as his temper rose. ‘These are very serious things you’re saying. You don’t know what you’re saying. I lost all of my investments too, you know.’
‘Good.’ The anger had brought on a newly charged petulance in me.
‘Well, that doesn’t help you, does it?’ he said with a bitter smile.
‘No. You know what helps?’ I recklessly waded into the shameful secret, consequences be damned. ‘What helps is knowing that I was the one who turned you in.’
‘Oh?’
‘I wrote a note to my teacher, Mr Coetzee. He was in the Commandos. He got you arrested.’
‘He got me arrested?’
‘No, I did. I’m glad I did. I got you arrested. I sent you into exile, lost all your money for you.’
‘Lost your mother’s money, too.’
‘Well, that too.’
‘This is very interesting. So, what did you come here for?’ He took a new tone, the more even, victorious tone of higher
ground, and he smoothed the envelope flat on the desk. ‘For money? Or to tell me that?’
‘I’ve said everything I can.’
‘Well I haven’t. It’s my turn now.’ He rose and paced in front of the desk. ‘Now, let’s see here. You say I owe you, but the way I see it, you owe me. You owe me five years. Five years I was away! And you owe your family much more than that. Do they know all this? I bet they don’t.’
I’d better tell them before he did, I thought. How would I begin to come clean to Ma? I got up to leave, but Leo Fein spoke again.
‘Sit down. They don’t need to know.’
Instead of running home, I tarried under Leo Fein’s raptors.
‘What’ll it do, telling them?’ he asked.
‘It’s the truth,’ I said, but already I was hoping there’d be a way to avoid a confession in front of my family.
‘Sometimes the truth doesn’t solve anything. Sit down again, my boy. Sit down now,’ he said. ‘It seems to me we’re bound together. I said I don’t have any money and I don’t. Not real money. But I’m starting a business. I could use you.’
‘No thanks. I’m finished.’
‘You came in here a minute ago demanding money. Do you want it or not? Listen, for someone in need you’re bloody cheeky, let me tell you. And don’t forget, you owe me. Hang on a moment, let me tell you my troubles now. At least do me that courtesy. I lost all my money, all my friends here. The government was after me. Over there I was like a beggar. Couldn’t conduct my business. Family? At least you have some – worse for wear, maybe, but you have them.’
I remembered Michael Fein, weeping on the couch beyond the double doors while Kaddish was performed. ‘What about your son?’
‘Gone,’ he said, and looked away from me. ‘But now – don’t be so hasty, my boy. Don’t be so hot and fast. I should be angry about this … But it seems we were both hard done by. I’d like to believe you didn’t know what you were doing when you wrote that note. You were only thirteen then, but you need to grow up now. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones – I don’t like to dwell. Look, I have an idea. There’s a future for you. You come work for me for a little while. You get a salary, you help your mom, your brothers. And you and me – it’s cleared.’
A moment earlier, I’d been ready to run home and empty myself of all I’d been carrying. But Leo Fein was right, I thought – how would it help Ma or Will? The fear of what they would say, what they would think of me if they knew, returned. ‘I can’t wait for a cheque at the end of the month,’ I said.
‘You’re bloody difficult when you want to be, hey? I’m helping you here – don’t you get it?’
‘Well, when do I get paid?’
‘How about you do some work first? Here,’ he said, getting up and going over to the desk. He opened a drawer and took out five one-hundred-rand notes, and put them in the envelope. ‘It’s an advance.’
‘Are you in business with the AWB?’ I asked.
‘We’re just talking.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘The future, my boy. We deal in the future.’
* * *
I was met at the door by Marieke’s brother. He cut off his greeting, facing me silently and with a slightly startled look. His gaze narrowed when I asked for Marieke, and it was this sulky countenance that became most familiar to me over the next few weeks.
He called for Marieke before storming his room, where he played selections from the FAK songbook and Italian marching songs on a plastic turntable.
Marieke burst past her brother and pulled me into the living room where Mevrou de Bruin, Marieke’s mother, was sitting with a Rooi Rose magazine.
In her mother’s presence, Marieke was a much more demure version of herself, wary as she was of her mother’s careful criticism of dress and deportment. Mevrou de Bruin was a shapely woman made fifteen centimetres taller by her red bouffant. She plastered over her slightly pockmarked face with the make-up she sold for a living, and was the kind of woman who squeezed her children’s pimples.
There was no more Meneer de Bruin, his demise having been brought on by drink, and none of the children brought up the memory of their father, or felt the need to, since Mrs de Bruin ruled with a strong enough hand. I think there was a general sense, on the part of Mrs de Bruin at any rate, that the Lord had blessed them with Mr de Bruin’s departure and the subsequent bestowal of his property upon the family.
At dinner I mentioned that I too had grown up without a father. A silence hung over the mashed vegetable boerekos.
‘There’s a test for us in everything,’ said Mrs de Bruin, cutting up Danie’s Vienna sausages.
