Lord, have mercy, they’re screaming and shooting again behind those rolls of razor-wire. It’s been going on like this all night now – flashbacks of what happened during the year. The little man on TV says they’re first having the flashbacks, and then, only later, the Queen. It’s that time between Christmas and New Year again, when this is all you get to see on TV. Mol’s tried the other stations too. Just speeches and marches and dead people under blankets wherever you look.
Every time Treppie pokes his head out of his room and sees more bodies under blankets, he says he’ll bet his bottom dollar those are Operation Snowball’s blankets. Charity’s not what it used to be, he says.
Nothing to be done about it. She’ll just have to wait for the Queen of England. At least it’s something to look forward to.
The house is peaceful tonight. Pop’s sleeping next to her, in his chair, and Toby’s lying with his head on Pop’s shoe. Treppie’s reading newspapers in his room. Lambert’s in his den. He says he’s painting. When he’s not painting, he’s digging his hole: his storage cellar, he calls it. He says it’s still not deep enough. Every day he picks something from his list to work on. Then, when he’s finished, he comes and stands here in the middle of the lounge with his hands on his hips, and he says: three down, twenty-six to go, or, five down, thirty-two to go.
Treppie says they must get ready, ’cause they’re well into the countdown now. Not to be launched, he says, but to implode.
As far as she can see, Lambert adds things to the bottom of his list faster than he ticks them off at the top. So, this is no count-down, it’s a count-up. And she wouldn’t be able to say what that means as far as blowing up or conking in or imploding’s concerned. They’ll just have to wait and see.
To top it all, Treppie’s gone and talked a new fencing story into Lambert’s head. Mister Cochrane’s Security Fencing, with spikes. ‘Neat and nasty security spikes from Stiletto’s.’ She has to listen to it almost every day now.
She’s seen a lot of houses with those spikes, but they always put them on top of high walls. Their house hasn’t got a high wall. But Treppie says it’s not a problem. All they need to do is hammer a few spikes into the roof – around the overflow pipe, where the corrugated iron is coming loose. And then they can put Mister Cochrane’s electrified razor-wire on top of their own wire fence in front, and on top of the prefab wall, too. That will make them the neatest and nastiest of them all, Treppie says. Then they’ll be ready.
Ready for what? she asks. And he says, ready for any eventuality.
Treppie says Mister Cochrane is a man after his own heart. He’s an oke who takes a gap when he sees it. And he doesn’t just take the gap, he looks for it too, all over the world. If he doesn’t find it, Treppie says, then he wouldn’t be surprised if Mister Cochrane goes and makes his gap with the help of the state.
When she asks him what gap, Treppie says: Oh, it’s like something that still hasn’t been given its right name. Mister Cochrane trekked right through Africa following the gap, until he arrived here at the southern tip. Things only began to go well for him in Nyassaland, which is now Kenya. It was there that Mister Cochrane saw the Mau-Mau, and that was one of the gap’s first names. So he made his fencing to close up the gap.
Mau-Mau.
Treppie says there’s just one thing about this kind of gap: once you’ve closed it up with security fencing, it starts getting bigger and bigger again and you can never keep up. You think you’re closing it but actually you’re opening it. He says that’s what you call a paradox, but security is full of paradoxes like that.
All she needs to do is use her own two eyes, he says, and then she’ll see all of Jo’burg sparkling with Mister Cochrane’s security fencing. Around the golf courses, the Vroue-Landbou-Unie’s home for unmarried mothers in Brixton, around schools and factories and the JG Strydom Hospital, Shoprite’s loading zone at the back, Triomf’s NG church, the coolie-church in Bosmont, everywhere. It’s been put up once around the botanical gardens and three times around John Vorster Square. Even the Chinese in Commissioner Street have fenced in their yards, except now they can’t chase the rats out any more. So they add them to the sweet and sour, for bulk.
Bulk.
You can even see the fencing on the walls of the Rand Afrikaans University, as if that wall isn’t bad enough as it is. Seven million rands’ worth of wall, says Treppie. You’d swear RAU was a raptor or something, trying to break loose.
Raptor.
He says it won’t be long before they surround the whole of Jo’burg with that fence. But Mister Cochrane still won’t be finished, ’cause then he can make fences inbetween and more fences around and inbetween and around and inbetween until he’s gone right around the world.
