The Lion Seeker (21 page)

For before a dent can be reversed it has to be understood. Sanding a dented panel unveils a map of high points and hollows that Miller shows him how to read. Hitting a bulge on the underside of a dent too directly can make worse damage; it has to be hammered at slyly, carefully, from the edges, because every bulge has a humped rim on the top side that also has to be coaxed down with the same blows. Miller shows him how to use the whole of his hand to feel the surface of the steel map, understanding that the true size of any dent is not just what is seen.

So, under Miller's supervision, he practises how to bounce the right panel hammer sensitively and rhythmically against a dent braced underneath by the right-shaped dolly, sometimes if lucky popping the dent out flush, most often working it carefully by angled degrees towards its former contour. He learns how to use the big tanks of oxygen and acetylene, adjusting the mixture to refine a flame to a shade of clear yellow or opaque winking blue, according to its purpose. The flame can be used to heat a panel to render it more malleable or it can melt lead to use as filler or it can burn out bolts that are rusted and crushed into their threads; flames can be licked lightly over a part to make it expand so that once fitted it will shrink to maximal tightness, or they can be centred to that hard dancing blue like a needle that can bore tiny holes or cut clean crackling lines through steel plate. He learns to use hydraulic bars to straighten crumpled pillars. Learns to use frame hammers and suction cups, alignment bars and forty-five-degree hammers for door panels and ones with picks for bumpers. Most of all he learns to value precision, and not to care when the sweat and rust flakes and caked dirt get into his eyes and make them burn, into the cuts on his toughening hands, his arms shuddering deep in the tendons with the ache of hard labour.

 

On occasional Wednesdays he takes the bus and gets off in Parktown to wait at the municipal park on Gilder Lane. Yvonne Linhurst comes straight home on Wednesdays, her early days: no last period, no netball practice, no standard nine dance committee meetings. When he comes—maybe only about once every three weeks or so at first—he'll bring her a slab of Aero chocolate (her fave) and she lets him carry her briefcase from the bus stop to the driveway.

At every visit he is always careful to keep a respectful distance and he listens to her words as if they are lobbed eggs he has to catch and cradle to himself, not allowing himself to miss even the silences between them. She tells him in her soft high voice about her fears of not being picked to be a prefect. About this one girl, Amanda, whom all the others hate, because this Mandy spreads these gruesome rumours that are
such
lies. About idiot Mr. Williams who gives her Bs on essays that deserve A-pluses, minimum. About her parents and how crazy they are, no one has any idea (Isaac thinking, Yes I do).

Gradually the Wednesday visits become more than occasional; they turn weekly, fixed, he is always there, waiting, and she always expects him.

One time she tells him,—It's all so serious for you isn't it hey?

—What you mean?

—Life, I mean, for you. Serious business. And she mimes his expression, going sombre (Isaac thinking, Is that me? For real?), hunching her shoulders as if protecting her chin.

He fights not to let himself get cross, to snap at her, the protected silliness of such an opinion. —Ja, but the thing is, it
is
. Maybe you just don't know yet.

She looks at him, her cute snub nose wrinkling, disagreement akin to distaste.

He says,—When I's little maybe I thought not, thought it was all different.

—Like how?

—Easy, like. All nice.

She goes quiet then, till they reach the driveway. —So what, do you reckon that I'm all . . . 

—What?

Now her eyes have that other look, calm and thoughtful. He has so many of these looks of hers now in him, sometimes at night he'll go over them, one picture after another, as if sorting through a box of irreplaceable photographs.

—But I'm not, she says.

—Whatchoo mean?

—Spoiled.

—Who said spoiled?

—I know what you're thinking.

He smiles. —Nah, you not spoiled, you perfect.

She blows air out of her pout: ridiculousness. —Don't even think that.

—I think it's true.

—There's nothing perfect, Isaac. I'm just a girl. And I can be bloody cruel.

—No.

—Seriously. Don't say those things.

—Ukay, ukay. You just a girl. Here. He hands her briefcase across. She holds on to it, looking down.

—Hey, she says . . . Want to come in for a bit?

