The Lion Seeker (39 page)

—Ja, sick of work, I think, lately.

—No.

—Isaac, I got my eye on you.

—Just a cold, Franzie. I promise.

— . . . Oright.

—Oright then.

A car worker without a car, he takes the bus out to Parktown. Waits there in that little park with willow trees down the road from The Castle. He never had such mad feelings inside him in all his life. There's this terrible wilding pain in his chest and a sense of overwhelming desperation; it's like the need to breathe only
she
won't let him. He feels like a dog wounded by its owner and in its pain all it can do is go back to the same owner for the caresses it has become dependent on, but there is no caress, only another kick. He knows his face must be white as soap.

Usually she gets a lift to school with the Cruel Duke but she won't this morning. There is no rational basis for this knowledge in him yet he knows it with no doubts: she'll take the bus today. He walks up and down behind the willows. The sun's pale rays start to thicken to a harsher yellow. He digs out another Max cigarette, the last of the pack. He doesn't remember smoking them all. What is he doing? Am I going mental here? Is this what it is to be truly mad in the head? If I saw myself I would laugh so hard at me, at how stupid, how pathetic. But I am in myself: this
is
me. His mouth so dry he can't dredge up any tobacco spit. He is chewing his nails in lieu of cigarettes when she comes down the street in her uniform: her green blazer and tartan skirt, the stockings on her long strong legs. She does not show shock or even mild surprise. She gives him cat's eyes, blank and observing, full of disdainful tranquility. —What now? is what she says.

—No lift this morning hey?

She watches him.

—Why not hey?

—What is this, Isaac?

—They gone away?

She nods once then seems to try to erase the fact she's made this gesture by shaking herself.

—Where to, he says, Switzerland?

—Yes Switzerland, she tells him with her flat eyes and voice. Switzerland, America, Asia. The Med. London. Antarctica.

—That's nice, he says.

—And I'm going to school.

—I know.

—And you're going to work.

—Yes.

—So goodbye.

She steps around and keeps on.

—Yvonne.

He has to follow, double-stepping to catch up. —Yvonne, what did you want me to do hey?
I
never stabbed him. I was right here in this street tryna help. His blood was on my clothes. I went back to work and got kuk for that, you know that?

—Isaac, please.

—What?

—Come on. He's just. He's just a kaffir to you.

He has no words for this new cold rage in her.

—And you're just a con, she says. Like everyone. On your own you wouldn't have lifted a finger. If it wasn't for me. Tell the truth. It's nothing to you if he lives or if he dies.

He bites at lips so dry. —You know what I think on these things. I'm not perfect hey.

She stops. —Well neither am I!

Her eyes look wet now. —I'm eighteen, Isaac. I mean I am eighteen years old. You understand that right?

But he doesn't.

—Isaac, this just isn't . . . Isaac, just forget this all, right, forget it.

—What am I supposed to do?

She shakes her head.

He squeezes the hard small thing in his pocket so that his forearm aches. —Look at me standing here, he says. I love you Yvonne. I love you.

She starts walking again.

—It wasn't my fault!

She keeps going and he follows after. —He didn't die, did he?

She doesn't answer.

—Yvonne.

—How would we even know? God.

Then she stops again. —Why don't you go find out for me?

—Hey?

—Yes, go. Instead of words. Go on. Do
that
for me.

—For you, he says.

—Well look around. I'm the one in high school, mister. You're the one's supposed to be all grown-up, with the car and the money and the job. You
could
go.

She's facing him now, her green eyes level, a little pinched down in their staring.

—I don't have a car, he tells her. The one I's borrowing went back. I took the bus.

She blows a puff of air through her nose once, her chin lifting. —See.

—I would.

—Listen, she says.
I'd
go. I have the guts and I'd drive us anywhere if I could, and to hell with school. But you, you don't mean anything. You're just words.

—I don't have one, Yvonne. I don't collect Cadillacs.

She watches him with her pinched-down eyes in a silence, then gives another snort, shakes her head so that the ends of her hair dance. —Yes but you're the same as him. You're both the same thing.

