The Quiver
It was a rough place - not the kind of environment Elliot would deliberately have chosen for his childhood. There was a lack of sophistication in the landscape; fields of blood-red earth became bright green with maize crops and then white-grey before the next cycle started again with the violent breaking of the earth. Between the maize fields the deep dongas of eroded soil and, if you knew where to look, the sink-holes where underground dolomitic caves had collapsed to expose vast, gaping tracts of raw earth.
Along the line of the deep artery of gold reef the earth was broken and scarred more permanently, the landscape covered with scabs of slurry dams and mountains of un-earthed, crushed and de-veined rock.
To get to the town you followed the road from dust heap to dust heap, past the mine-shafts like hypodermic syringes stuck into the flesh of the land, until you crossed over a final hill and saw it below - a sprawling town too big to be a village and too small to be a city, with neither the charm of the quaint nor the excitement of the vibrant. It was where the miners came home from six thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty-four thousand feet underground, after sweating and digging and laying explosive charges and blasting rock to pieces and clearing the stopes of rubble into the gaping ore passes and up to the surface to be physically and chemically, electrostatically exploited.
It was the town of the big car - V8 aggressors with lowered suspension and re-bored cylinder-heads for increased horsepower. And it was the town with the highest per-capita population of motorcycles in the world - unbelievably fast Japanese bikes with noisy, power-enhancing exhaust systems.
Everybody smoked - not mild cigarettes in elegant packaging, but brands - men's brands: Gunston and Lexington and Texan Plain from packets kept in shirt pockets or rolled into sleeves. And everybody drank - beer and more beer or brandewyn and Coke. Now and then you would smell the sweet scent of someone smoking dagga. And more than one miner, too pious to drink himself to oblivion, would survive on constant, adult doses of cough mixture or headache powders.
It was the town of the national wrestling champion, and the town of the Wheeler brothers who could beat up the national wrestling champion. And the town of numerous classmates two feet taller than you and up to four years older, with muscles honed in garage gyms and fighting skills taught them by their fathers - more often by example than by instruction. Their Friday evening entertainment was an excursion to the nearest big city by train or by hitch-hiking or by “borrowed” car. There they would seek out the worst bars and clubs and spend the evening in combat, refining their street-fighting skills by street-fighting.
It was the town of Elliot's birth. The town of his childhood, and the town that would stay with him despite leaving it so far behind.
Elliot avoided fights as much as he could, but sometimes they were inevitable. In year three he won his first fight, against Bertie Blom, who was only slightly more surprised than Elliot was when he got knocked over after starting the fight. He had punched Elliot in the face for ... neither could remember what for. Then there was Thomas. He was tough and sinewy like cheap meat but Elliot beat him convincingly. In year six he beat a boy much bigger than him by hitting him on the ear with a right hook that dropped him like a felled tree. He writhed on the ground, covering his ear and crying loudly. His mother came out and beat Elliot up instead, until he managed to break free from her grip and run home. He lost every fight after that. Every year the regular fighters got better, and his moderate amount of natural talent became increasingly inadequate. For most of his years at school there weren't that many fights - perhaps one or two unavoidable ones a year - but they were enough to make him hate the town. The school-ground had been divided into several groups. The fighters got better and better by joining excursions to the city and fighting on a weekly basis. At the other extreme there were the victims, the kids who for some reason or other were always picked on and always beaten up. Some fought back but were never good enough to win. There was a small group of boys who always managed to avoid fighting - they were either just too weak to bother about or managed to befriend the really tough guys. And then there was Elliot's group, who managed to stay out of trouble most of the time but every now and then would attract attention, usually because of some achievement at school that made them “too big for their boots”. Then would start the inevitable process of build-up to an excuse for a fight.
“What are you looking at?”
“Who, me?”
“Yes you. Are you saying I squint? So what were you looking at?”
“I don't know. I wasn't looking at anything in particular.”
“Don't get smart with me. You were looking at me. Do you have a problem? What's your problem?”
“I don't have a problem.”
“Then what were you looking at?”
“I already told you, I was …”
“You were sizing me up.”
“No I wasn't.”
“Are you calling me a liar? You size me up now you call me a liar.”
