Lambert looks up at the helicopter. His mother and Pop and Treppie stand next to him. He went out early this evening, and when he got back from doing his rounds, the helicopter was there. Then he went inside and told his people they must come out on to the front lawn. So the neighbours and the people in the helicopter could see the Benades had nothing to hide.
Now the helicopter dips and turns, flying low over the houses of Triomf, block by block. Its blue searchlight shines into everyone’s backyards. The whole street’s full of people who want to know what’s going on. They stretch their necks this way and that to see if they can catch a glimpse of someone running away or climbing over a prefab wall. Everyone leaves their front doors open. Some of the houses have little Christmas trees with lights that switch on and off all the time. It’s two weeks into December already. He’s told them he wouldn’t mind a tree like that in their own lounge, with little lights and things. For putting on the sideboard. Treppie says it’s kitsch, but then he says it actually depends on your class. What’s kitsch in Houghton is art in Triomf, he says, but his heart bleeds for anyone, never mind his social standing, who spends so much money on material things. Whether it’s kitsch or art, a tree like that costs a shithouse full of money. And the fuckers who get rich from selling those trees know all too well it’s not an electrical trick their customers are looking for. What they want is Jesus on an automatic time switch. Jesus on, Jesus off. And it’s been a bit rough on that poor Son of Man, Treppie says, inbetween all the onning and offing. For years on end. But no one seems to want to know anything about it. That’s why angels are so blessed, he says. They’re permanently switched on to ‘Hosannah in the highest’. But not with electricity. With holy current. That must be quite something, he says, but he doesn’t look like he believes what he’s saying.
Now the helicopter’s blue light shines right into their faces.
‘Ow!’ says his mother. She holds up her hand in front of her eyes. Pop looks the other way.
No, man, what are his people doing now, they must look straight into the light, with open eyes, so they can make themselves known to the protectors of the law. Let them shine their fucken light. If they want to interrogate him here in his own yard, then he’ll say to them, look, if it wasn’t for his regular patrols in the streets at night, which he does of his own free will, without expecting anything in return, then Triomf would be the same as all the other suburbs. Full of murder and robbery and killing. As things stand, Triomf is one of the safest areas in the whole of Jo’burg. You wouldn’t say it, with all the riff-raff and scum just a stone’s throw away, there on the other side of Ontdekkers. It’s all thanks to one white oke who can be seen regularly on the streets at night. They know they can’t just come and take chances here in Triomf.
That’s why, when he’s out at night and he walks past a munt, he shines his torch right into the munt’s eyes and then he says: Watch your step, my mate, I’m checking you out.
And nowadays he also tap-taps on his gun. Which he wears in his belt. Then their eyes go big, like saucers.
He sticks the gun in the belt that he took off his Man About Towns. He made a new hole right at the end of the belt, and now he can only just get it on again, under his belly. The stretched elastic in his shorts won’t hold the gun nice and tight. When he puts the gun into his belt, everyone can see it.
News travels. By this time, anyone who’s up to funny business will know about him. Especially now that he’s armed.
His family don’t know about the gun yet, but they stare at him like they do. ’Specially his mother. He figures that maybe they saw his list. And he thinks his mother saw more than just the list. He swears she saw THE MOLE IN THE FRIDGE. All his stuff was shifted away from the wall when he came to. But maybe he did it himself, when he was burning the rubbish. Or maybe they scratched around in his things when he was lights-out.
No respect for his privacy. But what can he do? He can’t remember so nicely any more. And when he woke up, he wasn’t wearing his shorts.
Lately, Treppie’s been holding his hands in front of his eyes like binoculars, and then he sings, in a deep voice:
‘I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way.’
Or he pretends he’s pulling a gun out of a holster and then he does a crazy little dance with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out and his head pulled back into his shoulders. Then he pretends he’s shooting up into the sky, ‘crack!-crack!-crack!’.
And when he asks Treppie what now, then he says no, he’s just playing Lambert, the Sundance Kid.
Treppie’s arse. He doesn’t need to know about the gun. Nobody needs to know. He’s not going to start bothering about a licence now. In any case, nowadays it looks like every second kaffir’s got a gun, especially when they march up and down the streets and shoot off their weapons into the sky. No one can come and tell him they’ve all got licences. He’d thought it was against the law, but the policemen don’t do anything. They just lie on their tanks and watch. Treppie says that’s the official standpoint of the Ministry of Law and Order. Dis-cre-tio-nary po-li-cing. He says it’s just another word for shit-scared constables. But, he says, their shit comes in two different colours: one for when the Inkatha impis are on the march with their guns, and another when they think it’s APLA. When they reckon it’s APLA, they go on a raid across the border at night and shoot the APLAs full of holes in their beds. Never mind if they’re just apprentice-APLAs who’re still wet behind the ears. And with the ANC they don’t even bother any more. Treppie says that’s ’cause the ANC’s the biggest cannon of them all.
Well, all he knows is that if trouble comes their way, he’ll be on the right side. The police will still be grateful for people like him one day. People they can rely on. He stands for law and order here in Triomf. Like that little bloke in Urban Angel, who works for nothing and then gets a kick in the teeth for thanks. But in the end he’s still everyone’s hero.
