by Trevor Sacks
I looked out the Mercedes window to the road leading to the hall. Approaching it were the protesters, the fruits of Leo Fein’s brainstorm with the AWB. Men in khaki uniform with insignia, others in untucked office shirts or knitted snowflake jerseys.
Their route took them right past the Mercedes. The phalanx of women supporters, the Kappiekommando, came alongside like mourners. As if only now arriving from the Great Trek, they wore their prim, long sand-brown skirts and their floppy bonnets, which hung like wilted poppies.
A vierkleur flag of the old Transvaal Republic ruffled against the car window. The marchers carried other placards and banners:
VOTE NO AND SAVE THE VOLK
SAY NO TO COMMUNISTS
VOTE NO OR DON’T VOTE AT ALL
REJECT THE ANTICHRIST – VOTE NO
Another flag, one with the three sevens like a crippled swastika, rippled into my peripheral vision, a final straggler joining the protesters.
The crowd began chanting, ‘Aah, Veer, Beer! Aah, Veer, Beer!’
I could hear Casspirs, the armoured police vehicles, vibrating to life at the edge of the scene. The men in khakis and women in kappies approached the policemen at the door of the hall and shouted the rhyme in their faces: ‘AWB! AWB!’
From the rear, the chanting crowd parted to let the bearded man with cold blue eyes and a light-grey three-piece suit pass through: the man I was to chauffeur after the meeting. It was as if his laser-blue eyes flung the people left and right, and he and his small band of uniformed men in black walked straight to the front. The man in the three-piece spoke and shook a finger at one of the older policemen. The policeman sent a younger officer inside.
The crowd seemed to be waiting for something. In the meantime, the Kappiekommando women were handing out vetkoek and koeksisters to the policemen in the Casspirs, who ate them up with their thank yous. Only the chief at the front refused the treats.
The blue-eyed hulk had a loudhailer. ‘The foreign minister is digging the white man’s grave, I say to you!’ he shouted, in Afrikaans. ‘He’s not going to have his say tonight, though. We are!’
From inside the hall, there was some angry Afrikaans being hurled at him. I couldn’t hear it too clearly but registered it in the faces of the crowd outside.
People around the hulk in the three-piece began pushing towards the doors and the policemen needed reinforcements badly. Only four new officers joined at the front. The hulk in the suit was now surrounded by his men in black uniforms adorned with the three sevens and Bauhaus eagles: the Ystergarde.
The protesters shoved through the police and entered the hall. They were facing some resistance inside. There were shouts and crashes, and swearing and scraping. I got out of the car and climbed atop a cement dustbin to try to see in but all I could make out were rapid shadows against the tall windows along the flanks of the hall.
Then some of the incumbents emerged from the doors. Women ran out first – not the Kappiekommandos, who’d followed the AWB men in, but the NP wives, the mevrous and mevrou-dokters of the town’s politically connected. A few of the NP men crawled and scrambled, helped by others, some with head wounds and limp arms. The din from inside rose.
‘I’ve said we will speak tonight,’ rang a voice over the PA system. It was the voice of the leader I was meant to chauffeur. ‘And we speak for the white nation, because no one else will!’
There was more crying and shouting and some fumbling over the microphone. The National Party representative had regained the platform. ‘This is Afrikaner blood,’ he said over the microphone, ‘and it’s on your hands!’
More fumbles and crashes as the interloper was pushed off the mic. Again the hulk with the ice-blue eyes: ‘We speak for the Afrikaners, not the NP any more. And we will never give up the land given to us by the Almighty Lord.’
It was then that the national karate team flew out the front door, their Springbok blazers split at the armpits and torn at the pockets, followed by more bloodied NP supporters. The senior police officer – a brigadier, I believe – was taking orders from an NP man who had blood streaming from a gash in his bald patch down to his orange, white and blue rosette.
The policemen were fetching gas masks from one of the vans and pulling them over their heads. Three young officers ran from the Casspirs, which had moved forward, opening up a space. They nodded at a signal from their leader and lobbed their teargas canisters into the hall.