Security fencing has become South Africa’s biggest single export product, Treppie says. Everyone wants it, all the way from the Sudan to the Kruger National Park and to Chile. Treppie says Mister Cochrane has been invited by the United Nations to go to Bosnia and Hertzego-whatsitsname to come make his fences, so the Moslems and Christians will stop wiping each other out over there. And during the Gulf War, just a few years ago, there was lots of interest in Iran and Iraq for Mister Cochrane’s fencing. Which doesn’t surprise him at all, says Treppie, ’cause South Africa sold cannons to Iraq for that war, and war of any kind always opens up gaps that have to be fenced in again. When those two countries were at war, the government exported security fencing to both of them. The more fighting, the more fencing. The more fencing, the more fighting. That was like killing two birds with one stone. Boom! Snap! says Treppie. Boom! Snap! Boom! Snap! Very profitable.
Nowadays, he says, it’s not guns and roses any more. Now it’s guns, gaps and fences. And the one hand doesn’t wash the other, they’re both equally dirty now. Both know what the other’s doing. And they’re both in it right up to the elbows.
It sounds mixed up to her, but Lambert keeps nodding his head as if he understands exactly what Treppie’s saying. And now, on top of everything, Lambert says he wants to buy second-hand fencing from Mister Cochrane, so he can close up the gaps around their house. But the only second-hand security fencing you ever see is the kind that lies around in rusted heaps and spiked balls that can’t ever be undone again. Those terrible blades hook into each other, and then they catch bits of grass and plastic and stray cats and things. She’s seen those balls of wire, next to the roads and in the scrapyards.
Treppie says Lambert doesn’t understand the first thing about security fencing. He just pretends he does. Second-hand security fencing, he says, is a contradiction in terms. Mister Cochrane sells only new fencing.
That might be, but new or old, she doesn’t want to be the cat, not to mention the kaffir, who lands up inside that wire.
Treppie says ‘put up’ is the wrong way to describe what you do with a fence like that. What you actually do is roll it off and turn it out, ’cause it comes rolled up tightly on a big spool. Then you turn the spool with a handle so the wire can roll off, in stiff, stabbing circles. Treppie says it’s South Africa’s Olympic emblem. Never mind our flames.
If you try to cut that wire with pliers, then the two loose pieces shoot out around your hands and bite deep holes into your flesh. And the more you try to pull yourself out, the deeper it digs in.
They once saw a cat inside one of those balls of wire. It was second-hand fencing, which made it worse. The cat looked like someone had tried to make muti out of it. It was hacked into little squares, making it look twice its size, shame. Nowadays, apart from the blades that hook, the fence comes in a double layer, too, one outside and one inside. The inside layer shocks you. That’s after you’ve already been cut into chunks and you’re still trying to get in to wherever it is you want to get into. Then it shocks you as well.
Treppie cut out Mister Cochrane’s advert and pasted it up underneath the old calendar with the aerial photo of Jo’burg. He says it’s so we make no mistake about where it is we come from. He underlined the important words with a red ball-point:
Detect the Intruder
Stop the Intruder
Shock the Intruder
Low-Cost Aggressive Asset Protection
It’s still two and a bit hours to wait for the Queen of England. First it’s Agenda. Tonight’s Agenda is about peace: they show the part where Chris Hani asks for peace and then it’s the dove who fell down next to Hani’s coffin. Must have been dizzy from all the people and the flowers and the shots into the sky and everything. Poor little dove.
But she saw this before, at Easter. They said they took the dove out before closing up that grave, although she saw people throwing handfuls of dirt and petals on to the dove. It kept blinking its little eyes all the time.
Now they’re showing the faces of people they’re scared will also get shot, just like Hani.
The first one is Terre’Blanche of the AWB. Treppie says that man will shoot himself in the foot before anyone gets a chance to shoot him anywhere else. And then, when someone does eventually kill him, he’ll get a hero’s funeral. That, says Treppie, is what happens when you shoot a cripple Boer.
Now they’re showing how Terre’Blanche keeps falling off his horse. Three different horses, in three different places. Always under some flag or another. Treppie says they would do better to pull him around in a rickshaw.
The AWB boss is talking. He asks whether people want the plots being hatched in the cold cancer chambers of Communism to come to fruition in our beautiful country. No, they mustn’t, she thinks, but then Terre’Blanche must also learn to ride a horse properly.
Now they’re showing Winnie. They’re scared people will shoot her from several different angles. Now that’s a dizzy palooka for you, Treppie says. He says it’s from that headgear she wears. Anyone who wears a ball of green satin bigger than her own head, with points on top, is bound to start talking a lot of crap. ‘We shall liberate this country with our matchboxes,’ she says. Not enough blood to the brain, says Treppie.
