by Trevor Sacks
‘She’s your mother,’ said Nadine, and she left the room.
Elliot entered and sat down.
‘Ma okay?’ I asked.
‘She said she was feeling weird on one side,’ said Elliot. ‘She’s sleeping now. You really fucked up, hey?’
I huffed through my nose.
‘Carlien says she’s never seen Marieke so fucked off. She hit a gate with the bakkie – she can’t drive.’
‘Ah, Jesus,’ I said. ‘I didn’t ask her to drive back. I would’ve taken her. It was work.’
‘What kind of work are you doing on a Sunday, anyway?’
‘It was a meeting. I couldn’t get out of it.’
‘You should’ve said no.’
‘It’s a new job,’ I said. ‘I can’t just say no, can I? Besides, you said I should try do something. I should try help Ma and do something for myself. I mean, you’re not helping her, are you? You’re the one who fucked up her job at Doren’s.’
Victor came in to watch the news and we stopped talking.
‘Come, let’s smoke,’ said Elliot.
‘You can smoke inside, I told you,’ said Victor, although he’d never let me do it. I followed Elliot out and we walked over to the rotting, flaking bench by the cycad on the far side of the garden. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a Golden Virginia tobacco pouch.
‘Can you roll it for me?’ I said. ‘I can never get it right.’
‘Open it,’ he said. Inside was a thick stack of banknotes.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s for you and Ma,’ said Elliot. A giddiness not unlike a tobacco headrush flooded my system.
‘Where’s this from?’
‘Sold two paintings today,’ he said as he pulled out another bag, this one an orange Boxer tobacco pouch, and began rolling.
‘Where?’
‘Some art dealer. Not even my best ones – it’s always like that, though.’
‘How much is it?’
‘Ten grand,’ he laughed. ‘It was the first number that came out of my mouth. Listen, you hang on to it, though – Ma keeps losing things. She’s just not in the right frame of mind at the moment.’
Elliot handed me one skinny cigarette and took the other for himself. I drew in the smoke from the roll-up and it mingled with whatever chemicals the comfort of ten grand releases in the body.
‘It’s not for Will, though,’ he said. ‘It’s for you and Ma. I mean it.’
‘Okay.’
‘But you really fucked up with Marieke.’
‘What am I supposed to do? I’ve been trying to phone her all day. She won’t talk to me.’
‘Maybe you should try see her.’
That evening I walked to the De Bruins, thinking along the way how I would apologise. My remorse flipped to anger, defensible by my duty to work, and flopped back to remorse at the thought of Gina. I tried to find a middle ground where she would see the light side and forgive me.
By the time I reached the house, I’d begun to imagine that Marieke had had enough time to cool down. She would surely have had a chance to think about her screwball drive back into town and be able to laugh at it. And I would never ever mention Gina.
The optimism swam out of me, as if under suction from Danie’s nozzles, as I stood at their gate, wavering.
Then, with the same somnambulant submission I rely on to jump into cold water, I opened the gate and walked up to the front door. ‘She’s not here,’ said Hannes, standing there with his arms crossed. ‘If you come here again the Ystergarde are going to come find you.’ The Iron Guard were the AWB’s elite bodyguard.
I heard the whirring of the Hoover VacuMate’s retractable power cord from somewhere in the house behind him. ‘Hannes!’ said Mrs de Bruin, swatting her son aside. ‘Get inside. Hello, Ben. Marietjie’s not here but she’s very upset, you know. I’ve never seen her like that. You can try get her at Carlien’s. You know where it is?’
I said I did and began my walk to the house in which I lost my virginity. At that once glorious address, an edifice of dread awaited me now; the memory of that first night of sex had a new air of tragedy to it.
I was overcome with a feeling of loss, which grew with every footstep. I wanted rid of it. I’d do anything to get her back, I was so desperate.
I girded myself for a difficult introduction in Afrikaans to Carlien’s family but was grateful to see Carlien answer the door herself.
‘Marieke doesn’t want to see you,’ she said.