This was usually followed by a slap across the face, or a shove against a wall or an elbow in the ribs. You could not run away, even if you wanted to - these incidents never happened without a crowd primed to watch and they would block your flight if you tried. If you lifted your hands or struck back you would be annihilated. If you didn't you would be shoved, pushed and knocked until you did strike back and then annihilated. There was never a way out. No degree of reason, of courage or cowardice, could avert these fights once the build-up had started.
So it paid to keep a very low profile, and Elliot's friends usually did; bright, studious boys able and competent, many of them even competent athletes, who would deliberately under-achieve to avoid the attention of the street fighters. Elliot also compromised, employing a farraginous blend of diplomacy, stealth and bluster to accommodate his sense of competitiveness and his need to achieve - his desire for acknowledgement.
§
When he was sixteen Elliot was presented with a dilemma that challenged his carefully constructed defences. Walking home after a music lesson one winter's evening he heard the familiar sounds of a street fight as he passed the alley between the bicycle shop and the stationer's. He quickly, instinctively startled away from the noise, running around the last of the line of shops and jumping over the fence of the first house. He crouched in the darkness, listening for footsteps. Conscious of his racing heartbeat - wiping the sweat from his palms against his school trousers - he could faintly hear the television from the house behind him and the barking of dogs some houses away, and over it he heard the continuing fight in the alley. He heard the voices, and then a repeated whistling sound and thud, whistle-thud, whistle-thud. This was something different.
He was strangely curious about the noise and edged along the split-pole fence towards it. Between the house and the shops was a second alley, obstructed with old bed-frames and washing machines and even the skeleton of an old Ford Fairlane. This alley joined the service alley where he had first heard the noise. He could hear the voices clearly now and recognised his old rival Thomas, and also Travis and Brett and Anton Lass from his class and some seniors whose names he did not know. There was a hole in the fence where a knot had been, and he crouched to look through it. The light was dim, but he could see the silhouettes of the boys, kicking a writhing body on the ground, scuffling their feet to get a better grip before launching another boot into the back of the moaning victim. One boy was repeatedly swinging a length of garden hose pipe into the flailing arms of the person on the ground - whistle-thud, whistle-thud.
The scene was steaming with white breath in the cold evening air, and with the darker, heavier smoke from cigarettes.
“Have you learned your fuckin' lesson?” It was Thomas' voice, loud but panting from exertion. “They'll never learn, man. You know these blacks.”
A car appeared at the entrance to the alley, its bright lights projecting white lines across Elliot's face and clothes. He jumped back, falling against a wheelbarrow.
He heard one of the boys shout: “Who the hell is there?”
But the driver of the car shouted “Get going, get going!” and Elliot heard doors open and some boys getting in, and others shouting greetings and running up the street on the other side of the shops.
Elliot knew to keep absolutely still. Someone could have stayed behind to seize on him as soon as he moved. The metal of the wheelbarrow was cold against his back and he could smell the rot of compost and the lingering cigarette smoke. He could hear the occasional moans of the man in the alley and his irregular, heavy, constricted breathing.
It was a good thing he stayed still. After five, ten minutes he heard someone say “bloody cats”. The boy, whom Elliot did not recognise, lit a cigarette and left the alley.
After a few more minutes Elliot carefully got up and limped, crouching, around the house. He climbed the fence and ran home as fast as he could, staying in the shadows all the way and looking over his shoulder like a man persecuted.
Back in his room he leaned against the closed door, repeatedly rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand. His parents were at a church meeting. Not that they would be much help. His mother always said “If they hit you, hit them back”. She had no idea. His father tried biblical advice, contradictory strategies of turning cheeks and eyes for eyes. It was equally useless.
What to do now? The man in the alley might die. But if he tells anyone he will get the same treatment. In a normal world you would go to the police and tell them what you saw. You would call for an ambulance. But if anyone finds out that he saw what had happened …
Elliot flung himself onto his bed, burying his face in the pillows. His anger and frustration exploded into a gush of tears and sobbing, deep into the suffocating heat of his pillow. His shoulders were shaking. No, no, no!
After a while he calmed down - became more rational. What to do? Sitting on his bed he tried to make a mental list of options but he could not get beyond two options, their blinding pros and cons in direct conflict with one another, fighting one another, battling for his soul. In the end it was simple.