Then they show Peter Mokaba. He’s got no hat on his head. Yes and no, he says. No, they mustn’t shoot the Boere, he says, but yes, they must. Treppie says Mokaba’s going to become the Minister of Tourism in the new government, but he’ll cool down quickly once he has to look after a herd of zebras.
Then they show Hernus Kriel’s face. He looks like someone’s just told him he’s an arsehole. And Kobie Coetzee, with his pop-out eyes. Treppie says you see eyes like that on people who’re about to get golden handshakes. Like the one Kobie’s lined up for himself. And then it’s Buthelezi. He’s in skins and he’s got his sticks with him. And the mayor of Jo’burg, with a grey dove on his head. Everyone wants to shoot him over the rates.
But if you ask her, not a single one of them jogs. Hani used to jog every day in his tracksuit. Jogging’s good for you. The president of America jogs around the White House every morning with his bodyguards. But Buthelezi doesn’t jog. And he’s not wearing anything underneath those animal skins, either. That’s what Treppie says. He says the skins are just for show, and someone who’s on show must sit still with his legs together and his hands folded neatly in his lap. Roelf Meyer jogs. She saw one day on the cover of Your Family and You in the café. He runs in his jogging shorts with his dog, one of those bull terriers with piggy eyes and a tail like an aerial. But no one’s worried about Roelf getting shot. He’s for peace. Treppie says he’s a poofter and a kaffirlover, but he looks quite okay to her. It’s just that he’s getting thinner by the day. His collars hang loose and his Adam’s apple jumps up and down like an oil-pump every time he talks. It’s from negotiating, Treppie says, from throwing all his weight into the negotiations. Then it’s Pik Botha. Pik’s talking so much the spit flies in all directions. He says they can try shooting him if they want, he’ll just shoot back. Pik’s a jolly bloke, even when everything’s falling to pieces all around him. That’s what she says. She hasn’t once seen Pik really get rattled. He always has something to say for himself, or he’s got a plan for other people. Pik reminds her a lot of Treppie. If he wants something, he just takes it. And when he’s finished, he gives it back again. He starts a fight, and then when he’s finished he makes peace again, right there and then. Without batting an eyelid, says Treppie.
Pik’s nose is also red, just like Treppie’s. Hee-hee, she must remember to mention that to him.
There’s Constand now. He’s the leader of the Freedom Front. His neck’s stiff and when he pulls away his bottom lip, his teeth show. He gives talks to women with perms. He stands on a stage with a flag behind him and a flag in front of him. The women look grim.
Treppie says the general’s a brilliant strategist. He means business. He says he read somewhere that the general’s got a twin brother who looks just like him, but his brother’s as meek as a lamb. Hell, if you ask her, to be attached to a brother like Constand must be the same as getting stuck inside Mister Cochrane’s security fencing. It’s just as well they’re not Siamese twins. Treppie’s nickname for the general is Salamiboy. He says he’s got a picture of the general somewhere when he was still chief of the defence force. In the picture, he and his top brass hold up the biggest salami ever made in Africa. Salami and smiles for the boys on the border. Treppie says those boys on the border didn’t get to see much meat at all, never mind salami.
Treppie’s got a whole pile of newspaper clippings where important people hold funny things in their hands – pumpkins, sheep, sucking-pigs, sculptures of presidents’ heads, mielies, the works. He says it’s incredible what people in this country are prepared to pose with. The Benades have never posed for any newspaper and maybe they’re a bunch of poor white has-beens, but as sure as God’s in heaven, he doesn’t see the slightest difference between them and the top brass.
Now they’re showing FW. He’s standing on a red carpet at an airport with his hand on his heart. It’s in Chile. The Chileans march past with guns and helmets. Next to FW stands his wife, Marike. She’s wearing a little hat with netting on, and she holds her handbag in both hands in front of her. They saw this piece on the news when it happened. She remembers feeling so sorry for that poor Marike. She looked so miserable standing there, with her eyebrows all screwed up and a deep furrow in the middle of her forehead. She looked like she wanted to cry, standing there on a mat at that windy airport in Chile, with the aeroplanes far away in the distance and her floppy blue dress flapping round her legs. If she went on like this, Mol said at the time, then that face-lift of hers would come right down again, within a year. That’s ’cause a frown is something you have to unlearn. It doesn’t help to cut it out, it’ll just frown itself back on again. But how do you unlearn something like that, in times like these?