So he doesn’t mind. He’s looking after Triomf, and he knows his day will come. Every dog has its day, no matter what Treppie says. Treppie says he mustn’t walk around so much on his own at night, ’cause he hasn’t got a groundswell behind him. He’s an individual, and the police are hard on lost individuals.
Well, he reckons the police are far too busy with discretionary policing to worry about people like him, never mind patrol Triomf. The only time they come here is when there’s trouble. And even then it’s a struggle to make them believe you’ve got a case. That’s if they ever get here. When they do come, it takes them hours to arrive.
Like when he phones about the people next door. If that bunch at Fort Knox isn’t making trouble, then it’s Fish-Eye and his lot on the other side. That Fish-Eye’s beginning to look just like his blarry fish, with his one flat eye and his scrappy little moustache-beard. He says he eats those fish of his. Sis! Carp. He keeps them in a Penguin Pool, with a pump that goes through seven phases. Carp have got to have bubbles, he says, otherwise they die. The pump starts off low, then it gets higher and higher. ‘Eeeeee!’ At phase five it starts shaking. ‘Drrr!’ It gets so bad that he, Lambert, can’t get to sleep in his own den from all the noise. Never mind the poor fucken carp. But he supposes carp don’t ever sleep.
He’s already told Fish-Eye, he knows all about machines. There’s nothing that these two hands of his can’t do. He’ll tune that pump for him in two ticks so it runs as smooth as a sewing machine, ‘zick-zick, zick-zick, zick-zick’, all day long, through all its phases. But then Fish-Eye told him he must fuck off. Just like that. Uneducated bastard.
And then the shit started again, just the other day. It was a Saturday night. That machine was making such a noise his mother began to think the whole of Jo’burg, all the way from Sandton to Bosmont, was falling into one big sinkhole. She started running up and down with her housecoat open and her stomach wobbling, screaming that she wasn’t ready, the Lord must forgive her and protect her from the jaws of the animal in the depths.
Then he thought, no, enough is enough, now he’s going to phone the emergency number. So he went across the road and asked the dykes very nicely. They were in a jolly mood, and they said okay, he must just stay there, they’d bring the phone to him. So they brought the phone to the lounge, with an extension.
‘Disturbing the peace,’ is how he began his story. Then he mentioned the carp and he explained about phase five.
But he was connected to the Flying Squad and they were using a radio telephone. Other people kept talking on the radio. The men from Murder and Robbery in Brixton were saying they’d run out of wet bags and wires, and where did you get wet bags after one in the morning in the New South Africa, and how did things look there at Johan Coetzee station, didn’t they maybe have some bags and wires to send over? And while they were at it, they could also send their little red Hotnots along so they could clean out their gills for them. They were sitting around in Brixton with nothing to do. Every time Lambert got a word in, he had to start the whole story all over again, and each time the constable couldn’t understand what carp and phase five had to do with disturbing the peace. Likely blarry story, if they knew what wet bags and little red Hotnots and boredom had to do with each other. But he supposes every oke has his own way of frying fish.
That’s also what he said to the dykes, and then the tall one told the short one she would put this story of his before Lawyers for Human Rights, and the short one started laughing so much she had to go sit down and hold her head in her hands. He couldn’t figure out what was so funny, but he kept quiet. It was then that he clicked why Treppie says they’re so dilly. Treppie says you get two kinds of dykes, diesel dykes and dilly dykes, and these two across the road are definitely the dilly kind, if you ask him.
Anyhow, then the police came. They stood there next to the wall and they listened, but they said they could hear sweet blow-all, and he, Lambert, mustn’t waste their time like this. They were the Flying Squad and all they really handled was serious crime.
By that time the pump, of course, was a long way past phase five. It was running softly on phase one and all you could hear was ‘plop-plop’ as the carp took bites out of their bubbles.
Meanwhile, Fish-Eye was standing there behind his aloes, smoking and listening to everything they said, acting like he knew nothing.
Lambert tried to explain what happened each time the pump got to phase five. And how many hours it took to go through the whole cycle. If the Flying Squad came back at about six in the morning, they’d see exactly what he meant.
Then the policemen said, with their hands on their hips, ‘Mr Benade, do you or don’t you want to lay a charge?’
So he said no, ’cause by then Pop and Treppie were outside, pointing angry fingers at him behind the policemen’s backs. He said no, he just wanted them to put some pressure on Fish-Eye about his pumps that were making such a noise.
Then those policemen told him they weren’t in the pressure business, they were in the shooting business. And if it’s pressure he wanted, he should go to the World Trade Centre, where they were also into phases and stuff like that. Those politicians knew all about pressure, they said, laughing themselves to death there on the Benades’ front lawn.
It wasn’t just the dykes who were dilly, he thought to himself.
