Lambert looks at the watch that Treppie got for him at the Chinese. It was to correct his sense of time, as Treppie put it, so his biological clock would stop running ahead of itself so dangerously.
A cheap piece of Chinese rubbish, but at least it shows the time and date. Five o’clock in the afternoon. Twenty-fifth April.
He’s sitting on a Dogmor tin, surveying his handiwork.
Actually, he’s looking at his hands.
They’re full of cuts and bruises. There’s still a plaster on the palm of one hand. It’s one of the spots that wouldn’t heal after the acid burnt him. Now the plaster’s black and frayed around the edges. He must remember to put on a new one before tonight.
He turns his hands so his nails face upwards. His fingers are trembling and his back feels lame from all the running around. And God, how his feet ache. But he’d rather not start looking at his feet now.
It’s Treppie who hurried him up so much. He thought he’d be getting his girl on the night of his birthday, which is the 26th. But then, yesterday, Treppie came with a new story, in front of his mother too, the bastard.
Actually, Treppie said, he was born just after midnight and it was ‘therefore’ already the 26th, and it was then that his birthday should begin, and ‘therefore’ his birthday present should be handed over to him on the night of the 25th. Handed over, he said, making curves in the air with his hands like a woman’s body. Handed over in good time, he said, so Lambert would be ready for the hour of reckoning.
His mother said, hmph, what reckoning was this now, his birth was more like an hour of tribulation, God alone knew.
No, Treppie said, she had to be positive now. For Lambert it would be an hour of triumph, not despair. And, he said, when you have a birthday, you rejoice the loudest, all the days of your life, the exact minute when someone held you upside down and smacked you till you said: Eh!
And he, Lambert, had to be ready, and everything else had to be ready too, on that exact moment just after twelve, as the 26th got going, so he could perform at his very best.
It was nothing less, said Treppie, winking that devil’s wink of his, than the bounden duty, nay, the heavenly command of a person who finally, on his fortieth birthday, gets to fuck someone who isn’t his mother. Or, mind you, someone who isn’t his father either, ’cause that possibility should also not be excluded – just look how the world was swarming with misfits who couldn’t let go of the apron strings, or for that matter, the braces of their parents.
At that point, he, Lambert, decided he’d had enough of Treppie’s rubbish, standing there in the kitchen door with that holier-than-thou look on his face. He took a king-size swing to smash in that foul mouth of his, but Treppie ducked and he knocked his fist right through the door of the kitchen dresser instead. His mother cracked up when she saw him punch his fist through the dresser, so he gave her a couple of good smacks too to make her shuddup, but she just sat down on her backside on the lino floor and pissed in her pants from all the laughing.
And then it was almost another big fuck-up here in Martha Street. But Pop quickly came and gave them all a shot of neat brandy. He can bet Pop doctored those shots with fit pills, ’cause once he’d swallowed his tot he suddenly began to feel calm again, and his mother’s laughing came out slower and slower, like a wind-up toy running down, and Treppie brushed at his face weakly, as if he’d walked into a spider’s web, or a thick mist.
Pop said they must wipe up the mess on the floor. Everything was okay, they must just wait calmly. He was going to take Treppie to his room quickly, he said, ’cause it looked like Treppie wanted to fall over.
When Pop came back he helped the old girl to her feet and stood her up against the wall. All this time she’d just been sitting there with her legs in that pool of pee in front of her, and all she could do was light up a cigarette.
Then Pop said he, Lambert, must apologise to his mother, and why in heaven’s name was all that necessary? He told Pop how Treppie had talked a lot of rubbish into their heads and how he’d wanted to punch Treppie, but Treppie ducked. So it was the dresser that got punched instead and his mother started laughing when she saw him miss, as if it was a fucken joke or something.
She couldn’t help it, she said, standing up against the door with her legs wide open, right there where Pop had stood her up, with a cigarette in one hand and that doctored brandy in the other. She couldn’t help it, it was so funny, and then she started laughing all over again. She showed Pop in slow motion how he, Lambert, had thrown himself into that big punch. And then she ducked like Treppie, but in slow motion, putting her fist slowly through the hole in the dresser. ‘Boom! Crash! Ting-a-ling!’ she slurred, and God knows it looked so funny that he and Pop started laughing too, and then she laughed even more.
So he said sorry very nicely to her and told her he hadn’t meant it. Then he began to feel sleepy again and Pop led him off to the den. When he woke up it was evening already, and it hit him like a bomb: if his girl was coming just after midnight tomorrow – that’s now today, which at midnight becomes his birthday, the 26th – then he still had a helluva lot to do. And ever since then his hands have been shaking.
Come now, Lambert, Pop said, there was nothing to tremble about. They must just calmly see what they could still do with reasonable certainty and capable speed. It wouldn’t help to try and move mountains in the space of twenty-four hours.
