The Pickup Read online

  If you want. I could do that.

  Oh wonderful. Do you perhaps know of someone who would have a good car they’d like to sell? You might get to hear …

  People sometimes come to the garage … I can look around. If you want. What kind of car?

  Not a Rover, you can bet on that!

  Yes, but two-door, four-door, automatic—whatever.

  There was a space before the EL-AY Café. She obeyed the man-child who signalled her in with his glue-sniffer’s plastic bottle in hand. Arguing about the model of car, the level of possession appropriate for her, they left hers and took the steps to the terrace. This time went inside, this time he was taken to the friends’ table.

  Hi Julie; a rearrangement of chairs. —This is Abdu, he’s going to find new wheels for me.—

  Hi Abdu. (Sounds to them like an abbreviation of Abdurahman, familiar among names of Malays in Cape Town.) The friends have no delicacy about asking who you are, where you come from—that’s just the reverse side of bourgeois xenophobia. No, not the Cape. They have his story out of him in no time at all, they interject, play upon it with examples they know of, advice they have to offer, interest that is innocently generous or unwelcome, depends which way the man might take it—but at once, he’s not a ‘garage man’ he’s a friend, one of them, their horizon is broadening all the time.

  So that’s where he’s from; one of them knows all about that benighted country. The ‘garage man’ has a university degree in economics there (the university is one nobody’s heard of) but there isn’t a hope in hell (and that place is a hell that, because of god knows what, probably the religious and political factions he did or did not belong to, or lack of money to pay bribes to the right people) he could get an academic appointment. Or a job of any kind, maybe; no work, no development, what can you grow in a desert, corrupt government, religious oppression, cross-border conflict—composite, if inaccurate, of all they think they know about the region, they’re telling him about his country. But then she hears an explanation for something he had said to her she hadn’t understood. He’s telling them: —I can’t say that—‘my country’—because somebody else made a line and said that is it. In my father’s time they gave it to the rich who run it for themselves. So whose country I should say, it’s mine.—

  With them, his English is adequate enough and they have not been embarrassed to ask from what mother tongue his accent and locutions come. One of them enquires hopefully of this foreignness, since she has adopted the faith that is a way of life, not a bellicose ethnicity. —Are you a Buddhist?—

  —No I am not that.—

  And again, he has risen, he has to leave them, he’s a mechanic, he belongs to the manual world of work. One of them ponders, breaking a match over and over. —An economist having to become a grease-monkey. I wonder how he learned that stuff with cars.—

  Another had the answer.

  —Needs must. The only way to get into countries that don’t want you is as manual labourer or Mafia.—

  A week went by. She would never see him again. It happened, among the friends, with the people they picked up: —Where’s that girl you brought along, the one who said she’d been a speech-writer for some cabinet minister who was sacked?— —Oh she seems to have left town.— —And the other guy—interesting—he wanted to organize street kids as buskers, playing steel drums outside cinemas, did he ever get that off the ground?— —No idea where he landed up.—

  Two weeks. Of course the man from the garage knew where to find her. He approached the friends’ table on a Saturday morning to tell her he had found a car for her. The garage workshop was closed on Saturdays and now he was wearing well-ironed black jeans, a rose-coloured shirt with a paisley scarf at the neck. They insisted he must have coffee; it was someone’s birthday and the occasion quickly turned the coffee to red wine. He didn’t drink alcohol; he looked at her lifting her glass: I’ve brought the car for you to drive.

  And the friends, who were ready to laugh at anything, in their mood, did so clownishly—O-HO-HOHOHO!—assuring him, —Julie has a strong head, not to worry!— But she refused a second glass.

  —The cops are out with their breathalysers, it’s the weekend.—

  The car was not to her liking—too big, difficult to park— and perhaps it was not meant to be. He had a contact who was on the lookout, he would bring another the next weekend. If that was all right.

  First she said she didn’t know if she’d be free; and then she did it, she told him her telephone number. No paper to note it on. The celebration with the friends was still warm upon her, she laughed. Put it on your wrist. And then was embarrassed at her flippancy because he took a ballpoint out of his pocket, turned his wrist face-up, and was writing the number across the delicate skin and the blue veins revealed of himself, there.

  He called, brief and formal over the telephone, addressing her as ‘Miss’ with her surname, and the arrangement was for an earlier date, after working hours. That car, again, was not quite right for her. They drove a short way out of town to confirm this. It was as if freed of the city it was not only the road open to them; with her face turned to that road ahead she was able to ask what the friends had touched on— needs must. How does a graduate in economics become a motor mechanic? Wasn’t that quite a long training, apprenticeship and so on? And as he began to speak, she interrupted: Look, I’m Julie, don’t call me anything else.

  Julie. Well, Julie. His voice was low although they were alone, on the road, no-one to overhear. He was hesitant, after all, did he really know this girl, her gossiping friends, the loud careless forum of the EL-AY Café; but the desire to confide in her overcame him. He was no qualified mechanic. Luckily for him he had tinkered with cars since he was a small boy, his uncle—mother’s brother—fixed people’s cars and trucks in his backyard … he learnt from him instead of playing with other boys … The garage employs him illegally—’black’, yes that’s the word they use. It’s cheap for the owner; he doesn’t pay accident insurance, pension, medical aid. And now the seldom-granted smile, and this time it rises to the intense, solemn eyes as she turns her glance a moment to him. All the principles of workers’ rights I was taught in my studies.