And the next morning, when Pop took the key out of the postbox, he found a letter there, from Fish-Eye. Treppie grabbed the letter and made a whole performance out of it, so Lambert still doesn’t know if everything Treppie read was true or not. The long and the short of it was Fish-Eye saying his property was losing its value as a result of all their meddling, and he’d be much happier if a decent kaffir like Cyril Ramaphosa came to live next door to him one day. Ramaphosa might even plant something along the boundary wall, he said, ’cause he saw Ramaphosa was planting weeping boer-beans there at the World Trade Centre, in a suit too, which was more than he could say for the Benades, despite the fact that they were white. And then he made a long list of complaints about them disturbing the peace and using the Lord’s name in vain. And about Pop’s zips that always hung open, and his mother who walked around with no panties all day long. And that they must watch out before he mobilised the whole neighbourhood against them,’cause they were sticking out like a sore finger. And then, right at the end, the fucker actually wanted to know if they’d paid their dog taxes all these years, for their one departed and their one surviving dog. He was just asking, although he felt it was only fair to inform them that he himself was a police reservist, and that he had family who were high up in the municipality too. One word from him and the Benades would be in their glory, dogs and all. Thanking them in anticipation, J.J. Volschenk.
He swears Treppie sucked half that letter straight out of his thumb, but by then he had them all wound up anyway, which must have been what he wanted.
Treppie said the honourable Mister Jay Jay Volschenk doth protest too much. He schemed Jay Jay was himself so low down in the pecking order that he got a kick out of writing high-and-mighty letters to the untouchables.
Then Treppie had to explain to his mother what untouchables were.
Not that he, Lambert, knew so well what it meant himself.
Of course, Treppie went and said the worst thing he could think of, just to torment her. He said the untouchables wiped off their shit, er, er, pardon, he meant their excrement, with their hands, and then they used it to write messages on the walls, for aliens. ‘Mene Mene Tekel.’ Aliens were the only ones who were still interested in them. Hadn’t his mother noticed how people were taking a wide berth around them nowadays?
Then she asked him, but what about the Witnesses? They still came to visit, out of their own free will. But Treppie said the Witnesses were interested only in their souls, not their excrement; although, come to think of it, their souls were probably lodged in their excrement, otherwise he also couldn’t figure out what the Witnesses thought they were looking for here at the Benades. But, he said, one of these days the Witnesses would have to come visiting on stilts, ’cause they were already deeper than knee-deep, and they were sinking fast.
Pop asked Treppie if he didn’t have a drop of self-respect left in him. But Treppie just acted like he hadn’t heard. He pinched his nostrils and sang like the main coolie-singer on top of the mosque, the one they always hear from Bosmont when the wind blows in the right direction:
‘Lemon tree very pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon
Is impossible to eat.’
So, that’s why Pop’s wearing blue shirt-buttons to close up his khaki-pants nowadays. His mother spent the whole day sewing them on, with pink cotton. It doesn’t look right, she says, but at least Pop looks decent again. She also tried to fix Pop’s zip-up pants, but he uses a safety pin to keep the fly closed. And Lambert thinks they must’ve bought his mother some panties too, ’cause every now and again he sees them hanging on the line.
He’s got his own plans for Fish-Eye. When he goes out on his rounds, late at night, he takes a crate to stand on and then he pisses into Fish-Eye’s postbox.
Fish-Eye thinks it’s the kaffirs. Lambert’s seen how he waits for them behind his wall on weekends, early in the evening. But Fish-Eye has to wait a long time. It’s mostly just kaffirgirls who walk up and down Martha Street, and they wouldn’t be able to piss into that postbox of his, even if they wanted to. Every now and again a few kaffirs come walking past and then Fish-Eye shits them out. He calls them hosepipe-dicks. And he asks them if they’d like to know what it feels like to get their king-sized dicks caught in a mouse trap. He’ll give them something to write home about, he says. They mustn’t think they’re the only ones with cultural weapons around here.
Then, one day, a long stick of a kaffir came walking past with his hair all tied up in strings. He was wearing sunglasses, with a red, green and yellow cap. Lambert’s mother thought he was a Zulu, so she hid behind the bathroom door. But Treppie said, no, Zulus had knobkieries. This was a Rasta-man, and they must check now how this Rasta-man was going to jive old Fish-Eye, who was shitting him out something terrible there in the street. That Rasta-man just stood there, cool as a cucumber, rolling a zol and checking Fish-Eye out as he screamed at him from behind his wall.
And then the Rasta-man actually had the guts to give Fish-Eye a talking to. ‘Cool it, my man. Smile, God loves you,’ he said. He even threw Fish-Eye a peace sign. Fish-Eye went completely purple in the face. He ran around like a madman. It was so bad they thought he was going to jump into the Penguin Pool to be with his carp. But he didn’t. He went and set the little mousetrap in his postbox, and then it snapped on to his finger.
Lambert’s clever. He first takes out the mousetrap. Then he pisses into the postbox. When he’s finished pissing, he puts the trap back again. He doesn’t let people fuck with him. Now Mister Reservist can read piss-letters until the day he dies. And he gets a lot of letters, too. From Absa and Sanlam and the Bible Society and the AA and Readers Digest. Serves him right. And the police must also watch out, discretion and all. Treppie read him a story the other day about two policemen from Triomf who raped a woman at Johan Coetzee police station. De Bruin and Visagie. Lambert still wants to find out where in Triomf De Bruin and Visagie live. And that clever-arse traffic cop at number 101, who races up and down Martha Street on his motorbike must watch out too. A person’s life is in danger around here. The place is full of dogs and things. He can just see an accident happening.
When the police themselves become a danger to society, then you know something’s wrong.