His mother made them all eggs on bread with tomato sauce, and then they sat down in the lounge with pen and paper and worked out what each of them could do to get things ready, even if it was just on the surface, ’cause it was appearances that counted.
His mother said if he got the lawn-mower running nicely for her, she’d cut the grass, right away. That’s ’cause there was a full moon and next door wasn’t allowed to start complaining before ten o’clock. Tomorrow, she promised, she’d tackle the kitchen.
Treppie said unfortunately he had to go work the next day, but he’d get some nice colourful Chinese lampshades, and then it would look like a jolly party. Pardon, he should say they would create a festive atmosphere, and he was sure he’d be able to get his hands on a plastic Chinese toilet seat as well.
Pop said he’d make a plan to find a mirror for the bathroom. There was still a whole panel of looking-glass left in the dressing table in their bedroom. He’d take it out of its frame and stand it up on top of the toilet. And then he’d put up the postbox, too, but this time, he said, it would be for good. For ever and ever, his mother said, and Treppie began singing: ‘Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset.’
And what about the gaps in the wall where the cement was gone and the red bricks showed through? Lambert asked. But Pop said if his girl said anything he could just show her the Wonder Wall papers. Painters always fix that kind of thing before they start painting. Then she’d know everything was okay.
Well, this morning he asked Pop for those papers and then he phoned the Wonder Wall people from across the road to ask when they were coming. The lady on the switchboard said, no, most certainly today, and if not today, then by the latest tomorrow, and thank you for your patience.
More than that he couldn’t do. If they come tomorrow, on the day of his birthday, then maybe his girl will still be here and then at least there’ll be something interesting on the go. Then she’ll be able to see with her own two eyes that the Benades aren’t just any old Tom, Dick and Harry from Triomf.
But what about the hole in the front door? he asked.
Treppie said that was easy, all they needed was to take a saw and widen that hole a bit. Then, abracadabra, he could say it was Toby’s dog-door, so that Toby could go in and out during the night and then she’d think they were ‘thoroughbred dog-lovers’, and that their dog, despite his inferior origins, still had very good manners. It was manners that counted with dogs, Treppie said, not pedigree.
He began to think Treppie was making fun of him again, but his face was completely serious.
And what about stuff to eat and drink? He couldn’t very well let his girl sit there dry-mouthed the whole night.
Treppie started to say that it shouldn’t be her dry mouth he worried about, but then Pop waved his finger at Treppie and luckily he shut up.
No, Pop said, if Lambert made a nice list, he and Mol would go to Shoprite. But he said they must go to the Spar in Melville instead. The Shoprite in Triomf didn’t stock those nice dips he wanted for his girl.
Treppie said he shouldn’t overdo things, that girl they were getting for him was a saucy little dip herself. She was the one who was coming to get dipped. Lambert should remember that he had to do the dipping, and if he wanted to get his chip properly dipped, then he shouldn’t be too stuffed with all kinds of snacks. But Treppie saw he was going too far again and he quickly tried to cover it up with all kinds of talk about dips and chips and chips and dips. He listed them, all the kinds of chips you get, from salt and vinegar to boerewors and barbecue, and all the dips he could think of, from garlic to angel-fish to avocado pear. All he was really trying to say, he said, was that Lambert should get on with it and make up his mind.
After that, they could all breathe more easily. Pop said Treppie might be an expert in dips and chips, but he’d better behave himself, or he’d give him another dose.
‘If we only had love,’ Treppie sang.
They carried on like this until very late last night. His mother mowed the lawn, with him supervising to make sure she kept in straight lines and cut evenly. Pop hammered the pelmet in the lounge straight and Treppie helped him put it up again. They even got the curtain hanging after a fashion. Treppie sawed the hole in the front door evenly, and then they swopped his mattress around with Pop and his mother’s inner-spring mattress. He managed to get that buggered old bed of his back on to its legs again but the bed springs were sticking out all over the place, so he just snipped them off with wire-cutters. He didn’t have time to mess around any more with that kind of thing. When they all went to bed last night, he wrote out his shopping list for Pop and his mother, and he made a list for himself, a short one from the long one, which was now longer than any list he’d ever made in his life before. It was so long it made him cross-eyed.
When he eventually got to bed, the sparrows were already singing.
It was the end of that long day. It was actually today already, the 25th, and he swears he slept only about four hours before he woke up again. And then it was still today.
And now, as he sits here, it’s the night of today, but it already feels like tomorrow.
