The Lion Seeker (57 page)

—Ja, I am thanks. Didn't come easy lemme tell you. Lot of hard graft went into it.

—Is that a fact?

—You know, Tiger, I'm not sure what it is, but I reckon I am picking up a very slight negative tone off you. Is there summin I said wrong?

—Tiger, says Isaac.

—Hey?

—Still calling me Tiger, Isaac says, coming off the wall.

—Why not, you prefer different?

—I wanna know what happened to lion.

—Lion?

—Lion.

—Ha ha, says Hugo.

Isaac sits on the desk, beside Hugo. Hugo leans back but his blue eyes flick to the telephone. Isaac reaches across and slides it away to the far side.

—Ja, those old Lion Motor days hey, says Hugo. Those were some times, I'll never forget.

—Won't you?

—Well. Too bad we couldn't make a go of it. But you learn from your mistakes hey. You dust yourself off and get back on the trail. You shine up like I always say.

—Perseverance, says Isaac.

—There's it!

Isaac takes a folded paper out of his jacket. —See this. This perseveres.

—Hey?

Isaac unfolds it, holds it out.

Hugo lifts some ivory-frame half-moon reading glasses from his pocket that Isaac never remembers him needing before; he polishes the lenses, slides them on. —Would you look at that. Isn't it the old contract hey? Ja, remember when. Poor old Silas, what he went through. Ja . . . those days. Silas, he still with me, know that? Those were rough times hey boyki. Bones of our arses. But we don't have to worry no more.

—We don't, do we.

Hugo takes off the glasses to lean across and pat Isaac's thigh. —I'm telling you Tiger! Name your job, man. Name your job. I look after my friends.

—Hugo, says Isaac.

—What?

—Hugo.

—What?

—That was my money. I put in fifteen hundred pounds. Solid. Plus another one hundred before, the first time when we started Lion. That is sixteen hundred quid, china.

—Boyki.

—Maybe you changed the name of this firm but it's still the same thing. And majority still belongs to me. You signed your name to that.

Hugo laughs. He creaks back in the seat and laughs for most of half a minute. —Ja Tiger, you got me there. This is ten times better than Malan from the Receiver's office. Ten times. S'good one.

—Is it?

—Ja perfect, you got me beautiful.

—Too bad I'm not charfing.

Hugo takes a hanky out and blows his nose and rubs his mouth with it, his chin, takes his time stuffing it back into his vest pocket. —Tiger, that other firm was dissolved how many years ago now. Get serious. This one's a—what you say—a separate enterprise. Sorry, but this paper you got means sweet blow all. In case you forgetting, you the one who disappeared on me without a word. Left me without a ball to carry. Some partner hey. But who keeps grudges?

Isaac says,—More'n a grand and a half in my hard cash. My labour.

Hugo is already shaking his head. —Really disfortunate, but all that capital went down with the ship when Lion couldn't make it, gluggedy glug. This firm here I started fresh with my own capitalizing which I raised and was no cherry garden I can tell you.

—I spose you got all the papers showing that.

—What papers? More than half a decade ago now, boykiwoyki.

—That's not what a lawyer says.

—Lawyer?

—That's right.

Hugo laughs. —A lawyer now already? Wow. Listen boyki, whoever told you you could go to court over this is paddling up his arsehole. I got plenty lawyers and believe me they can keep this thing arguing for much longer than you got money to pay your guy. Some people would be offended by what you saying but I am telling you don't worry. What are we arguing for? I'm ganna look after you, I'll set you up so beautiful just cos I don't forget those days. And hey, I know you were in the war and all, but let's not make a bad flavour here and hurt my good feeling. No more meshugena talk about Lion Motors ukay? Those was solid good times but Lion is dead and buried years ago.

Isaac nods for a long while, not looking at Hugo. —The war, he says. You talk about the war.

—Ja, well.

—Saw a lot of things.

—Hey? Ja, I spose you did hey.

Isaac is looking down at his feet, one finger tracing the line of the fresh scar on the knuckles. —While you were working here in your nice office. This one place I was in for a while, there they used to make people eat each other. I don't mean that as a whatchacallit, a symbol. I mean they used to tie someone down and leave him and other people was starving, they would cut out their liver and eat it while they was alive.