‘I just want to say sorry.’
‘Look, if it was me and you did that,’ she said, enumerating my sins on her supple fingers, ‘left me alone in a room for a whole day, then make me drive when I can’t even drive, get in an accident …’
‘I know, I just want to say sorry.’
‘And look at that,’ she said, stepping out and pointing to Tjoppa’s bakkie in the driveway. It was gouged along its length, down to the quick of raw steel. ‘You better pay for that or Tjoppa’s going to be very angry.’
‘Me?’
‘Who else? Tjoppa’s gonna freak out. You don’t know him.’
I wasn’t going to contradict her on that score. ‘Look, can I just see her to apologise? Then I’ll go.’
Marieke stepped out of the house, her arms crossed, just as Carlien’s were and Hannes’s had been, earlier.
‘Just go away,’ said Marieke.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Can’t you forgive me?’
‘Just forgive you?’ said Marieke. ‘Do you know what I went through?’
‘I heard, and I’m really, really sorry. I tried to come back earlier. I had to wait for ages for a taxi, and a lift, and the car broke down. You were gone when I got back to the hotel.’
‘I can’t drive, Ben. I could’ve died.’
‘I’m sorry. But if you’d waited—’
‘I did wait! I waited all day and all night.’
‘Not all night – you left, like, a few minutes before I got there. Cut me some slack, for fuck’s sakes,’ I said.
‘Don’t swear at me!’
‘I’m not swearing at you, I’m just swearing. Look, I had to work, I tried to get back and I couldn’t – actually, I did, and I fucking had a horrible day trying to get back, so just cut me some slack. I think you’re overreacting.’
‘Just go away.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘Were you with that girl at the hotel?’
‘Which one?’ I said, almost swallowing the words.
‘You know which one. The one at the front – “Ooh Ben, it’s been so long. We must have a drink. Or let’s just skip the drink and just fuck.” The one who looked at me like a flap of useless … skin, or whatever.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘So you didn’t see her?’
‘After I got back at, like, ten-thirty and you weren’t there. We had a drink. That’s all.’
‘What?’ She looked pale now.
‘What?’ I said, but my ‘what’ was weaker than hers.
‘It’s over,’ she said, walking towards the door. ‘I don’t want to see you any more, ever.’
I called after her, but it was no use.
* * *
Leo Fein came into the office the next day and wanted to talk about the Bishop. When he’d heard it had been successful, that I’d made contact and set up a meeting, he presented me with a box. Inside was a Tag Heuer watch with a green brushed-steel face. I put it on at his insistence.
He asked after every detail and reacted with extreme childlike amusement, incongruous with all previous experience of the man, to my baptism.
I, on the other hand, felt only anger and remorse. These two feelings swirled around like poisons in the gourd of my stomach. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘You should be proud of yourself. And you’ll get a bonus if this pans out, I promise you. Come on – what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, no,’ he said, pulling back his neck to look at me from an in
ch or two further away. His grey curls bounced as he hung his head to the side and inspected me. ‘Girl trouble, I bet.’
I was sure not to react with even the slightest movement or expression to this, but he pursued it.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I’m right, hey?’
‘I was supposed to spend Sunday with her and I was at the ZCC instead. I really fucked up.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you were a man. You had something you had to do, and you did what men do. You’ll make it up to her. Come, don’t look so miserable. I tell you what you’re going to do – you’re going to take her away on a luxury weekend. Oh, you think it can’t be fixed? You’re still young – these things are never as serious as they first appear. You’re going to take her away to Joburg, the big city, Sandton. You’ll stay at the Sandton Sun – the best. You’ll go to the fanciest restaurants, the swankiest bars, discos, whatever she wants.’
‘She won’t even see me. The whole situation is just fucked. Beyond fucked.’
‘I bet it’s not that bad, china.’
‘It’s that bad.’
‘Well, do you wanna do something about it? You wanna get her back?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You need to get her attention.’
‘I can’t do that big romantic stuff. My brother can, but not me.’