EVERY APPRENTICE HAS A SIX-MONTH
period of probation and Isaac now nears the end of his own. As if in anticipation of it, Labuschagne hands him and Jack Miller a challenge in the form of a badly rear-ended Willys sedan.

For weeks they painstakingly uncrumple mashed steel. Like used tissue balled up it must be carefully stretched and smoothed without tearing. With this wreck, Isaac has the feeling of undergoing a final exam. He gives his all to the work and at the end of every day is filled with a happy drained sensation. After work he walks over with the other men to the Great Britain Hotel to drink whisky and talk meaninglessly in the tobacco haze. Rugby, cricket, war, money, women. Jolly abuse slurred at Ricardo the diminutive Portuguese bartender with his small hairy hands and dapper cufflinks.

At home over supper it's his father now who has the questions about the work and nods at his answers, encouraging, it's Mame who mutters and interrupts with comments about the meagre pay and the long hours and what
else
does he have on the go?

—Loz em, says Abel. Leave him. Isaac is happy learning his trade.

A trade, says Mame. Tradesmen don't live in nice big houses in Orange Grove.

But I
am
happy, Isaac thinks, floating in the steaming zinc tub in the backyard afterwards. My father is right. The water cools around him, turning black, and he reads comics in
Radio Fun
and feels the good tired feeling of the heat through the marrows of his bones, of having worked hard and well all day, and smokes his Max cigarettes, one after the other, and sometimes nods off to be awakened by the wet touch of the surface on his chin.

During this period he also finds himself getting called to the phone at home sometimes, for a Mr. Shmear, a Mr. Kidneystone, a Mr. R.J. Pickles. When he picks up the receiver he tells Hugo: —You're going to run out of voices.

—When are you coming out Brakpan way, Tiger, give a look at the place at least?

—When you ganna stop asking me?

—I shouldn't, you don't deserve the opportunity. But what can I say, I got a gold hand when it comes to picking people, you the right lad for the job.

All Isaac can do is sigh. —Hugo, what can I tell you my mate. I'm happy panel beating.

—Happy? What's that? You know what's happy?

—Ja ja ja.

—A pig lying in its own runny stinking shice is what is happy. Duzzen know better. There were pigs on that hell farm by Vekklesdorp, remember? Chop chop chop.

—I gotta go now Hugo.

—Happy is one a
those
.

On Thursday nights when they get their pay packets they open the yellow envelopes and take out a few of the notes according to a fixed percentage and give them to Labuschagne for the kitty. The kitty is kept in an old Quality Street sweets tin that only Labuschagne handles. Every fifteenth of the month the kitty goes to one of them as a cash bonus. Each one of the staff, of the Whites, gets a turn and everyone must contribute. Handing over his cash, Isaac feels he is almost fully one of them; once he's passed his probation, he'll be up to collect the kitty too: drawing a man's full pay for a man's work.

Now comes the day when the panels are back on the Willys and only an unsightly dimpling covers the parts of them that were crushed the most, like the cellulite under the skin of an old lady's legs. For this final planishing work Miller forgoes the use of filler, calling it a cheat, and instead uses a custom-bent file as a slapstick. He shows Isaac how, braced with a comma dolly, even the smallest bubbles can be patiently tapped flat by the broad file—his work guided in part by the just-right tinking sound of a correct impact—and then afterwards sanded almost smooth as new steel.

The frames too have been exactly realigned under Miller's patient hands so that all the doors open and close with factory-perfect thunking. Now Blacks take hold of the wheeled jack by its long handle and others cluster behind; pushing and heaving and singing together, they manoeuvre it to the glass station where Rustas fits new windows and windshields. Isaac has been permitted to follow the Willys on, to watch and learn. Again the Blacks sing as they move the sedan to the paint shop-within-a-shop, Mornay Pienaar's kingdom. The new glass is covered over with newspapers, all edges taped down (not with Miracle Glow, mind, but standard masking tape, and Isaac understands now why it's called masking tape at all, for it masks what you don't want painted). The Blacks move in and sand away any paint still left on the fixed bodywork, smoothing down to raw steel. Then primer is applied, the bodywork turning terracotta. They smear black putty on any uneven patches, let it dry and sand it flush. Then Pienaar mixes lacquer paints—another, separate art, Isaac is told and sees is true—till the new matches the old so perfectly it is impossible to tell where it begins and the factory coat ends. Pienaar fills the electric spray gun, aims and pulls the trigger and the gun buzzes and hisses; he works the beam of lacquer back and forth evenly over the healed rear so that when the newspaper and masking tape is peeled off, the car is one and new and whole again.

