• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

His father is not a qualified bookkeeper; but during the years he spent running his own legal practice he picked up at least the rudiments. He has been the brothers' bookkeeper for twelve years, ever since he gave up the law. The brothers, it must be presumed – Cape Town is not a big city – are aware of his chequered past in the legal profession. They are aware of it and therefore – it must be presumed – keep a close watch on him, in case, even so close to retirement, he should think of trying to diddle them.

'If you could bring the ledgers home with you,' he suggests to his father, 'I could give you a hand with the checking.'

His father shakes his head, and he can guess why. When his father refers to the ledgers, he does so in hushed tones, as though they were holy books, as though keeping them were a priestly function. There is more to keeping books, his attitude would seem to suggest, than applying elementary arithmetic to columns of figures.

'I don't think I can bring the ledgers home,' his father says at last. 'Not on the train. The brothers would never allow it.'

He can appreciate that. What would become of Acme if his father were mugged and the sacred books stolen?

'Then let me come in to the city at closing time and take over from Mrs Noerdien. You and I could work together from five till eight, say.'

His father is silent.

'I'll just help with the checking,' he says. 'If anything confidential comes up, I promise I won't look.'

By the time he arrives for his first stint, Mrs Noerdien and the counter hands have gone home. He is introduced to the brothers. 'My son John,' says his father, 'who has offered to help with the checking.'

He shakes their hands: Mr Rodney Silverman, Mr Barrett Silverman.

'I'm not sure we can afford you on the payroll, John,' says Mr Rodney. He turns to his brother. 'Which do you think is more expensive, Barrett, a PhD or a CA? We may have to take out a loan.'

They all laugh together at the joke. Then they offer him a rate. It is precisely the same rate he earned as a student, sixteen years ago, for copying household data onto cards for the municipal census.

With his father he settles down in the bookkeepers' glass cubicle. The task that faces them is simple. They have to go through file after file of invoices, confirming that the figures have been transcribed correctly to the books and to the bank ledger, ticking them off one by one in red pencil, checking the addition at the foot of the page.

They set to work and make steady progress. Once every thousand entries they come across an error, a piddling five cents one way or the other. For the rest the books are in exemplary order. As defrocked clergymen make the best proofreaders, so debarred lawyers seem to make good bookkeepers – debarred lawyers assisted if need be by their overeducated, underemployed sons.

The next day, on his way to Acme, he is caught in a rainshower. He arrives sodden. The glass of the cubicle is fogged; he enters without knocking. His father is hunched over his desk. There is a second presence in the cubicle, a woman, young, gazelle-eyed, softly curved, in the act of putting on her raincoat.

He halts in his tracks, transfixed.

His father rises from his seat. 'Mrs Noerdien, this is my son John.'

Mrs Noerdien averts her gaze, does not offer a hand. 'I'll go now,' she says in a low voice, addressing not him but his father.

An hour later the brothers too take their leave. His father boils the kettle and makes them coffee. Page after page, column after column they press on with the work, until ten o'clock, until his father is blinking with exhaustion.

The rain has stopped. Down a deserted Riebeeck Street they head for the station: two men, able-bodied more or less, safer at night than a single man, many times safer than a single woman.

'How long has Mrs Noerdien been working for you?' he asks.

'She came last February.'

He waits for more. There is no more. There is plenty he could ask. For instance: How