Except that tomorrow only begins after twelve tonight, and it feels like all the watch-hands and the church clocks are depending on him. It’s like he has to extend himself to the utmost to make tomorrow come, his birthday. He has to make his own birthday happen. Then he’ll be forty. That’s if he can get it all together. But it’s actually a misnomer, as Treppie says, ’cause after twelve he’s already past his fortieth year. Then he’s into his forty-first year. That’s ’cause when you have a birthday, you don’t count what it is now, you count what’s already been, and then you’re actually on the way to the future again. But you don’t say it out loud, and you don’t add it on when it’s your birthday, which is actually a mistake, but you pretend for the sake of the party spirit. In the heat of things you just go ahead and say that, for the time being, you’re so many years old, but actually you’re always so many years old and a bit more. Forty point nought nought one into the next year. And if your watch is good enough, like an Olympic sprinter, you can even try keeping up with the facts of your lifetime, but it would be so fucken boring, keeping up like that. Tick-tick-tick-tick all day long, and between the ticks even more ticks, going even faster, and still more ticks and faster ones between those, until after a while time just zings by without even stopping for the ticks any more. Head first into your glory like a shooting star. Whoosh! Make way!
Lambert feels dizzy from thinking about time. He sits wide-eyed and stock-still, watching the things in his den. All the things stand there so quietly, you wouldn’t say time was zinging to hell and back in their insides, in their guts and in their seams.
‘Click’ goes the Tedelex as it switches itself on.
‘Clack’ goes the Fuchs as it switches itself off.
Suddenly a terrible fear grips his body. It pushes up from his tail-end like a wall of water. He wants to hold on to the bed but all he gets is a fistful of sheet in each hand. There’s a flashing behind his eyeballs. His head feels like a TV that’s busy fucking out. Lines and snow. Crash! Bang! Christ!
No, it’s not a fit, or anyway it’s not him that’s fitting. It’s a general seizure. He’s sitting wide awake right inside it and there’s no black-out to take him away, no blowing of fuses so he won’t know anything about anything. Everything is quiet and clear. The quiet convulsions of all the things in time. On and on it goes, forever. He feels like he’s shrinking down to the size of a pin-point and, at the same time, swelling beyond the walls of his den, shot through and blasted by time zinging through him.
‘And now? Why you sitting here like this with big eyes like you’ve just seen a ghost?’ someone suddenly says here next to him.
It’s Pop. He didn’t hear him come in.
How can he explain all this to Pop now? If he does, Pop will go tell the others and then they’ll all start saying something’s wrong with him again. He rubs his eyes.
‘Come see if you like what I did with the postbox.’
Lambert feels Pop’s hand on his shoulder. Pop’s voice is soft. He’s not so bad, old Pop. He sees Pop looking at his chair, his and Mol’s chairs that he dragged in here today. Pop didn’t say a word, but he can see the old man doesn’t really like it. He looks where Pop’s looking. Yes, he has to admit the chairs do look a bit funny here, as if they’ve been shrunk or something. The light falls on them in a different kind of way. You can see the hollows in the cushions made by Pop and Mol’s bodies. Those chairs have been sat to death, but they’re better than nothing. After all, he can’t very well let his girl sit on a crate. Where would she put her drink down? He looks at the chairs’ arm-rests. They’re full of coffee rings and black marks, from cigarettes. Tonight he’ll put his red light on and then she won’t notice a thing.
Pop sighs a deep sigh, here next to him.
‘Just for tonight, Pop, then I’ll take them back to the lounge.’
Pop shrugs. It’s okay.
He points to Treppie’s clock–radio next to the bed. Five past five, it says. Pop checks his watch to see if his time is right. Why’s Pop so worried about time all of a sudden? They worked everything out nicely, after all. When Treppie comes home, it’s just the finishing touches, then Pop and Treppie will go fetch the girl and drop her off here, and then, he told them, they must go out for a long drive with his mother. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s being spied on. He wants to be alone with his girl. That’s the least a person can expect of his own family.
Pop prods him gently. He must come outside now. Pop walks in front, straight down the passage and out the front door. He points to the postbox. It’s up, but Lambert must go look inside to see exactly how he did it. Lambert looks in through the little door. Fucken sharp!
Pop’s made the mother of all plans. He drilled a little hole through the bottom of the postbox and then he stuck some fridge tubing into the hole, twisting it on the inside so it wouldn’t slip out again. Then he stuck the other end of the tubing down the hollow gate-pole, till it almost reached the bottom.
‘Now it’s foolproof,’ says Pop, standing next to him.
‘Fucken sharp!’ he says again. But it’s not the engineering he’s praising, it’s the decoration. Light blue. Ja, just the thing. With its number painted pitch black in front: 127. ‘Not bad, hey?’
‘Ja, I saw there were some dirty old paint tins next door in the yard, from when they painted the roof. So I asked if I could have them. There was more than enough for a postbox.’
Now only does he notice Pop’s got blue paint-spots all over his face. He looks like a bird’s egg with a thin shell full of spots, standing there with a big smile on his face.