‘I’m not talking “big romantic” here. Not the movies. That usually backfires. No, you’ve gotta play to your strengths. Ben, that Northern Horizons annual report – that’s talent, my friend. It’s a gift. Write to her if she won’t see you.’
‘What do I say?’
‘Well, tell her how sorry you are and how much she means to you. Or you can steal, like I do. Get some poems out the library. Khalil Gibran is good.’
I must have sneered. Whether it was exhaustion from the past two days or whether some change really had come over me, I didn’t know. But I would not have been so outwardly disdainful before.
Leo Fein didn’t flinch at it, though. ‘Well, use your own words if that’s better. And then we take her to Joburg, impress her and make her forget about it. And if it doesn’t work out,’ he said cheerfully, ‘Snor and his boys run a brothel and we’ll make our own fun.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘It’s just a little business trip. Snor wants us to meet some IFP Zulus. Easy sale – they’re stocking up.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘I’ve got to do a few Northern Horizons presentations for new prospects. You might have to fill in with Snor and the Zulus.’
‘I don’t know if I’m the right guy for it. I’m fine with the office stuff, but AWB, IFP – I can’t do that.’
‘My boy, business is business. You’re in it. Let’s not get all existential about it. You’re gonna make a lot of money and forget about all that pretty soon. And your girlfriend’s gonna forget all about her troubles, too. I guarantee it.’
* * *
For most who grow up with a mother and father, they witness the resilience of a relationship through niggles, arguments and letdowns, even betrayals. But those without the model can misunderstand its fragility, and misjudge it as beyond repair once it’s dinged. It was a small revelation that I might be able to save the situation with Marieke, and I tried to ignore the source.
It hurt me palpably to take Leo Fein’s advice and write a letter, but who else was there to help me? Elliot’s ideas were too grand; Will would make me squirm; Victor was out of the question, and so was Ma, even if she wasn’t laid up in bed as she’d been the past few days.
Besides, it seemed like good advice; and if anyone should believe in the power of letters, it’d be me.
I opened the pad of Basildon Bond writing paper I’d taken from my uncle’s drawer and sat down to think. Not since that treacherous note had I written so deliberately. There’d been the bar mitzvah thank-you letters and I’d written in school, of course – including an excruciating sonnet I was made to read out in class – but I’d never felt the sustained raised pulse that choosing heavy words could bring, heavy because so much depended on them.
I wrote of my sorrow, my regret, my depth of feeling for her, and begged her forgiveness. I finished late, and almost finished the pad of Basildon Bond, turning out the light after two in the morning. When I had done with it and put it aside for fear of bringing on insanity, my thoughts went to Leo Fein. Over and over, with minor variations, I played that damn two-man drawing-room drama out in my head.
The voices were mumbled, but Leo Fein looked fittingly bewildered and I, sincere but confident. We were in his study and I was explaining that I was grateful for the opportunity he’d given me but that it wasn’t the career path for me. It was while telling him of my plans to take History at university that the birds began to move. It was a signal, a twitch in his cheek, followed by a single revolution of a raised index finger, that sent them swirling round my head.
I was able to call the action to a halt before my temples were carved and my nose severed. Would he come looking for me if I didn’t show up to work? The other anxieties played out, too. He could turn me in to the military for dodging conscription; the General would see to it that I was placed in detention barracks and forgotten, or given to Tjoppa as his plaything. Meanwhile, Ma would be on the street and without Victor or Elliot or Will to help her.
Alternatively, Leo Fein could tell my family about my betrayal. He brought it up often enough that it would surely roll off the tongue easily if he had to repeat it in front of them. My family would turn against me, throw me to the wolves – or the army, at any rate.
No. The bare facts were that I had the money from Elliot in the tobacco pouch under my pillow, and a bonus coming soon. That would release the Will we knew years ago, free now to deploy his full energies against Leo Fein. I got up to change the letter one last time.
The exhaustion had brought on wild thoughts and images. I fell asleep and dreamt Will was telling me what to do with the money in the tobacco pouch.
