The Pickup (2 page)

I'm on lunch. He pulled down the corners of his mouth undecidedly, then smiled for the first time. It was the glimpse of something attractive withheld in the man, escaped now in the image of good teeth set off by clearly delineated lips under a moustache black as his eyes. Most likely of Indian or Cape Malay background; like her, a local of this country in which they were born descendant of immigrants in one era or another—in her case from Suffolk and County Cork, as in his from Gujerat or the East Indies.

EL-AY Café.

The friends probably at their usual table inside. She didn't look, and made for a corner of the terrace.

In casual encounters people—men and women, yes, avoiding any other subject that may be misunderstood, compromising— tell each other what they
do:
which means what work is theirs, not how they engage their being in other ways. A big word had been brought up from what was withheld in this man—‘fate'— but it was simple to evade its intimate implications of belief, after all, steer these to the public subject: the occupations by which she, driver of the Rover (even if, as she insisted, it was borrowed), just as he, his place the underbelly of other people's vehicles,
gained her bread. Whatever his ancestry, as a local of the same generation they'd share the understanding of ‘bread' as money rather than a loaf. Nevertheless she found herself speaking rather shyly, respectful of the obvious differences in ‘fate' between them: she in her father's (having lied by omission about this) Rover, he trapped beneath her small jalopy.

What I do, what you do. That's about the only subject available.

I don't know how exactly these things work out. I wanted to be a lawyer, really, I had these great ambitions when I was at school—there was a lawyer aunt in the family, I once went to hear her cross-examine in that wonderful black pleated gown and white bib. But with various other things on the way … I quit law after only two years. Then it was languages … and somehow I've landed up working as a PRO and fundraiser, benefit dinners, celebrity concerts, visiting pop groups. Everyone says oh great, you must meet such famous people— but you also meet some awful people and you have to be nice to them. Sycophantic. I won't stick to it for long. She stopped short of: I don't know what I want to do, if that means what I want to be. That was a lead into the confessional, even if the ethic were to be open with strangers.

It's good money, isn't it?

Commission. Depends what I bring in.

He drank the coffee evenly in swallows and pauses, as if this were a measured process. Perhaps he wasn't going to speak again: it was patronizing, after all, this making free encounters out of other people's lives, a show of your conviction of their equal worth, interest, catching the garage mechanic in the net, EL-AY Café. When he had taken a last swallow and put down the cup he'd get up and say thank you and go—so she had to think of something to say, quickly, to mend, justify, the pickup.

What about you?

It was the wrong thing—there! She'd done it, it came out god-awful as Showing Interest, and she thought she heard him take a breath in order to deal with it, with her; but he only put out his hand for the sugar-bowl, she hastened to hand it to him, he helped himself to another spoonful for the dregs in his cup. He would keep silent if he wanted to, he could speak if he wished, it wasn't up to her.

Many things, different countries.

Perhaps that's the way.

It is if they don't want you, say it's not your country. You have no country.

Isn't this our country. That's a statement, from her.

For you.

Oh I thought you were—like me—this's home, but it's good to get out of it. I was in America for a year—some other country would have been a better idea, for me.

I go where they'll let me in.

And from … She was tentative. It couldn't be avoided now.

He named a country she had barely heard of. One of those partitioned by colonial powers on their departure, or seceded from federations cobbled together to fill vacuums of powerlessness against the regrouping of those old colonial powers under acronyms that still brand-name the world for themselves. One of those countries where you can't tell religion apart from politics, their forms of persecution from the persecution of poverty, as the reason for getting out and going wherever they'll let you in.

Things were bad there. Not really knowing what she was talking about.

Were, are.

But you're all right, here? Are you?

Now he neatly replaced cup in saucer, placed spoon, and did get up to leave.

Thank you. I have to go back to work.

She stood up, too. Thursday?

Better if you call before you come. Thursday.

It's Julie.

But he said, Who, who d'you want to speak to.

I'm the one whose car you're fixing, you said Thursday.

Sorry, there's a lot of noise—yes, it's all ready for you.

At the garage he handed some sort of work-sheet over to the owner at the office, and she paid.

Everything okay now? You're sure.

He gave the slight shrug of one accustomed to dealing with customers' nerves. You can try it out with me if you want.