So he patrols. Somebody has to do it.
When he walks up and down the streets of Triomf at night, with his stick and his gun safely in his belt, he feels like he was born to patrol. He feels sharp. The kind of person other people can rely on. And he checks out everything, even the stuff that looks okay. It’s when things don’t look different that you drop your guard. So he checks, not only inside all the windows, to make sure that every mother and father, grandma and grandpa, child and grandchild, brother-in-law and step-sister, what have you, is sitting nicely at the TV and watching the news; and not only that all the front gates and the driveways and the car windows are closed, and that the number plates are still on. He also checks the things no one else ever looks at, the things that tell you straight away when something’s wrong. Like the stop signs. He checks to see if they’re the right colour and the right height, and if they’re standing on the right side of the road; and he checks the streets’ name-plates, to make sure they’re the same as the names on the kerb, and that they point in the right direction; and the streetlights, to make sure they’re all switched on; the telephone wires, to see that they’re still nicely connected; and the manholes, whether their lids fit the holes nicely. Nowadays the kaffirs even steal manhole covers and sell them for scrap iron. Ten rand apiece. Treppie says it’s to keep the balance in the New South Africa, ’cause for a long time now the antiquarians have been stealing pressed metal ceilings from old houses, to sell on the black market.
So he also tries to check if all the houses still have their ceilings, although Triomf’s houses have only pressed cardboard. And he looks inside the rubbish bins, to make sure they’ve got the kind of rubbish they’re supposed to have: old bread and newspapers and rotten vegetables and stuff, not heads or cats or babies. People throw away the funniest things nowadays.
He checks the green fuse boxes on the pavements to see if their little doors are closed, and to make sure no loose wires stick out or lie around. Treppie says people siphon off electricity illegally, but no one ever gets caught. Triomf’s a closed shop, a law unto itself, he says. Not if he, Lambert, can help it. He’s going to check out this closed shop very carefully to see what openings he can find.
And with his sharp eye he sometimes sees things he’s sure no one else ever sees. Things on the ground and things in the air. On the ground, it’s mostly bugs and funny little creatures that come out of their little holes. He once spent the whole night on the veld across the road from Shoprite, at that bus stop in front of the police flats, watching with his torch how termites come pouring out of their holes after the rain. They just kept coming, in a never-ending line, like someone was pulling them out from above on a string. Then they broke loose and swarmed up into the sky. Some of them fell down and died. Moles also do their pushing at night. Rats too. The rats are breeding like mad in the drains. That’s where they live. They go ‘trrrips!’ one after another through the gaps in the pavement, down into their holes. Like someone’s reeling them in by their noses, downwards.
He once saw a baboon-spider walking across the street. It was as big as his fist, with legs that moved on their own, as if they were tied to separate threads. That was at the end of Martha Street, on the koppie-side. You see some interesting things on that side. Rabbits with eyes like reflectors, who feed in the beds at the Centenary Old Age Resort. Once he even saw a little buck, and often he sees owls. That’s when he realised there was more to Jo’burg than met the eye. And he’s glad that he sees all these things. It feels like he’s got secrets that are his only. But when he sometimes tells his folks a little something, they just laugh at him. Then they say he’s having them on.
Treppie says if there were just one wild buck left in Jo’burg, it would be worth saving from fire and brimstone, but there obviously isn’t. He says all he can hear in Jo’burg are sirens and gunshots. All he can see are things that burn. And all he can smell is blood and iron. He says Jo’burg’s like a massive big iron dinosaur devouring itself, tail first, screws and brackets flying through the air.
Then his mother asks Treppie where he sees this ugly monster, and Treppie says if she’d just use her eyes like the good Lord Jesus intended her to, she wouldn’t be able to miss it. And then his mother spends the whole day waiting for the dinosaur to pop out somewhere. Behind the Hillbrow tower; on the open ground behind the Spar; or behind Northcliff hill. She says she can’t see any dinosaurs. All she sees are roads and cars and buildings and shops and people and things.
She’s looking in the wrong places. Treppie too. It’s just him, Lambert, who knows where to look. Only he sees everything there is to be seen.
’Cause he’s a patrolman. It’s in his blood. If you’re a born patrolman, you see everything, near and far, big and small, and you look at things carefully. You check to see how they work and what their movements are, inside and out.
And you pick up vibes.
He feels bright and breezy when he’s finished his patrolling for the day. He keeps on looking till he starts picking up vibes. Some nights there’s nothing. He knows there’re vibes, but he doesn’t always get hold of them so nicely. Then it’s just an ordinary night. Nothing special.
But other nights are different. Then he picks up the vibes on the ground and he follows them through the air. The vibes of things that fly, things that travel far. Stars with tails. He sees lots of stars falling. Stars dying. And he sees sputniks too. Bright side, dark side, bright side, dark side, as they dip through the night. That’s when you know the little monkey can’t settle down. Or the little dog.
Treppie says sputniks are full of over-excited monkeys and dogs. Sometimes the sputniks are empty, just cameras and things taking pictures of the earth and the moon and the stars. But others have astronauts inside. Space travellers. They patrol the heavens. Treppie says those astronauts are even more fidgety than the dogs and the apes. They’ve got ants in their pants. That’s why sputniks sometimes explode before they even take off, like the Challenger. Treppie says everyone’s a challenger, but sometimes people take things too far, or they do nothing. If they do nothing, they open their eyes one day and they’re knee-deep in something that someone else took too far. Then there’s shit to play.