—Jesus, says Hugo.

—Changes you, says Isaac. You see a thing like that happen. Makes you think, nobody is ever ganna take a bite out of
me
. You know?

He turns his eyes back on Hugo and Hugo says nothing. —Way I see it, you in the motor game today cos you had all that stock and all those contracts to get you started. You had my sixteen hundred and all my sweat and blood that I put in. Never mind anything else.

Hugo's shaking his head.

—Now you can pay me out what that's worth, that's fine, says Isaac. Or leave it as a half share in this business and bygones be bygones and Monday morning we start running it together. I say we shake on that.

Hugo studies Isaac's hand with sadness filtering into the blue eyes over his grin. His head has not stopped its steady shaking. —Boyki, boyki, he says. I'm sorry you feel this way.

—You sure?

Hugo turns up his palms.

Isaac says,—Oright then. Only one thing left.

—Hey?

—You keep the contract and I'll take an eye off you.

—Hey?

—Like the Torah says. Eye for an eye. I reckon that's fair.

He taps the contract but never drops his fixed stare from Hugo's left eye.

—What? says Hugo, huffing a little bit but failing to take flight into full laughter. You religious now?

Isaac smiles. —That's another thing I seen in the war. Eyeballs ripped out. It's not that hard, really. If they want to stick me in prison for it, that's ukay too. I go happy if I go right, know what I mean? Doesn't matter much to me, after what I been through.

—Ha ha, says Hugo, huffing.

Isaac smiles and waits. His hand drifts to the desktop. There is no invoice spike like that other time at the Reformatory long ago but there is a stapler here and he picks it up without dropping his stare and holds it in his lap.

For a time Hugo shifts in his chair, making the leather creak. Suddenly he points at Isaac's face. —Ahhh nailed you! he says. Nailed you didn't I.

—Absolutely, says Isaac. You got me good.

—Had you going.

—That you did.

—Thought old Blezzy was tryna do the dirty on you, diden you?

—You had me for sure.

—Put it there, my partner.

—All the way, says Isaac, thin-lipped, shaking the soft hand as Hugo rises.

—So good to have you back, says Hugo, his grin perhaps a little shaky and his words lightly panted. So good. Maybe now we go get that steak hey? Not liver—ha ha. Tell you what, all a sudden I could do with a nice Scotch or two. Celebration. The war hero is home.

—I reckon, says Isaac, we should get our new papers signed and squared away first.

Hugo's grin holds.

—Wouldn't you say? says Isaac, and gives off an implacable grin of his own.

IN THE BEGINNING
the partnership is split as it was before, with Hugo handling the deal making, the advertising, the office management, and Isaac running the yards (including the one at the Reformatory, a property Hugo had long ago bought) and the staff, which reunites him with Silas Mabuza. But it's Isaac who begins to understand what is happening long before Hugo admits it to himself—Isaac with his nose in the grease and his ears on the streets, his body tuned by the torments of the war into one vibrating nerve of survival. Not that it takes an especial instinct to see what is plain: how the prices on used parts and scrap metal are sinking quickly to more reasonable levels now that factories are turning back to civilian production, now that new models of civilian automobiles—closed for the war effort—are once again flooding the market. What had made Hugo rich will no longer. Yet he continues to spend on promotions and to bank on the market share he has won for his name to carry high sales volumes on a continuous wave into the future. He doesn't see, maybe doesn't want to, that the shortages are over, the world is shining up again and will hold no particular loyalty to Bleznik AutoMetals.

And all the time, too, Isaac is noticing how much new competition is being born every day, for more than a good few returning soldiers have gone into business for themselves, and starting up a garage is a common choice, with few barriers to entry save for the mechanical knowledge that many have gained in the army. Such garages often developed into tow-truck operations and some became dealers in scrap metal and parts. Isaac watches them sprouting everywhere like tough weeds in the city's cracks. But when he tries to get Hugo to listen to him he receives only that familiarly dismissive wave from the back of Hugo's pudgy hand. What does he know, what has he done? It's Hugo who has built Bleznik AutoMetals to its number one position. Isaac says he doesn't care about any number one: the only number that counts is net profit. Hugo tells him to go back to the grease pits where he belongs.

