Meyer with something, okay?’
I felt the others trying to pick up a conversation again, rolling the ball on the ground between one another while Leo Fein and I climbed the grass bank.
‘Thanks, my boy. You’re a big help, hey,’ said Leo Fein without looking back at me. ‘Meyer’s running short of booze. A party should never run out of booze, hey, boy? That’s rule number one.’
We walked along the driveway to his car, a silver Mercedes coupé with a long nose and cream leather seats. Soon we were rolling through the streets, keeping a steady pace.
‘So you’re an Aronbach, hey?’
I nodded.
‘Hey! Your father was a good man, let me tell you.’
But he didn’t tell me. He just kept driving, his shoulders pressing comfortably against the cream leather seatback, while I shuffled questions I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
My father died when I was six, if you choose to believe me, or five, if you prefer my mother’s version. I’d always correct her when we talked about it. There was no reason for me to know better than her but I pressed for the extension anyway.
It was a heart attack that killed Eddie Aronbach. I don’t remember anyone telling me he’d died. I saw Elliot, who was eleven at the time, thrash on the bed and cry rare tears. Even then I didn’t know the cause of his distress. How could I? No one was talking to me. They were too busy pouring whisky down Elliot’s neck and getting him our father’s gold watch to grip on to.
And where was Will during all this? In a pattern he’d never shake, he was working. He worked at phoning our relatives, he worked at arranging the funeral and, although still only sixteen, he worked at understanding the finances. As I grew older, carrying the knowledge of my father’s death, I sensed that I’d missed a defining trauma.
The Mercedes drifted through town and I began to wonder where we were going. We passed Dungeon Park and turned into Grobler Street, driving in the direction of the town’s great landmark, the red-and-white radio tower.
At the intersection with Schoeman Street was the place I always thought of as the centre of town. Great North Diesel and Auto Electric, the business my father had started, sat on one corner. Diagonally opposite the family business was the library with the monument of molten rifles from the Makgoba War; the other two corners were taken up by the sixteen-storey Nedbank building (our only skyscraper) and the OK Bazaars supermarket.
I’d assumed we were going to Leo Fein’s house but we drove slowly down Market Street, past Roy’s Uptown Liquor, craning to see in.
‘Ag, no. Closed,’ he said.
Of course it was closed – it was Sunday. Everyone knew it was illegal to sell alcohol on a Sunday. He must have forgotten, I thought.
We pulled around the back, into General Joubert Street, and reversed the Mercedes so that the rear bumper was close to the steel doors of the delivery entrance. Here we were hidden from what little traffic there was in town on a Sunday afternoon, on a street where the backs of many buildings lay.
‘Listen, this is my friend Roy’s place,’ said Leo Fein. ‘He’s not gonna mind if we borrow a few things. You gonna help me?’
I nodded.
‘You think you can jump over?’ He peered up at the gate through the Mercedes’ window.
‘I get into my mom’s window from the roof sometimes,’ I said. ‘For fun.’
‘Hey, what a bugger you are! Don’t worry about it – Roy’s my old friend. I’ll make it up to him.’
We stepped out of the Mercedes and Leo Fein peeped through a gap in the gate.
‘Look here,’ he said, pulling me to the square hole in the gate where the bolt lay. Our faces were side by side and he held on tight to my shirtsleeve, keeping me at the gap. ‘See that window there? That’s where you get in. If you take those empty crates there, the beer crates, and put them on top of each other, you can stand on them and get up to the window.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘When you’re inside you start bringing the booze to the big door.’ He rumbled the words at me and his instructions were beginning to drive my heart faster. ‘When you’ve got everything, you wait there at the door and then you bang three times, like this.’ He tapped three slow gongs quietly on the steel gate with his knuckle. ‘Then I’ll come in and open up, and we load and go. That’s our plan.’
I nodded and turned to climb the gate.
‘Don’t you want to ask anything?’
I looked into his face. Yes: how did you know my father? Were you friends? Were you in business together? What made my father a good man? Did my father ever do anything like this with you?
I asked none of them and shrugged instead.
‘Don’t you want to know what you must get?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Okay. You gonna remember this? Three cases of beer – you know, twenty-four cans in a case – one of Lion, one of Ohlsson’s, one Castle. One Campari and one Tia Maria, if you find them.’ He asked for wine, too, then said, ‘Whisky. You must look for Johnnie Walker Black – not the red label. Six bottles.’
He went over it again, making me repeat it back to him. Trying to keep the order straight made me more nervous than the thought of the task ahead, driving out one kind of anxiety with another.
‘Clever boy,’ he said when I had the order right. ‘You get the whisky first, okay?’ Leo Fein stooped a little and locked his fingers so that his hands formed a stirrup. ‘Come,’ he said. It was a familiar pose to me but one I’d never seen an adult assume. I put my foot in his hands and he boosted me up.
‘Be quick,’ said Leo Fein in a low voice once I was over. ‘They’re waiting for us at Uncle Meyer’s.’ I carried the plastic crates up a ramp that led to the raised loading bay where the steel roller doors hung shut, and stacked them against the wall. Here, I staggered them like steps up to the window.
I hauled my body up and knelt on the top crate, then raised myself to open the window, which was hinged at the top. The tower teetered but held as my foot came off it, and I wormed myself through the fanlight.
Now half of me was outside and half inside where things were much darker and the sounds of my efforts struck hard surfaces. Only here, at this halfway point, did I feel the clanging of the risks involved.
It was too painful to remain there like that for too long, and I couldn’t turn back and face Leo Fein as a failure, so I swung over inside, hanging off the frame from my fingers. I had no idea how far the drop was from the window or what lay beneath me in the dark. It’s an odd feeling, giving yourself up to fall an uncertain distance. Even a suicide jumper must have an idea of just when he’ll hit the ground, but the raised delivery bay and the darkness confused my sense of depth.
I inhaled unsteadily and unhooked my hands. My bare arms slid against the cold enamel paint of the wall and my feet touched down with a shock, earlier than anticipated.
When my eyes adjusted, I got busy shopping. Well, what choice did I have now? I knew which were the brandies, which the whiskies, liqueurs and wines, since I’d studied closely the bottles in the bar at home. I found the Johnnie Walker without too much trouble.
Soon enough I had our consignment arranged neatly before the roller door. The three bangs came as a shock, even though it was my own fist on the steel. I strained to hear outside.
Silence.
I considered that I’d been left there – they’d only find me in the morning and I’d have to try to sneak out or lie about why I was there. If I didn’t get back to Meyer Levinson’s house, there were the Dorfmans to consider, the whole party might be concerned; my mother.
I