It’s Greg Kartun delivering fruit and vegetables to the house from the produce market near the racecourse. He drives his vegetable lorry, his freight train, in and parks, then wanders in from the early autumn cold, gun tucked into the belt of his Levi jeans, white Versace shirt ironed crisp, thick brown hair coasting over his forehead to dip down in a careless wing over very blue eyes. Greg was part of a famous gang that ran the streets of Johannesburg. After a shootout in which three people died, Greg and his cohorts were brought to trial for murder. He served four years for public violence and exited jail reformed; he now owns his own company, Major Potato, and delivers produce to restaurants round town. Given that he was a student of my father, he takes it upon himself to keep the late Dr Kriel’s wife supplied with the best fruit and veg.
He walks into the kitchen – thirty-five years old and six foot two, feet turned out like a prima ballerina, back erect as though strapped to a painted maypole – a childhood watching his mother teach ballet has rubbed off and he holds himself, part ballet dancer, part fruit-and-vegetable Mafia man.
“Huuuuullo, Mrs Kriel.” Deep male voice.
Life, Greg’s assistant, carts in the boxes of produce, which he piles into a leaning tower of Pisa in the centre of the kitchen. Peaches and oranges instantly perfume the place.
“How are you, Mrs Kriel? Hello, Helena.” His voice is modulated to dip an octave or two when addressing me. He stands, gun in his jeans, cell phone in his hand, feet turned out. “When you going back to America?” he wants to know. “Isn’t Hollywood calling? Aren’t you a Very Important Person? What you still doing here?”
“Hollywood can wait,” I say. “I’m not going back now.”
“Why?”
“Because. I’m needed here,” I say.
“Why’s that?”
“Stop asking so many questions, Greg,” I snap.
“I hope you’ve given me good peaches this week, Greg. The peaches last week were dry,” my mother interrupts, changing the subject and waving her wooden soup spoon about, head all pea-green.
“It’s autumn, Mrs Kriel,” he laughs. It sounds like a crow caw-cawing. “The only reason you’re getting peaches is because you know Greg Kartun.”
“Make Greg some tea,” my mother says to no one in particular. “So what’s new, Greg?”
“Nothing.” He taps the Versace logo over his shirt pocket looking for his smokes. “I live a very mundane life. I sell potatoes in the murder capital of the world. Time to get out of South Africa.” He lights up. “Go to Portugal. That’s a nice place, except the Americans are ruining it; fucken soya eaters, cutting down the trees to farm soya and coffee, and then they have the cheek to tell the Brazilians not to burn the Amazon, those same soya-eating, vegetarian coffee drinkers. Don’t burn the Amazon! If I was a starving Brazilian, what do you think I’d do? Let’s see the Americans drop their standard of living. Hawaii was a paradise till the whites got hold of it. White-Protestant-fucken dogs!”
“You’re so PC,” I say.
“Ja,” he says. “I am.”
He follows me to the counter where I switch on the kettle to make him tea. He looks me up and down like a slave trader assessing a virgin for sale. “You lost weight?”
“Don’t look at me so closely, Greg.”
“And why shouldn’t I look at you? You’re pleasing to the eye.”
“You’re such a thug.”
I turn my back on him and pour the tea, pass it over. He holds the cup like an aristocrat, his pinkie finger sticking into the air. His other fingers are bedizened with diamond rings, collateral from all the people he has lent money to who still owe him.
“Why d’you walk around with your cell phone in your hand?” my mother asks.
“In case it rings.”
“Why don’t you put it down?” I say.
“In case I forget it.”
“Bit of bondage going on there?” I say.
He takes a delicate sip of tea. “I’m into bondage.” Pinkie standing up like a snorkel on a snorkeller.
“You’re into bondage?”
“Yes, baby. I think you should get into bondage too. I could teach you. You’d be good at it, whipping someone into submission.”
“Is that what it takes to get you to submit?”
“Ja.” He is categorical. “Whip me blind and I’ll surrender completely.”
“Well, that gives me something to consider. It’ll help me with my research.”
“What research?”
“On surrender.”
“Come to my house and I’ll introduce you to all my whips. We’ll get into some surrender, big time.”
“Definitely something to consider.”
When the sun goes down we bring flame to wick.
My mother and I light the Sabbath candles. When I open my eyes, Evan is sitting on the couch, showered. His shoes shine, candlelight making suns on the tips of his polished black brogues, his hair growing slowly in. Lively fire turns the piano room crackling. My mother opens her eyes when she has finished her prayers, claps her hands in a syncopated beat, as though dancing to a Flamenco guitar in a Spanish courtyard, polka-dotted dress, long train, thick hair, coding some inner beat. She was a dancer with the Madrid Spanish Dancing Company when she was young. Forty years later, those castanets are still making music in her mind. Ross has arrived with Stargazers, which we put, all pink and open throated, into vases to perfume the rooms and passages.
At the table, set with my grandmother’s Russian silver and lace, Evan recites the prayers. We move from the everyday to the sacred. And after eating, we retire to the couches and sprawl out by the fireside, cheeks traced in orange as though painted by Rembrandt. The fire clicks-snaps-seethes from the grate, then burns down slowly.
“So, hopefully, Ev will go back to teaching,” I say into the room almost in darkness now, the night’s candles burned out and the last of the fire turning us into shadow puppets wavering on a bagged white wall.
“Let’s not rush it.” My mother’s voice emanates from somewhere. “Teaching means going into town and being exposed to all those germs.”
“What’s wrong with being exposed to germs?” Ross wants to know, his voice gone deep and sleepy. “Apart from getting flu, what’s the problem?” He’s almost asleep, each word dragged out.
No one answers. I wait. Are Evan or my mother going to take the opportunity to tell Ross the truth? Evan is slouched in the maroon armchair by the fireplace, long legs up the white brick wall, warming his socked feet in the slow heat that emanates through the bricks, his place every Friday night, a precision to the image we can count on. Ross is asleep, lying along the couch, arms crossed over his chest.
“What’s the rush about getting back to teaching? Why not start next year?” my mother asks into the almost dark room.
“No,” Evan says. “I have to get back to my life, my world.”
“He needs something concrete to move towards,” I say.
My mother is silent. Only the fire chats, crick-cracking.
“I have to get up in the morning with something to do,” Evan says. “You know, with a contribution to make.”
Silence from my mother’s side of the room, she is evidently