The Classifier Read online

  My feet dragged lightly on either side, skimming the surface of the dirt, but I was moving. I lifted them, perhaps a millimetre off the ground. And now I was really moving, seriously moving, balancing on two wheels, the thinness of which had been worrying me. Suddenly it was the easiest thing in the world.

  As the bike gathered speed, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment out of all proportion to the significance of the act. The road sped by underneath, my legs stiffly extended on either side as per Ruthie’s instructions. In silhouette I must have looked like some sort of primitive aircraft struggling to take off.

  From behind I heard Ruthie’s shrill call. ‘You better stop now.’

  We had not discussed stopping. The end of the road was marked by a waist-high steel barrier, the purpose of which was to stop someone like me finishing his journey among the traffic on the North Coast Road. It was drawing closer far more quickly than I would have liked. I knew that the brakes on a bicycle are on the handle bars and I tried them, with little effect. Ruthie was shouting something, but she was too far away, there was too much wind around my ears and adrenalin in my blood for me to make out the words.

  Ahead was the steel barrier and to the left a steep grassy embankment. I aimed for the embankment and lost all control of the bicycle. I landed heavily, taking most of the weight on my left knee and shoulder. As far as I could see in that tiny fraction of a second, the bike kept going.

  As I stumbled to my feet, Ruthie and the three kids arrived at the top of the grass slope. Her voice sounded concerned – to the point of panic. ‘Johnny’s going to kill me if his bike is broken.’

  I limped to the bottom of the slope where the bicycle was lying on its side, the back wheel spinning forlornly. I righted it and started struggling up the slope, pushing the offending vehicle. ‘It’s okay,’ I called to Ruthie. ‘Everything seems fine.’

  When I reached her, she conducted her own inspection and decided that Johnny’s bike had survived my first ride. ‘There’s a little dent on the mudguard,’ she said, ‘but I’ll tell him it was like that.’ Then she looked at me. ‘You hurt your knee.’

  The grass burn on my knee was bleeding a little and there were grass marks on my shirt where my shoulder had made contact with the earth. Neither seemed important.

  Ruthie expressed what really was important. ‘You rode,’ she said.

  ‘Fast,’ a small boy who was part of her entourage added admiringly.

  Before the afternoon was over, I was pedalling too, even if it was with more determination than skill. ‘I told you I could teach you in one day,’ Ruthie said. ‘Now you can buy your motorbike.’

  By the time I got home my knee had long since stopped bleeding. I washed it under the garden tap so that Mama would be less concerned at the sight of it. Nothing I did could save my shirt though or modify her reaction to it.

  One more incident stayed in my memory long afterwards. The first time I tried pedalling, this time across the breadth of the road, not downhill, Ruthie had held the bike steady for me. I got on, a foot on the ground to steady myself, ready for action. She leant towards me, one hand on the saddle behind me and the other on the handlebar on her side. I could smell her. She smelled warm and soft, the way a baby does. There was no trace of deodorant or any other cosmetic, only the gentle scent of Ruthie herself. That night, I lay in bed remembering it. I remember it still.

  nine

  Another two weeks after Ruthie had taught me to ride was all I needed. I had two hundred and sixty-two rands, enough to make the first move, if I followed the advice of Uncle Stefan. Abraham went with me to Gert van Staden’s house.

  Nothing was quite the way I expected it to be. I had a picture in my mind of Gert being alone and knowing why we had come. I would make him the offer, he would think about it, decide that it was the best deal he was going to get and we would shake hands on it.

  To begin with, he had no idea why we were there and he was not even sure that he knew us or that we came from the same neighbourhood. On reflection, this was not all that surprising. Nineteen-year-old boys have very little interest in those they see as thirteen-year-old punks. Not only did he not know us, but he was not alone. His father was with him. They were in the garage, doing something to their lawn mower. The spark plug had been removed and little pieces of the carburettor were spread out around them.

  Gert’s father, a broad man with a huge beer belly, looked up from his work and squinted at us with what looked like deep suspicion. It was only later that I realised that he had a bad eye and this was his usual expression. He clearly assumed that our business was with him. ‘Yes, kêrels, what can I do for you?’