He straightened his school uniform, put on a warm overcoat and walked the five blocks to the police station.
§
Elliot sits on the carpet in the empty room. In his hands a pair of pliers and the remnants of his father's do-it-yourself electric power point, a temporary extension from the next room that became permanent. Dismantling thirty years' worth of budget-improvements to the house has taken longer than expected. But the house has to be sold. He has taken a week's leave to wind up everything. His wife wanted to help but he insisted on doing it alone. He wants the time on his own.
Elliot stares at the brittle wires. He thinks they are still live. He is tempted to check by touching them - with the back of his hand. He still remembers the lessons of the visiting fireman at school: if you try to escape from a burning room crawl along the walls, with the back of your hand feeling the way. Exposed electrical wires could grab you - or rather, your hand would close over them as the power jerks your body - and the involuntary grip would hold you, until you are dead and limp. How long would that take? If he touched these wires with the back of his hand, leaning away so that his jerking body would fall away from the danger, would he just get a bad shock - like electric shock therapy? Or could it all go awry - could his hand flip over involuntarily from the first impulse and grab the cable? He would fall back, clutching the wires in his gyrating hands, pulling them away from the skirting board and tearing the layers of paint away from the wall like nails ripping into the quick.
The quick. Why is it called the quick? Is it the same as the quick and the dead? Where does that come from? The quick. Dead is dead, or is it? It's not the slow. The quick and the very slow. He has been slow.
On the first day he was efficient. He decided to do the worst part first and cleared her bedroom. He was clinical about it, packing away clothes and linen into boxes to be donated to charity. He then collected the jewellery and packed it neatly to be given to the women in the family. He lost some momentum when he had to pack away the perfume and the hairspray and powder and what else. He wanted to throw it away, but then remembered how she hated to waste. Then he decided to donate it with the other stuff but that also seemed wrong - dumping half-empty perfume bottles on the needy. Then he unpacked the box again and left it on the floor to be decided later. It ended up in the donations box again - let someone else decide to dispose of it - or not. On the second day he was much slower because he was exhausted. He had struggled to sleep in his old room. He was visited by the ghosts - not hers, and not his father's from years back, but the incomplete, part-documentary part-fantasy dreams of his childhood - the nightmares that had followed him since then.
On the third day he could not get the fingerprint dust off the kitchen counters. Soap and water did nothing. Ammonia smudged it and left him with a headache. He decided to siphon petrol from his car into a bucket. He could not get the timing right - sucking on the cut-off section of hosepipe and then quickly dropping his hand to the bottom of the bucket to see only a short, impotent spurt and then drops and nothing. He tried again and the gush of fuel into his mouth and over his chin took his breath away. It burned his dry, winter skin and he sat down in the driver's seat to look in the mirror. And then the magnitude of it all crushed him.
The last time he ever saw her he was looking in that rear-view mirror. She was standing on the pavement next to the daisy-bush where they had picked seeds earlier that day, preserving them in glass jars for yet another generation of orange and white flowers in the same flower-beds the next year. She had one foot in the road and she waved - her white hair clear against the background of the late afternoon sky. He looked at her for as long as he could, driving slowly, framing her image in the shape of the mirror. Then he turned the corner and she was gone.
He thought he was leaving that damned town for the last time. But it was his mother he would never see again.
What happened to the blood? There must have been blood. There is no chalk-outline on the floor where the body lay, like you see in films. Just the fingerprint dust. Did the detectives find anything? You can't say from the dust. Grey like pencil-lead but slightly shiny. And the hammer? Did it leave any marks from missed blows? Was anything else broken and taken away as evidence?
Elliot does not test the electric current. He rests the wires against a packing carton and follows the cord along the wall and through to the next room. It is connected to the light switch. He turns on the light. It works.
§
Elliot eventually finished clearing out the house. And as if by some strange, poetic coincidence - like a fable - he arrived home to the news that Anne was expecting a baby.
Fatherhood suited Elliot. All fathers think that, but he was really good at it in a clumsy, masculine sort of way. He sang to the boy - for the first time since his childhood music lessons he sang - made up lullabies reminiscent of Sibelius, and of Beethoven Piano Concertos - and nonsense songs with body-slapping accompaniment and awkward dances.
