what I knew about it.
‘Nothing,’ I said, nervous at the implication that I might.
‘Satanists,’ said Mrs Verwey, taking hold of my arm. ‘Very dangerous. And they’re in this town, Ben. You tell your people to be careful.’ Finally she let go of my arm but repeated the word – ‘Satanists’ – before I excused myself for break. I dreaded Mrs Verwey finding out my family were atheists – at least Satanists believed in something, but atheists?
At home that afternoon, Ma decided the situation was becoming serious enough to warrant talking to Elliot in private. I hovered in the passage outside his bedroom door, pretending to fetch things from my own bedroom.
‘You know you’ve caused a lot of trouble,’ she said. ‘More than I think you knew you would.’
‘I know,’ said Elliot.
‘People think it was Afrikaners now – neo-Nazis. Do you know that? You could have stirred something up that’s out of control now. I heard Julian Gross was thinking about getting the Jewish Board of Deputies from Joburg involved even. Julian was going to get an appointment with the mayor.’
‘Damn.’
‘I know you didn’t mean it to be like this. I’m glad you see it was a mistake.’
‘It was a mistake – it doesn’t look like the Israeli flag. Nobody knows what it’s supposed to be.’
‘Elliot, it’s gone far enough,’ said Ma, firmer again. ‘You have to take responsibility for it. There could be trouble because of this. People could get hurt. The wrong people will be blamed.’
‘I’ll take responsibility.’
‘So, okay,’ she said. He’d caught her off-guard. ‘So, should we call Julian now?’
‘No, I’ll do it. Just give me a little time.’
‘Don’t take too long. It’s the right thing.’ It sounded like she was starting to walk so I scooted further down the passage. ‘I’m proud of you,’ I think I heard her say.
Elliot spent most of the night in his room.
I didn’t see it but apparently it was a three-by-two-metre sheet that was hoisted up the flagpole at the shul that night. Elliot must have spent some time on it, making sure the stripes were parallel, that the swastika was even and tilted at just the right angle, and that the images were on both sides of the flag. There was no mistaking now, I believe, that this was a modified Israeli flag, blue stripes above and below a cocked swastika in place of a Star of David.
For good measure, next to the blue smudge of his first attempt, he stencilled the Israeli coat of arms, the menorah, with a swastika adorning the centre candlestick holder. Beneath it he’d spray-painted:
END NAZIONISM NOW!
* * *
Perhaps I couldn’t quite believe that Leo Fein was gone forever; if he was, so was my father. I wasn’t at an age where I was immune to imagining my father’s comeback, but it wasn’t something I ever spoke about with Ma or my brothers.
It was Joss to whom I could talk about the possibilities, the malleability, of the rational known world. (The longing I felt for Georgina Melck, I still kept to myself.) We had to have these discussions – at least, I did – because, as much as I wanted to make myself a believer, questions presented themselves. Joss was my fellow philosopher and through our examinations we could reason our way through any doubts.
We pondered, Joss and I, why it was that God appeared all the time to people in Bible stories – in person, as it were – and performed miracles, but was largely absent in our time. That, in the biblical era, He could move oceans aside and spontaneously combust bushes, give clear instructions in dreams and waking life, appear on the scene like a friendly/wrathful neighbour, but not do any of it in this era – all of this was simply a function of the times, we concluded.
In those days, see, some of the laws of physics and so on were suspended. Perhaps this explains why it took so long for Galileo, Newton et al. to ‘discover’ the universal principles governing movement etc., etc. The looseness of the laws back in the Bible days, for some divine reason, was made firmer as we crept into the modern era and God retreated simultaneously through the shrinking cracks to take up more of a neutral-observer-type position.
‘I think there’s a heaven,’ said Joss. ‘In heaven you get to hang out with everyone who’s dead. If you want to speak to Einstein, you can. You can have a game of chess with him. In heaven everyone knows everything and they’re all good at stuff.’
‘But if everyone knows everything, why would I need to talk to Einstein?’
‘He just seems like a cool guy.’
‘I suppose. Do you think Leo Fein’s there too?’
‘I’d want him there,’ said Joss.
‘He’d be a hit in heaven.’
‘Busting in with his Mercedes-Benz.’
‘Showing everybody the nose-picking thing.’
‘So I guess we’re never going up in the Cessna with the General now,’ said Joss.
‘Guess not.’ I didn’t ask whether he thought Leo Fein and my father would be there together, and I was glad to end the subject.
That afternoon we cased out Radio-Rama. We wondered whether, with my heist experience, we could pull off a robbery. Inside, I was eyeing out a tape player and some Commodore 64 games. Joss was into the tape player, too, but also the Walkman and some pre-recorded cassettes of Juluka.
He picked up the tapes and put them down again. South African bands, no matter how good they were, were never going to be considered as good as even the second-rate shit from overseas. Other kids would judge you for sure; to be seen with a South African band’s music could ruin you.
There were CB radios there too. The craze had gone, but I was reminded of Jackie’s story of Good Buddies contacting spirits on the other side with their breaker-breakers and wondered whether Leo Fein would be listening in, and what his handle would be.
It was half-hearted, anyway. After Shadrack’s badge, I didn’t want any more robberies. Besides, without the getaway car, what would be the use?
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.
‘Leo Fein would’ve known how to do it,’ said Joss.
‘For sure.’
‘My dad was talking to Meyer Levinson and old Meyer said Leo Fein took the Americans for a ride.’
‘What Americans?’
‘NASA,’ said Joss with that old trademark Dorfman drama.
Every kid had heard the rumour that NASA wanted silicon from Silicon Smelters outside town for the microchips in the Space Shuttle. I still don’t know whether that’s true, but we all longed for it to be so.
‘But why would Leo Fein rip them off? I mean, it’s for the Space Shuttle,’ I said.
‘I don’t know. Just what I heard.’
As puzzling as it was to me why anyone would work against NASA, Leo Fein’s association with them was further proof of his exceptionality, and his death all the more of a loss.
5
SATANISTS
Uncle Victor and Elliot’s relationship was one that continually surprised me. I’d missed its germination, since it had started before I was born, but when Elliot was a boy the two would go to professional wrestling matches together. It’s hard to imagine Elliot enjoying such an event at any time of his life, but the fights cemented a mutual affection that lasted beyond Elliot’s childhood days.
Victor grew up in a place without a shul, had never had a bar mitzvah,