There were screams, not just from women, and a clatter louder than any that had come before from the hall. The long windows were smashed. The orange and black chairs crashed through them and bounced on the ground like poisoned insects. Even the doors were ripped away in the push as people tried to burst out the hall faster than the clouds of gas.
That’s when I saw Hannes in a khaki cadet uniform running, and falling to his knees. I hurried towards the hall, trying to shield my face from the teargas in the neck of my T-shirt. Khakis stepped on one another’s heads to make it outside and even the men in black couldn’t keep from pulling faces like implacable babies. My would-be passenger had lost his jacket and came sputtering out the front, tears running from his blue, blue eyes into his big white beard.
I lost Hannes in the swarming of people but kept going. The peppery gas clung in the air and dried my throat in an instant. I took off my shirt and wrapped it over my face. On the ground, khaki-clad men and women, and others in regular smart-casual wear, some with blue-and-orange NP rosettes and badges, crawled coughing from the hall. I was sure I saw Barry among the scrambling bodies, the boy I’d sat next to on the Standard Five Tour bus, in a state of panic, his pants wet at the crotch.
More police vehicles arrived. Police dogs leapt out of the back of bakkies, one or two sneezing. Where the fumes had cleared, men were rising once more and now there was a stand-off. The dogs were being held back by their handlers, straining at the collars, drool dripping from their incisors. The men in khaki wiped their eyes.
I saw Hannes’s jersey and fuzzy hair on the ground in the space between the dogs and the mob. I kept low and reached next to a pair of legs in long socks belonging to a man who was choking; I grabbed the kid.
He didn’t put up a fight and we pushed our starving lungs until we were at the car. Neither of us could say anything and I could barely see. With the dogs still growling, we drove away in Leo Fein’s Mercedes-Benz.
Just before our view was obscured by a Casspir, we saw the leader of the Kappiekommandos on all fours, retching outside the hall, her kappie sagging low. Our eyes and noses streamed and I blinked to see the road. When we stopped coughing and sneezing, Hannes took stock of where he was and looked around the interior of Leo Fein’s car cautiously.
We drove to the De Bruins’ house in Fauna Park with the air-conditioning of the Mercedes pumping hard but smooth. When we arrived at the door, our eyes were bloodshot and my throat was rough.
I can be sure those were real tears bursting forth from Hannes, not just from the gas, because he sobbed and fell into his mother’s arms when she opened the door. Whatever toughness he’d incubated in himself fell away now as his head lay to the side against his mother’s shoulder, his mouth stretched into an open frown.
‘What happened?’ asked Mrs de Bruin.
Hannes couldn’t talk yet and I only just managed to say there was fighting in the town hall. And when I saw Marieke, the tears pooled in my eyes, too. I hadn’t cried in so many years, I amazed myself that I still had the faculty for it. Whatever channels and vents needed opening, opened, and Marieke wept too.
It was a release of all that had occurred before: the betrayals of Marieke, of Leo Fein, and of myself; the hurt I felt in her; the loneliness I’d felt from keeping so much hidden for so long.
‘Why are you crying?’ said Danie, wrapping the hose of the AEG vacuum cleaner around my foot.
I explained what had happened over coffee and condensed milk while Hannes shared a chair with his mother. It was difficult to talk since Marieke sat next to me
on the couch, a chink of air between us. She didn’t touch me, not so much as to brush against me, all night.
Hannes, worn from the riot and escape, went to bed, hugging first his mother, then Danie, then Marieke, then me.
When I arrived home, Victor was seeing someone off in the driveway. I waited, then gingerly rolled the Mercedes in. ‘Where’d you steal this one?’ asked Victor.
‘It’s my boss’s.’
‘Venter from Nedbank?’ asked Victor. I tried to smile in response.
‘Does he know you’ve got it, or did you just take it?’ said Victor.
I sighed a fragile sigh.
‘Come on,’ he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. I put my arm around his too, and came close to tears again.
‘And this?’ he said, gabbing the Tag Heuer watch on my wrist.
‘A gift,’ I said. ‘Also from my boss.’
