The Lion Seeker (51 page)

But how to reach the man, how to get round that fucken lawyer. You try and you get cut off forever. No contact means no contact. But there's always a way. If you find that lion inside yourself like he said to do. Means the guts to go after it. But not being a Stupid about it, not just ringing and asking, no. Get some other way, find some means of appealing to his cousin Avrom . . . 

He comes back to the sight of Blumenthal. Ask this man about Avrom and especially Avrom's father that Mame would never talk about. Whatever can be learned about Avrom Suttner and the father Hershel Moskevitch could maybe be the angle he needs, the little something that makes all the difference. A family detail that could put him in with Avrom, past that cocky mamzor of a lawyer.

He turns to the small room, the dark fabric stacked up high in cool rolls to the left, the sewing table containing the Singer machine now stored away inverted under the flat top. He still can't find the bladey watch cap. He pulls on the scooter helmet. In the yard under the rain he goes through the narrow gap behind the outhouse to reach the house wall then edges along the bricks to the kitchen window. Blumenthal's still there, hukking away to someone he can't make out. Isaac flicks some little stones gently at the glass; at the fourth Blumenthal frowns and has a look. Isaac puts out his hand, catches the man's eye. Blumenthal's mouth opens. Isaac puts a finger to his lips and points to the yard, makes a round-the-corner move with his arm then presses his lips again. Blumenthal stares at him. Isaac nods fiercely. Okay? Okay?

 

Isaac stands in the rain, his helmet dripping. Blumenthal comes around the tin hut of the sewing room, mopping water from his brow with the back of his sleeve. —Yitzchok, vos macht du dorten?

—Not doing anything here. I just wanna ask you something.

—Du kookt azay veiss in ponnim.

—I'm not sick, I'm fine.

—Vos?

I lost my job today, Isaac says, going into Yiddish also.

Ai. Woe. Woe. I'm sorry to hear. And on Rosh Hashanah also.

Don't say a thing to my parents.

I won't.

Want to ask you. You know my uncle Hershel, back in Dusat. Want to ask about him and the boy he had.

Hershel?

Sure, my ma's older brother. Hershel Moskevitch. He ran away to Vilna.

Brother? Vilna? No-o.

He was the older brother, maybe it was before your time. I know he died young.

Blumenthal smears more water from his heavy-jawed face. He shakes his head. Isaac leans closer, catches the hint of Mame's sweet herring on the man's breath mingled with the tobacco and brandy. He takes hold of his arms. Just tell me. It's all right. I already know it.

Youngster, I don't want to mix in with this business. Your mother, ask her. Ask your father.

Just tell me straight. It's important.

Blumenthal takes a half step back; Isaac pulls him in, shakes the arms. Tell me straight!

But Blumenthal keeps shaking his big jaw, slowly but definitely. Isaac, Isaac, cool down. I'm speaking God's truth. Everyone knew your grandfather with his six girls. And believe me if anyone ran away to Vilna everyone would have known. In Dusat there couldn't be secrets.

Six girls, says Isaac. What are you saying? What about Hershel?

I'm not saying egg noodles. I'm telling you Zalman the butcher had girls, that's it, cut and salted.

No son?

Did you hear me?

You're sure?

Enough enough. Take your hands off me. This is going somewhere I don't want to go. I'm not here to stir trouble.

—Kayn tzores, says Isaac, letting go. No trouble.

 

From inside the sewing room, Isaac watches Blumenthal leaving in the rain through the gateway in the low brick wall. He turns to face the fabric rolls and the sewing table and the random goods piled against the tin wall behind, the shapes of stacked broken chairs, bedposts, crown mouldings, and in the corner the frames and the never-dusted mirrors. It fits, what he said. No record of Avrom, you've always known it. So Mame lied. Everyone lies. You can't depend on no one. Not Yvonne, not the okes at the shop, not Hugo. Who
is
Avrom? God knows. Of course he's not ganna help, you
child
. He never was: all this talk of leaving messages for him—another bladey lie. All this immigration kuk is just some pie in the stuffing sky. Just some strange struggle going on between Avrom-whoever-he-is and Gitelle, that he has no real idea about. Chances are there's no money at all and never was. Think: all of a sudden when he tries to ring him up the lawyer bells back to say, Oh ja, I was just about to ring
you
. Kuk! They playing me like a toy. Not even related to us! His heart clouts and clouts at his ribs. The lying scum at the shop setting him up with the kitty, and no one even believes the truth in a liar's world. Everyone's out to get you in the end.