Then, to top it all, Treppie began mocking Marike. He went and stood in front of the TV with two little knocked-together ladies’ knees, and he held his hands in front of his crotch, putting on a smile just like the one Gerty used to wear when she did a number two. To tell the truth, that was the closest thing she’s ever seen to the expression on Marike’s face that day in Chile.
Then Treppie sang in a high little voice:
‘I wonder what’s bothering mee-ee
There’s trouble in my heart
A tim’rous little butterflee-ee
Forever from the garden barred.’
Pop says Treppie missed his calling in life. He should’ve been an actor. He says it bothers him terribly that such a talent should be wasted, without anyone even lifting a finger to do anything about it. He’ll go so far, he says, as to say Treppie deserves a subsidy.
She must say, the Benades have their moments. Like the other day, just a few months ago. It was still spring, and then they walked smack-bang into peace.
Treppie saw an advert in the smalls for an office furniture sale in Braamfontein, so they decided to go. Treppie said you sometimes found a handy piece of plank or something at the most unlikely places, for next to nothing. The trip was actually for Lambert. He was struggling to get his work bench nice and smooth for his girl, and he was starting to look dangerous again. He said he wanted to mix the cocktails on his work bench. And he needed it to put out the peanuts and the dips and the chips. The bench had to be nice and neat and smooth. That rough old railway sleeper standing on prefab slabs wasn’t good enough, he said.
Well, in the end they didn’t get anywhere near that furniture sale, ’cause when they turned into Jorissen Street it was suddenly just kaffirs wherever you looked. White people too, but mostly kaffirs. They filled the whole street, holding hands and singing and dancing, and they pushed Molletjie all over the place, until she jammed against the kerb. And there they sat. All the other cars also sat like that, stuck in the crowds of people with their lights on.
‘Here comes big shit!’ said Treppie. They couldn’t see what was going on. At first they thought Mandela was there, or Mandela was dead, or maybe FW. Another huge bladdy funeral party.
The kaffirs kept pointing to Molletjie’s front and back number-plates. They slammed their hands on the roof, looking at their watches and telling the Benades that they must get out of the car now.
‘MDM!’ they shouted.
‘MDM!’ they carried on shouting, pointing and shouting with open mouths.
‘Right, people,’ Treppie said, ‘what’s happening here is what I predicted a long time ago with these number-plates of ours. It was a big mistake. Now all of you better just act like you’re the Mass Democratic Movement!’
She remembers, they waited a terribly long time to get those numberplates after Pop lost the papers. And when they went to fetch them, Treppie said it was a chance in a million. Of all the cars in Jo’burg, theirs had to be the one with MDM on its number-plate. Treppie said he foresaw a problem of mistaken identity, ’cause MDM stood for Maximum Democratic Merrymakers. That was a nice little mistake, she said. She wouldn’t complain about an identity like that. Treppie thought it was very funny, but he told her she shouldn’t push her luck too far. Well, she didn’t have to push anything, ’cause in the end that day turned out very nicely, even if it did feel like touch and go at the time.
Pop sat dead still. He pulled the keys very slowly out of the ignition and put them into his pocket. The next thing, people were pulling them right out of their seats.
Lambert’s eyes went wild from not knowing what was going on, and he shouted: ‘Stay together! Just stay together!’ She remembers feeling in her housecoat pocket for a peg.
But they quickly got mixed up in the crowd. Treppie on this side, Pop on that side, Lambert on the far side, and her right on the other side. So many strange people around her. Then a black girl with a Chicken Licken cap on her head came over and said: ‘Peace be with you, Ma,’ and she smiled at Mol and pinned a light blue ribbon, with two doves on a bright blue pin, one white and the other light blue, on to her housecoat. Only then did she see what was going on – everyone was wearing ribbons and doves and holding hands. So that was the story! And all this time the young girl kept squeezing her hand and smiling at her with shining eyes. She smelt like Chicken Licken and her hand was a bit greasy, but then Mol squeezed the hand back, even though she’d never touched a black hand before, clean or dirty. On her other side was an old man with only one leg, leaning on crutches. He stuck one of his crutches under his arm and then he shook her hand. That hand was cold and the skin was loose. And the bones felt like they had come apart. But he held her hand nice and tight.
She saw the old man had no blue on, so she worked her hands loose to give him her own ribbon. He motioned to her: here, she must please put it on for him. And so she stuck it on for him, right there on his lapel where he showed her. That old man’s jacket was completely worn through, but the blue pin made it look nice and new again. And then she smiled at him, and she saw the young girl smile as well, and then all three of them were smiling much better, and they all took each other’s hands again.