Treppie’s a fine one to talk. He’s always challenging him, Lambert, and he always takes things too far. A pity, ’cause Treppie’s the only one among his family with anything between his ears.
Sometimes they have interesting conversations.
But as soon as it gets interesting, Treppie starts fucking around.
Lambert looks at Treppie next to him, here on the lawn. ‘Wakey-wakey!’ Treppie says. ‘All is quiet on the white side of Ontdekkers.’
The helicopter turns to the Bosmont side.
Martha Street’s residents go back into their houses. The moon’s sitting high.
‘They’re looking for a Hotnot,’ says Pop.
They stand and watch for a while as the helicopter searches, up and down, up and down, its red tail-light flashing. The searchlight cuts Bosmont’s dark streets like a thin, blue probe of glass. Sirens wail all over Jo’burg. Shots go off on Ontdekkers.
‘Who’s shooting?’ his mother asks.
‘Those are just the taxis that are missing, Ma.’
‘It’s Jo’burg that’s missing,’ Treppie says.
‘Her points are dirty. Her timing’s out. Who’ll give Jo’burg a service?’ he sings. Treppie started hitting the Klipdrift early tonight.
Lambert goes back to his den. There was nothing special on the go tonight. He went up and down Martha Street and then into Gerty and down Toby, to the bottom, where he always checks out the cars on the big advertising boards.
Those boards have long strips running downwards. First they turn one way, then the other, making a ‘ting!’ sound after each turn. And there’s a different picture each time.
Tonight it was a car driving through a veld fire.
Metallic blue. ‘Ting!’ It curves!
‘Ting!’ Opel Kadett 140.
And then it starts all over again. The blue car with its wheels in the fire. No one inside.
‘Ting! Ting! Ting!’
Over and over again.
Then the moon rose like a big, yellow ball above the advertising board.
And then he thought, no, now he’d better go home.
He goes round the back way to his den. Once inside, he feels for the key at the back of the Tedelex’s ice-box. He unlocks the steel cabinet and takes out his binoculars. Should he strip them? He once opened a kaleidoscope that Treppie brought home from the Chinese, just to see how it worked, how it made the little patterns that were all the same but also all different. But the pieces of glass fell out and he couldn’t get them to fit together again. Common piece of Chinese rubbish. Anyway, a Chinese is a sort of a Hotnot. The Japanese are the ones with real class, Treppie says. They’re honorary whites. They can make motorbikes. Suzuki, Kawasaki. Sounds more like Zulu to him.
He lies back on his mattress. The mattress he inherited from Pop and his mother. They actually went and took the new one for themselves. They say if he wants to burn his own bed he mustn’t complain about what they give him. Mind you, theirs is also not brand new, it’s a second-hand mattress from the pawnshop in Brixton, with an inner-spring. Not bad. And they bought a base, too, a shaky one, but what the hell. Now at least there’s one decent bed in the house. When his girl comes he’ll swop the mattresses around. They mustn’t try to stop him. You can’t let a guest sleep on a fucked-up piece of old sponge on the floor.
He focuses his binoculars on SUPERBEE. He sees it from so close that all he can make out are some of its parts. It takes him a while before he realises he’s looking at SUPERBEE’S body. Then he clicks it’s the middle sting, the one curling round the cloud. He can see on the black line how his hand was shaking when he got to the narrow part at the end. He looks down, at the wings, where the world shines through, softly blurred with spit between the veins. Yellow grass and red aloes. This bee’s more than a Superbee. This bee’s heavenly! It should actually be called ANGELBEE. Maybe he can still change it. Same number of letters. He’ll first have to paint white over SUPER and then write on top of it again.
He looks at his painting. There’s still a helluva lot to do. Lots that he has to fill in. Here and there he’s drawn a piece of outline. Most of the squares only have names. He looks at the names. Actually, everything should get wings like Angelbee. Angelbee’s got a vibe. None of them must lie thick or heavy or flat on the earth. They must fly. Things that can fly up into the air have vibes from other worlds.
Termite angel. Angel wasp. Heavenly rats and moths. Angels for Africa. Then the whole ceiling can get stars, so it looks like heaven.
He sees yellow spots on the ceiling. Must be the geyser leaking, or the overflow. And black specks, from the damp. Or maybe it’s fly-shit.
In the one corner he suddenly sees an off-white clot of threads. Things that look like sticks.
What is it?
He sets the binoculars to see better, but it blurs on both sides. He turns and turns until he gets it into focus.
The ball-thing’s moving. No, what the hell. What’s this now?
Slowly the little ball begins to tear open on the one side. Something’s moving around. Then three little folded-up things pop out. For a while they just hang there. Then they slowly open up.
Spiders.
Daddy-long-legs.
‘I spy with my little eye,’ says Treppie, suddenly here next to him. Lambert jumps. He sits up quickly, trying to hide the binoculars behind his back. But Treppie doesn’t want them. He’s sitting on a crate, holding his hands like binoculars in front of his eyes. He looks up at the ceiling.