‘Thanks, Pop, man! You’re a champ.’
‘Postbox for peace!’ It’s his mother. She’s also come out on to the little stoep, standing there with her hands on her stomach, watching them. Here she comes now, walking over the lawn. When she gets to the gate, she looks up the street.
‘Treppie,’ she says.
Right at the top of their block, where Martha Street crosses Thornton, they see Treppie walking towards them. Apart from his black working bag, he’s also carrying a big black rubbish bag full of stuff.
Must be the lampshades. He makes a tick next to lampshades on the list in his head.
Today he’s flying through his list like the wind. He even saw to the moles. Last night he borrowed next door’s hosepipe and then, first thing this morning, he connected the pipe to Flossie’s exhaust and connected their own hosepipe to Molletjie, filling up those holes one by one with exhaust fumes. Now there’s no danger that he and his girl will be eating breakfast here in the yard tomorrow morning and she suddenly spills her coffee ’cause a mole’s pushing up a hill under her nose. Moles are ugly things with whiskers and two teeth in front. He’s sure you don’t get moles in Hillbrow. Cockroaches, yes, and termites. But he reckons those have also been seen to, with all the fumes on that side.
And talking about breakfast, the breakfast cake is also ready. It’s a small Swiss roll, just enough for two people, in a closed white box in the fridge, together with all the other snacks for tonight. His stomach churns.
His mother was fine about everything. When they arrived back here this morning with all those chips and dips and things, she helped him pack everything into the back of the fridge. Then she said he must wait, she had a surprise for him – she didn’t think he should display all those fancy eats in shop-packets and plastic bowls. So last night she asked Pop to get the key for the sideboard from Treppie, and she unpacked all the stuff that was inside there. Those things, she says, are all she’s still got left from her mother, Old Mol – two thick wine glasses with patterns, two round-bellied brandy glasses, and lots of plates and bowls in old cream china, all of them with a red stag in the middle, jumping among pine trees across mountains white with snow.
And now everything’s standing there neatly on his work bench, which he tidied up so nicely. His whole room’s been swept clean and dusted down, with planks covering his petrol pit. They washed and ironed two of Treppie’s window sheets and pulled them neatly over the bed. As Treppie said, a man couldn’t ask for more. And his mother found two cushions and covered them with bright pieces of cloth, ’cause he’d burnt all the slips in that fire to kill the earwigs.
No, he must say, his mother co-operated very nicely. She even washed the kitchen floor twice. After she finished cleaning it the first time, the silly old cow went and threw a whole bottle of drain acid down the kitchen sink, just like that. It bubbled and bubbled and then it exploded, ‘kaboof’, shooting up from the bottom of the sink right across the lino floor, all the way to the other side of the room. Sis! Dirty brown goo.
But his mother just went down on her hands and knees and cleaned the whole floor all over again.
He had to use plastic tape to close up the pipe under the sink, ’cause that acid burnt a couple of holes right through the pipe. That drain stuff is almost as bad as fridge burn-out oil.
That was all this morning. He’s just glad the smell has gone. It was a whopper of a pong. And he’s also glad Treppie wasn’t there when it happened, ’cause then of course he would’ve had lots to say.
Here he is now, at the front gate. He looks pissed.
‘The burghers of Triomf!’ he says. ‘Why you all standing here like you’re going to church? It looks like you want to get baptised or something.’
His mother points. The postbox.
‘Light blue.’
‘Yes, I see, it’s breaking out like pork measles, the national peace epidemic, vote blue, vote pig, the Benades are going aboard the peace brig! Coor-doo, coor-doo!’ sings Treppie, flapping his arms like a dove.
‘Now the postbox is fixed for ever and ever.’ Pop winks. He can see Pop’s telling him he must just stay cool. He’ll handle Treppie.
‘Sure thing,’ says Treppie, ‘hope springs eternal. Go fetch the ladder so we can start. I’ve got lampshades for Africa here, and you can choose between a yellow or a blue toilet seat.’
‘Blue,’ says his mother. He agrees. Blue’s better. Blue or pink, but not yellow. Yellow’s too close to shit.
Treppie says he’ll hang the yellow one behind the bathroom door as a spare. That’s cool, he wants to say. If he, Lambert, spent as much time on the toilet seat as Treppie, then he’d also want a spare. But he doesn’t say it. He holds back. He doesn’t want to rub Treppie up the wrong way. Treppie’s on his ear already.
And he’s full of tricks, too. No, they can’t touch his bag. He wants to unpack the stuff himself, inside, not here. They must come into the lounge. His mother closes the door behind them.