She looked around and caught sight of Pop and Treppie and Lambert, all of them with ribbons on their shirts. All of them holding strangers’ hands. But they weren’t smiling. Only Pop had a slight smile on his face. He looked a bit panicky.
Suddenly everything went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. All around her people began to cry. The old man dropped his chin on to his chest and closed his eyes and then tears started rolling down his cheeks. Next to her, the black girl was sniffing. The next thing, that girl picked up her hand, with Mol’s hand still in it, and she used it to wipe her nose. Mol thought, ja, it’s hard to believe, but if that girl had rubbed her snot off on the back of Mol’s own hand, she would really not have minded. There was such a nice feeling in the air that she almost started crying herself. But then the silence was over and all of a sudden it was just hooters and bells and singing and people in taxis throwing peace signs. A young man in a striped tie grabbed her and they did a little two-step like she last saw in the days of Fordsburg’s garment workers’ dances. Eventually, she pushed her way through to Pop and said to him, with a smile on her face, ‘Peace to you, Pop,’ but she saw Pop was crying, too. Ai, Pop, he’s got such a soft heart, truly.
When it was all over and they got back into the car, Pop turned around and asked her if she’d ever in her life heard of a coincidence like this, but that old man with only one leg whose hand she was holding was the very same man he gave money to in his tin, the one who said to him: God bless you, sir. It just shows you.
Lambert was over his shock by then, thank God, and he said he didn’t know what it showed, but he also felt it showed you something.
Treppie was completely speechless.
But completely.
It was like someone had cut out his tongue.
When they drove past the Spar in Thornton – no one was in the mood for office furniture any more – Treppie suddenly popped up with the strangest idea. She could hardly believe her ears; it’s the kind of thing she’d expect Pop to say, but Treppie said it was such a nice spring day and it was almost one o’clock, and weren’t they also hungry? Why didn’t they go buy something tasty and have it for lunch at the Westdene Dam?
Oh yes, the Benades have their moments. Even if they first have to stumble into peace, in the full light of day. In streets full of pealing bells.
That day just got better. They bought fresh bread and Springbok viennas and oranges and a litre of Coke and a coconut macaroon for each of them. Treppie paid for the lot from his back pocket. Just like that. They went and parked at the gate in Seymour Street, but she felt something was missing. It was Gerty, of course. Gerty was still alive then. Old and sick, but still alive. Shame, she’s been dead almost a month to this day. She misses Gerty all the time.
But on that spring day Pop drove patiently back to the house to fetch Gerty and Toby. He knew they didn’t always get a chance to play at the dam. When they got back to the dam they parked at the same spot and the dogs began wagging their tails and it was all very jolly. They took their lunch and found a place to sit in the slight shade of the willow trees that had just begun sprouting, opposite the island, where there were some more willows and a hadida.
It was all quiet and calm. The only other people there were on the other side, having a braai.
‘Must be policemen,’ said Pop.
‘Maybe they work night shift. Shame, they must also crave a bit of sun,’ she said.
So they unpacked their food and ate in silence there on the grass. Every now and again someone said something. Like: Look at the ducks. Or: Look where Toby’s running now. Or: I wonder what kind of bird that is?
Except for Treppie, who didn’t say a word. He just sat there, writing on his cigarette box. He’d write something, scratch it out again and then write something on the other side. After a while he was even writing on the macaroons’ paper bag.
‘What you writing there, Treppie?’ Lambert asked after a while, and then she and Pop also asked. But Treppie just bit the back of his ball-point pen and scratched his head. He didn’t say a word.
Then, after a long time, when they were passing around the Coke bottle for last sips and smoking their second cigarette, Treppie asked if they were ready to pay attention now, ’cause he’d written something special, for a special day. It was called ‘This is not wallpaper’ and this was how it went.
He stood up and smoothed down his clothes, and then he recited his little verse. So all that time he was sitting there writing a little verse, on his John Rolfes box, and on the macaroons’ paper bag.
He put on his stage voice, gestured across the water, and read from the paper. It’s the same piece of paper she can see now, pasted under the aerial photo of Jo’burg:
2 September 1993
THIS IS NOT WALLPAPER
The African coot creases the water
And the Egyptian geese shout wha! to the sky
And the hadida, that old bachelor
sits there on the fronds of a willow.
He shakes his feathers and stretches his leathers
and shouts ha! to his friends on the bridge,
ja-ha! They must look,
this is not wallpaper
not this time, no, not this time,
it’s spring, yes it’s spring
at the old Westdene Dam—
and, not least,
at last there is peace.