I’ve saved the last De Bruin till now because he deserves his own paragraph (at the very least). Danie de Bruin was born somewhere towards the Asperger’s end of the autism spectrum, a place reserved just for him and his deep, affectionate, intellectual and obsessive love affair with vacuum cleaners.
He was nine when I met him and it was clear that nothing made the child happier than being in the same room as one of those cleaning machines. Mrs de Bruin had six – what she could afford on the household income. If she could’ve bought more she would’ve, since the whole family had given up, a long time ago already, any notion that Danie could resist the pull the machines had on his soul.
‘So, what do you do, Ben?’ asked Mrs de Bruin.
‘Ma-a—’ said Marieke.
‘Actually, I’m just starting a new job,’ I said. Marieke waited for me to carry on. ‘Just today, in fact.’
‘Oh, congratulations,’ said Mrs de Bruin. ‘What kind of work is it, Ben?’
‘It’s a business thing,’ I said.
‘What business?’ asked Marieke.
‘Deals, between business. Sort of a middleman.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to cut out the middlemen in business?’ asked Mrs de Bruin.
‘Not if you are the middleman,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ said Mrs de Bruin. ‘I suppose I don’t know much about business.’
‘I suppose I don’t know too much yet, either. It’s kind of confidential, these deals.’
But Mrs de Bruin did know about business. On subsequent visits she repeated as often as possible, ‘Not everyone can say they’re consistently first- or second-place saleswoman in the entire Far Northern Transvaal region for the past seven years, consistently. Nobody else can say that.’
There was a fierce rivalry with another woman, Mrs Ferreira, over their performance representing the cosmetics range, and the only thing Mrs de Bruin was more protective over than her children was her sales position. The sales team’s prize-giving evenings were treasured opportunities for revenge and Mrs de Bruin would have her nails affixed, sharpened and painted in ever-more bountiful colours for them.
While Marieke helped her mother in the kitchen after dinner, Hannes and I were left together watching over Danie, who was arranging his nozzle attachments.
‘Didn’t you get your call-up?’ asked Hannes.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Where to?’
‘The last one said Phalaborwa.’
‘Seven SAI,’ he said. There was respect and not a little surprise in his voice that I’d been called up to 7 SA Infantry. This was unnecessary since call-ups were mostly random assignments to regiments and therefore weren’t based on any kind of military potential or killer instinct one might possess.
Hannes shook his head. ‘Yussie, you’re lucky. That’s one of the toughest. I wish I get a call-up like that.’
‘I don’t think I’m lucky.’
‘Why? Are you a moffie?’
‘You know I’m your sister’s boyfriend, right?’ I said.
He curled his lip and squinted down at it. Hannes sighed, then picked up one of Danie’s attachments. ‘I can’t wait to be called up.’
‘Stop talking,’ said Danie.
‘I hope I get a good one,’ said Hannes. ‘I want to go before it’s too late. Maybe it’s already
too late.’
‘Shut up!’ said Danie. He’d arranged his nozzles in rows and now pushed them aside. ‘I want the other one,’ he said.
Hannes handed him the one in his hand.
‘The other one. I want the other one.’
Hannes stood up and went to the cupboard in the passage. He returned with a box on which someone had written in black marker, ‘Electrolux’. He sat on the floor next to his little brother and opened the box. As Danie took out the new set of nozzles, Hannes brushed his brother’s hair back. Danie swatted the hand away and locked his gaze on to the plastic attachments.
‘So, what you up to this weekend?’ I asked, eager to change the subject.
‘Well … ag, nothing.’
‘What?’
‘No, you don’t want to hear about it.’ He shook his head.
‘Sure I do,’ I said, watching Danie run his finger over a brush attachment for the Electrolux.
‘Okay,’ he said, allowing himself just enough trust. He sniffed and said, ‘We’re gonna drive around and any blacks we see in the street after dark … We’ve got baseball bats.’ He hoicked his eyebrows.
‘Don’t make up shit like that, Hannes.’
‘I’m not. My cousin went last weekend. They took out three guys who were looking for kak.’
I’d heard some things from Victor already but took them for his usual doomsday rumours. Victor said a cow had been painted with the right-wing emblem, the three-legged swastika, and that there’d been some sort of trouble, maybe looting or vandalism, at the Indian Plaza.
‘Jeez,’ I said.
‘Ja,’ said Hannes.
‘Are you serious about this? Beating up black people?’
‘Ja, off the back of this guy’s bakkie,’ he said, as if it were only that I’d not heard him correctly. ‘We gotta send a message out there. Otherwise it’s civil war.’
‘But this thing on the bakkie – that’s civil war.’
He considered it. ‘Well, if it is, it is,’ he said with a light shrug.
He told me his race theories, that black people need white leaders. That Nelson Mandela would be assassinated before long, probably by ‘one of his own’, as he put it.