39

THE PUB WITH NO BEER

DR ULRICH WAS AT HIS USUAL FRIDAY EVENING LOCATION: locked in combat with Girlie Ming in her office behind the Beijing Bazaar. They were playing chess and arguing about philosophy, ancient remedies and the iniquities of antibiotics.

That night Old Mrs Ming had not yet shuffled in with a tray of lapsang souchong tea when Dr Ulrich unleashed a cunning move half an hour into the first game. ‘Check.’

‘What?’ Girlie’s forehead clenched in a frown.

‘Check. Your queen’s a goner.’

‘She can’t be. Hang on a mo.’ She studied the disposition of her pieces with dismay. The devious quack had cornered her. Girlie hated losing, especially to a man.

‘Capitulate, my friend, and we’ve time for two more games.’

‘You leave me no choice.’ She knocked over his king. ‘You win. And I need my tea before we start again.’

‘Anything stronger in the house?’

‘You know I don’t drink, Egon.’

‘Not even medicinal brandy?’ Dr Ulrich prescribed a half-jack every month for Old Mrs Ming’s breathless spells.

‘Heaven forbid. Bad for my liver.’

Nobody had informed her daughter, then. And the doctor’s last patient had been too late for him to tank up in advance as usual. He grumbled, ‘I thought heaven was a Christian concept?’

‘If you wish to be pedantic. My astrologer says all religions have their own versions of the positive life force which we call qi, and that heaven is just—’

‘Yes, yes. We’ve talked about the spiritual carrots dangled in front of the gullible.’ The doctor lurched forward to emphasise his objection. ‘But all they do is hoodwink people into putting up with their hells on earth.’

‘You’re getting metaphysical again.’ It was their code for the forbidden subjects: religion and politics.

‘So I am,’ Dr Ulrich conceded. ‘It’s been a bad day. Six HIVS confirmed and a kid with gangrene in his toe because his mother was too sick to bring him in earlier. No family to help her and his father’s gone, as usual. I had to amputate.’

‘But an auspicious day too. Did you hear about the brown Madonna?’

‘Endlessly. Sis’ Diliza dropped in with the glad tidings on her way back from the store, and my patients were carrying on about it like a bunch of hadedahs. Thrill a minute, this place. Regular proclamations from the prophet. Exhortations from the pastor and the reverend. Rampant gangs. Mutinous cops since the new captain arrived. It’s a fucking madhouse.’

Girlie gave a fat chuckle. ‘Not anywhere near Joburg. I miss the place.’

‘The Angolan border was worse.’

She sighed. ‘Different times. We shouldn’t live in the past.’

‘Conceded.’ Dr Ulrich gave an ironic two-finger scout salute. ‘Okay then. I’ll settle for tea.’

As Girlie raised her chins to call her mother, there was a commotion outside: yells of anger, thudding feet and a roar of pain. ‘Playtime over,’ sighed the doctor as he picked his way through the dark shop to the door that opened onto the main road with Girlie wheezing behind him.

There was a man down on the gravel verge with three dogs worrying his bloodied trouser leg. ‘Sic! Sic!’ Mad Zizwe egged them on.

‘Stop it, man!’ Dr Ulrich shouted. ‘What’s going on here?’

A thrilled boy turned and gabbled, ‘Tex tried to kick the dogs away from peeing on his bakkie wheels and they went for him.’

Tex roared, flailing his legs as the dogs growled and hung on.

Someone shouted, ‘Where are the cops?’

‘Never around when you need them.’

The gathering crowd began to toyi-toyi and ululate.

‘Call off your dogs,’ Dr Ulrich ordered the old man.

‘Why? He kicked them. They are my children.’

The doctor had not seen him close up before: the impervious face, the shaved head hatched with prison scars, the eyes like black nuclear pools. There was dignity in the way he stood his ground

‘Please,’ Dr Ulrich said, ‘we don’t need more trouble tonight. I’ll check them for injuries, if you like.’