‘Go to Skamandrios and put it all down on Troy Ounce in tomorrow’s race at Turffontein,’ he said.
I found myself in the dim hall of the Tattersall’s. In it, wrinkled black men shuffled around the floor in houndstooth jackets, hands behind their bent backs, pipes in their mouths. Their smoke filled the place and made it difficult to see the details of the race forms, printed on a sheet of newspaper like the pages of Victor’s stocks. The men waddled like hadedas and now some of them were hadedas, honking at each other, their pipes turning to long, curved beaks.
I was anxious to remember the name of the bookmaker I was to go to, repeating it over and over – Skamandrios, Skamandrios – so as not to forget. But there was no Skamandrios.
‘Skamandrios?’ I asked the man behind the bars at the counter.
‘You mean Skambonides. Skambonides,’ he said again, pointing to his breastbone. ‘You want to place something with Skambonides?’
‘Troy Ounce at Turffontein,’ I said. Skambonides huffed and flipped the bone-dry pages of some guide or programme and skidded a heavy finger down a black list. He took up another programme and pulled the list back from his vision, looking to and fro between them.
I squinted to see the writing but it was too small for my eyes and smoke from the tobacco pipes gathered in front of the type. Skambonides said, ‘There’s no Troy Ounce at Turffontein. There’s Troy Ounce at Newmarket and Helen of Troy at Turffontein.’
I tried to look at the paper again and wanted to cry from the tiny writing, the smoke and the puzzle of it all.
‘Look for yourself,’ he said. ‘There’s lots of horses: take your pick.’
‘Troy Ounce,’ I said, stifled, and handed over Elliot’s pouch. Skambonides took it from me and wiggled his fingers inside it. Panic buzzed through me and I stood on tiptoes to see into it.
‘What’s this?’ said Skambonides, running his fingers through the contents of the bag. The pipe smokers came forward, honking their hadeda cries, and scrabbling their be
aks into it, too.
Skambonides lifted little pink sweets out of the pouch and let them fall between his fingers. The hadedas pinched them in their beaks.
‘There’s money in there!’ I shouted, and strained to see inside.
‘Skelm!’ said one of the pipe smokers to me in a rasping voice.
‘Skebenga!’ cried a hadeda.
‘Skatofatsa!’ yelled Skamandrios or Skambonides, standing up and pointing an accusing finger at me.
The hadedas turned their beaks on me, shrieking, slashing and stabbing at my face.
* * *
In the morning Victor was to meet the new buyers of Capricorn Precast Walls and hoped to introduce Ma as part of the package. He had the idea of trying to secure her a position there, although what that position was, he hadn’t settled on.
The business already had a fine receptionist, Hettie, and while Ma’s record in commerce was attractive (she had steered a business for seven years), it didn’t hold up (she had lost Great North Diesel and Auto Electric in a matter of months).
So Victor, Nadine and Ma readied themselves and swept out of the house and into Victor’s Audi 500. The phone rang inside just as they were closing their doors. Through the front room window I could see Victor reversing out the driveway, Nadine talking agitatedly at Victor’s ear from the back seat and Ma looking for her seatbelt buckle or something she’d dropped in the front.
I answered the phone and heard Will’s voice. I knew it was a matter of time before he’d call to pressure me for the cash. I’d decided beforehand I’d try to hold him off until I’d earned enough from Leo Fein, but in the instant of picking up the receiver, I changed my mind: I would tell him about Elliot’s cash. The dream had rattled me, and I didn’t think I could hang around Leo Fein and his associates any longer to earn my bonus, plus there was the new expense of Tjoppa’s bakkie.
‘Good news!’ said Will on the line. ‘I’ve got the cash.’
Before I could ask him how, or tell him about Elliot’s money, something stopped me. Tyres shrieked, a car hooter voiced discord, and Nadine blared out a honking moan of alarm.
‘Jesus,’ said Will with a jolt. I pulled the lace curtain back and saw Victor’s Audi halted at an unusual angle in the middle of the street.