My grandfather was a formidable character. He had a fair-sized beak nose and lips that would spittle when he spoke. He wore spectacles, which looked like magnifying glasses, and which made his eyeballs appear ginormous. I would exaggerate my expression in our exchanges so that we might understand each other better.

I thought that he would be upset when my uncle, Rueben, moved away. But he said only, 'That's just the way that life is, my boy.' He was always saying, 'That's just the way that life is' to me. When he said 'my boy' like that, just like that, his eyes would grow bigger and I would shrink.

My grandfather and Uncle Reuben had never really gotten on, or let us say, they hadn't come to terms. In my grandfather's presence, Uncle Reuben would scratch his head and stare at the floor and my grandfather would raise his voice louder and louder and Uncle Reuben would scratch his head and wring his hands too much, much too much, and my head would dart from my uncle to my grandfather to my uncle, until somebody- usually my father- would come in to break up the scene.

My grandmother was not alive when I was born. She had died during the birth of Reuben, a fact from which Reuben had never fully recovered and that my grandfather had never fully forgiven. My grandfather was terrified of dying, but he was composed in his living. He would dress every morning as if for his own funeral- smoky grey suit, starched shirt with cufflinks, dark tie- and would sit at our kitchen table sipping tea throughout the day and spurning each of us in turn: me, on my way to school and back again, my mother, in and about the house, and my father before and after the office. Grandfather spoke in clipped phrases, 'Yes today, please', 'No not tomorrow', 'Please pass the sugar'.

He was a contentious figure between my mother ('This cannot go on forever, Michael'), my father ('This will go on for as long as it needs to'), and me ('What's going on?'). When Grandfather slipped, fell and fractured his hip and had to spend several weeks in the hospital, my mother's step and breath became lighter. But when Grandfather returned with a walking cane and a frown, everybody resumed their normal pace.

My grandfather carried a gold- rimmed pocket watch and I would ask him, 'Grandpa, what is the time?' and he would slip the glass pendulum from the satin of his breast pocket, and say, 'Half past five' or 'A quarter before seven' or 'Nearly the hour of nine'- almost bathtime, almost dinnertime, almost bedtime - but never enough time.

Grandfather slurped his tea and suggested to my parents that they have another child to keep me company, that it should be a girl, and that they should name her 'Rose.' My mother said that it wasn't like choosing a film from the video store, and besides, she already had her hands full with me and my father and my grandfather.

On Sundays we would go to the Zoo Lake to feed the ducks, and Grandfather would give each one a different name (Leon/Knox/Penelope/Jo-anne) even though they all looked exactly the same. In the winter, he wore his coat collar in the style of a spy - high up and curved around the neck - so as to shut out the world around him and contain his privacy. My grandfather had the hardiness of a Cossack: steady and ever ready for confrontation. The roughness of his palms compared to his refined frame, slight from disuse, always struck me as undignified. He liked the month of July; it was cold, but at least it was definite: no surprises.

He had come by ship from Eastern Europe with a burden on his back and a chip on his shoulder. The Kishinev Pogrom erupted after a Russian boy was found killed in Dubăsari. My grandfather's chances were 50: 50. He could take them and run and he did.

'Why South Africa, Grandpa?'

'Because it was safer here,' he said. 'My eldest brother brought us out. We were eight - two girls and six boys. I was the second youngest.'

He had no friends, and had no intention of making any. He met and married my grandmother in Johannesburg. She was an immigrant from Palanga, on the west coast of Lithuania. My great-grandmother baked kitke to sell on the Sabbath, and as a girl, my grandmother would run from village to village with the loaves. Because she was one of the few who could read and write, the townspeople would bring her their letters. My grandmother's family was set to sail for America, but then the Titanic sank.

My grandfather disliked all this talk of 'fighting for one's country', the search for 'identity'. His philosophy was in subjectivity: the only reality. When I first learnt of a rhyming couplet, I wrote one about my grandfather:

My grandfather taught me a thing or two about history,
He said, 'My boy, there will never be another man like me.'

I would dedicate much verse to him: his unwavering gaze, his bushy brow, the sharpness of his tongue. I allowed him the words that he had omitted. My grandfather used to say that Donne had it wrong, that man is an island unto himself, and only much later, when I was older, did I perceive that my grandfather's constant criticism was the poor façade of a man lost at sea.