He finds that he is biting into his fist. He pulls it away from the teeth, the flesh indented. A powerful urge vaults in him. He picks his way to the back corner, shifts the mirrors and squats; part of the tin wall at the bottom can bend away. Behind is a little suede bag and a big yellow envelope. He takes the little bag and tips the ring out onto his palm. It's not very bright in the darkness. He finds that he is making a low keening sound. He looks around and gets some heavy cutting shears off the table. He grips the ring in the blades and drives it against the hard floor and twists it. A sob comes out of him. When the silver snaps he takes fresh bites with the shears. He stamps with his heel, grinding. Everything, he thinks. All of it. He pulls out the envelope, removes the papers and puts on the light. He wants to hold the forms to the hot bulb till they run with flames and dribble ashes, what suits these lying bladey filthy lies. When she told him that time in the car outside the bank to make everything clean between them it wasn't clean it was filth she was giving him. The same as it was when Yvonne held him close in her room, feeding him all of those meaningless whispers. And when they hid stolen money in the Jewboy's locker.

The papers bump the light and it sways on the cord. The words
Vance, Johnson and Smythe, Attorneys at Law
moving in and out of shadow. Papendropolous saying, on the telephone, about
the other gentleman
. The other gentleman—that means the lawyer, the one supposed to have the cash in a safe, waiting. Three numbers to call him and a letter of release for the funds.
If
it's true. If. Slowly, he lowers the papers. He finds the legal letter and reads it and goes to the window and looks out at the yard. He stands that way for an hour. The rain picks up, so hard it's like buckets of water are being dashed against the glass. It's getting late, more hunched-over guests keep leaving through the yard, running home to get ready for dinner with their families in these Days of Awe.

He goes on standing and he watches the back door open and Mame comes out. Watches her run towards him through the rain with an umbrella open above her, a stout Yiddisher mame in a print dress with blue flowers and short sleeves, slippers splashing, the bulb of the hanky she always keeps in her sleeve against the soft upper arm that jiggles as she moves. Her rectangular face bent forward so that he does not see the scar. Yes, please come here, Mame. Please run here to me.

She cuts across to the outhouse.

There's a space of nothingness, when he fades out of wherever he is standing and fades back to see her disappearing into the house. Some kind of standing swoon, some kind of sleep on his feet. As if a thought can be so heavy he must black away from its very looming.

We've already contacted the other gentleman
.

His mind circles the meaning in these six words. Are you a lion or are you a sheep? That's what
he
told me to be. So decide it. A Stupid or a Clever, a lion or a lamb, no other way. When everyone lies through their filthy teeth and takes and takes from you. Decide it. When the world comes to feed on you and it's only yourself even when all your life all you tried to do was your best, to be a good son. It's only yourself now. This is only you. Forget everyone else. Even her. Time to be strong for you. Afterwards when it comes time for charity
then
you can help them all. Mame and her family. With houses and boat tickets and visas, it doesn't matter. They don't need it now like you do. They've been waiting so long let them wait a bit more. Now is the time to take hold of the gold that is in your hands, you understand that? That you've worked yourself halfway to the death for. If you don't at least
try
to survive there will be nothing for you and nothing for anyone else either. Don't be a Stupid, Isaac, worse than a bladerfool. To go and admit it to her and to
be
that—never never never.

He goes on standing.

We've already contacted the other gentleman.

Man, there's nothing there. But there
might
be. Sitting there.

The whole idea falls to him then, not in a rush but calmly, fully—as complete in every detail as an intricate gift from the devil's own hand.