‘The sky’s the limit,’ he says.
Then he takes away his hands.
‘And the heavens declare!’
‘Just don’t start with me now.’
‘I’m not starting with you.’ Treppie winks. ‘I’ve got a suggestion for you. Put on your shoes, and then bring those binoculars of yours. I’ve got the Klipdrift. We can tell Pop and them we’re just going for a spin to Brixton. Then I’ll take you on an outing. Then I’ll really show you something.’
‘Like what?’
‘Shit with what. If you’re scared, bring your gun.’ Treppie winks a double-wink at him. First with one eye and then the other.
Okay, so he knows, the bastard. Nothing to be done about it. And with all that Klipdrift in him, he’s capable of barging into places he doesn’t belong. Well, okay then, for just in case.
Lambert takes his belt from the steel cabinet and fastens it under his belly. He loads the gun. One bullet for every hole. Six of them. Then he puts the gun into his belt on one side. His binoculars dangle from his neck.
Treppie stands at the door, looking at him. He rocks slowly on his feet.
‘I’m ready if you’re ready.’
Treppie salutes. It’s weird, his fist makes a dull noise as he knocks it against his chest. With the other hand, he lifts the Klipdrift high into the air, and says:
‘It’s the knight of Triumph
Look, look, look over here
He can see around corners
And his barrel is loaded
But where, oh where is his Guinevere?’
Treppie mustn’t go and fuck with him now. He wants to know who this Guinevere is, but he decides to leave it. One thing at a time. He’s feeling a bit jittery about this outing.
Treppie doesn’t drive to Brixton. He drives down Long Street, with a smile on his face, till he gets to the gates of the other big Jo’burg dump, the one between West Park cemetery and the police flats. That building’s so high you can see it for miles around. It even flashes a red light on top to warn aeroplanes at night. From its windows you can see the dumps, the cemetery, and from Northcliff hill all the way to Florida, where the water-organ plays. On the other side it looks out over the northern suburbs, right up to the Sandton Sun, which shines like a bar of gold in the night, also with a light on top.
They climb over the high gate. Treppie walks in front between high piles of rubbish until they get to the back of the flats. The moon shines brightly all around them. A fucken weird place to visit at this time of night! He wonders what bee Treppie’s got in his bonnet. They walk past an old kaffir sitting next to his konka. The poor bastard must live here.
‘Evening, my masters,’ says the kaffir, taking off his hat.
‘Evening, chief,’ they say to him.
It takes a long time before they get to where Treppie wants to be – a big heap of stones.
Up here, Treppie points. ‘That’s it,’ he says when they get to the top.
Not rocks, Lambert sees, but stones. Smooth, shiny cut-offs from polished granite, the left-overs from West Park’s headstones. Lambert looks at the big block of flats. Then he looks around him. A person can see far from here.
‘Must be nice to live here, with a view like this. You can almost see the whole of Jo’burg.’
‘Oh yes, as long and as wide as God’s mercy.’
Lambert looks at Treppie. He’s full of tricks again. He was hitting the Klipdrift early tonight, even before Lambert went on patrol.
‘Yes,’ says Treppie when they both find seats on flat pieces of stone, ‘and if you ask me, they need it, too. Fucken heavenly garages full of mercy. With a view, for just in case. Not that it’ll help. A policeman’s eyes sit too closely together, like a baboon’s. He just looks straight in front of him. Never sees what’s under his nose.’
Treppie shows with his fingers and his nose how the baboon-policemen look out at the world. Then he takes a long sip from the Klipdrift bottle and passes it on.
They drink and then they look at the big block of flats in front of them, with all its little squares of light.
‘These people don’t even close their curtains.’
‘Why should they?’ says Treppie. ‘On this side it’s just dead bodies and the city’s rubbish. But us, we’re here now, we’re alive and we’ve got a gun. And binoculars.’
Only now does he click Treppie’s plan.
‘And a snort,’ Treppie says. He holds the bottle up high and says ‘Cheers!’ to the flats.
It’s funny to be so close. Pop always says the flats look like a honeycomb from a distance. That’s when they go for a drive and they come back on the Albertskroon side. Then Treppie always says: A honeycomb with no sweetness in it. It looks more like a mouth organ to him, Treppie says. Then everyone laughs and says, but it hasn’t got any music either.
Those are their jokes about the big block of police flats. They’re bored with it.
But this is a completely different story. Now the flats look like lots of little square movies, all running at the same time on a big screen.
‘So now,’ says Treppie, ‘pass me that mean machine of yours so I can find us a nice one. Take your pick. Comedy, thriller, action, romance. The works. What you in the mood for tonight, hey, Lambert?’
Treppie’s nice and greased, he thinks. He smiles. Never a dull moment when Treppie’s in a jolly mood.
‘Mmm,’ says Treppie, looking through the binoculars. ‘Just what I thought.’
He looks where Treppie’s looking, up and down with the binoculars. They’re in for fun and games, ’cause Treppie will make up all kinds of things about what he says he sees there. All you can really see are the insides of the bottom flats, and the ceilings and walls of the flats higher up. But let’s give Treppie a chance here.
