Lucky Packet Read online

  I’d assumed we were going to Leo Fein’s house but we drove slowly down Market Street, past Roy’s Uptown Liquor, craning to see in.

  ‘Ag, no. Closed,’ he said.

  Of course it was closed – it was Sunday. Everyone knew it was illegal to sell alcohol on a Sunday. He must have forgotten, I thought.

  We pulled around the back, into General Joubert Street, and reversed the Mercedes so that the rear bumper was close to the steel doors of the delivery entrance. Here we were hidden from what little traffic there was in town on a Sunday afternoon, on a street where the backs of many buildings lay.

  ‘Listen, this is my friend Roy’s place,’ said Leo Fein. ‘He’s not gonna mind if we borrow a few things. You gonna help me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You think you can jump over?’ He peered up at the gate through the Mercedes’ window.

  ‘I get into my mom’s window from the roof sometimes,’ I said. ‘For fun.’

  ‘Hey, what a bugger you are! Don’t worry about it – Roy’s my old friend. I’ll make it up to him.’

  We stepped out of the Mercedes and Leo Fein peeped through a gap in the gate.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, pulling me to the square hole in the gate where the bolt lay. Our faces were side by side and he held on tight to my shirtsleeve, keeping me at the gap. ‘See that window there? That’s where you get in. If you take those empty crates there, the beer crates, and put them on top of each other, you can stand on them and get up to the window.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘When you’re inside you start bringing the booze to the big door.’ He rumbled the words at me and his instructions were beginning to drive my heart faster. ‘When you’ve got everything, you wait there at the door and then you bang three times, like this.’ He tapped three slow gongs quietly on the steel gate with his knuckle. ‘Then I’ll come in and open up, and we load and go. That’s our plan.’

  I nodded and turned to climb the gate.

  ‘Don’t you want to ask anything?’

  I looked into his face. Yes: how did you know my father? Were you friends? Were you in business together? What made my father a good man? Did my father ever do anything like this with you?

  I asked none of them and shrugged instead.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what you must get?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Okay. You gonna remember this? Three cases of beer – you know, twenty-four cans in a case – one of Lion, one of Ohlsson’s, one Castle. One Campari and one Tia Maria, if you find them.’ He asked for wine, too, then said, ‘Whisky. You must look for Johnnie Walker Black – not the red label. Six bottles.’

  He went over it again, making me repeat it back to him. Trying to keep the order straight made me more nervous than the thought of the task ahead, driving out one kind of anxiety with another.

  ‘Clever boy,’ he said when I had the order right. ‘You get the whisky first, okay?’ Leo Fein stooped a little and locked his fingers so that his hands formed a stirrup. ‘Come,’ he said. It was a familiar pose to me but one I’d never seen an adult assume. I put my foot in his hands and he boosted me up.

  ‘Be quick,’ said Leo Fein in a low voice once I was over. ‘They’re waiting for us at Uncle Meyer’s.’ I carried the plastic crates up a ramp that led to the raised loading bay where the steel roller doors hung shut, and stacked them against the wall. Here, I staggered them like steps up to the window.

  I hauled my body up and knelt on the top crate, then raised myself to open the window, which was hinged at the top. The tower teetered but held as my foot came off it, and I wormed myself through the fanlight.

  Now half of me was outside and half inside where things were much darker and the sounds of my efforts struck hard surfaces. Only here, at this halfway point, did I feel the clanging of the risks involved.

  It was too painful to remain there like that for too long, and I couldn’t turn back and face Leo Fein as a failure, so I swung over inside, hanging off the frame from my fingers. I had no idea how far the drop was from the window or what lay beneath me in the dark. It’s an odd feeling, giving yourself up to fall an uncertain distance. Even a suicide jumper must have an idea of just when he’ll hit the ground, but the raised delivery bay and the darkness confused my sense of depth.

  I inhaled unsteadily and unhooked my hands. My bare arms slid against the cold enamel paint of the wall and my feet touched down with a shock, earlier than anticipated.

