The morning of Maja’s flight, she left her apartment for a brisk walk along the canal. Her bag was packed; she was keyed up, wanting to leave. There was ice on the ground and the weather was the coldest it had been for weeks. Sometimes, when she looked at Hunters in the Snow in the morning, the wind attacking the window, she thought, you think you’ve got it bad, you in there? Well, look here. Five centuries later, same story.
A strange thing happened at the end of her walk, as she was about to cross the road and climb the three stories to her apartment. She was stretching her calves when a seagull swooped down and loitered a few feet away. As Maja walked towards her building, the seagull rose and flew directly at her face. She saw its black eyes and thin, sharp beak, shouted “Weg !” and swiped her arm in its direction. But a few seconds later it dived again, turned back only by the violent flap of her hand.
Back inside, she looked out of her window onto the canal and saw that the seagull was still there, patrolling the edge.
Her father had loved seagulls. He used to take her on the train to Zandvoort for ice cream and to feed the gulls. He liked the way they pecked at each other to get to the crumbs. Tough birds. Maja was no believer in the supernatural, but the stupid thought came that this might be a message from him: Come on, look sharp. Showtime.
Hershel
As Hershel slid around a stationary taxi on Adderley Street, watching in his rear-view mirror for oncoming cars, a pedestrian stepped obliviously into the road ahead. Hershel pressed the hooter and his hatchback Renault – a car unsuitable for a man of his size, he often thought – emitted a quack. Why were the hoots of small cars so unthreatening?
After stopping for a couple of Kit Kats at the nearby Seven Eleven, Hershel headed on to Black Enterprises, a corner building at the bottom of Kloof Street. He took the lift to the second floor and walked past the office of Maurice Black, who looked up from his paperwork.
“You free?” said Black, gliding backwards a short distance on his smart office chair. It wasn’t really a question. “Let’s talk in the boardroom.”
With fake leather chairs and a wood-veneer table, the windowless room was furnished to radiate efficiency and success. Usually, during impromptu meetings, Black perched with his backside on the edge of a desk, looming above his seated employees despite his shortness. Now he positioned himself at the head of the table, Hershel taking the seat to his right. Black laid a blue ring-bound notebook on the table. He was about to speak when the cellphone in his pocket started belting out Gloria Estefan’s Conga.
Black picked up, listened briefly. “Tell them,” he said, “to stick it.” He raised a palm towards Hershel: wait. Black’s head was smooth, though hair curled over the V in his shirt and erupted from his forearms. “If they’re gonna ink, they must do it now. They’re umming and ahhing. They’re wasting our lives. This is an awesome property – people are lining up.”
For Black, the market was always fantastic; any crummy space was full of potential. Like all great self-promoters, Hershel thought, Black believed his own stories. Consequently, even in these bleak times, with agents giving up and developers going bust every day, Black carried on leasing and selling property in the city centre, closing the deals.
Off the phone now, Black turned his attention back to Hershel. “Coffee?”
Hershel shook his head. He could feel his palms beginning to sweat; he rubbed his hands on his trouser legs. Despite the midsummer heat and the claustrophobic room, Black was too cheap to switch on the air con unless a client was present.
Black leaned forward. “Have you ever watched Japanese archery, Hersh?”
“Sorry, what?” A fresh round of moisture broke through the pores in Hershel’s palms. He placed his hands discreetly under the table.
“The Japanese.” Black positioned a forefinger to slant his eyelid.
“I know who they are.”
“But have you watched them in action? A couple of years ago I was in San Francisco, at Golden Gate Park – they’ve got an archery field out there, and the Japanese teams came and practised. Even the Olympic team. You’ve got to go. Seriously, Hersh.” Black nodded, a man offering a word to the wise.
Hershel nodded back, as if in his current or foreseeable financial situation a trip to San Francisco was a possibility.
“But here’s the thing,” said Black. “How many arrows do you think the coach gives each team member?”
Hershel shook his head.
“Come on, guess. Take a risk.” Black arched his eyebrows. “You could be wrong, that’s all.”
Hershel closed his eyes, as though he were thinking. When he opened them, he said, “One.”
“Wrong!” Black held up a pair of fingers. “Two. I saw it myself. Now guess the number of bull’s-eyes. There were ten people in the team.” Black was looking at him, eyes narrow. “You know the answer.”
“Twenty.”
“Exactly. Two arrows per man, twenty bull’s-eyes. Every – single – day.” Black punctuated his words by hitting the table lightly with his flat palm, dull thuds in the airless room. “There’s a lot to learn from the Japanese. You know what I mean?”
Hershel didn’t. They were good archers. What would you expect from the Olympic team?
“Come on, Hersh, what’s the lesson? I’m telling you this story so you can take something away.”
Hershel shifted his buttocks in the seat. Now his lower back was sweating. He wondered how many other agencies were hiring in this climate, and briefly, for he’d thought about this many times, whether he had any other viable skills or products to sell. He was half an accountant, as his mother often said – he’d passed some exams, though not others – but he had no further training. He’d been lucky to get this job with Black. Maybe he could do better in other things, though. You never knew. His grandmother had wanted him to become a doctor: as a child, he’d been urged to wind reams of wet toilet paper around her arm to form a plaster cast. Hershel had spent many lugubrious hours in this way. But his medical prospects had vanished in high school, when his marks had failed to take off, and the most he could finally manage was to become a fraction of an accountant. Still, perhaps his true self lay in a different direction. His grandfather had driven sheep from one Lithuanian village to another, sometimes carrying them on his back. Maybe that kind of work, just to take one example, was what he was really cut out for.
Black continued, “The coach gives them only two arrows because failure is not an option. They don’t even look at the target, you know? I mean, at some point they must look, but when they shoot, some of them even have their eyes closed.” Hershel made his eyes wide to show surprise. Black paused. Hershel could actually see his boss’s rib cage expanding as he inhaled to make his next point. “I want you to adopt that mind-set:” – he looked caringly at Hershel – “the mind-set of success. Failure is not an option. That must be your mantra.”
A pep talk: so Hershel’s job seemed to be safe, for now. His boss opened the blue notebook on the table. “Here are your figures for the past three months.” He flipped the book around and slid it towards Hershel. “No bull’s-eye.”
The figures were depressing, even Hershel could admit that. He’d landed three small rental agreements, each bringing in a few thousand per month from their respective landlords – Black earned five per cent of that, Hershel another five. From his labours, he and Black had each earned enough to go out to a movie and a nice-ish dinner afterwards, if they’d been so inclined. Hershel drew in air and expelled it loudly through his lips. The impossible combination of people without cash and acres of vacant space in town meant a whirlpool of sellers, developers, agents going down the spout.
“It’s not like I’m firing you or anything. I just want you to have better sales. You’re number three here, Hershel.”
“There