The Blacks then move it on its jack to the upholstery station where the trimmer, Eddie Tops, crawls inside. He had earlier stripped out all the seats and interior linings, to repair them at his cutting table with its heavy sewing machine. Now, on his knees on the bare steel, he wires the new-stitched hood lining into the roof, then lights up a Primus stove and sets a can of water to boil. A length of rubber hose rises from the can to coil through a gap in the roof edge. Steam fills the narrow space above the lining, and the leather gradually loses its creases and fills out like a tightening drumskin, beautiful. Eddie puts back the interior panels, the carpets, the seats.

Then Labuschagne the shop mechanic—first in, last out—comes to put the wheels back on, to replace the battery removed before, to retune the engine, gunning it, making sure. That afternoon they wait for the owner, who arrives to pay his insurance deductible, and sign the clearance certificate, and then Labuschagne gives him the keys and the man can legally drive away. His Willys sedan resurrected.

Labuschagne turns and grins at Isaac and waves him into the office. While he fetches something down from the top of a filing cabinet Isaac stands there with a swollen heart, chewing his lips to keep his feelings in. Then Labuschagne shakes his hand and welcomes him to Gold Reef Panel Beating and presents him with a new set of tools of his own. His own hammers, his own shining set of dollies. It will come out of his pay, of course, but they are his. Earned. He runs his fingers over the clean smooth steel, the polished wood. Labuschagne touches his shoulder. —You done real nice, he says. I can see it. You keep on.

 

The shining tools fit into moulded grooves in a flat box of red-painted steel. Isaac pastes a label on the box, writes ISAAC HELGER in careful letters. The tools are ordinarily stored in the shop but he takes the box home with him that first soaring night, lays the box on the kitchen table and opens it to show his father. Abel picks them up with his long fine fingers, one at a time, gravely gentle. He goes to the closet and fetches down the brandy and two glasses. My boy. This. This is a real thing. To life.

—L'chaim, Daddy.

They are clinking glasses—to doing a
properly job
—when the door opens and Mame looks in. His father says something that Isaac doesn't register because he is staring at her. Her face has gone hard and her eyes are like glinting breaks in the stone of it, the skin all grey but for the scar that throbs livid. —Ach come on, Ma, he says.

She lifts her chin, stretching the scar. A space hollows out behind Isaac's loins. His throat crowds with tears.

She turns away and the door shuts. When he goes after her, Abel touches him. —You drink with me first. Never mind it your mame. Your mame is oykay.

Isaac drinks, picks up his cap, walks out the backyard into the alley then the street. Goes on walking without thinking—quick angry steps—until after half an hour he finds that he is stopped outside the laundry shop.

MRS. BLUMENTHAL AT THE COUNTER:
a woman with a side-parted fringe that slants across a white brow, hair black as wet coal. Isaac asks to speak to her husband. She squints at his face. What's the trouble?

Something important. I want to ask.

Important? The man's resting. What kind of important?

Important is important.

He waits and she squints at him then mutters and goes up to convey his request and seems surprised when she comes down that he has agreed, yes her husband will see him, the Helger boy. Isaac climbs the spindly staircase to the apartment over the shop, the woman muttering in her teeth and watching him from underneath. When he knocks the loose door creaks in. From the hallway he sees Mr. Blumenthal washing his face at the sink. He presses his nose into a towel, tells Isaac to come in and sit. Isaac settles behind the kitchen table. Blumenthal, a man with wide wrists and a face underslung by a heavy jawbone, fetches down a chess set. You play?

Not really.

He sets up the board. You see, he says. Just like this country. Black against White.

I'm white, says Isaac.

Yes. You go first but I can promise you I know who will get the last move. And he laughs.