  When my eyes adjusted, I got busy shopping. Well, what choice did I have now? I knew which were the brandies, which the whiskies, liqueurs and wines, since I’d studied closely the bottles in the bar at home. I found the Johnnie Walker without too much trouble.

  Soon enough I had our consignment arranged neatly before the roller door. The three bangs came as a shock, even though it was my own fist on the steel. I strained to hear outside.

  Silence.

  I considered that I’d been left there – they’d only find me in the morning and I’d have to try to sneak out or lie about why I was there. If I didn’t get back to Meyer Levinson’s house, there were the Dorfmans to consider, the whole party might be concerned; my mother.

  I was about to bang on the steel again when I heard the whine of an engine and a crash and a shudder. The car was near; I heard footsteps approaching, then violence at the base of the steel door. It made me think about running behind the boxes but all I did was freeze.

  ‘The chain!’ said Leo Fein on the other side. ‘Pull the chain!’

  I groped along the wall and found it and pulled. The roller doors began to rise. Leo Fein slid underneath and started to carry the liquor out. The silver Mercedes stood vibrating serenely in the loading bay; the gates to the yard seemed to have imploded and a rear corner of the car had been crushed slightly under the impact.

  Leo Fein already had some of the beer at the car and fought to open the boot lid so much that the rear bounced on the shock absorbers. He finally had it open and, while I stood frozen, the man moved with more speed than I’d anticipated from someone his age and shape.

  ‘The whisky? You get it?’ he asked, sprinting up the steps. He answered his own question by scooping up four bottles.

  I ran after him, helping him load the last few bottles into the boot and sliding the rest onto the back seats. It took several thrusts to slam the boot lid down before it finally clung shut.

  Once we were in the car, we sped through the gates. For three or four blocks my head was pushed against the leather seat and the engine emitted an alarmed howl. We said nothing. Thereafter we slowed to the same cruising velocity with which we’d left the party.

  I stole a look at the man. The straight line of his lips was presided over by a proud and not unattractive nose through which he did virtually all of his breathing. Only the very ends of the mouth curved one way or the other and the lips appeared tucked in. This straight line set off, by contrast, the curves and folds of his cheek, chin, neck and belly.

  He finally loosened a little. Calmly he said, ‘Well done, my boy. You were like a cat, hey?’

  I was still reeling, riding high on the caper. ‘Is your car okay? What happened?’

  ‘The car? A little scratch, my friend,’ he said coolly. Then without holding back, he said, ‘Smashed those gates in like they weren’t even there, my china! Bam!’

  The Mercedes approached a red light and slowed to a stop and, with the last catch of the brakes on the wheels, the boot popped open, revealing our haul. We both quietened down as a high-riding Hilux bakkie rumbled up the street behind us. The elevated cab’s occupants would have had an easy view of the shining bottles between the loosened jaws of the car boot as they gently turned to the lane alongside ours and came to a stop.

  I watched Leo Fein face front as if for an austere presidential photograph, or a mugshot. In the neighbouring bakkie an upright couple in Sunday best gawked at the slightly tattered Mercedes, then at Leo Fein with the white streak and the twelve-year-
old in the passenger seat next to him.

  Leo Fein kept staring ahead and did the most peculiar thing. He began to pick his nose in earnest. How he dug and scraped in that fleshy pit. From my ringside seat I had a view of both Leo Fein and, across him through two sets of windows, the couple in the next car.

  It happened before anyone had a chance to examine the situation in any detail and, as if to deny or excuse this private act of a fellow human being, by some compulsion the couple turned their heads and faced front. We in the silver Mercedes turned left.

  ‘Works every time,’ said Leo Fein. ‘Don’t know why, but it works.’

  ‘What if we get stopped?’ I asked.

  ‘Ag, nobody cares. It’s like a practical joke. That’s what it is. You know – like when you pretend there’s a string across the doorway in class and climb over it. Or you put drawing pins on the teacher’s seat, hey?’

