in their pockets, an innocent group of boys on the side of an unlit road on the edge of a beach at night doing nothing in particular. The car goes by. Its coming and going ends the debate and turns into an unspoken decision. The cable of sand is rapidly completed, and the group splits into two squabbling teams, one on either side of the road. Lawrence makes them practise until they can react to his signal with a semblance of teamwork.
The car comes at last. It is a red Ford Corsair with a plastic orange on the tip of its radio aerial. The night densifies, warmed, focuses on this spot, this place in the great world. “Now!” shouts Lawrence, as the car is right on them. The two teams straighten up as one, heaving on their rope of fantasy. It shoots up into the beam of the headlights, straightens out, quivering with strain. Tyres lock, the car screeches to a halt, snaking from left to right with such violence that it would strike into the left-hand team if the boys weren’t already scattering onto the beach.
“You fucking little bastards!” roars the driver into the dark, shaking his fist at his pimpled tormentors.
But they are gone, melted into the past.
Eli
This is a history of butter, of margarine and the Law. On Friday nights we do not have butter on the table whenever my grandparents come for Shabbes dinner. It is not kosher to eat meat with milk, or as we say, to mix milchig and fleishig. Our father pretends that he keeps kosher. They know it isn’t true. They know that he eats prawns and oysters, that he loves Indian and Chinese food, Portuguese food, any damn food that comes from somewhere else. Yet Archie is thorough in his pretence. At least on Fridays, even those Fridays with no grandparents.
When the world discovers cholesterol and turns to margarine, on Friday nights there is no margarine. My brothers and I argue endlessly with Archie. We insist that margarine is not a dairy product. But to him it looks like butter and tastes like butter, therefore it must be milchig. It is difficult to understand his religious views. Maybe he doesn’t understand them either. He admits it, and explains that he’s been brainwashed and so cannot help himself.
This very Friday evening, my grandparents come for dinner. Wolf Machabeus is blind, despite the thick spectacles he wears. I don’t know why he keeps on wearing them. It is just stubbornness. My grandmother and father stand on either side and help him up the pair of steps before the entrance. He comes up one at a time, pausing, resting on his thick walking cane. He wears a grey serge suit and a red tie.
Edie Machabeus has thin lips. She uses lipstick to magnify her lips, painting two exact points, like the upper half of an M in italics. It looks strange.
Simon holds the wine goblet in his right hand. I don’t know why, because he is left-handed. His right hand is shaky, and always has been. He intones the prayer tunelessly, not because he has no musical ear, but because the prayer is always chanted in this style.
My grandfather’s lenses reflect the chandelier, all five lights glinting off their twin smudges. Wolf’s skin is wrinkled and sags. It is like the parchment of the Torah, frail but intact.
My grandmother looks down at the table, listening shrewdly. Her mind is sharp, she calculates where people are and when they moved there. Her memory is a family tree, rooted in the old country and stretching its branches throughout South Africa, Australia, Israel, New York. Some are still here, of course, living in the sharp light of Port Elizabeth. As I write this, I picture her standing at the table and imagine what passed through her mind: in the old country milk was delivered in buckets, and in winter it froze outside the doorway even as it stood there. There was a rooster on the roof, crying out warnings about the milk and the ice. She remembers nothing before then, because that is where she began.
Jude eyes the goblet, grinning wickedly. Simon’s shaking hand is tilted, in danger of tipping out wine. The red of the drink is deep and violent. When it does spill, it seems to swell like gore, stretching from the goblet’s lip to where it splashes down, and only then letting go. It splashes over the Sabbath Evening Service, staining the yellow pages even more. Later it will dry out the colour of raisins. The pages will become rippled, like sand in the Sinai Desert. But for now, my mother shouts at Simon.
“It was just an accident!” he protests, whining, indignant. But she doesn’t like accidents. They disturb her and so make her angry.
“Schweig,” says Archie, resting his hand on hers. “It was just an accident.”
Wolf and Edie have nothing to say. They don’t pay that much attention to their grandchildren, not in any detail. Jude cackles like a witch, a dibbuk. I think he made Simon spill the wine by staring at his hand. Rose presses a serviette down on the open book, staining the serviette too. She pours salt on the wounded tablecloth, and then Simon is free to say the part of the prayer that covers bread.
The electric bell has fallen off the table again. My mother stoops and lifts it off the carpet and rings for Euphonia to wheel in the soup. It comes in a great silver tureen, with a little gap in the lid for the handle of the ladle. I have always liked the ladle. It curves elegantly, and its uneven silver finish pleases me. The tureen holds a steaming bean soup, which I like too.
I don’t like the marrowbones resting at the bottom. Jude and Simon love them. They let them cool on the side plate, and when their soup is finished, they blow out the marrow onto slices of challah and sprinkle salt over it. To me, marrow looks like snot. I say this out loud, and Jude retorts, “So what? Don’t you like swallowing your own?”
He reaches across the table to break off a hunk of braided bread. Archie notices it, drunk as he is. His mood is usually bad on Friday nights, especially when his father visits. Archie is annoyed, every week, knowing that Jude intends to dip bread into the soup. It is bad manners.
“Jeez, Dad, why not?” asks Jude. “It’s so delicious – why on earth not?”
“Because I told you not to do it,” he replies, emphasising each word.
Jude shakes his head, smiling sardonically. “Dad, you can be so bourgeois sometimes.”
A silent rage envelops our father. There are two fathers in the room. Wolf sits quietly, listening. At least, I think he is listening. It is hard to tell what thoughts stir behind his blindness, inside his thick and difficult accent. Perhaps he feels that our father drinks too much. Wolf Machabeus is a religious man, a good man. He founded the first synagogue in Port Elizabeth when he was young.
“Just do it!” snaps Archie.
Jude grudgingly leaves the bread on his side plate.
Granny Edie raises an eyebrow. “The children are very headstrong these days,” she remarks, her clear voice falling into the clinking of spoons and plates. “It must be difficult to manage sometimes.”
“Truer a word,” replies my mother.
“What do you mean, ‘truer a word’?” asks Simon. “That doesn’t make sense.”
She lifts her voice, lilting into intonation: “Truer a word was never spoken.”
That is all the explanation she gives.
After supper my brothers sing a song for Wolf which we call “Malacha Ha’yam”, because that is how it starts. They stand together in front of his armchair, their hands clasped in front of their flies. They are still wearing their khaki cadet uniforms with knee-length shorts, white puttees and boots. They look ridiculous. I don’t sing it because this tradition started when I was too young to sing, and it carried on without me. No one has ever thought of asking me to