—How you ganna say that to me?

—Dadsy and his Cadsy, she says, looking off.

He reaches for a joke then, something to force some air and space and lightness between them, trying to smash at the dead weight of her cold negation. —We could always take
that
.

She doesn't smile and she doesn't laugh. She faces him.

 

He's not allowed even to stand on the driveway so he waits on the pavement under the municipal jacaranda trees till even after the garage door has rumbled up. She comes down the drive and waves to him without looking directly—her firm impervious distance a horror he must ignore and pretend not to be affected by.

—School sorted?

—I rang them. Said my parents will confirm when they get back.

—Will they?

—Never bloody mind that. Her agitated foot tapping, her eyes anywhere but on him, hideous Isaac.

—Oright, so . . . you ready?

She folds her arms. He waits a while then repeats himself. She shakes her head but goes uphill and he follows behind her. The garage door's still up, the garage empty but for the bulked sheepskin to the left in the open clean space. No chance of Moses hiding in any dark corners.

She says half in a mutter,—Why couldn't you get one? Borrow a different one?

—I just couldn't, oright. Look, if you wanna leave it, if it's too much . . . 

He gets a direct look then, a hard loathing glare that in Jewish would be called a glotz.

He tries a shrug. —Anyway, where's the other car? If it was here, I'd rather . . . I mean. It makes no difference to me hey. It's.

—They've gone to the Drakensberg, she says. A motor holiday.

—Oh, he says. Nice.

She is rubbing her brow with the back of her hand, looking into the garage, muttering: —Phinneas is driving them . . . But there's no key for the . . . I mean he keeps it locked.

—I told you that's no problem.

Now he recognizes some fear in her face and it makes him feel calmer to know it's growing in her, with the reality of what they are doing on them like this. He goes past her, over to the sheepskin cover, bends to take hold of an edge, then remembers what Moses did that time, the straps underneath. Good old Moses. Lead us to the promised land hey won't you mate.

He looks back to say: —Wanna give me a hand with this?

She doesn't move.

—The easy part, he says.

 

They roll quietly to the bottom of the driveway, only the soft jouncing of the rubber on the flagstones. She goes back to shut the garage; meanwhile he gets out to open the bonnet. He stops. The automobile is immaculately clean and the morning light looks astonishingly beautiful on the cream white steel of its long form: in front a silver angel with backswept wings leans forward into an imagined wind; the swoop of the mudguards under which the whitewall tires nestle reminds him of one of Hugo's good fedoras; the long chassis and the silver lines detailing the bodywork speak to him of speed and power in a way that makes his skin ripple with gooseflesh. Like a statue chiselled from one block of pure new marble. He lifts the bonnet, the massive engine makes him whistle in his teeth. He touches a screwdriver between two points on the starter, that's all it takes, then a few tugs on the accelerator wire to make sure. Its rev sound is low and smooth and throbbing.

Yvonne is sitting in the passenger seat with her arms folded.

 

Now he is piloting the steel mass of this American driving machine down Gilder Lane. Now turning.

—How is it? she says.

—It floats.

—I don't mean that.

He corrects the drift to the centre; the feeling of being wrong, sitting on this side, is not diminishing.

—Go slowly.

—I keep looking the wrong way for the rearview.

He changes into third, gentle on the stick off the steering column. Everything smells of leather. There's a clock in the centre of the dashboard with horizontal lines of inset steel on either side and the nose of the automobile is very long ahead of them through the angled windshields, the silver windswept angel at the tip marking the view of a rich man's world.

—I keep wanting to change with the wrong hand.

—Are you all right with it?

—Ja, I just keep bumping the right hand, I mean my left one, which is the right one for changing, ha.

—Don't talk about it, just concentrate.

They are merging near Empire Road, the high road swooping down to the low, and Isaac has already looked over the wrong shoulder. His head whips back and he sees a car looping fast out into the oncoming lane to miss them, hears the distorted notes—
eeyow
—of the hooter as it passes. Fuck, is what he says.

—Be careful man!

—Is oright hey, he says in a while. I'm getting the hang now, serious.