He got into the passenger seat; she reversed swiftly between obstacles on the workshop floor, to show him she could do it. They drove around the quarter, splashing through overflowing drains, pulling up behind the abrupt stops of minibus taxis, nimbly squeezing between double-parked vans, avoiding pedestrians darting in and out of the streets like a school of fish. She was at ease; now she was part of the stampede, riding with it, chattering.

You still think I should buy a new one.

It makes sense. Next time something else will go wrong; you'll have to pay again to keep the same old thing.

I'd buy a good second-hand car. Maybe. Maybe it's an idea? D'you think perhaps you'd vet it, if I did? I'd have to have it seen by someone who'd know what to check under the bonnet.

If you want. I could do that.

Oh wonderful. Do you perhaps know of someone who would have a good car they'd like to sell? You might get to hear …

People sometimes come to the garage … I can look around. If you want. What kind of car?

Not a Rover, you can bet on that!

Yes, but two-door, four-door, automatic—whatever.

There was a space before the EL-AY Café. She obeyed the man-child who signalled her in with his glue-sniffer's plastic bottle in hand. Arguing about the model of car, the level of possession appropriate for her, they left hers and took the steps to the terrace. This time went inside, this time he was taken to the friends' table.

Hi Julie;
a rearrangement of chairs. —This is Abdu, he's going to find new wheels for me.—

Hi Abdu.
(Sounds to them like an abbreviation of Abdurahman, familiar among names of Malays in Cape Town.) The friends have no delicacy about asking who you are, where you come from—that's just the reverse side of bourgeois xenophobia. No, not the Cape. They have his story out of him in no time at all, they interject, play upon it with examples they know of, advice they have to offer, interest that is innocently generous or unwelcome, depends which way the man might take it—but at once, he's not a ‘garage man' he's a friend, one of them, their horizon is broadening all the time.

So that's where he's from; one of them knows all about that benighted country. The ‘garage man' has a university degree in economics there (the university is one nobody's heard of) but there isn't a hope in hell (and that place
is
a hell that, because of god knows what, probably the religious and political factions he did or did not belong to, or lack of money to pay bribes to the right people) he could get an academic appointment. Or a job of any kind, maybe; no work, no development, what can you grow in a desert, corrupt government, religious oppression, cross-border conflict—composite, if inaccurate, of all they think they know about the region,
they're
telling
him
about his country. But then she hears an
explanation for something he had said to her she hadn't understood. He's telling them: —I can't say that—‘my country'—because somebody else made a line and said that is it. In my father's time they gave it to the rich who run it for themselves. So whose country I should say, it's mine.—

With them, his English is adequate enough and they have not been embarrassed to ask from what mother tongue his accent and locutions come. One of them enquires hopefully of this foreignness, since she has adopted the faith that is a way of life, not a bellicose ethnicity. —Are you a Buddhist?—

—No I am not that.—

And again, he has risen, he has to leave them, he's a mechanic, he belongs to the manual world of work. One of them ponders, breaking a match over and over. —An economist having to become a grease-monkey. I wonder how he learned that stuff with cars.—

Another had the answer.

—Needs must. The only way to get into countries that don't want you is as manual labourer or Mafia.—

A week went by. She would never see him again. It happened, among the friends, with the people they picked up: —Where's that girl you brought along, the one who said she'd been a speech-writer for some cabinet minister who was sacked?— —Oh she seems to have left town.— —And the other guy—interesting—he wanted to organize street kids as buskers, playing steel drums outside cinemas, did he ever get that off the ground?— —No idea where he landed up.—

Two weeks. Of course the man from the garage knew where to find her. He approached the friends' table on a Saturday morning to tell her he had found a car for her. The garage workshop was closed on Saturdays and now he was wearing well-ironed black jeans, a rose-coloured shirt with a paisley scarf at the neck. They insisted he must have coffee; it was someone's birthday and the occasion quickly turned the
coffee to red wine. He didn't drink alcohol; he looked at her lifting her glass: I've brought the car for you to drive.

And the friends, who were ready to laugh at anything, in their mood, did so clownishly—O-HO-HOHOHO!—assuring him, —Julie has a strong head, not to worry!— But she refused a second glass.