  ‘Ja,’ I said, as if I did those things.

  ‘So it’s no big deal. But that doesn’t mean you go blabbing to everyone about where we got this stuff, okay?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea. Some people do that.’

  We arrived back in the garden of Meyer Levinson when the braai barrels had been cleared of their meat and the afternoon was sinking into night. I called Joss and the two older boys to help carry the liquor from the Mercedes.

  ‘It really wasn’t necessary, Leo,’ said Meyer Levinson. ‘All this drink. People will be leaving.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, Meyer. You only have one sixtieth.’

  ‘The other thing, Leo—’

  ‘Ah,’ said Leo Fein, ‘I see my friends have arrived.’

  While I placed the beers in the icy water of the galvanised tub on the grass, I watched Leo Fein approach two men, one wearing Aviator glasses and the other tidying his hair with a steel comb. Leo Fein cradled the bottles of Johnnie Walker Black in his arms and greeted the men in Afrikaans. They moved inside Meyer Levinson’s house.

  The boys and I smuggled a few beers around the side of the house. We popped the cans and let the aroma fizz out of the tops. The smell was always better than the taste, not as bitter, and in our haste to drink it down Joss and I let rip several burps from our throats. I began to feel the lightness rise up in me even before the end of one can.

  ‘So where did you go?’ asked Gershon, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Just for a little cruise,’ I said, mysteriously.

  ‘This is good stuff,’ said Lee, savouring a lengthy sip of Lion Lager. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and blackened the end lighting it.

  ‘What the hell happened to his car?’ asked Joss.

  ‘A scratch, my friend. Nothing more.’

  Joss crushed the empty can in his hand. ‘Oops! Just a scratch, old sport.’

  Someone came around the corner and we all hid our cans. ‘Fuck off, Shoshana,’ said Lee.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ said the girl shaped like a potato latke.

  ‘So?’ said Lee.

  ‘So you better give me some or I’ll tell your mom,’ she said.

  Lee gave her his can and she took a sip so small it barely wet her lips.

  ‘So where did you get it from?’ Gershon asked me again.

  ‘Let’s just say, a friend’s place,’ I said. ‘No big deal.’ How much could I inflate the mystery before it collapsed, I wondered.

  ‘Oh, a friend,’ said Lee, blinking through the smoke.

  When no one tried to pry it out of me, I said, ‘Yip, an old friend called Roy’s Uptown.’

  ‘They’re not open on a Sunday,’ said Potato Latke scornfully.

  ‘No, they’re not,’ I said and walked around the corner again. I wasn’t one of them, but I’d found a kind of position among them.

  Really I sought to share the feeling of victory with my accomplice, a feeling amplified by the beer, but he was inside with the new men and the whisky. Already many guests were leaving Meyer Levinson’s garden.

  Mrs Dorfman was walking towards me. ‘Where’s Joss, Ben?’ she asked. ‘We’re leaving now.’

  ‘He’s coming. I just wanted to say goodbye inside.’

  ‘To Leo Fein? Oh, I think he’s having some kind of business meeting. I’m sure it’s fine if you don’t say goodbye. It’s getting late.’

  The others came out from around the side of the house and Joss joined me next to his mother. ‘Come on, boys,’ she said, scanning us with her eyes.

  Meyer Levinson and Mr Dorfman were standing together, whispering to each other in between goodbyes to the guests.

  ‘I don’t see why he has to meet in your home, Meyer,’ said Mrs Dorfman as we approached, ‘and on the occasion of your sixtieth birthday.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t important, I’m sure, Gail,’ said Meyer.

  ‘Important?’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘What are we talking – national security?’

  A meaningful look passed between Meyer Levinson and Mr Dorfman.

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t believe everything he tells you, Meyer.’

  ‘Gail, the man’s got connections,’ said Mr Dorfman. ‘Important ones.’

  ‘You two are too easily impressed.’ Mrs Dorfman kissed Meyer on the cheek. ‘I hope they don’t ruin your sixtieth.’

