‘The chain!’ said Leo Fein on the other side. ‘Pull the chain!’
I groped along the wall and found it and pulled. The roller doors began to rise. Leo Fein slid underneath and started to carry the liquor out. The silver Mercedes stood vibrating serenely in the loading bay; the gates to the yard seemed to have imploded and a rear corner of the car had been crushed slightly under the impact.
Leo Fein already had some of the beer at the car and fought to open the boot lid so much that the rear bounced on the shock absorbers. He finally had it open and, while I stood frozen, the man moved with more speed than I’d anticipated from someone his age and shape.
‘The whisky? You get it?’ he asked, sprinting up the steps. He answered his own question by scooping up four bottles.
I ran after him, helping him load the last few bottles into the boot and sliding the rest onto the back seats. It took several thrusts to slam the boot lid down before it finally clung shut.
Once we were in the car, we sped through the gates. For three or four blocks my head was pushed against the leather seat and the engine emitted an alarmed howl. We said nothing. Thereafter we slowed to the same cruising velocity with which we’d left the party.
I stole a look at the man. The straight line of his lips was presided over by a proud and not unattractive nose through which he did virtually all of his breathing. Only the very ends of the mouth curved one way or the other and the lips appeared tucked in. This straight line set off, by contrast, the curves and folds of his cheek, chin, neck and belly.
He finally loosened a little. Calmly he said, ‘Well done, my boy. You were like a cat, hey?’
I was still reeling, riding high on the caper. ‘Is your car okay? What happened?’
‘The car? A little scratch, my friend,’ he said coolly. Then without holding back, he said, ‘Smashed those gates in like they weren’t even there, my china! Bam!’
The Mercedes approached a red light and slowed to a stop and, with the last catch of the brakes on the wheels, the boot popped open, revealing our haul. We both quietened down as a high-riding Hilux bakkie rumbled up the street behind us. The elevated cab’s occupants would have had an easy view of the shining bottles between the loosened jaws of the car boot as they gently turned to the lane alongside ours and came to a stop.
I watched Leo Fein face front as if for an austere presidential photograph, or a mugshot. In the neighbouring bakkie an upright couple in Sunday best gawked at the slightly tattered Mercedes, then at Leo Fein with the white streak and the twelve-year-old in the passenger seat next to him.
Leo Fein kept staring ahead and did the most peculiar thing. He began to pick his nose in earnest. How he dug and scraped in that fleshy pit. From my ringside seat I had a view of both Leo Fein and, across him through two sets of windows, the couple in the next car.
It happened before anyone had a chance to examine the situation in any detail and, as if to deny or excuse this private act of a fellow human being, by some compulsion the couple turned their heads and faced front. We in the silver Mercedes turned left.
‘Works every time,’ said Leo Fein. ‘Don’t know why, but it works.’
‘What if we get stopped?’ I asked.
‘Ag, nobody cares. It’s like a practical joke. That’s what it is. You know – like when you pretend there’s a string across the doorway in class and climb over it. Or you put drawing pins on the teacher’s seat, hey?’
‘Ja,’ I said, as if I did those things.
‘So it’s no big deal. But that doesn’t mean you go blabbing to everyone about where we got this stuff, okay?’
‘I know.’
‘I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea. Some people do that.’
We arrived back in the garden of Meyer Levinson when the braai barrels had been cleared of their meat and the afternoon was sinking into night. I called Joss and the two older boys to help carry the liquor from the Mercedes.
‘It really wasn’t necessary, Leo,’ said Meyer Levinson. ‘All this drink. People will be leaving.’
‘Don’t mention it, Meyer. You only have one sixtieth.’
‘The other thing, Leo—’
‘Ah,’ said Leo Fein, ‘I see my friends have arrived.’
While I placed the beers in the icy water of the galvanised tub on the grass, I watched Leo Fein approach two men, one wearing Aviator glasses and the other tidying his hair with a steel comb. Leo Fein cradled the bottles of Johnnie Walker Black in his arms and greeted the men in Afrikaans. They moved inside Meyer Levinson’s house.
The boys and I smuggled a few beers around the side of the house. We popped the cans and let the aroma fizz out of the tops. The smell was always better than the taste, not as bitter, and in our haste to drink it down Joss and I let rip several burps from our throats. I began to feel the lightness rise up in me even before the end of one can.
‘So where did you go?’ asked Gershon, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Just for a little cruise,’ I said, mysteriously.
‘This is good stuff,’ said Lee, savouring a lengthy sip of Lion Lager. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and blackened the end lighting it.
‘What the hell happened to his car?’ asked Joss.
‘A scratch, my friend. Nothing more.’
Joss crushed the empty can in his hand. ‘Oops! Just a scratch, old sport.’
Someone came around the corner and we all hid our cans. ‘Fuck off, Shoshana,’ said Lee.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ said the girl shaped like a potato latke.
‘So?’ said Lee.
‘So you better give me some or I’ll tell your mom,’ she said.
Lee gave her his can and she took a sip so small it barely wet her lips.
‘So where did you get it from?’ Gershon asked me again.
‘Let’s just say, a friend’s place,’ I said. ‘No big deal.’ How much could I inflate the mystery before it collapsed, I wondered.
‘Oh, a friend,’ said Lee, blinking through the smoke.
When no one tried to pry it out of me, I said, ‘Yip, an old friend called Roy’s Uptown.’
‘They’re not open on a Sunday,’ said Potato Latke scornfully.
‘No, they’re not,’ I said and walked around the corner again. I wasn’t one of them, but I’d found a kind of position among them.
Really I sought to share the feeling of victory with my accomplice, a feeling amplified by the beer, but he was inside with the new men and the whisky. Already many guests were leaving Meyer Levinson’s garden.
Mrs Dorfman was walking towards me. ‘Where’s Joss, Ben?’ she asked. ‘We’re leaving now.’
‘He’s coming. I just wanted to say goodbye inside.’
‘To Leo Fein? Oh, I think he’s having some kind of business meeting. I’m sure it’s fine if you don’t say goodbye. It’s getting late.’
The others came out from around the side of the house and Joss joined me next to his mother. ‘Come on, boys,’ she said, scanning us with her eyes.
Meyer Levinson and Mr Dorfman were standing together, whispering to each other in between goodbyes to the guests.
‘I don’t see why he has to meet in your home, Meyer,’ said Mrs Dorfman as we approached, ‘and on the occasion of your sixtieth birthday.’
‘He