  Abraham looked at me. It was a moment in which a little support from him would have been useful, but he waited for me to start. I stood there, tongue-tied. I tried to remember how Uncle Stefan had said I should deal with them. All I could think of was that I should walk away if they did not like my offer. Not ‘they’; he had been talking about Gert. Now I was stuck with Gert and his father, and his father’s suspicious eyes. ‘Yes, kêrels, what do you want?’

  ‘Uncle,’ I started. ‘If Uncle doesn’t mind, I would like to speak to Gert.’ Even with my almost nonexistent experience of business, I knew that such humility was a poor basis from which to start negotiating.

  ‘Then speak,’ Uncle van Staden said. ‘There he is.’

  Then I remembered that Abraham’s father had said I should make the offer on the phone. He had not said I should walk away if they did not like the offer. He said I should hang up. But it was too late to go back now and phone.

  Gert, who had been crouching next to his father, rose and started towards us. He was a tall, lean boy. I was big for my age, but he seemed about twice the size of Abraham and me. It was clear that he was moving away from his father so that we could speak in relative privacy. His father had other ideas though. ‘Where are you going, jong? I also want to hear.’

  So Gert came to a stop and looked at me enquiringly. There was nothing for it, but to press on. ‘You still want to sell your motorbike?’

  ‘Five hundred,’ Gert said.

  This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Uncle Stefan said I should not ask for the price. Now Gert had just told me the price without my asking. I had received no instructions about what to do under the circumstances. But I did have an understanding of the general principles of negotiation that Abraham’s father had tried to instil in me. ‘Too much for me,’ I said and turned to go.

  ‘Wait,’ Gert’s father said. ‘How much can you afford?’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty.’

  Gert whistled. ‘Not a damn.’

  ‘Okay, thanks, Gert. Thanks, Uncle.’ I was heading for the gate again. The power of just being able to walk away was all right. I freely admit that I enjoyed it.

  ‘Wait, jong, wait.’ Gert’s father was also on his feet. ‘What about two hundred and fifty and fifty a month until the five hundred is paid?’ Gert was nodding, clearly pleased with his father’s thinking.

  ‘Where will I get fifty a month, Uncle?’

  Gert’s father’s eyes, including the bad one, were half closed as he looked at me. Machiavelli could not have looked more scheming. ‘Aren’t you the two who are always buying second-hand goods? You’re a couple of little Jews, making money all the time. Don’t tell me you can’t manage fifty rand a month.’

  He had me. But unexpectedly Abraham came to my aid. ‘Our mothers take all the money,’ he said. ‘We just get fifty cents a week pocket money.’ I was so proud of him. We were becoming real businessmen.

  ‘Thanks, Uncle,’ I said, opening the gate to let us out. ‘Thanks, Gert.’

  Gert’s father seemed to want to say something, but stopped. As we walked down the road I thought I heard him tell Gert, ‘You haven’t been able to get rid of the donderse thing.’

  When we were out of earshot, I punched Abraham on the upper arm. ‘Our mothers take all the money,’ I whispered. ‘That was a good one.’


  Abraham grinned. Clearly he also thought it was pretty good.

  It was true that I did not have the bike, but I still had my two hundred and fifty. And I had just walked away as if the bike meant nothing to me.

  I had barely arrived in my little bedroom and sat down on the bed when my regard for Abraham’s father’s wisdom grew further still. I heard the phone ring and Annie answered it. She pushed open my bedroom door without knocking and said, ‘For you, big-shot businessman. Some deal being closed, I’m sure.’

  Gert was on the other end of the line. He must have spent the whole time since we left tracking down my telephone number. ‘I’ll take the two fifty,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all I can pay.’

  ‘I’ll take it. It’s too little, but you can have it for that.’

  ‘Does it run?’

  ‘Of course. What do you think?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll come get it.’

  ‘When?’

  A new thought had entered my mind. ‘I can’t come now. I’ll come about six o’clock.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You better come. Or somebody else may come with a better offer.’