Lambert feels Pop pulling him by the sleeve. He must sit down on his crate so Treppie can start. Treppie’s wired. He acts like that rubbish bag’s a king-size lucky packet. He must just be cool tonight. The closer they get to the election, the more crazy Treppie gets. Like the other day, when they heard someone say the voting would now be over three days – the first day for special votes, and the next two for ordinary votes – Treppie started spouting rubbish again. Seeing that he, Lambert, was in the special class at school, Treppie said, he should by rights bring out a special vote on the 26th, which was also a special day for him – his birthday. But he needn’t be afraid, Treppie said, he’d go with him, they didn’t allow special cases to make their crosses without the guidance of an adult. He was just about to give Treppie another smack when Pop explained a special vote was something people made in ‘exceptional circumstances’, like drought or a plague, but then Treppie said, in that case the whole of South Africa should go vote with Lambert, so he wouldn’t feel lonely. Then they could all make one helluva big cross with white stones on RAU’s rugby field, right inside those new walls. Then maybe a few UFOs would come land there. Treppie says UFO stands for United Foreign Observers. Typical Treppie rubbish.
Here he comes now with the first shade. Just a yellow square, really. What kind of a shade is that? But now Treppie’s unfolding it like a fan. It’s a great big sun with a wide, red mouth that smiles.
‘A sun! Good show!’ says his mother. She holds out her hands.
‘Don’t touch!’
Treppie hotfoots it up the ladder. ‘Hold tight,’ he shouts.
Pop holds the ladder. Treppie works the shade around the bulb till it fits nicely.
‘Ta-te-raa!’ he says. ‘Now it shines on everyone!’
The second one’s a round blue light full of little silver stars.
‘Ooh! Give here!’ It’s his mother again. She sucks her lip, in-out, in-out. Doesn’t want to wear her false tooth. If his girl comes again, after tonight, he’d better nag Pop to find her a tooth that fits. She looks just like a worn-out old slut nowadays. And now she’s falling in love with those little stars. She’s getting soft in the head. Better just to leave her alone.
‘Okay, Ma.’ He tries to keep his voice even. She and Pop have helped him nicely today. They may as well have the stars for their room. He’ll even hang the shade up for them. As he walks down the passage, he hears Treppie mumbling something to his mother. Must be talking about him again. Let them, they’re still going to see a thing or two in this house.
He has to stand on the mattress to hang up the shade. He struggles with the strings around the hole where the bulb goes in. Fucken frills! He can hear them dragging the ladder around as they hang things up all over the house.
‘Don’t fall,’ he hears his mother say. It sounds like she’s talking through a rag. She even stinks from her mouth nowadays. After tonight he’ll be finished with her. Then he’ll do his own thing, in his own way. He must just have the right touch with his girl tonight. Then she’ll come back again and, who knows, maybe this will become a decent house.
He can’t get the bulb through the hole. It’s too small. So he just pushes it, ‘grrt!’, right through the paper. He ties the strings on to the electric wire. Right, it’s tight enough now.
He walks through the house. Shades hang from the ceiling everywhere. Full moons and crescent moons and pointy little stars and things like that. Some of the suns are even winking at him. No more naked bulbs. The left-over shades have been hung up by their strings from the ceiling. They’ve put up two shades in his den. He heard Treppie telling his mother and Pop about the red ones being the hot planets, and how they had to keep watch over tonight’s other two stars. Treppie must watch his fucken jokes now. This is serious business!
‘Yippeeee! Party!’ Treppie shouts. He comes jumping up and down the passage, touching all the moons and stars and suns with his fingertips as he runs. They swing and turn on their strings. Toby ‘whoof-whoofs’ after him. He stands to one side. They must go slow, now! Slow!
‘Lights!’ Treppie shouts. ‘Lights!’ It’s already quite dark in the house. Then Pop switches on all the lights. Suddenly he sees yellow and orange shadows everywhere as the shades light up the walls.
‘Check it out,’ says Treppie, ‘the Orient is with us! Now all we need is some sweet and sour. Come, it’s time for room inspection. Step up! Step up!’
Treppie pushes his mother and Pop down the passage, into the den. Lambert feels shy, he’s pissed off. It’s his stuff, this! Why must they do this, now? They just want to go and spoil everything again! He must act like it’s nothing, just stand there with a straight face and push out his chest. No one’s going to get him down now.
First they inspect the den’s walls. The insect paintings are nearly finished. All of them got some new wings this morning.
‘Good enough for an opening night,’ says Treppie.
In the deep, red light, the insect-things look almost real. His mother gets the creeps. ‘Yuk!’ she says.
‘Lost City,’ says Treppie. ‘It glows with eerie brilliance!’ He flings out his arms and prances around the room like a master of ceremonies. ‘Lost City or Cango Caves, and here comes the caveman, too!’
Treppie smacks him on the back. It burns, but he says nothing.
Then Treppie picks up the glasses one by one and makes as if he’s wiping off dust. Full of shit again! He polished those glasses himself. There’s no dirt on them.