Treppie’s little poem left them speechless. For a long while all you could hear were the birds. Toby began to cry, ’cause Treppie kept standing there in that funny way with his one hand up in the air and the other still holding the macaroons’ paper bag. So Lambert started clapping and they all joined in. Pop put his fingers in his mouth like he used to when he was young and he whistled a whistle with a wild twist at the end. And then of course Toby started barking and jumping around in circles.
They all wanted to hear the verse over and over again. Treppie had to recite his poem four times, and each time it sounded better, and different.
‘A poet and you don’t know it, hey?’ Lambert said to Treppie as they walked back to the car.
But Pop said: ‘He knows it, all right, he knows it,’ and he put his hand around Treppie’s shoulder.
When Pop took the turn into Martha Street, past the prefab wagonwheels, Lambert said: ‘“This is not wallpaper, not this time, no, not this time”,’ and when they got to the house and she climbed out to open the gate, Lambert shouted: ‘“And the Egyptian geese shout wha! to the sky”.’ And when they walked in through the front door, Pop said: ‘“And, not least, at last there is peace.”’
That’s when she said to Treppie he must give her that paper bag, she wanted to paste it up nicely on the wall under the aerial photo, next to Mister Cochrane’s security fencing. He looked at her hard and then she smiled back at him. She couldn’t stop herself. She said: ‘So we make no mistake about where it is we come from.’ Then he also smiled and winked at her, giving her a little hug around the shoulders. Ja, can you believe it, a decent, brotherly hug.
It just shows you.
What a day like this can do to a person.
Now she hears Lambert wants Treppie to write a rhyme for his girl, before even meeting her. In English, too. But she’s not so sure about this business, ’cause by that time there won’t be any peace left. Then it’ll be elections.
Hell, but it’s a long wait for the Queen of England tonight. Still another quarter of an hour. It had better be worth the wait.
Maybe she should start throwing away the Christmas cards on the sideboard – if they’re still there by New Year she can just see the trouble it’ll cause again. Not that she meant anything by putting them there in the first place, one at a time, as she found them in the postbox. She stood them upright with their pictures showing to the outside, all of them with houses, houses, houses, except the one with a path to heaven and a little sun. She stood them there so Christmas would at least look like something, for a change. Most of the time their Christmases are just miserable bugger-ups.
But this year they were lucky. Christmas turned out much better than for a long time. They got together in threes and gave presents to the fourth one. Lambert carried on and on about wanting to have a braai with T-bones and watermelon, so they could all learn to be nice and sociable. He said that was something the rest of them were going to have to learn fast in the New Year, once he and his birthday-girl started going steady. They’d have to learn how to treat visitors nicely, and they’d have to start eating some decent food, too. They also needed to learn the meaning of hospitality. And no, she wasn’t allowed to fry those T-bones in the pan, on top of the Primus. They had to be done on a proper wood fire, in the backyard. Lambert actually went and bought five silver balls at Shoprite, and then on Christmas Eve he hung them up on the fig tree in the yard. He told them they must all come outside now, he wanted to practise making a jolly fire. He said he knew how to make big fires, but a braaivleis fire was a different story altogether. For a braaivleis fire you needed an audience.
He bought three bags of firewood, one and a half for practising and one and a half for the real thing.
Then he wanted old newspapers to put under the wood, but Treppie said, uh-uh, he wasn’t finished reading them yet and Lambert should’ve thought about this when he burnt all his old Watchtowers. The next thing, Lambert tells her she must go fetch those stupid Christmas cards from Seeff and Johan Bekker and Nico Niemand and De Huizemark and Aribal whatshisname so he can use them to make his fire. She said no way, Christmas wasn’t over yet and his Christmas fire would die for sure if he went and sent the season’s greetings up in flames. Then he said season’s foot, they didn’t mean it, it was just estate agents’ sales gimmicks. Gimmick himself, she said. What about the NP’s little Christmas card, did he want to burn that one too? No, he said, she must leave that one. The NPs had been in their house so many times they were almost family by now, and in any case the NP was safer than houses.
Then of course Treppie couldn’t keep his mouth shut again. He told Lambert if he went into the election believing those two snotnoses from the NP were any better than estate agents looking for a commission, then he’d learnt nothing in all his forty years.
Treppie said Lambert must ask himself this: if the DP paid its workers one rand for every black vote they could get, and the ANC was willing to pay as much as fifteen thousand rand for just one bankrupt white cop with a drinking problem who’d seen the light, then how much more wouldn’t the NP pay for all the Ampies of the nineties who still lived in Triomf? Hadn’t he noticed the smart car that nosepicking Groenewald drove around in, and did he perhaps think the NP got money like that from selling doughnuts at church bazaars? He could assure Lambert now, without a doubt: money like that came from one place and one place only – the taxpayer’s pocket. It was a fucken shame.