  Nobody has so far, I thought. ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Don’t forget to bring the money.’

  I wanted to wait until Uncle Stefan came home before going to collect the bike. I was on their back stoep with Abraham when he walked in. He took one look at us and said, ‘It looks like big things are brewing. You two better tell me.’

  ‘Pa, they took the two hundred and fifty,’ Abraham burst out.

  ‘Have you paid them already?’ Uncle Stefan looked alarmed.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask Uncle, should there be a contract?’

  He nodded. ‘Get me a pen and paper.’

  Abraham fetched the pen and paper for his father and we sat at the old table they had on the back stoep, watching him write our contract. Abraham and I crowded so close that he had difficulty getting the words onto the paper. ‘Stand back a bit, men,’ he said. The way he spoke to us always made us feel good, this time more than usual. ‘If you want me to do this, at least give me enough room to write.’ We both moved back, but only enough so that we were not actually pressing against him.

  Our contract had some grand phrases, the grandest of which was – in capitals – IN FULL AND FINAL SETTLEMENT. Abraham gave me a triumphant look. If, at that moment, he had said that my father could not have done as good a contract, I would have been unable to argue.

  ‘Gert has to sign before you give him the money,’ Uncle Stefan said.

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  ‘Abraham you go with Chrissie, as a witness.’

  Abraham was already on his feet, eager to be going. He had no intention of missing such a momentous occasion. ‘Yes, Pa,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’

  Uncle Stefan looked uncertainly at Abraham. ‘Do you boys want a lift?’

  ‘It’s all right, Pa. I can walk,’ Abraham said.

  The transaction went smoothly and, to my surprise, the bike started at the first kick. It roared like a lion. Clearly Gert had removed the baffles from the silencer, a standard procedure among teenage boys in Red Hill. I had learnt the basics of driving a car on Oupa’s farm and I knew where the controls were situated on the bike. We moved off down the road, Abraham on the pillion seat with his arms round my waist. We did not go smoothly, but we did go.

  We rode from the Van Staden house straight to the cemetery, through the main entrance, past the guardbox where Abel must have been asleep or busy with Auntie Virginia’s house servant, and down to the far end where there were no graves. There we bounced along the footpaths used by neighbourhood servants as a short cut to the North Coast Road and the bus routes.

  Twice we slipped on spots where there was loose gravel over hard clay and both times we came off, landing in the bushes and wild grass. Abraham wanted a turn and he did better than me. With him in front, we only came off once. At one of the bends in a path, a dog I recognised as belonging to a neighbour was sniffing in the grass. We chased after him at full throttle in first gear, the engine roaring. The last we saw of him was a panicky-looking backside, tail between legs, as he disappeared into the bush.

  We paid no attention to the passage of time. It was only when I had to switch on the headlight that I realised how late it was. Abraham too had said nothing about going home. His cheeks were glowing and his eyes shining. I suppose I looked much the same. My motorbike was magnificent.

  When we reached Abraham’s place, I rode straight down the drive, into the backyard and switched off the engine. ‘And now?’ Abraham asked.

  ‘I want to leave it here for a few days.’

  Abraham’s grin told me what he was thinking, but before he could say anything, the back door opened and his parents came out. ‘So this is the wonderful piece of machinery?’ Uncle Stefan said. ‘We’ve been hearing it from the direction of the graveyard.’

  Abraham and I said nothing. We both just stepped away from the bike so that his father could walk around it, examining it in the light from the back stoep.

  ‘I’m surprised your father allows it,’ Auntie Virginia said, shaking her head, and went back inside.

  ‘Has he allowed it?’ Uncle Stefan asked gently. ‘And why is it here on its stand in our backyard when you could have dropped Abraham outside?’

  ‘Just till Saturday, Uncle,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ll take it away on Saturday.’

  ‘Just till Saturday.’ This time he was not smiling. ‘You have to tell your father sooner or later. On Saturday you take it home and you tell your father or I will.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle. Uncle’s a good Uncle.’