‘Look, all the little buck!’ his mother says. She’s looking at the bowls that he lined up in a row on his bench. He turned all the bowls so the stags’ feet point to the bottom and their heads to the top. What’s so funny about that? He wishes they’d just fuck off.
On the bed, on top of the white sheets, lie his clothes. A light blue shirt from Jet, and a dark blue, double-breasted blazer that Pop found on special at the Plaza. And a brand-new pair of white pants with funny pleats on both sides of the zip. Pop bought everything with his own money. He’s already looped his belt, with its extra hole, into the pants. And there lies his new, blood-red Speedo, on top of the pants. His polished boots stand at the foot of the bed with a pair of Pop’s socks in a ball on top.
They stare at his clothes. He feels naked.
‘Phew!’ Treppie whistles. He picks up the Speedo, stretching it open with his hands.
‘Hey, Lambert, how you going to get your whole pedigree into this, old boy? Pit bull terriers! Njarrr! Looks a bit small for champion stock, don’t you think?’
‘Hands off!’ says Pop, taking the Speedo away from Treppie. Pop puts it back on to the bed. He motions with his hand. He’s trying to tell him he must just hang in there, it’s almost over. They’ll be out of here any second now. They fuckenwell better.
But now Treppie’s trying a new angle, sticking his fingers into his shirt-pocket with only his pinky sticking out. Like a poofter. Sometimes he thinks Treppie should’ve been a poofter. It’s only poofters on TV who throw scenes like he does. He’s got a lot of fucken airs, this Treppie.
‘I almost forgot!’ Treppie looks round to see if everyone’s eyes are fixed on that shirt-pocket of his. ‘Rough Riders. Look, Lambert, a cowboy on a horse! We don’t want you to go and get the load, hey.’
His mother grins.
He wants to tell Treppie he’s a fucken poofter, but his voice gets stuck. He looks at Pop. Please, Pop, please. Pop takes Treppie and his mother by the arm.
‘Right, Lambertus, get yourself ready. We’re leaving any minute now.’ Pop nods at him as if to say everything’s okay, he needn’t worry.
He watches them as they cram through the door. Fucken bunch of sheep. He looks at the alarm and then at his watch. Only quarter past seven. God, help!
He calls after his mother. She must come here, he wants her to tell him something. He hears her shuffling back.
He points. ‘Does everything look all right here?’ He can hear his own voice. It sounds panicky. He doesn’t want to sound panicky. What for?
He says it again: ‘Everything’s ready, right?’
‘All ready,’ his mother says, nodding her head up and down. ‘Just perfect!’
She’s also on her ear. He saw her pouring herself shots all afternoon long. She doesn’t usually drink alone. Seems like she’s also got the jitters. What for?
‘What else do I need?’ He points to the room.
‘Beauty sleep. Hic!’
Hiccup or no hiccup, he wants to try this just one more time.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ He shakes his mother’s hand.
‘The pleasure, hic, is mine,’ she says, just like he taught her.
But he can’t sleep. He baths and shaves and puts on his new clothes. Then he puts out his dips and chips and lemons on the service counter. All in a row. Pop and Treppie have been away for more than an hour now. Wait, let him quickly go and see if everything’s still okay in the house. His mother’s fast asleep. Huddled on the bare mattress in her and Pop’s room. Toby’s lying behind her back. Now Toby lifts up his head and pricks his ears. ‘Swish-swish’ goes his tail on the mattress. The blue lampshade with its silver stars throws strange spots and shadows over his mother. And across the mattress and Toby and the floors and the walls. Weird.
Let him just leave her to sleep, even though he really wanted her to tell him a story, to get him right and ready. ’Cause he doesn’t feel ready.
Maybe it’s just as well. Now he can go pick the yellow bud on her rose bush without her seeing. It’s the first bud. He’s been eyeing it all week. That rose bush is still sitting there in its plastic bag.
It’s for the little bottle next to his bed. ’Cause if you ask him, a real flower’s the only thing he’s short of.
Mol wakes up. She’s not altogether sure where she is. ‘Tip-tip-tip’, she hears. It’s raining. Where’s it raining now? She sits up. Here’s Pop, next to her. There’s Treppie, on the back seat. Pop and Treppie are both sleeping. Toby’s awake. He looks at her with big shiny eyes from where he’s sitting in the dicky at the back. All she can see through her window are drops of water. She winds down the window. It’s the Zoo Lake parking lot. That’s where they are.
First they were on the koppie. That’s right, now she remembers. With sermons. And Klipdrift. She touches her head. It hurts. Too much Klipdrift today. The stuff just makes her feel sleepy, but what could she do, with all the nerves in the house about the girl who was supposed to be coming, and everything. So when they finished looking at Lambert’s den, she helped herself to another shot. And then she went and lay down, ’cause Pop and Treppie just couldn’t get themselves going. Before she knew it she was fast asleep. The next thing, Pop was shaking her. All she could see were little stars.