Treppie said he was even tempted to go and join the Inkathas – that was at least a kaffir party whose doors were wide open to white people. At least then you knew you were dealing with a kaffir who was sick to death of being used by the NP, someone who kept to his own path, even if he did still dress in skins sometimes. Served them right, Treppie said, he wished old Mangope and Oupa Whatshisname and that cocky little Bantu from the Transkei and all the others who sold out would also bite the NP’s hand. Its backside too. Would the NP never learn?
Treppie was so worked up he started getting the shakes, and Lambert wanted to knock him sideways with a piece of firewood. On the very eve of the holy Christmas. But she told them that unless they calmed down she wouldn’t ‘marinade’ their T-bones, not a damn. The closer Lambert gets to his birthday, the fancier his words get. She said if they didn’t stop, she and Pop would go across the road and ask the police to take Lambert in a straitjacket to the nuthouse. Treppie too, ’cause she didn’t want to sit through another Christmas with people who were full of the horries, never mind the election. That was if they ever made it to the election. Pop said he agreed. He begged them, didn’t they want to try getting through just one Christmas without another big hullabaloo. Maybe this would be his last.
That shut them up nicely. It was the first time they’d heard Pop say anything like that.
So, she almost didn’t stick around for Lambert’s fire practice.
But it would’ve been a great pity to miss the giving of presents. And that business with the presents was a jolly affair, from start to finish.
They worked out that if they bought in groups of three for the fourth one, they’d save money and they could give each person a nice present. And they could also make sure everyone’s present was worth the same money. In other years, someone always cheated, and someone else always felt done down, and that’s where the Christmas trouble always started. The new plan was Pop’s idea. Treppie said it sounded to him like a real New South Africa idea.
It worked like this: she and Pop and Treppie had to give Lambert something, and she and Lambert and Pop would give Treppie something, and then Lambert and Pop and Treppie had to give her something. Then she and Lambert and Treppie could buy something for Pop. And all of them gave Toby a packet of soup bones. Ag shame, why couldn’t Gerty also be here this Christmas?
A proper negotiated settlement is what Treppie called it. That’s now what he called transparency. And she said yes, transparent, that’s the way she’s always known Pop to be.
On the Thursday before Christmas they all went to Shoprite. They reckoned Friday would be too busy, but it was busy on Thursday too – so busy you could hardly swing a cat in there, never mind a trolley. So they took baskets instead.
The one whose present was being bought had to stand around at the magazine rack at the entrance with his back to the shelves, and the other three were given fifteen minutes to find something. Those three paid for it at the farthest till and took it back to the car. After that they could come back for the next round.
They worked out beforehand where each one’s plastic bag would be kept to avoid a mix-up, ’cause all the bags looked the same. Pop’s bag had to go in the bonnet, Lambert’s in the dicky, hers behind Pop’s seat and Treppie’s in the front, at her feet.
Lambert was the youngest, so he had to wait first. She and Pop and Treppie bought him a new pair of shorts and a packet of Gillette blades for his razor. That’s when she saw the passion meter. Treppie said it was rubbish, Made in Taiwan, but she said, no, this was really just the thing for Lambert, and in the end they all agreed. For Treppie, she and Pop and Lambert bought a short-sleeve shirt, a golf cap with Michael Jackson written on it and a packet of peppermint humbugs.
Lambert said the humbugs were for the smell, ’cause nowadays Treppie’s Klipdrift breath was so bad it was enough to get the lawn-mower started.
For Pop, she and Treppie and Lambert bought a pack of four hankies. White ones with curly blue Ps in the corners. They also bought him two pairs of socks and a new set of braces. His old ones were so stretched they couldn’t hold anything up any more, neither his pants nor his bum, although his bum’s been shrinking to nothing lately. And a big tin of Ovaltine, just for him, so he can build up his strength. For strength you need more than braces.
As for her, she knew there was at least one thing she’d find in her bag from Pop and Lambert and Treppie. And she was right, too. It made her happy to see Pop could still make his influence felt.
It was a new housecoat. The same kind Pop always gave her for Christmas. But this time it was a yellow one, golden yellow, her favourite colour. With two packets of cigarettes in one pocket and a surprise in the other – a new cat for the sideboard, to replace the one with no head, which has been like that for more than three years now.