  What an awful man, exploiter.

  What would I do without him. He risks, I must pay for that. That’s how it works, for us.

  The next car was the right one—size, fuel consumption, price—and perhaps it had always been available, kept in reserve for the right time to be revealed. She was pleased with the car and also had the satisfaction (although she could not say this to him) he surely would get some sort of kick-back from whoever the owner was—unqualified, working ‘black’ he couldn’t be earning much.

  We must celebrate. Good you convinced me it was time to get rid of the old rattle-trap. Really. I’m just lazy about these things. But you don’t drink wine …

  Oh sometimes.

  Fine! Then we’ll christen my new car.

  But not at the café.

  He had spoken: with this, a change in their positions was swiftly taken, these were smoothly and firmly reversed, like a shift of gears synchronized under her foot; he was in charge of the acquaintanceship.

  At my place then.

  In quiet authority, he had no need to enthuse accord.

  Even though it passed muster with the whites among the friends that her ‘place’ was sufficiently removed from The Suburbs’ ostentation to meet their standards of leaving home behind, and was accepted by the blacks among them as the kind of place they themselves moved to from the old segregation, her outhouse renovated as a cottage was comfortable enough, its under-furnishings nevertheless giving away a certain ease inherent in, conditioned by, luxuries taken for granted as necessities: there was a bathroom that dwarfed the living-cum-bedroom by comparison, and the cramped kitchen was equipped with freezer and gadgets. It was untidy; the quarters of someone not used to looking after herself; to seat himself he removed the stained cup and plate and a spatter of envelo
pes, sheets of opened letters, withered apple-peel, old Sunday paper, from a chair. She was making the usual apologies about the mess, as she did to whoever dropped in. She opened wine, found a packet of biscuits, sniffed at cheese taken from the fridge and rejected it in favour of another piece. He watched this domesticity without offering help, as her friends would, nobody lets anyone wait on anyone else. But he ate her cheese and biscuits, he drank her wine, with her that first time. They talked until late; about him, his life; hers was here, where they were, in her city, open in its nature for him to see in the streets, the faces, the activities—but he, his, was concealed among these. No record of him on any pay-roll, no address but c/o a garage, and under a name that was not his. Another name? She was bewildered: but there he was, a live presence in her room, an atmosphere of skin, systole and diastole of breath blending with that which pervaded from her habits of living, the food, the clothes lying about, the cushions at their backs. Not his? No—because they had let him in on a permit that had expired more than a year ago, and they would be looking for him under his name.

  And then?

  He gestured: Out.

  Where would he go? She looked as if she were about to make suggestions; there are always solutions in the resources she comes from.

  He leant to pour himself some more wine, as he had reached across for the sugar-bowl. He looked at her and slowly smiled.

  But surely … ?

  Still smiling, moving his head gently from side to side. There was a litany of the countries he had tried that would not let him in. I’m a drug dealer, a white-slave trader coming to take girls, I’ll be a burden on the state, that’s what they say, I’ll steal someone’s job, I’ll take smaller pay than the local man.

  And at this last, they could laugh a moment because that was exactly what he was doing.

  It’s terrible. Inhuman. Disgraceful.

  No. Don’t you see them round all the places you like to go, the café. Down there, crack you can buy like a box of matches, the street corner gangs who take your wallet, the women any man can buy—who do they work for? The ones from outside who’ve been let in. Do you think that’s a good thing for your country.

  But you … you’re not one of them.

  The law’s the same for me. Like for them. Only they are more clever, they have more money—to pay. His long hand opened, the fingers unfolding before her, joint by joint.

  There are gestures that decide people’s lives: the hand-grasp, the kiss; this was the one, at the border, at immigration, that had no power over her life.

  Surely something can be done. For him.

  He folded the fingers back into a fist, dropped it to his knee. His attention retreated from the confidence between them and escaped absently to the pile of CDs near him. They found they did share something: an enthusiasm for Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour and Rhythm & Blues, and listened to her recordings on her system, of which he highly approved. You like to drive a second-hand car but you have first-class equipment for music.

  It seemed both sensed at the same moment that it was time for him to leave. She took it for granted she would drive him home but he refused, he’d catch a combi ride.

  Is that all right? Is it far? Where are you living?

  He told her: there was a room behind the garage the owner let him have.

  She looked in—didn’t allow herself to ask herself why.

  Looked in on the garage, to tell him that the car was going well. And it was about the time of his lunch break. Where else to go but, naturally, the EL-AY Café, join the friends. And soon this became almost every day: if she appeared without him, they asked, where’s Abdu? They liked to have him among them, they knew one another too well, perhaps, and he was an element like a change in climate coming out of season, the waft of an unfamiliar temperature. He did not take much part in their unceasing talk but he listened, sometimes too attentively for their comfort.