Isaac goes. In these early years he still feels weak, still respectful of Hugo's wartime achievement (NUMBER ONE IN JHB!!!), is still drinking. Steadily, Hugo's contracts for farmland wrecks become meaningless—no longer worth the price of the shipping. And sales continue to fall; yet rather than close locations and lay off staff Hugo spends all the cash he's made in the war to prop them up and begins even to borrow. Number one, number one.

At least there's no more gambling, Isaac thinks. For himself, he goes on working hard every day with his hands, keeping to long hours and few distractions, letting the manual labour of stripping wrecks with the boys in the yard slowly re-energize his haunted spirit. His stomach gradually heals itself too and, though he is still thin and hard as a rail, his mame's good cooking has put meat into the crannies of his face and around his neck so that he does not seem the starkly gaunt figure worthy of a double take that he had been on his return.

 

In the summer of 1947 there comes a crisis weekend: Isaac has a meeting with the accountant without telling Hugo, then he calls Hugo to join him at the office where they can all face the facts of life together, recorded there in plain and unforgiving ink. After all the shouting is done it is Isaac who prevails, pulling out the papers he made Hugo sign that first day in the Vrededorp office, pointing out the magical number of fifty-one percent allotted to his name.

The next month the company restructures under a name both new and old: Lion Metals. All properties are sold off except for the Vrededorp building. Staff is cut and debt reduced. Remembering his days as a panel beater, Isaac knows the importance of the insurance companies, the ones who used to send all the work to Gold Reef. Now he sees they are the key to locking up a future supply of wrecks to be turned into parts and scrap metal. Yes, there may be a thousand little towing operations in Johannesburg at the moment, but the insurance companies, themselves consolidating, will not for long deal with such a petty multitude. In time one firm must become the largest, one firm must dominate. Isaac knows which it must be, will be. The war has hardened him to function in a world of eater and eaten—the world Avrom Suttner once revealed to him, prepared him for.

It becomes Hugo's job to concentrate on charming insurance men with long lunches and discreet gifts. In the meantime Isaac starts getting aggressive about finding towing jobs to keep up the cash flow. The key here is to be first on the scene at an accident and this they try to achieve by bribing police radio dispatchers to give them a ring. They aren't the only ones pursuing this tactic and after a second driver comes back to the Vrededorp yard with a lump like a golf ball on his head instead of the salvage job, Isaac takes to following his trucks in his car, bringing Silas along. If there is any sort of hassle with another tow truck trying to chup away their business, they both pull balaclavas down over their faces and come out of nowhere fast, Silas with a traditional assegai, a stabbing spear, two feet of razor steel shaped like a diamond, and Isaac with a jack handle. While Isaac interacts with the other crew (vigorously or mildly, depending on their attitudes), Silas darts around with the assegai, opening up at least two of their tires before anyone can realize what is happening.

By the end of that year, Lion Metals has secured several lucrative insurance contracts and they no longer have to chase after towing business and can send their trucks out to collect their wrecks in a civilized manner from either the police impound lot or another tow company's. Hugo's charm has won and is continuing to win the necessary battles. The more insurance work they do the more they receive. They have a relatively smaller business now than before (when Hugo was NUMBER ONE!!!) but it makes a solid profit and its growth is steady. Still, Hugo mopes: no longer is he the star of the half-page ads. Isaac cheers him by offering to sell out some of his share of the business so that Hugo can have majority control.

—Now why would you do a thing like that?

—Only one reason in the world.

A FAINT VARIANT OF
The Pain had always been with Gitelle, only hardly ever severe enough to disrupt her life: just a sense of pressure in the lower back and under the floating ribs on the right side, as if some phantom had its knuckles pressed against her from the inside. Sometimes back spasms would flair up, true, as they had during that worrying time right before the war, but who doesn't get back spasms? They always subsided and seemed unconnected to the feeling. She would later not be able to remember exactly how long the faint pressure had been with her—years, yes, but how many?—but she would never forget the day that it mutated. Enlarged.