With the slightest of nods the old man muttered an order and the dogs let go and backed off to sit on their haunches next to him, panting.

‘Shall I? Will they accept me?’

Another infinitesimal nod and he squatted down to run his hands over the dogs, feeling the youngest flinch when he touched a swelling, but otherwise he could find no damage. He looked up. ‘Nothing. Just a few bruises.’

‘Thank you.’ Mad Zizwe turned and went away with the dogs loping at his heels.

‘It’s a fucking madhouse,’ Dr Ulrich said, to himself this time, as he turned to inspect the damage to Tex’s leg.

The Outspan had thick walls, the bar was empty and the new residents were sitting round a table in the dining room, which faced the garages at the back. Except for Sid Barker, whom the two priests had helped stumble up to bed and undressed – peeling off the tight polo neck and jeans with the amused expressions of men who wore comfortable cassocks – and left sleeping beneath the old ceiling fan to cool him down.

Nobody in the hotel heard the altercation outside the Beijing Bazaar because they were too busy enjoying the evening.

Mother Esmé sat savouring a second glass of Father Liam’s stash of Meerlust Rubicon. Father Liam and Father Alboreto were catching up on old times in the seminary, well into a second bottle. Rod Greyling, puffed up by his satellite transmission and a double helping of bobotie and yellow rice, was holding forth to the old nun about his exploits in Idi Amin’s Uganda. Benjamin hovered between the table and the kitchen, where Raylene had divided a tin of peaches into four bowls, then topped them off with swirls of ice cream.

Admiring her deft improvisation, he mumbled, ‘You’ve been fantastic. Don’t know how I could have managed on my own.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, Benj. Any time.’

A budding friendship had grown over steaming saucepans and she was feeling good after sitting down with a very tired Philomena and Sweetness to the remaining bobotie before they went home.

‘Do you really mean any time?’ He could hardly believe what he was hearing. ‘Ma Philo says she’ll do what she can, but if the guests stay on I’ll need more help.’

‘All weekend if you like. Evenings when I’m teaching.’

‘You’re a star. I’ll pay, of course.’

‘That’s not the point. I enjoy cooking when it’s not full-time.’

‘You sure?’ When she nodded, he said, ‘My luck’s turned, then.’ Beaming at her, he was surprised how easy it was to banter with a girl.

‘Like I said before, I’d be doing it as much for me as for you.’ Her swamp eyes narrowed. ‘The nuns’ food is terrible, not to mention the beds. Old iron things with horsehair mattresses this thin,’ she demonstrated with fingers held two centimetres apart, ‘and lumpy too.’

‘You could stay here tonight. There are plenty of bedrooms.’ He hoped he hadn’t made a risqué proposition.

‘Real beds with proper mattresses?’

‘Hotel-quality springs. You’d need to make one up, though,’ he cautioned, feeling his way past his mother’s warnings about gold-diggers and loose women. ‘And the rooms won’t have been aired so they’ll be stuffy.’

‘Not a problem. It’ll be heaven.’ She had loaded a tray with the four bowls and held it out to him. ‘Now take the dessert through, skat, and bring the dinner plates back for me to wash.’

Skat? The Outspan, heaven? he marvelled as he shouldered open the swing door into the dining room. The men were growing animated as the level of Meerlust sank. Mother Esmé’s eyes were half mast but still gleaming.

Father Liam thought Ben looked like the cat who got the cream. And what a fine day it had been.

They were all fast asleep in the upstairs bedrooms by midnight, except for Mother Esmé in the manager’s suite to one side of the lobby at the bottom of the stairs. She never dozed for more than short spells because she needed to move around to ease the pain of lying still.

An hour after the lights went out, Smart Fikile fiddled the kitchen lock open with a slim jim. In the closest of the garages in the Outspan’s back yard, the Lucky Boys crouched in a tense huddle.