—The cops are out with their breathalysers, it's the weekend.—

The car was not to her liking—too big, difficult to park— and perhaps it was not meant to be. He had a contact who was on the lookout, he would bring another the next weekend. If that was all right.

First she said she didn't know if she'd be free; and then she did it, she told him her telephone number. No paper to note it on. The celebration with the friends was still warm upon her, she laughed. Put it on your wrist. And then was embarrassed at her flippancy because he took a ballpoint out of his pocket, turned his wrist face-up, and was writing the number across the delicate skin and the blue veins revealed of himself, there.

He called, brief and formal over the telephone, addressing her as ‘Miss' with her surname, and the arrangement was for an earlier date, after working hours. That car, again, was not quite right for her. They drove a short way out of town to confirm this. It was as if freed of the city it was not only the road open to them; with her face turned to that road ahead she was able to ask what the friends had touched on—
needs must.
How does a graduate in economics become a motor mechanic? Wasn't that quite a long training, apprenticeship and so on? And as he began to speak, she interrupted: Look, I'm Julie, don't call me anything else.

Julie. Well, Julie. His voice was low although they were alone, on the road, no-one to overhear. He was hesitant, after all, did he really know this girl, her gossiping friends, the
loud careless forum of the EL-AY Café; but the desire to confide in her overcame him. He was no qualified mechanic. Luckily for him he had tinkered with cars since he was a small boy, his uncle—mother's brother—fixed people's cars and trucks in his backyard … he learnt from him instead of playing with other boys … The garage employs him illegally—'black', yes that's the word they use. It's cheap for the owner; he doesn't pay accident insurance, pension, medical aid. And now the seldom-granted smile, and this time it rises to the intense, solemn eyes as she turns her glance a moment to him. All the principles of workers' rights I was taught in my studies.

What an awful man, exploiter.

What would I do without him. He risks, I must pay for that. That's how it works, for us.

The next car was the right one—size, fuel consumption, price—and perhaps it had always been available, kept in reserve for the right time to be revealed. She was pleased with the car and also had the satisfaction (although she could not say this to him) he surely would get some sort of kick-back from whoever the owner was—unqualified, working ‘black' he couldn't be earning much.

We must celebrate. Good you convinced me it was time to get rid of the old rattle-trap. Really. I'm just lazy about these things. But you don't drink wine …

Oh sometimes.

Fine! Then we'll christen my new car.

But not at the café.

He had spoken: with this, a change in their positions was swiftly taken, these were smoothly and firmly reversed, like a shift of gears synchronized under her foot; he was in charge of the acquaintanceship.

At my place then.

In quiet authority, he had no need to enthuse accord.

Even though it passed muster with the whites among the friends that her ‘place' was sufficiently removed from The Suburbs' ostentation to meet their standards of leaving home behind, and was accepted by the blacks among them as the kind of place they themselves moved to from the old segregation, her outhouse renovated as a cottage was comfortable enough, its under-furnishings nevertheless giving away a certain ease inherent in, conditioned by, luxuries taken for granted as necessities: there was a bathroom that dwarfed the living-cum-bedroom by comparison, and the cramped kitchen was equipped with freezer and gadgets. It was untidy; the quarters of someone not used to looking after herself; to seat himself he removed the stained cup and plate and a spatter of envelopes, sheets of opened letters, withered apple-peel, old Sunday paper, from a chair. She was making the usual apologies about the mess, as she did to whoever dropped in. She opened wine, found a packet of biscuits, sniffed at cheese taken from the fridge and rejected it in favour of another piece. He watched this domesticity without offering help, as her friends would, nobody lets anyone wait on anyone else. But he ate her cheese and biscuits, he drank her wine, with her that first time. They talked until late; about him, his life; hers was here, where they were, in her city, open in its nature for him to see in the streets, the faces, the activities—but he, his, was concealed among these. No record of him on any pay-roll, no address but c/o a garage, and under a name that was not his. Another name? She was bewildered: but there he was, a live presence in her room, an atmosphere of skin, systole and diastole of breath blending with that which pervaded from her habits of living, the food, the clothes lying about, the cushions at their backs. Not his? No—because they had let him in on a permit that had expired more than a year ago, and they would be looking for him under his name.