He is a jumboo baby
He is a jumboo boy
He is the loveliest, loveliest thing
He, is, his father's joy
Badadedum dum de dum da doo da
Dabadedum dum de dum dee doo
He is the loveliest, loveliest thing
He, is, a wonderful boy.
It was a golden time. Elliot found a profound meaning in the new life, in the sense of protecting and nurturing another being. He even found peace in the apparent meaninglessness of generation after generation creating another generation - each filled with self-importance and pomp. He never wavered in his renewed vitality.
As Julian developed through the stages of early childhood Elliot indulged in the wonders of every phase. He loved observing the development of language and the charming logicality of errors - the “handburgers” and the cry to “pick me down” when he lifted the boy above his head.
Julian was strong for his age, and when he started school it was clear that he was athletic.
Then on a June Friday evening, lying on the couch while Julian had his bath upstairs, Elliot was startled by two men bursting into the room. One shoved a pistol in his face while the other gestured that he should keep quiet and turn around. They frisked him, fast and efficiently, and asked him who else was in the house.
Elliot judged that it would be wrong to resist, that their best chance of survival would be to follow instructions. He had the unyielding steel of a gun pressed against his temple and the hate-filled blood-shot smoked-up eyes of a wild, vengeful man close to his face. He had read the numerous articles about similar situations, and that compliance had been proven to be the best strategy for survival. They removed his watch and, on the way upstairs, he in front and they following close behind, he saw a third man in the garden outside, standing guard as a backup if anything went wrong.
The rest was a blur for Elliot. He remembered telling Julian that the men were only playing a game. He remembered giving them everything they wanted, emptying the small home safe of its contents, including the few keepsakes he had of his parents. He remembered telling them where else he kept some spare cash. He wanted to placate them. They tied him up, face down, on his own bed. He thought they were going to kill him. As they frogmarched Anna and Julian to the bathroom to lock them up his eyes met his son's. And in that moment of eye contact, in the depth of fear, horror and resignation, something passed that would stay with him for ever. Something was lost - an innocence - but there was a power in that moment, a look that asked all the questions a son would ask of his father in a lifetime, and all the answers compressed in an instant of recognition.
§
Elliot has a recurring nightmare.
He is in a dangerous situation - sometimes his own life is threatened by wild animals or soldiers or armed men. More often his family is with him. They are hiding but the enemy is looking for them.
He has a weapon on him, a pistol or a rifle of some kind. He decides to defend himself and his family and he shoots back at the enemy, exposing his position to them.
But his weapon has no impact. The bullets fly out of the barrel with great velocity and then lose speed and limply fall short of their target, just some metres away.
He has exposed his family. He has threatened their lives by fighting back. If he is lucky, this is where he wakes up.
§
Elliot sits in a room with the remaining members of his extended family. Julian is sleeping. Elliot has not done any business, has not worked for almost a year. This is not a dream.
They discuss politics, as they have many times before. They do not all agree. He says that it is time for a new government because the previous one has been sullied by its own aggression towards other nations. Someone says that the alternative candidate is weak - that business would not support him. He says that that is a generalisation. She says that Elliot knows nothing about business, that he is remarkably opinionated for someone who knows so little.
The room falls quiet. It has never been like this. His first response is to smooth over it to make an excuse for the biting aggression of the remark.
But then he feels the weight of the incident pressing on him. He knows that a family debate like this would never be the same again - it was lost for ever - a simple, unspoken rule has been broken. This was the one place in the world where he had always been safe to be himself without subterfuge. The castle was breeched.
And when she shows no remorse, when she patronises him with feeble matronising advice he accepts no more. He takes arms against wave upon wave of trouble. He reaches for the sharpest arrows in his quiver and aims them with great precision. Then more arrows before he uses the blunt end of the bow itself. He reaches for his lance and his broadsword. He tilts then fences. Parry - riposte, parry - riposte.
Thomas and Bertie Blom and every thug with a hosepipe, and the racist police who told them that he had reported the beating in the alley, and every head-butt and bleeding nose and daily beating like daily bread after that, and swollen fingers that could not play an octave, and the bastard, the bastard that killed his mother with a hammer for no apparent gain. And the pressure of the gun against his temple. And Julian's eyes. Parry riposte. Touché.
§
Julian visits his father every week. They do not speak much. They look at each other.