  ‘Your father might not think so, if he knew about my part in this.’ He pointed a warning finger at me. ‘Chrissie, you take that bike home on Saturday.’

  ‘I promise, Uncle.’

  ‘Good.’ I was turning to leave when he stopped me. ‘Did you do what I told you?’

  ‘He did it good, just like Pa said,’ Abraham broke in.

  ‘Good. I think you got a bargain for two hundred and fifty. You can always get things cheap if you’ve got cash. It gives you bargaining power. Remember that.’

  I did and I still do. His advice has served me well since then.

  Uncle Stefan took my motorbike into their garage for safekeeping. Then I said goodnight and ran all the way home, going round corners at full gallop, imagining that I was still on the saddle of my motorbike. My clothes looked at least as bad as they had on the day Ruthie taught me to ride a bicycle and I had picked up a few more grazes. But none off that was important. Even my mother’s scolding was a small matter. I was the owner of a motorbike, paid for with money I had earned. I doubted that I would ever be able to sleep again.

  ten

  There was no way of knowing how my father would react to my motorbike. The awful possibility existed that I might lose it altogether. And I wanted to show it to Ruthie before that could come about.

  In the week after I bought my motorbike and before I saw Ruthie again, the secret of its existence hung over me in an impenetrable cloud of guilt. Every time I looked at Mama or my father, I felt the weight of my deceit. Once Mama even asked me how much I had saved towards my motorbike. To avoid answering, I pretended to have a stomach cramp and ran for the lavatory. That only made things worse, because then she was concerned about my health, gave me medicine and put me to bed. That was Mama. She was always dosing everyone. She should have been a doctor or perhaps a pharmacist.

  Guilt also came in another form that week. On the Friday one of the girls in Abraham’s class had a birthday party and he and I were invited. When we got there, we found that her parents had been exceptionally accommodating by going out for the evening. They had left her with strict instructions that there was to be no alcohol, also that the party had to end at eleven thirty sharp. They would be home by eleven forty-five and it had to be over and we had to be go
ne. Looking back, I can see that we were really well-behaved kids. No one even thought of disobeying their instructions.

  We did play Postman’s Knock though. Until that time I had only heard about it. I thought it was the most tantalising, imagination-stretching, risky game that could ever have been invented.

  The boys and girls drew straws separately. The couple with the longest straws then disappeared into the next room where, behind the closed door, they kissed. Just one kiss – that was the rule. For someone like me, who had never kissed a girl except in greeting an endless stream of female relatives – and that did not count – the thought was enough to make me tremble.

  Sex was not something that was often discussed in our household. I remember Annie cornering Mama in the kitchen one day. I had noticed something in the way she held herself and the mortified expression on her face so I had slipped quietly down the passage and stopped to listen just outside the kitchen door. ‘It’s so terrible,’ she was saying. ‘Glenda is so embarrassed, she is too shy even to talk about it.’

  ‘But why is she embarrassed?’ Mama asked.

  ‘Well, if her mother’s pregnant again, that means that she and Mister Lombaard are still doing that. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘How old is Glenda’s mother?’

  ‘She’s old. She was thirty-five last year.’ Then Mama laughed. ‘It’s not funny,’ Annie said. ‘Think how Glenda feels.’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Mama said. ‘You run along now, I’m too busy to talk.’

  At that stage my knowledge of sex was even worse than Annie’s. The first few girls I drew in Postman’s Knock received just a perfunctory touch on the lips from me. On reflection, I think they must have been disappointed in me. The fourth time I drew the long straw my partner was Jill. She was the prettiest girl in class and the one who, according to the boys, had the most colourful reputation. I tried my little peck on the lips with her, but she had her arms round me and held tight. ‘You’re not getting away with that,’ she whispered. I had no idea until that moment that, besides eating, the human mouth could be such a source of pleasure. When the kiss ended I tried to restart it, but Jill whispered, ‘Wait. We can’t stay longer. They’ll want to know what we’ve been doing. I’ll get you again later.’ And she did, twice more that evening. Each time was more stimulating than the one before.