Sell Me a Gun
IAN MARTIN
Sell Me a Gun
IAN MARTIN
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The next time he walked down Hout Street he stopped on the pavement opposite City Guns, hesitated, and then crossed over. He had a strong aversion to firearms, deeming them abhorrent on three counts. For starters, he considered force, or the threat of force, as a means of settling a dispute, to be a very unintelligent option. The non-violent possibilities were numerous and he believed strongly in his own ability to extricate himself from confrontation and conflict by employing such methods as argument, persuasion, flattery, reassurance, deception, deceit, pleading, weeping, promises, distraction, diversion and sleight of hand.
Secondly, the mere sight of a gun made him feel faintly queasy. This was on account of the involuntary response that the visual stimulus elicited in him. Into his mind there instantly leapt a scene of horrible carnage: bullets ripping into flesh, blood spurting, bones being irreparably smashed, spinal cords snapping, arteries and nerves being severed. The fact that a gun was loaded meant that it was waiting to go off at any fraction of an instant. It had to go off, like a time bomb, and he braced himself for the imminent explosion.
Finally, he associated a certain type of person with the bearing of firearms, and it was a person not to his liking at all. It was clear that some men derived a Freudian pleasure from carrying a gun. It made them aggressive and obnoxiously proud of their masculinity. They tended to scowl and swear more than was their usual habit, and to swagger and be argumentative. They became boorishly boastful and spoke coarsely of women, subconsciously certain in the delusion that the carrying of a pistol was accompanied by miraculous generation of erectile tissue. These were the selfsame poseurs whose virility was charged up when they slid behind the wheels of their souped-up Ford Cortinas. Henry didn't like them.
He didn't like anything to do with firearms but nevertheless he crossed the street to look in the window, fully intending to enter the shop and experience the dubious pleasure of being sold a gun.
The door was solid and massive and the colour of Pears Soap. The window displays which flanked it were curiously innocuous and, as it turned out, deceptive. The window to the left was devoted largely to an array of knives. There were Swiss Army combinations consisting of a whole toolbox of miniature equipment: scissors, file, can opener, corkscrew, bottle opener, awl, tweezers, saw, pliers, magnifying glass, tooth pick, screw driver - almost entirely useless for practical purposes. Then there were the spring-loaded clasp knives arranged like the spokes of a wheel. These were ideal for cutting bite-sized lengths of biltong (dried meat), or for stabbing rival gangsters. Behind the knives in one corner stood a family of stainless steel vacuum flasks, made in the USA and very expensive. In the other corner were two Coleman cooler boxes arranged one on top of the other.
The right hand window was given over to a scene from the bush, with grass and twigs on the floor and a black pot astride the coals of a campfire. On the seat of a canvas folding-chair was a felt bush hat complete with leopard-skin headband. Casually leaning against the chair was a .303 hunting rifle. In the background he saw a weathered tree trunk upon which hung a pair of handcuffs and a four-foot sjambok (whip) of genuine hippo hide. The sporting life was sketched with skilful economy and the window dresser's dark message was not lost on Henry once he spotted the accoutrements on the periphery - strict discipline was an essential ingredient for a successful safari.
In the Metropole Bar on the corner of Long Street he drank two beers to prepare himself for the little adventure that awaited him. He had no intention of becoming a gun owner but he was more than moderately curious about the process surrounding the legal acquisition of a firearm.
He acknowledged that what he was about to do was deceitful and a premeditated waste of salesmen's time. However, he justified his intentions by reminding himself that to deal in arms was an indisputably immoral occupation and that the major religions of the world roundly condemned trafficking in commodities that lead so inevitably to an increase in human misery. So what if it wasted their time? He would be delaying, if not preventing them, from making a genuine sale. He would go in there and act his part and learn something more about the peculiar behaviour of human beings. He drained his glass and sallied forth full of Thespian resolve.
When he pushed open the door a klaxon bellowed twice with the same hoarse urgency of a bullock undergoing castration. Nervously he stepped inside and became aware of several pairs of eyes regarding him with intense suspicion.
"How can I help you?"
Henry jumped. The voice came from directly behind him. The man had been standing on a narrow footplate attached to the back of the door. His jeans were tucked into jackboots and his white lounge shirt was open at the neck. The cuffs of the shirt were rolled twice and flapped midway between wrist and elbow. The potbelly on an otherwise scrawny frame added to the seediness of his appearance and Henry was reminded of the alcoholic barman at the Fireman's Arms. They could be brothers. From the shoulder holster he was wearing there protruded a Colt Government Model pistol.
"I - I'm thinking of buying a gun."
"For? What purpose? We have hundreds of firearms here."
And it was true. He hadn't entered a shop - this was a veritable arsenal. Thousands of guns. Before him and to his left two long counters formed an L. To the right a flight of steps descended into the basement. Behind each counter stood two men, and all four of them were conspicuously armed and staring at Henry, who was the sole customer at that moment.
"This counter is for sporting guns and assault rifles, and this one is for hand guns."
The older of the men at the sporting counter beckoned and Henry advanced obediently. He looked into China blue eyes set close in a meaty red face and he felt at once that this big-bellied hulk had to be an ex-cop. China Blue? No, these eyes were Delft Blue. They glinted with the coldness of sanitary ware and Henry was in no doubt that the blueness of these eyes must have had an emulsifying effect on the contents of many a large colon.
"Alright, Meneer. I can see you think you don't know what you want but actually you do know what you want, if you see what I mean. Don't worry about any crap from that grootbek (big mouth) over there about 'what purpose?' Every man comes in here for the same purpose: he’s looking for a weapon. And what you want a weapon for? I tell you straight: security. A white man comes in here for one thing only - to protec' hisself. To protec' hisself, his car, his house, his kids, his dogs, his wife."
"Well, I'm not married and…"
"Ag don't worry man, you don't look like a fokken moffie (fucking faggot). Anyways, we don't allow moffies in here."
"No ways." The doorman said this emphatically. He made a lightning draw from his shoulder holster and sighted along the blue-black barrel of his pistol, left hand steadying the right, one eye closed, aiming at the groin of an imaginary hermaphrodite. "Get your poofter arsehole out of here before I blow your balls off." Satisfied, he lowered the gun and jettisoned the magazine before commencing to strut up and down. Every few paces he would go for his gun, whirl on his heel and pull the trigger. Meanwhile the ex-cop had resumed his sales pitch.
"A man has always got something to protec', and there's always a enemy. And in the Republic we got plenty e
nemies, that's for fokken sure."
"You can say that again. The whole world's our enemy, and inside the country every coon and coloured's our enemy."
"For sure. That's why a white man's got to protec' hisself. No commies or kaffirs is going to chase us off our own land. Not a fuck. An intelligent oke realise he got to arm hisself. And no ways are one firearm enough. Man, you got to plan this thing proper."
"Man, you listen to what he says. We won't chune you kak (talk shit to you), no word of a lie. Six. That's the minimum."
"Six guns? Jesus