He gives it a little more: the V16 surges, so quiet and so much power. Jesus but she is a dreamboat. Three tons but it's like on oiled ball bearings. Jesus but she's lovely. Oh I love cars, good cars like this, smooth as oil she is.

—Slow slow Isaac. Slow.

—Just a little bit, she wants to open up. She's a beauty. An American darling.

—Slow down now.

—Oright, oright. I'll easy on her. She wants to run me but I'll easy-easy on her. Yes darling I will.

He has a feeling Yvonne might be smiling so he glances across, but her face is set hard.

—Watch the bloody road.

—I will, says Isaac. Absolutely.

THEY DRIVE SOUTH AND WEST FOR A LONG WHILE
, to the far side of the city, and finally reach a road that passes along a rise to their left with a fence at the crest made of concrete boards. Where there are gaps in these boards there are glimpses of the Black world on the other side: the rocks on the roofs of rusted tin and cardboard, the red dust and rusted wire. Comes a road sign warning of Blacks crossing, a picture of them silhouetted on a road, and the words
PASOP NATURELLE VOOR—CAUTION NATIVES AHEAD
. Yvonne says it makes them seem like animals in a game reserve. What is it she would prefer, see them getting run down? But he nods. A little farther and they reach the crossing place, a crowd here of mothers with little ones strapped to their backs in blankets and sacks of mielie meal balanced on their clothed heads. Isaac slows. Now the smell tips through the windows: burning rubbish, sweetish taint of exposed sewage, sweat of many bodies. He eases the Cadillac to the roadside.

—What are you doing?

—You sure you want to do this?

—You're not?

—I'll go in, I'm not chicken or nothing, I'm just asking.

—There's nothing to ask.

He nods. We'll see, Princess. Princess ganna learn today. Blacks have meanwhile drifted closer to stare at this huge machine that could be made of polished ivory, so brilliant in the bright sun. He turns it very slowly, tires crackling on raw stony earth. His mouth mutters that he can't believe he's doing this and she, very quick, cuts back at him: —Doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Just keep going.

Then, as if truly enfolded in the swamping numbness of a dream, the Cadillac is away from the tarred road of the Whites and climbing a rise of baked red soil dotted with clumps of yellow grass and fat-leaved cacti. —Illegal for us hey, his mouth says. I think Whites can go in jail for coming here.

He'd forgotten that possibility.

—What? she says.

Watch your mouth, he thinks of himself, watch your thoughts from getting out, it feels a dream but it is no dream. He says: —Nothing. Then: —Jee-zus.

Ahead Blacks on the path turn to look over their shoulders at them and it occurs to Isaac this path isn't meant for cars, it's missing the parallel grooves that tires would have worn. No, Blacks have no cars. Some are on bicycles but mostly they are walking and mostly they stop to turn and to stare.

They start to pass them, waiting on the side, staring in. A woman in the blue and white uniform of her church, with a star pinned to her bosom on a strip of green felt. A man with khaki trousers and a horrified face under his hat, with goggling eyes and a mouth open like a pink flesh flower full of teeth. Boys and girls start running beside them, Isaac so slow and cautious they can almost keep up. Then a bicycle in the middle of the path ahead, the rider, a bareheaded boy, looks behind and almost falls at the sharking surprise of the Cadillac rising behind him. He pedals hard to the side, with his eyes never leaving them. As they pass, Isaac sees on the front of the bike how a live goat has been lashed with wire and twine, its legs folded tight to the ribs. The mouth bleating steadily, showing a blue tongue.

They crest. The path falls away to Orlando: clumped boxes in the dust and farther out concrete rows. Ahead on the path a line of small children in short pants, with bare feet. They don't move even when Isaac taps the hooter. Yvonne seems ready to get out and he almost catches her arm. Then an old man with the salt of a grey beard speckling his chin hurries from behind and takes the children aside in a chain of holding hands. In profile, Isaac sees how their bellies protrude and he thinks how well fed they must be, fat as little piglets they are, and what commie propaganda it is that they have nothing to eat.