*
Enough. This inquisition went on for what seemed like a lifetime. Until the plates, twice and thrice refilled, were empty but for wing-bones in smears of tomato sauce. Then they began to subside one by one into satiated silence, and would have forgotten all about me, casting me aside like another dented trophy — some of them were already nodding off — had Darlene not stoked them up again.
‘You worked for the regime,’ she said.
‘I proofread the telephone directory!’
‘Exactly. How do you think the cops found out where people lived? When they wanted to go harass them?’
I am not a coward. In those far-off days when the world was at war, I had itched to go up north, and I’d have gone too, young as I was, if it hadn’t been for my eyes. I’ve stood up to my share of bullies along the way. But my blood ran cold when I saw where this crooked line of reasoning was leading. I remembered looking down on the plot in Prospect Road, where something lay with sheets of newspaper fluttering around it like flames.
‘Terrible things have happened in this country,’ a young woman was saying. ‘And you are as much to blame for them as the men who did the dirty work.’
‘Ja, you’ve got to stop pointing fingers. You’ve got to take responsibility.’
‘It’s your fault.’
‘Ja, Churl or whatever the case may be, it’s all your fault.’
Another wave of resentment. But just as I was beginning to think that they would actually beat me with their fists, or cast me to the wolves from the balcony, things took an unexpected turn. And oddly enough, it was Darlene who started it. In the middle of this diatribe, she suddenly waved everyone to silence and declared:
‘But in spite of everything … everything … we forgive you.’
‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ Wessels said. I noticed that he was smoking a Peter Stuyvesant in anticipation of a hangover.
Now a chorus of drunken voices rose up, a chorus of forgiveness just as vehement and unreasonable as the chorus of condemnation it had displaced, and broke over my head. Some of them were close to tears, some on the verge of laughter, yet others irate or indignant. We forgive you. We forgive you. There was clearly no room for argument. Yes, Mr T! Stop pulling faces. You are forgiven. We forgive you.
I was relieved and grateful. It would have been uncharitable to feel otherwise. But I couldn’t see what it was all about. Why the blazes were they behaving like this?
Before I could frame the question in an inoffensive way, Hunky Dory, bless his copper terminals, burst out in a tarantelle.
*
I barely had time to slip the No. 2 sign into my pocket, before hands seized the tables and chairs and whirled them away into the corners. I saw it as the final sundering of the circle.
Dancing! Choreography by St Vitus. They lurched around, waving their arms as if they were trying to stop themselves from falling over, snatching at their clothing and barging into one another. The thickness of their soles had a practical purpose after all; no matter how much they tilted and swayed, they kept their balance in the currents of noise, like deep-sea divers on the ocean floor.
Mevrouw Bonsma and Hunky Dory played another duet, ‘Shall We Dance?’ from The King and I, which may have been a reference to my head. Tit for tat, I supposed, for the crack about the crêpes.
My mind was full of the accusations that had been levelled at me. What an outpouring of ill feeling! I remembered Mrs Hay’s comment about the send-off I was going to receive. Was the whole evening an excuse to humiliate me? I could believe it. They wouldn’t let me alone to lick my wounds; they were insisting that I dance, to show that I was part of the gang, even after everything I’d done.
Nomsa, the chubby one, took my hands and dragged me onto the floor. ‘Spider! Come out of your web.’ Rolling her hips, trying to embarrass me. I stood my ground. I have the grace of a porpoise, a porcus-piscis, a pig with fins. If pigs can swim. Fly, I mean. I called for a bossa nova. No takers. I called for a lambda. The latest dance craze from Greece. Nothing doing. Nomsa went round like a schwarma machine. What did she mean by ‘Spider’? Daddy Longlegs? Stood on a fanatic’s foot, name of Arbuthnot, spelt it for him, letter-perfect, by way of an apology. Why did she remind me of vegetables? Eggplant. Her skin had a purple sheen I’d never observed on a colour chart. The sweat stood out like wampum along her hairline. Plastic pearls at the throat. Mouth improbably large, lips like segments of some sea-fruit, a creature that looked like a plant, but was really an animal, something that would snap if you touched it.
I was feeling queasy, should have had more sleep last night, should have eaten a proper dinner beforehand, should have tried the buffalo wings, resisted the whirligig. The liquor had gone to my head. Or had one of them slipped me something? Wessels, I’ll wager, spiking the whiskey with that coffin varnish of his. Flight of the Bumblebee. It was one of his life’s ambitions to see me drunk. He couldn’t bear my self-control, precisely because his own was so sadly lacking.
Nomsa was going round in circles. Nail her other foot to the floor. Showed me her back. Not to mention her backside. Bang! Bang! Allowed me to escape to the table. I wasn’t even sure if this was No. 2, now that all the furniture had been jumbled together, but quite by chance I found my old chair. Ah! In its supportive grasp, I regained my definition.
Four glasses of chocolate-brown liquor were lined up in front of Floyd. He shoved one of them at me. ‘Blowjob?’
Now what.
With a sly grin, he picked up a straw and drew its paper wrapper down to one end, crumpling it up tightly. He put this worm down on the table. Then he raised a small quantity of liquor up in the straw and spilled it out over the worm’s tail. At once, the thing stirred into life and began to stretch itself out on the table top. While I watched this phenomenon, frankly amazed, Floyd burst out laughing. The cartoon characters on his clothing winked with their human eyes and jerked their waggish hindquarters in time to the music.
I drank the brown stuff. Mocha.
*
‘Why you so black?’ Wessels said to the girl with the silver boater in an effort to charm her, trying to press his ear to her chest. ‘Are you sick?’
*
‘Eugene. Got a minute? l thought you’d want to know that you’re in the Concise under your proper name. At Jeep. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy to hand, but I do have a citation in my notebook here. “Eugene the Jeep. An animal in a comic strip.” Shall I write it down for you? No, that won’t do. Never smoked myself, but you’re bound to throw it away. Pass me that serviette.’
‘What’s this about a animal?’ Raylene sidled closer. ‘You better come right, before I tell Huge to bliksem you.’ To strike, as with a bolt of lightning.
‘You’re in questionable company, son. Slovo’s in there somewhere, at Slovene … and Smuts at blight … and Tutu plain and simple. Interested in sport? Here’s Borg, the tennis player, at borrow … Senna, the racing driver, unkindly defined as a laxative … Roux, a mixture of fat and flour used in making sauces …
‘On the back of your hand? I suppose so, if someone has a pen.’
*
‘Punt up the Volga!’ Don’t ask me. The music was so loud, one had to shout to make oneself heard. Without my lip-reading, I shouldn’t have followed a word anyone said.
For the umpteenth time that night I headed for the Gentlemen’s room, to relieve myself of nothing more than unwelcome company. But Mevrouw Bonsma spotted me, returned the keyboard to its owner, and dragged me back onto the dance floor. I was powerless to resist. Her hand on my arm was like a manacle, although her mobile surface was soft and moist. She kept bumping against me like a deflating weather balloon, leaving powdery smudges on my blazer. She was listing from foot to foot, rocking from tiptoe to heel, punching holes in the floor with her stilettos. A dotted line appeared in the puff pastry underfoot, and the floor gave beneath me. I saw myself plunging through into the kitchen of the Haifa Hebrew Restaurant down below, sprawled among the cabbage rolls.