‘Hm!’ said Victor. ‘Well, the car’s for real, but that’s a fake.’
I inspected the watch.
‘Feels a little light,’ he said. ‘The genuine ones are real chunks. Look at the links on the strap – that’s rolled metal, not solid steel. That Venter’s a cheapskate. Always knew it.’
‘My boss is a skatofatsa,’ I said.
‘A what?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said.
Victor was celebrating the sale of the business with the Dimple Haig, the one bottle Elliot and I were wary of touching. The success of the deal ignited a generosity in him – and Nadine was only too happy to be rid of more household items to pack – but, after a few Haigs, he began to pick on Will. It was a habit he fell into easily.
He couldn’t resist bringing up the investment Will had once tipped him off on. ‘Those containers you got me to sink my money into – that bombed out big-time, hey.’
‘I know, Uncle Victor,’ said Will. Will maintained Victor hadn’t stuck with it long enough, and Victor only saw the opportunity to criticise Will.
‘It never made anything,’ continued Victor.
‘You should’ve ridden it a little longer,’ said Will.
‘And pissed more of my money away? No thanks.’
‘Well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. Other people did okay from it.’
‘Where from? Show me,’ he said.
Will ground his teeth.
‘Oh! It was a piece of shit, that business,’ said Victor, starting up once more. ‘Let me show you something. Nadine – where’s the paper?’
‘You chucked it,’ said Nadine from the couch, behind the rasping of an emery board.
‘It’s here somewhere,’ said Victor, standing up unsteadily. He got down on all fours in front of the magazine rack, his broad arse in the air, and rifled through the contents. ‘Let me show you a good investment, Will. JD Group – a real beauty. It’s here somewhere. I want to show you. So you know next time what a good investment looks like. Where is the fucking thing?’
Will ground his teeth further while Ma and Elliot sat on the couch half-watching a TV show.
‘What were you doing tonight?’ asked Ma.
‘I had to work late,’ I said.
‘How come?’
‘It’s a busy time in the bank – lots of filing.’
‘Have you been crying? Your eyes are red.’
‘Nadine, where is it?’ said Victor.
‘You threw it …’ said Nadine, ceasing her filing to lift her head and speak, ‘a-way.’
Victor sat down heavily on the La-Z-Boy again with his drink. ‘Well, anyway, it was a piece of shit, that thing you brought to me. So – what now about the money Carol’s lending you?’
Will glanced at Ma. ‘We’ve got a fund we’re investing in.’
‘Not like the last thing, hey?’ asked Victor with a little laugh.
‘No.’
‘And not a donkey at Newmarket?’
‘No.’
‘Well – what is it?’
‘It’s called Northern Horizons.’
‘Oh,’ said Victor, slowly now. He carefully poured another drink, not catching the look Nadine was holding, an assassin with a nail file. ‘I’ve heard some good things,’ he said with a sniff and a nod. ‘They’ve got some hotshots out of Princeton putting it together.’
‘Yale,’ said Will.
‘You need a minimum, though.’
‘Thirty thousand,’ said Will. ‘We have it.’
‘Hm!’ said Victor, impressed. ‘I would have helped, you know, but with us moving and everything …’
‘I know,’ said Will. ‘Well, congratulations, Victor – on the sale of the business.’ He raised his glass, trying to bring the discussion to an end.
‘Thank you,’ said Victor.
* * *
The following day I took my first cup of coffee and sat at my desk to sort the post. I’d been thinking about Victor’s assessment of the fund all night and still wasn’t sure about it. That Will and Victor both respected it gave it some weight after all.
I looked at the watch and noticed a copper patch coming through where the silvery metal had rubbed away. I must have scraped it on the ground outside the town hall.
Leo Fein came through the door. ‘You didn’t pick him up.’
‘It was chaos,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t gonna wait for him. There was teargas and they were fighting with the police.’
‘So you didn’t pick him up?’
‘They were throwing chairs and kicking each other. They used police dogs.’ I stretched out my hand with the Merc’s keys. He stood without moving. Finally, he snatched them back.