Treppie and Pop and Lambert all stood there and smiled at her. She still doesn’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good one.
The best present of the night, by far, was Lambert’s passion meter. She wished she could’ve taken a picture of him as he stood there, reading what it said on the box. Something to do with demonstrating the ‘principle’ of being hot and how it relieved stress and boredom in just three seconds. ‘The perfect gift’.
Lambert hardly had that glass ball with the red stuff in his hands before it began boiling all the way up the little neck, and of course Treppie couldn’t keep his mouth shut again. He said, no, instead of messing around with his paintings all day, Lambert should spend his time sitting quietly in the Tedelex so he could cool down a bit before his girl came. Otherwise he was going to crack her radiator, for sure.
But Lambert was so happy about his temperature that he just laughed and forgot about Treppie.
The practice fire also worked out well in the end, and the next day’s T-bones were almost okay – they had to be cooked one at a time on a loose piece of bathroom burglar-bar. When Lambert looked for the old Austin’s grid to use for the braai, he remembered it was one of the things he’d burnt up in his Guy Fawkes fire.
They had some potatoes and baked beans to go with the meat. Treppie bought a two-litre box of wine for the occasion. Drostdy Hof Stein. They polished it off in two ticks. It made them all so mellow that in the end they didn’t cut the watermelon. They went and lay down in the shadow of the fig tree instead, with those five silver balls glittering and twirling among the dark green leaves.
Now Mol finds herself standing in the kitchen. She can’t remember why she went there. Oh yes, to throw away the Christmas cards. Ja-nee, things are on the move here in Triomf. She reads on the back of Aribal Catalao’s season’s greetings:
It’s true! A new force has erupted in the West. For an instant market evaluation or free advice on the sale of your property, phone 477-3029 (home) 837-9669 (bus).
The FOR SALE signs are going up all around them. But the sellers are struggling. The only people who’ve sold are those two across the road. Their sweetpeas are so pretty. Fort Knox’s been on sale for months now. They painted their black iron gates and their other stuff light blue, with everything else in white. Treppie says they look like Triomf’s Peace Secretariat now. But blue or not, they’re not triumphing, not a damn, he says.
Treppie says if the prices go up after the election they can maybe think of selling, but they must first paint. Then she asked him: sell and go where? He said he felt like going to Ten-Elephants-in-a-Row-Ville. Where was that? she asked, and he said it was in the heart of the country, but she mustn’t come and ask him exactly where, ’cause he didn’t think he could find a place where elephants were so well behaved.
She said she’d rather stay right here where she was. The rest of them could go if they wanted.
But wait, she’d better go back now. It must be time for the Queen of England.
It’s a grey day and the Queen has to pose for a portrait. She’s dressed up in tassels and fur and she’s wearing her crown. She sits dead still. At first, the artist paints only her head. The Queen’s favourite little doggy sits at her feet, his eyes shining and his ears pricked. He’s looking to see what his lady’s doing.
The camera shows the lobes of her ear, the pearls and the soft flesh on her neck, and then, one by one, the precious gems in her crown.
Mol sees her cheeks and her nose and the wrinkles under her eyes. The Queen is powdered and painted for her sitting, but Mol is not fooled by her tight little smile.
Now they’re showing how much of her the artist has already painted. Her face and a trimming of white fur around her neck. The likeness is good and the fur also looks genuine.
But the Queen keeps turning the tassels around and around in her lap. And she’s rubbing her thumb over the thick, bushy ends. They say she’s sad about Windsor burning down. The damage was huge and now the treasures are fewer. They show a picture of the fire.
The Queen looks out of the window. It’s raining outside. Further down, far away, the Royal Guard marches around the fountains. The soldiers are small and red, like ants, with stripes down their trousers. They stamp their feet and then they put down their guns. Each one’s got a cord on his sleeve and a high, black cap, as if he’s in mourning.
‘It looks like a rainy day,’ says the Queen, and: ‘How did this session go?’
But the camera shows she’s thinking about something else. About how she went and looked at Windsor, walking in the rain through the rubble. In a yellow plastic hat, black rubber boots and a thin old overcoat. A fireman with a helmet helped her step over the beams. Shame, she’s also just human.
‘Oh, what a shame. My, what a pity. Alas, history reduced to mere ashes.’
‘And now, Molletjie, why you crying?’
It’s Pop. He’s just woken up.
‘I’m crying about the Queen of England and her palace that burnt down.’
‘Never mind,’ says Pop, ‘she’s only a queen, and she’s got many more.’