‘Get up! Quick!’ Pop said. He was standing in the door, looking down the passage towards the den and then back into the room. In and out, in and out he kept looking, completely white with nerves.
‘She’s here!’ Pop said. ‘Quick! We must go!’
So she dragged herself to the front, even though she wasn’t properly awake yet. She only really came to when they got to the koppie. And not by herself. The sermons did it.
Pop stirs in his seat next to her. He looks all broken-jointed. His head lolls over the back-rest and his knees are jammed at an angle against the gear lever. Shame, he must also be tired after all the fuss. He was wiped out even before they left the house.
They had to stand on the pavement next to the car, waiting for Treppie. He’d taken the girl through to the back. Pop was pacing up and down, blowing out clouds of smoke. They told her later they’d looked high and low to find a girl, and in the end they decided to pick one up off the street. With a touch of the tar-brush, Pop said. Shame, a little touched. And Lambert himself is also a bit touched in the head. She wonders when they’ll be able to go home again. What’s the time? Probably early morning already. Lambert should surely be finished by now? Finished! God help her!
Pop said the girl cost a packet. He said Treppie tried to bargain with her, asking if they couldn’t first pay her a deposit. Then that girl told Treppie she may be a rent-piece, but she wasn’t yet a lay-by. Not slow on the uptake, Pop said. A real livewire. Well, so far, so good: that’s what Lambert said he wanted. Now he’ll see how things really work. Not everyone’s just going to do what he says. She hopes the whole thing doesn’t turn into a big fuck-up again. Pop said Treppie told the girl a lot of stuff and nonsense that she had to spin Lambert. That she was a high-class whore, a Cleopatra or something. And that she should keep a close watch, ’cause Lambert sometimes got wild. And if Lambert did get a bit wild she should pull his pants down over his feet and get the hell out of there. Pop said Treppie almost ruined the whole business with his horror stories. In the end they had to pay all the money in a lump sum, more than a hundred rand, just for an hour. Mol has her doubts. This woman is a stranger to Lambert. She’ll have to know her stuff, ’cause sometimes Lambert takes a while to get going. It’s a good thing they got out of the house. She told Pop, she really didn’t want to be there if the whole thing blew up, ’cause then she’d be the one to fix what that whore went and stuffed up. She could just see it coming.
She’s never before seen Pop in such a hurry. Treppie had hardly gotten into the car when Pop took off so fast that her head nearly jerked off her neck. They were thrown sideways, this way and that, as Pop wheeled around the corners. And when he skidded to a stop outside Ponta do Sol, she almost bumped her head in front. Pop was in a state all right. They bought Cokes and things and rushed back to the car. Then she asked him where was he taking them, but he just leant forward and stepped on the accelerator.
Treppie sang: ‘Up, up and away-y-y in my beautiful balloon!’
By this time, he was in high spirits. Mission completed, he said, now they could relax with a drink and a wide-angle view. So that’s where they were going – to the Brixton koppie.
Why did they have to go there again? she asked, but Treppie was running off at the mouth. He told her she should see it as a visit to the Mount of Olives. They would pour Klipdrift into their cans of Coke and drink them down to the very dregs! Yes, that’s what he said!
Pop was dead serious. He said this wasn’t the time and place for profanities. Didn’t Treppie realise how much depended on tonight? They should all hope and pray that everything went off well.
In for a penny, in for a prayer, Treppie said. They didn’t need to push him hard, ’cause when he had the city at his feet like this, he could pray a bird right out of a bush.
When they eventually settled down under the tower, she saw Pop would far rather drink than pray. ‘Ka-pssshhhtt!’ He ripped open the tab on his Coke tin, taking a big gulp – she saw his Adam’s apple jump and fall – to make space for a decent shot from Treppie’s bottle.
So there they sat, looking out at the view, the city’s lights shivering as far as the eye could see. More like candles than electricity. Far out to one side, they could see the Florida Lake water-organ and its lit-up fountain. Must be a lovely organ, that. She’s already told them she wants to go there and see it close-up, but they never get that far. Too many other things.
Then Treppie started up again.
‘All people that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice’
he sang, just from seeing an organ in the distance. He’s got a head like a see-saw, that’s all she can say.
The next thing, Pop also started up, out of the blue: ‘What if you know you’re dying?’ he said.
She got such a fright she almost fainted. Pop wiped his mouth with an angry swipe and passed her his chocolate.
No, God, she said, there, eat your own chocolate, Pop. But he took the chocolate, ripped off the paper and flipped it right over his shoulder for Toby at the back. A whole half a Snickers. And Pop so loves his chocolate.