‘This is bad. This is not the kind of impression we want to leave. We’re the ones he’s supposed to rely on. This relationship is at a very crucial time. There’s a referendum, you know?’
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay.’
‘So what was going on there?’ he asked, sitting on the edge of the desk.
‘There was fighting. The NP and the AWB were trying to kill each other. The police came in hard. There was teargas and rubber bullets.’
‘White-on-white violence. This is something,’ said Leo Fein thoughtfully. ‘But you should have waited for him. You’re my number-one employee. You can’t let this happen again.’
‘How was the IFP?’
‘You really want to know?’
I didn’t. I’d had a lucky let-off by running away from the town hall with Hannes. By saving the boy from teargas and Alsatians, I’d inadvertently saved myself from the culpability of supporting the AWB.
‘This for me?’ asked Leo Fein, picking up the large stack from the in-tray.
‘All just this morning.’
‘And here’s the cheques,’ he said, handing me an A4 envelope filled with letters. ‘Let’s get them in at the bank.’
He went into his office and I tipped the letters out on the desk. I sorted the cheques as I always did until I came across one from Carol Richler for R30 000.
‘Has the Bishop called yet?’ asked Leo Fein, returning to my desk. I placed a hand over Carol’s cheque.
‘Not yet.’
He pulled up a corner of his mouth. ‘That’s turning into a bit of a disappointment, isn’t it?’
I walked down the corridor to the lifts. Henry was waiting for one, too. We got in together and faced the door for the ride to ground level. ‘That’s quite a stack,’ he said, glancing at the cheques in my hand. ‘Investors, hey?’
I looked at him and, without saying a thing, stuck my finger in my nostril and dug. Henry looked ahead again.
Then I took Carol’s cheque, folded it and put it in my pocket.
11
THE LAST SHABBES
While the rest of the country was being swept away with the possibilities a referendum could bring, I’d been dragged in the wash of Leo Fein’s dealings. You couldn’t dip a toe in without being pulled under.
I couldn’t remain blind to the lands I was being brought to by his currents – military d
eals, racial hatred, civil war. No family fortune was worth it: it was time to drag myself ashore.
I decided to leave Leo Fein. I deposited the rest of the Northern Horizons cheques and walked out of the Nedbank building with Carol’s still in my pocket. I couldn’t let Carol give up her money for us. I didn’t know for sure about Northern Horizons but, glancing at my fake watch, my suspicions were growing. Was anything with Leo Fein ever real? I knew I couldn’t leave Carol’s money behind.
It wasn’t difficult to leave; I was grateful for the excuse Carol’s money gave me. To be the odd-job man and backroom staffer for the AWB and the Third Force – it wasn’t worth it, even to save my family from further impoverishment. I’d presided over enough betrayals and secrecy for an entire lifetime. It was exhausting. It ages you without maturing you, but I was young enough to begin again.
The lightness I felt, walking out of Leo Fein’s shadow, was soon replaced with a hanging dread that I’d have to tell my family all about my betrayals, sooner or later. Carol’s cheque led back to Northern Horizons, led back to Leo Fein, led back to my bar mitzvah. I’d have to confess to them: that was the price. Tonight, I said as I walked home.
That evening we had a small braai at Victor’s and Will invited Carol, a gesture Victor grudgingly approved and only because she’d helped the family with her savings.
‘Are you pomping her again?’ Victor had asked him. ‘The years haven’t been kind to her, hey?’
‘They’ve been a bastard to you,’ said Nadine. Finding Victor’s prodding intolerable, she went over and fetched Carol herself.
‘Tomorrow’s a sad day,’ said Carol as we sat around the plastic table in the back garden.
‘They had to call a referendum, Carol,’ said Victor. ‘The Nats lost the by-elections in Potchefstroom. The country’s going mad with black-on-black violence, the right-wingers are out of control. I don’t say it’s gonna change anything, but they have to do it.’
‘Oh, not that,’ said Carol, though my uncle didn’t register.
‘And,’ said Victor, hitting his rhythm, ‘if you want any international sport, and if you want any chance of the economy getting better – you vote yes, Carol.’