 

When he moves, he feels dazed: amazing how much time has passed in the relentless wash of his circling thoughts, a whirlpool current he was powerless to slow or to stand apart from. He disbelieves the little clock on the table. The darkness gathering outside is the evening spreading above the rain clouds. His body is stiff from the standing and it hurts badly in the places where the men hurt him at the shop. He licks the burn but it goes on stinging. His ribs twang some notes of agony when he sits by the sewing table to open a drawer. She keeps her order book here, and notepads. He tears off a clean sheet from a notepad. The sewing table has another lamp that she uses for working at night. He puts it on. Takes up a pen and dates the page. He looks down at the sheet for a long time.

Then, in careful block letters without pausing, he writes:

 

I, GITELLE HELGER, GIVE FULL AUTHORITY TO MY SON, ISAAC HELGER, TO SIGN ON MY BEHALF WITH THE LAWYER MR. VANCE OF VANCE, JOHNSON AND SMYTHE, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. AS THE REASON FOR WHICH IS ILLNESS THAT I CANNOT ATTEND
.

ALL HAS BEEN ARRANGED IN ACCORDENCE WITH MY PROPER WISHES
.

Translated from mouth by Isaac Helger, signed,

Signed by Gitelle Helger,

 

After he has written this he reads it over with his lips moving, nine times. Then he signs his name. He gets up and takes a sheet of glass off the wall and puts it on the sewing table with a small part overhanging. He finds a loose carbon copy of a page from Mame's order book, where she has signed off an order completed, under other notes made in her quick unvowelled Hebrew characters. He uses some tape from the drawer to stick the page on the underside of the overhanging glass. Then he puts the sewing lamp close under it on a footstool. When he puts his letter on top of the glass her writing underneath shows through and he copies the signature precisely. He takes another sheet and composes in Yiddish, carefully copying each Hebrew letter by sliding the sheet around over the original. He signs that one with her mark also.

When he looks up there is a tight feeling in his head, as if some tiny vital screw like the screws his father works with has been turned and turned till there's hardly room for his pulses to twitch in his temples.

He goes to the door; sheets of rain still rake the yard. He puts out his hand and cups a little cold water to his face. You'll be all right. Things will be all right. For everyone, in the end.

He looks around for something to keep the papers dry.

IN THE HOUSE ON THIS SABBATH NIGHT
, this second night of holy Rosh Hashanah, he knows that Rively and Mame and Tutte will be at the kitchen table with a white tablecloth and candles in silver candlesticks and a platter of fried latkes and another of gefilte fish and maybe a third of chopped herring with grated onion and crumbled egg. Maybe there'll be guests, the Altmans. They'll dip apple slices in honey and wish each other a sweet new year, next year in Jerusalem; but he knows they won't wait for him, they'll assume he's gone to work late at the Reformatory.

He has his papers inside a satchel on his back and has wrapped a sheet of oilcloth from the sewing room around himself and is driving the scooter through the rain. Shops in Doornfontein are closed. He finds what he needs in the Oriental district in the rougher part of Vrededorp that people call Fietas, gaining strange looks when he walks into a shop on Fourteenth Street with his helmet on and won't take it off for a fitting. He uses a nearby tickey box that smells of curry. There are some badly shivering moments before he lifts his hand off the hook.

Ten minutes after he has hung up he is still standing there: the dazed feeling. He had not truly believed. Then he drives through this rain that will not ease to an office building in town, on Diagonal Street.

 

There are night lights on in a marble lobby, crystal sconces crowded by shadows in the cool stone. A statue of a woman with her hair swept back in clean lines reminds Isaac of the ornament on a certain automobile bonnet. Don't think of
that
, it's not any coincidence, just the modern style: smooth chrome face of the 1930s, after which comes what nobody knows. He shakes the rain from the coat he bought with the other things at the churu shop. The night boy who lets him in takes the coat to hang up, then crumples a bronze lattice in front of the lift doors and the engine shrills to life. As Isaac is ridden up he is thinking there is still time to stop. Five, six. Now seven. Still time to say no and turn back. He is shown to a shadowed couch at the end of the hall against a window with a potted fern beside. He waits but does not sit. It takes over an hour before he hears the lift shrilling and humming again. He watches a man with no hat and an unbuttoned jacket come towards him. He whispers Isaac's name, as if this dark hour will tolerate no full-voiced heartiness. Isaac whispers back in the same illicit spirit and the man unlocks an office door.