  The Dorfmans thanked Meyer and wished him a happy birthday once more, and I said to Meyer, a man to whom I’d only ever said Gut Shabbes, ‘Thank you for a marvellous party.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Joss.

  In the car, Joss’s father studied us both in the rear-view mirror, while he and his wife spoke quietly in the front. ‘Important connections,’ said Mrs Dorfman in a tone I knew adults used when they meant other than what they said.

  ‘He moves in different circles, Gail.’

  ‘And all that booze! We aren’t Afrikaners, or Irish, starting to drink at ten in the morning and never stopping. Jews prefer eating to drinking,’ she said. ‘A nice dessert – that he could’ve brought.’

  In the darkness of Joss’s room that night I went over the details. I told Joss about climbing the gate and dropping onto the storeroom floor. I said I was scared, ja, scared that we’d be caught, even if Leo Fein did know Roy, because how would it look? And with me alone in that room, and all the risks.

  I told him it had been easy, actually, in a way, and that we could probably break into any number of places in town if we wanted to. And about the Mercedes. ‘We must have been doing a hundred-and-fifty k’s at the least.’

  ‘I didn’t know it could go that fast,’ said Joss. ‘I mean, it looks fast.’

  ‘And it’s strong.’

  ‘Jeez, and doesn’t he even care about his car?’

  ‘He doesn’t give a shit!’

  ‘How did he know that thing about picking your nose?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it worked.’

  We both agreed that Leo Fein was as cool as someone on TV.

  2

  SHADRACK’S BADGE

  The pierced brick wall that separated the courtyard from our driveway was whitewashed, and the holes offered easy grips to the top where it ran under the eaves of the garage. It was the same wall government men had climbed late one night to inspect whether any black people were on the property without the necessary pass.

  Ma had spotted the men from our kitchen by pure chance and chased them off, refusing to unlock the gate: they’d had to climb the same wall back out. Shadrack had been in his room, which stood across the wide courtyard bordered by the house and the whitewashed brick wall.

  Having reached the top of the wall, I dropped back down and walked into the sun where the rough cement baked the soles of my feet. I drifted across the yard and in the middle found a ragged seam. As I dragged a big toe along it, tiny bits crumbled off the crack, and I followed that little canyon to the wall of the outbuildings.

  At the base my elder brothers had etched their names into the cement when the house was b
eing built. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been born yet, and that there was clearly no fraternal accord between Elliot and Will, I felt annoyed at having been left out.

  The last great fight between Elliot and Will had broken out over a remark about the orthodontic headgear Elliot had to wear for a year. It had set him chasing Will around the dining-room table, a carving fork in his hand like a cartoon devil, and ended with a blood lip for Will, and with Elliot nearly unconscious in a chokehold. Shadrack, the only adult at home, had separated them.

  Will and Elliot fought often, mostly wrestling and grappling and pushing, but since Will had left for university the fights had lessened. This one had come as a shock to me, and maybe to Ma too, and I thought there was no going back after it.

  It always seemed to me that Will and Elliot were two extremes of ways of being, with me somewhere in the middle, trying to calculate whom to veer towards. Back then I imitated my brothers and, since the balance of power seemed to be in Will’s favour whenever he was home, I often sided with him. It was easy to be swept up by Will. His purpose was to persuade. He’d do his utmost to impose his firm ideas on the family business, and on the family, during his weekend inspections.

  He had the idea in his head that we’d once controlled a vast family empire (or at least punched above our weight in town) and that it was his calling to rebuild and extend it, as the Bonapartes of the Far Northern Transvaal. Will conducted variously Great North Diesel and Auto Electric, my school subject choices, Ma’s budget, and family holidays. While he had little success with Elliot, after a few precious hours with Will I always felt like a shining recruit for his empire.

  I traced my name with my big toe on the cement next to my brothers’ then followed another crack running along the wall to Shadrack’s door. It was open a little, enough to show the bar heater on the thin green carpet. I called for him softly; no one was inside.