Treppie drops the binoculars. He keeps quiet and looks around. The broken pieces of headstone look eerie. He drinks from the bottle and holds it up against the moonlight to check the level. Then he starts singing:
‘Oh sentinel on the ramparts
How endless seems the night
But now the dawn is blushing
And soon the morning will be glad and bright.’
‘Hey, come now, man!’ He presses Treppie on the shoulder. He must be careful now. He knows Treppie well. If he stays jolly on the Klipdrift, then he’ll go to bed in a jolly mood. But if he starts getting the blues now, he’ll just get more and more miserable as the night goes on. And then he’ll start spinning heavy shit about him, Lambert, and the rest of them. And then, later, everything will get completely out of control.
Lambert looks through the binoculars. Let him just find something to cheer Treppie up now, ’cause Treppie looks like he wants to start crying or something. He looks at the bottom windows. There’s a row of candles in one window, a woman holding up a piece of meat in another, and then there’s a dog with his feet up against the glass, trying to look out. No luck tonight. But Treppie’s too drunk to care. He hands him the binoculars.
‘Shame, the poor dogs!’ Treppie suddenly sticks his nose up into the air and lets out a long dog-cry. ‘Hoo-eee-a-a-hoo!’
His voice echoes against the high flats. A few dogs bark in the distance. Lambert feels a cold shiver run down his tail-end.
‘No, shuddup now, Treppie, if they catch us here, what’ll you say then?’
‘Then I’ll say you’re my guardian angel! Or my guide dog!’ Treppie laughs a drunk little laugh.
‘Let’s just go home now.’
‘Okay, but let’s just check first.’ Treppie takes the binoculars.
‘Check what?’
‘The moon.’ Treppie turns around in circles with his arms open. ‘They say there’s a man in the moon. But I’ve heard a different story.’
‘Ag don’t talk rubbish, Treppie!’
Now he’s not sure any more which way Treppie’s going. He’s got that twisted smile on his face, only now it’s even more twisted than usual from all the Klipdrift.
‘I heard there’s a cart up there, with two horses in front and two people in the carriage.’
‘Rubbish, Treppie, you’re fucken drunk, man!’
Lambert looks around to see if anyone’s coming. He doesn’t want any trouble now. Suddenly it feels like they’re very far from home.
‘You’re pissed, man.’
‘Not pissed, and not drunk, just tickled. That’s what my grandma always used to tell us. Your prehistoric great grandmother, the one you never met. She said there was a cart on the moon, with a bride and a groom, and two bay horses pulling the cart. On honeymoon.’
‘Bay horses, hmph!’
Treppie stands up straight. He shows Lambert he must get up too. He gets up. He and Treppie cast short little shadows on the stones. They look up into the sky. Thick balls of cloud glide through the open sky. The clouds are black underneath. Their heads look like white stones in the bluish light from above.
‘Check!’ says Treppie.
‘Check what?’
‘The bridal cart, man. Look if you can see the bridal carriage!’
Lambert lifts the binoculars to his eyes. Now he must just be cool here, that’s the best. Maybe it’ll pass.
‘Got it yet?’
‘I’m still looking!’
Lambert finds the moon between balls of cloud. He focuses nearer and further till he gets it nice and sharp. There’s a pale circle around the moon. Pinkish on the inside.
‘Now look,’ says Treppie. ‘That’s Koos Krismis and Laventeltjie, his wife. They’re on honeymoon, there above Klipfontein’s stars.’
Lambert looks. All he sees is the rough surface of the moon.
‘And there, next to the cart, is a wedding guest who wants a lift.’
Treppie’s voice sounds funny. Lambert looks for the guest. All he sees are patches and grey specks. The moon looks grated and chipped.
‘And the groom’s got a knapsack with a guinea-fowl inside. It’s for the pot, for tonight. The guinea-fowl’s head and its blue wattles are hanging out, and there’s blood dripping on to the dirt road.’
No, Jesus! He looks at Treppie. He wants to tell him he’s talking crap again. It must fucken stop now. Wallpaper, he wants to say. But tears are running down Treppie’s face, down into the wrinkles around his mouth. Strange birds call in the dark. High up in the flats, somewhere, doors slam and people shout.
‘There’s a dog running next to the front wheel, with his tongue hanging out.’
‘You’re drunk, man, that’s your problem.’ This is all he can think of saying. Now he just wants to get the fucken hell out of here.
‘Horries,’ he shouts. It makes him uncomfortable when Treppie cries like this, here among the old stones and stuff.
‘She’s wearing a little hat with lace netting, and behind the lace her eyes shine like dew on a spider’s web.’
Treppie swallows a sob. Then he sings:
‘Stop your rubbish now, Treppie, shit and rubbish! The moon’s in the sky and it’s full of holes. Let’s just fuck off from here now.’
Lambert grabs Treppie, but Treppie resists. He steps backwards, letting his unsteady body lean even further back.
‘Maybe it’s rubbish, Lambert, but who’s going to open your eyes for you? Fuck those binoculars of yours, man, fuck them! It’s all in the mind. And what’s in a name? The moon is a sickle, a coin or a pickle, teaching is cheating, God is a dog, just Eve is all side same side. Anything you say. Triomf or Doris Day, we’re here to stay!’
