the Women’s Zionist League,’ I said.
‘For Israel,’ said Joss. The Dorfmans had a natural grasp of the power of dramatic presentation.
‘For Israel, hey? Come with me, boys. Today might be your lucky day. Maybe we can do some business here.’ He led us into his house. ‘Want some juice?’
‘Ja, please,’ said Joss. We could hear the laughter of men who smoked heavily coming from beyond the sliding doors to the patio. The tiled room where we stood had a high ceiling and the biggest TV I’d ever seen. To my right were double doors that led to a room, somewhat darkened. I pointed inside to Joss, who followed my finger with his eyes and nodded, impressed.
It was a study with a heavy desk, and floating around it, like the recreation of a WWI dogfight, were stuffed birds – eagles and hawks and such, swooping and hovering, some perched. I froze at the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum with its aerobatic, deathly tableaux. The glass eyes saw beyond their prey, beyond time, beyond me.
Leo Fein came out propping a tray with our juices and an ice bucket on one arm and closing the door to the study with his free hand. He landed a look on me, a brief consideration, and I wondered what it meant: an enquiry as to my identity, or an offer of advice. But it was Ma he asked about instead.
‘She’s fine,’ I answered.
‘Good. Let’s go, boys.’ We took our glasses and followed him to the patio.
Around a wrought iron table sat three men, all tanned, all smoking. One was in his early sixties with grey hair at his temples and a cleft chin, wearing Aviator sunglasses. The other two both wore sandals, one in a safari suit and the other, with curly hair almost to his shoulders, in denim shorts. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black stood more than half-empty in the centre of the table.
‘Gents,’ said Leo Fein to his guests, ‘these are our town’s finest Jewish boys. Say hello.’
We shook hands with each of them.
‘Transvaal Jode,’ said the man with the sunglasses. ‘Just like you, hey, Fein? Boerejode. Glad to meet you.’
The other two barely spoke and when they did it was with accents I couldn’t place. French, maybe.
‘We’re raising funds for Israel,’ Joss said. ‘With a raffle.’ The men with the accents nodded.
‘The Women’s Zionist League,’ said Leo Fein, looking at the form in my hand. ‘The women in town raise funds for the troops in Israel. Very good thing.’
The men with the accents said something in their language but neither asked for a damn ticket. The Afrikaans man with the cleft chin and the sunglasses said, ‘It’s very important we support our friends in Israel.’ (Uhs-rrile was how he said it.) ‘We’re both fighting to protect our land and keep it safe for our people.’ He looked serious, like we’d angered him. ‘Here, boys, give me some tickets.’
He took a roll of cash from his trouser pocket. It was so thick with fifty-rand notes, he had to peel it open in his hand to find two twenties. He gave one note each to me and to Joss and I handed over the tickets.
‘Good luck, my friend,’ said the man in the sunglasses as he presented the tickets to Leo Fein. ‘I hope you’re a winner.’ He looked angry again, and held onto the tickets when Leo Fein put his fingers on them. Then he laughed a broad laugh and the other men joined in.
‘I’ve got a good feeling about this,’ said Leo Fein, fanning his face with the raffle tickets. ‘You’ve done some good business with the General, hey boys?’
‘You boys,’ said the General, ‘next time I’ll take you up in the Cessna, okay? Tell them, Fein.’
Leo Fein walked us to the door and Joss asked, ‘Is he really a general?’
‘He’d better be, boykie,’ said Leo Fein. ‘Thanks for coming, boys.’
We were still holding our twenties in our hands when we walked out.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘Twenty bucks,’ said Joss.
‘Each,’ I said.
We looked around and stuffed the notes into our pockets.
‘What’d he take? Like, twenty tickets? That’s only ten bucks.’
‘Think we need to get him change?’
‘Fuck that,’ said Joss. ‘Did you see how much money he was flashing around? He wanted us to have it.’
‘I need to give ten bucks to my mom for the tickets.’
‘That’s still fifteen bucks each,’ said Joss. ‘Or, I mean, we could give it to the Women’s Zionist League.’
‘Fuck that,’ I said. ‘My brother says they’re fascists. Anyway, the General wanted us to have it.’
‘He’s a general. It’s like an order.’
‘Who do you think those other guys were?’
‘Israelis,’ said Joss.
‘How’d you know?’
‘They were talking Hebrew.’
Cheder lessons hadn’t quite stuck the language in my ear yet. ‘What are you gonna buy?’ I asked as we walked through the streets of Bendor.
‘Sea Monkeys,’ said Joss with hardly a pause.
‘Wow.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll have to think about it.’ I was too old for lucky packets, but there was little else that offered the same satisfaction. At home I stuck the money and those thoughts under the badges in my drawer for later reveries.
* * *
The first time we met, Leo Fein had mentioned my father; the second time, my mother. How much did this man know about my family, I wondered. The secret ties between us, strung before my birth and tugged at now in my twelfth year of life, were a revelation.
A few days later, I had my savings plus the fifteen bucks from the General in my pocket, and was flipping through the pages of Photography Basics in the town’s only newsagent. As a hobby, photography had a lot going for it – I wouldn’t need to actually draw anything (Elliot’s realm), and it involved impressive gadgetry, and the possibility of naked flesh.
The photography book offered information on aperture, exposure, ISO speed, composition, black-and-white, filters, and one nude and two semi-nudes. But on my way to the checkout with the book, a bateleur caught my eye on another cover.
I walked out of the CNA gripping Birds of Prey and hardly felt a pang of mourning for losing the nudes. Instead, the bodies of Leo Fein’s raptors sped through my thoughts like feathered blades, swooping, spinning and intersecting.
With this book I would know the names of each of those hunters in Leo Fein’s study, their tastes in prey, their tactics and habits, and I would string another link to him.
* * *
Elliot could be pigheaded and obsessed with his own ideas but he was never deliberately cruel to any of us. So, when he said he’d like to come to the raffle draw, Ma didn’t comment on his change of heart. I guess she didn’t want to jinx a rapprochement, and Elliot had been unusually quiet recently.
The shul hall was decked in blue and silvery-white ribbons, and Meyer Levinson was at the microphone on the little stage. Besides the raffle, they were holding a cake sale, a jumble sale and fundraising dinner later, which I was grateful we’d be skipping.
As Meyer began the draw, we saw Carol.
‘Thank God we got that bakkie from Arnold for a prize or we’d be sunk,’ said Carol.
Ma didn’t reply, but I could tell she was startled, assessing now whether