  —What happened to Brotherhood, I’d like to ask? Fat cats in the government. Company chairmen. In the bush they were ready to die for each other—no, no, that’s true, grant it—now they’re ready to drive their official Mercedes right past the Brother homeless here out on the street.—

  —Did you see on the box last night—the one who was a battle commander at Cuito, a hero, he’s joined an exclusive club for cigar connoisseurs … it’s oysters and champagne instead of pap and goat meat.—

  The elderly poet had closed his eyes and was quoting something nobody recognized as not his own work: —’Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.’—

  No-one paid him attention.

  —Doesn’t make sense … why should people abandon what they’ve believed and fought for, what’s got into them between then and now?—

  What was he thinking, this intelligence dressed up as a grease-monkey—when he did have something to say it would puncture one of their opinions or trim one of their vociferous convictions. If he did speak, they listened:

  —No chance to choose then. Nothing else. That porridge and for each one, the other. Now there is everything else. Here. To choose.—

  —Hah! So Brotherhood is only the condition of suffering? Doesn’t apply when you have choice, and the choice is the big cheque and the company car, the nice perks of Minister.—

  —That is how it is. You have no choose—choice—or you have choice. Only two kinds. Of people.—

  And they choose to laugh. —Abdu, what a cynic.—

  —So come on David, what kind are you, in his categories—

  —Well at the moment my choice is pitta with haloumi.—

  —There’s no free will in a capitalist economy. It’s the bosses’ will. That’s what the man’s really saying.— The political theorist among them is dismissive.

  —You say that because you’re black, it’s old trade unionist stuff, my Bra, and meanwhile you’re yearning to cop out and be the boss somewhere.—

  The two grasp each other by the shoulder in mock conflict.

  They all know one another’s attitudes and views only too well. Attention turns to him, among them, again.

  —You agree about the capitalist economy?—

  —Where I come from—no capitalist economy, no socialist economy. Nothing. I learn about them at the university …—

  And he’s made them laugh, he laughs along with them, that’s the way of the table, once you’re accepted there.

  —So what would you call it—what d’you mean ‘nothing’?—

  He seems to search for something they’ll think they understand, to satisfy them.

  —Feudal.— He raises and lowers elbows on the table, looks to her, his sponsor here, to see if the word is the right one; to see if, by this glance, she will be ready to leave. —But they call themselves ministers, presidents, this and that.—

  The friends watch the two make their way between other habitues masticating, drinking, crouched in a scrum of conversation, cigarette smoke rising as the ectoplasm of communication not attainable through the cellphones clasped to belt or ear. —Where did Julie pick him up?— A member of The Table who had been away when Julie caused a traffic jam had to be told: that garage in the next street, that’s where.

  Her companion had paused a moment on the terrace and she turned to see: a girl with sunglasses pushed back crowning her hair, thighs sprawled, stroking the Rasta locks of a young man passed out, drink or drugs, on her lap.

  He walked away with a face closed in distaste. Her: Well?—was more tolerance than an enquiry of his mood.

  People are disgusting, in that place.

  She said, as if speaking for them: I’m sorry.

  Chapter 3

  You’re not there; I’m not there: to see. It’s not a traffic tangle in the streets, hands going up in culpability, surrender, owing this, open to the public.

  It’s not the spectacle available late-night on adult TV.

  She still joins the friends as usual at The Table to which she belongs—they are, after all, her elective siblings who
have distanced themselves from the ways of the past, their families, whether these are black ones still living in the old ghettoes or white ones in The Suburbs. But her working hours are flexible and she’s there at times when he’s under one of the vehicles round the corner; he doesn’t always come along with her to sit over coffee or the plonk that the EL-AY has available. The friends are not the kind to ask what’s going on, that’s part of their creed: whatever you do, love, whatever happens, hits you, mate, Bra, that’s all right with me. People come and go among them; so long as they remain faithful among themselves: gathered at The Table.

  There was that day when this was something surely he would realize for himself, the day he was with her when one of them told The Table he had just been diagnosed: AIDS. Ralph. Same wealthy suburban provenance as Julie herself, clear yellow-grey eyes, shiny cheek-bones, adolescent sporting feats that had given him shoulders so muscular his shirts seem padded: they gazed at him and it was as if the old poet saw something they did not, on the unmarked forehead. The old man spoke to The Table in the groans of an oracle. —It’s an ancestral curse.—

  —For Chris’ sake! What is this now—

  There’s a time and place for the old crazy’s pronouncements. Murmurs: shut him up, shut him up. But when The Table poet has something to say he doesn’t hear or heed anyone.

  —We are descendants of the ape. The disease started with primates. Then hungry humans in the forests killed them and ate their flesh. So the curse comes down to us from the revenge of our primeval ancestors.—

  The Buddhist convert stirs in agreement: meat-eaters, breakers of the code of respect for creature-life.

  Ralph the victim suddenly bursts into laughter. No-one had dared even to smile encouragement at him; a mood of bravado takes The Table. What has befallen one of their own isn’t going to be something they can’t deal with alternatively to the revulsion and mawkish sympathy of the Establishment, after all. They will always have the solution—of the spirit, if not the cure.