And now, why’s Treppie grabbing his balls? No decency. No, it’s not his balls. Treppie wants his gun! He grabs the gun out of Lambert’s belt and pushes him so hard on the chest that he almost falls into his glory down the pile of stones.
‘Give my fucken gun back!’
Treppie motions from above, he mustn’t worry, he’s just looking at the gun here a bit. He puts the thing against his head, and then into his mouth. Oh shit, here comes trouble! Lambert scrambles back up the pile of stones.
‘That fucken thing’s loaded, man, don’t start fooling around with it now!’ He should have known. That business of taking the gun with them. Another one of Treppie’s plans.
‘Six of the best!’ Treppie holds the gun up high, away from himself. Lambert can’t get to it. Jesus, help! What if Treppie shoots himself here tonight? What’ll he say to Pop? He lunges for Treppie’s arm, but he misses. Suddenly Treppie turns towards the flats.
‘And this one’s for you!’ he shouts. ‘Boom!’ He shoots.
Somewhere in the distance, glass breaks. Oh Christ! Now they’re in big shit here.
‘Boom!’ Treppie shoots another shot at the flats. ‘Zing!’ the bullet comes back. Lambert ducks. No, fuck, how’s he going to stop Treppie now? Without getting a bullet in the head first? Jesus, how could he have been so stupid? He grabs for the gun. He misses, again. Treppie just swings his gun-hand away from him all the time.
‘One for the dog in the moon!’ he shouts.
‘Boom!’ he shoots up at the moon. With his other hand he throws the empty Klipdrift bottle and it breaks into pieces on the rocks. Then the gun falls out of his hand, clanging down. Lambert sees it lying there.
Are you fucken mad or something? he wants to shout, but his throat’s too dry. He hears the sound of people talking, windows opening and closing. Now they must get the hell out of here, fast. So-called fucken outing! He fetches his gun from between two stones. Then he slips his binoculars around his neck. He grabs Treppie and drags him down the heap. Treppie doesn’t want to get up or walk on his own. He’s lying on the ground with a big piece of white headstone in his arms. He wants to take it home for Gerty, he says. Lambert will have to drag him away on his backside, he says, with granite in his arms.
He kicks Treppie to make him get up. But Treppie won’t get up. He falls flat on to his back again, with the slab of stone still in his arms.
‘Chip off the old block, chip off the old moon,’ he cries, with his face on the stone. Tears roll down his cheeks.
Lambert drags him, stone and all. He can’t just leave him here like this. He’d never hear the end of it.
‘Evening, my masters,’ the old kaffir says as they pass. He lifts his hat.
Stupid fucken kaffir, why doesn’t he come and help instead. Can’t he see they’re struggling here? The gun sticks into his belly and the binoculars swing on his neck. Treppie’s so heavy he leaves a trail like a fat python in the rubbish. Only at the entrance does he let go of the stone. Lambert manages to get him over the gate. He’s completely limp. There go his pants too. ‘Grrrr!’
Lambert has to drive. Treppie keeps falling against him in the car. Oh shit, what’s that blue light he can see now in the rear-view mirror? God, is it them they’re after? He changes back to second to get some speed going. The Volksie makes a ‘heeeee’ sound as it goes into third. Now he must just turn into Gerty. Get the police off their back. He checks in the mirror. It’s a van, driving like hell, but it carries on down Thornton. Right. Now Lambert feels sharp. He’s Treppie’s guardian angel. At the bottom of Gerty he takes the turn without even slacking down, and then he goes up into Martha. Here’s their gate. The moon shines bright into their yard. He drags Treppie out of the car and around the back of the house.
What’s that big tearing noise above their heads? It’s a Jumbo, taking the whole fucken sky for itself.
‘Jaws,’ Treppie hiccups, ‘snap!’
They watch the Jumbo.
A strong wind pushes the clouds across the sky. The Jumbo sails with its nose against the current. As it flies, clouds slide off its sides and moonlight covers its body, making the whole jet shine except for its belly. The Jumbo pushes its nose slowly into the sky as it flies away from them, towards the moon. Its dark shadow passes, and then the noise follows, louder and louder, until they can hear nothing but a terrible blowing sound.
Lambert sees Treppie’s mouth open as he shouts something at the Jumbo, flying towards the moon. He shakes his fist at the sky.
‘What?’
‘Angel of Retribution!’ Treppie shouts into his ear. The Klipdrift is heavy on his breath. ‘Shadowing the bonny bride, shadowing the groom.’
‘It’s going to land at Jan Smuts. Let’s go sleep now.’
He pushes Treppie from behind, into the passage. Then he helps him on to his bed.
He walks back to his den and switches off the passage light. As he passes, he stops at his mother and Pop’s closed door, opening it slightly to listen. ‘Ghrrr-ghrrr,’ his mother snores. ‘Phewww-phewww,’ Pop snores. ‘Swish-swish’ goes Toby’s tail. Must be on the bed again. Ever since Gerty died they’ve been letting him sleep on the bed. So they’re okay.
So now, all in all, it wasn’t such a bad night. He must say, he feels quite good. He’s a patrolman with class. What did Treppie say again? The Knight of Triumph, who looks after his own people. ’Cause they can’t always do it for themselves. That’s for fucken sure.