Contrary to the information I’d received, Dolfie returned home the next day and I had to content myself with getting off on every single little look, word, expression, hint of perfume and, of course, touch I’d experienced with his wife, Klara. I’d lie awake and hear the way she’d used the word “mount”. What a magnificent word. Mount, as in mare (yes), mountain (no), mountebank (yes). I must have heard the way she’d used the word a thousand times, unable to sleep, regardless of whether I’d taken myself in hand or not. Talking of which, I’d get into a swoon about our first handshake and what she’d do with that firm, dry hand. Every pore on my body was receptive to that rough hand. Grip my left foot and I’d come a kilolitre. Christ, it was driving me completely, exultantly insane. I imagined fucking her in every conceivable position and state of dress in her house, with or without her husband (and a barking Verdi) watching, while out in the supposedly real world people were still dying like flies or living like the turds upon which those flies feasted. All I could and wanted to think of was Klara’s hand, or that word, walking and sitting and talking with a perpetual hard-on, the bytes on my screen dissolving into that middle-aged, middle-class woman, getting herself into a Teutonic fit about that absurd, narrow-eyed Alsatian representing every boring, responsible little clerk – except the old man – on the planet. I knew I hadn’t fallen in love so I suppose you could say I was, in a word (or two, or possibly a hyphenated compound), cuntstruck.
Somehow the week passed and I finally drove through to Lyttelton on Sunday and the old man wasn’t waiting at the gates anymore, though when I opened them the dog came charging. After exchanging our usual pleasantries of threat and counter-threat, I drove around to the back and the old man’s saggy black longs, frayed jersey and shredded grey windbreaker were hanging on the wash line like ragged memories.
He was busy sweeping the cement apron, wearing his usual HPs and a pair of suit socks, the calves pale and hairless from years of wearing suits, the flesh around the formerly athletic knees sagging and creased. For pants he was wearing a torn and faded pair of once-blue PT shorts, and for his wrinkled torso an old white T-shirt that looked as if it had been holed by a German machine gun. You could walk around half naked like this of a Highveld winter’s mid-morning, if the sun shone, which it usually did, and the wind didn’t blow: it was pleasantly warm and still.
Apart from the cotton wool that was still over his eye, he had an additional bit of bandaging around his one shin. The beanie was still keeping his fine hairs under control and, after he crushed my hand, he asked what it was that I had in my hand, though it was quite clear what it was.
“I bought you a nice warm winter jacket.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he said, taking the padded corduroy jacket and looking extremely uncomfortable about it.
“Why not? It’ll keep you nice and snug.”
“Ja,” he said dubiously.
“Shall we have some coffee?”
“Good idea,” he said, relieved.
So we went through the usual routine and I was about to comment on the house reeking of dog when I noticed that he’d opened all the windows. Very attentive, for such a deaf, seemingly selfish old man. Back on the apron I found the dog’s chewed old cricket ball and threw it to the bottom of the garden. Off it waddled at pace and the old man looked particularly pleased about it. After a few of those it came and sat on my foot, exhausted, and he said he had a cupboard full of old clothes – didn’t I want to have a look at any of them? I gently but firmly told him his clothes weren’t my style and he accepted that, shaking his head slightly.
“So what is that bandage around your leg for?”
“Nothing,” he said, uncomfortable.
“Dad, what is it?”
“I fell the other day. I completely misjudged the pavement,” he said, starting to unravel the bandage.
“I don’t want to see it.”
So he did it up again and I saw it was bloody and it transpired that this wasn’t the first time he had fallen on his way to the bank or the supermarket, where he got his monthly pension and weekly groceries, respectively, respectfully.
“All right, from now on I’m going to come a bit earlier and I’m going to get your groceries. When I call you on Thursday nights you can give me a list of what you need. Do you understand me?”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not being a bother,” I muttered, hoping Uncle Vern would take him to the bank.
“What?”
I repeated myself a little louder, impatiently, which the dog interpreted as aggression and started grumbling, whereupon the old man leant forwards and picked up the miscreant, which was still imitating the universe and expanding rapidly.
“Dad, the doctors said you’re not supposed to bend and pick up heavy things!”
“Man, doctors know bugger all!”
“Whaff!” the dog agreed, safe in its doting owner’s arms, after which we sank into one of our usual, awkward silences again, letting our vast differences simmer down while I tried hard not to think of Klara, which of course just got me thinking hard about her in that place that now seemed to be the permanent seat of my intelligence.
“Do you know what?” he finally said.
“No,” I said, expecting a set of stock stories, maybe even ‘Pete the Piddling Pup’.
“I saw a programme on TV the other night about a man who’d been treated so badly on Robben Island that he’d lost an eye.”
“And?”
“That’s not right.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Bastards.”