She thinks Treppie got a fright, ’cause he started talking about Toby being so spoilt and how he must think he’s part of a travelling church bazaar – if it wasn’t Snickers, it was Smarties. Treppie didn’t really want to change the subject. He made that speech of his about bazaars and things just to play for time. She could hear from his voice he was brimming with that topic of Pop’s. Meanwhile, Pop sat and looked straight ahead of him. She could see he was gritting his teeth. It was a long while before he started talking again.
No, what he meant was this: say you were dead certain you were busy dying, quite fast. So fast you could more or less count the days still granted to you. Pop’s voice was slow and dead even, like it always gets when he’s telling you what he’s saying isn’t small-talk.
She wanted to change the subject, so she said in the end everyone had to go, anyway – what was bothering him so much all of a sudden?
But by then Treppie was up and away already, running with that ball.
Ja, he said, pointing past her and Pop in the front seat, they must look at all those lights. ‘I say unto you, for every one of those lights, someone will either give up the ghost or give his first cry tonight.’ When Treppie starts with ‘I say unto you’, then you know he’s halfway up the pulpit already and you’re not going to get him down again so easy. ‘It’s one and the same thing. Breathe in, breathe out, eat, shit, eat, shit, poof, gone! No one asked for it.’
But Pop said, no, that wasn’t his point.
Well then, he’d better get to the point before the point got to him, Treppie said, and she said, yes, Pop should get to the point so he could get past it.
That’s what she thought, then. But it was a helluva long point, that.
No, Pop said, what he meant was, what did you do if you knew your time was running out. What should you do if you knew?
Now it was getting a bit too much for her. She switched on the radio ’cause she didn’t know what else to do, and the car suddenly filled up with a love song, something about ‘only a heartbeat away’. That turned out to be completely the wrong thing to do. Treppie stuck his arm past her and switched off the radio, shouting, ‘Shuddup! Shuddup with that fucken rubbish!’ right into her ear. Even Toby said ‘ee-ee’, he got such a fright. Then Treppie sat back heavily, his chest heaving. He tried to light a cigarette but he was striking the matches so hard they kept breaking. ‘Fuck!’ he said after each match broke.
It was Pop’s should that threw Treppie so badly. If there’s one word you must never say in front of Treppie, it’s ‘should’. It was like someone had poured turpentine on to his tail.
‘Should,’ he said. ‘The fuck with should! When you die, you die, period, over and out. You don’t owe anyone any shoulds ’cause you never ordered it. You never asked to be born, nor to live all the days of your life in this furnace pit.’
At first Pop said nothing. He just looked in front of him out of the window. Treppie blew smoke into Pop’s neck as he talked. It looked like Treppie was about to start shooting fire from his nostrils, like that dragon on the video he brought from the Chinese one year for Guy Fawkes.
Then Pop said, ‘Furnace pit’, so softly you almost couldn’t hear what he was saying.
So she asked, what was a furnace-pit.
‘Yes, ask!’ Treppie shouted. ‘Ask!’ It was a hole full of bricks, he said. A deep, burning hell-hole where you sat and baked bricks, all day, every day, and when you were not baking them they sat and looked at you, stacks and stacks of those rough, red things.
Pop turned his head a bit, like nothing at all was the matter, and he asked Treppie how it was that he came up with this kind of thing.
He came up with what he came up with, Treppie said, Pop didn’t have to worry about coming up with anything whatsoever; all he had to do was look in a dictionary. There it stood, in letters as large as life, for anyone to read: furnace pit. And he was sure Pop knew all the other names for that pit. Arse-end, deep-end, furnace-hole, hell-hole, long-drop, Treppie said, hauling out all the names for holes that he knew, and he said the Benades were sitting in the lot of them. That was the one thing. And the other thing was it wasn’t their fault.
Her chocolate was sticking to the top of her mouth by now. She’s never been able to chew when people fight. She felt quite paralysed. ’Cause if there’s one word that she can’t stand, then it’s fault. Old Pop always used to say everything was her fault, and then Old Mol would jump in front of her when she saw a punch coming her way. Or she, Mol, would jump behind Old Mol. Then she felt it was all her fault, twice over, ’cause Old Mol was always looking black and blue from taking the blows meant for her.
Treppie must have seen her say the word fault, even with her mouth full of Snickers.
Yes, fault, Mol, fault, he shouted, making his mouth droop and saying fault in the same way she does when she doesn’t have her tooth in her mouth and she says something. It was so bad she put her hands over her ears, and when she took her hands away again, Treppie was still saying it wasn’t their fault, because of something.
Because of what? she asked. Now she was curious, but she had to ask Treppie three times before he gave her an answer. By then he was drinking the Klipdrift straight from the bottle, ‘ghloob-ghloob-ghloob’, as though it was water on a hot day.
No wonder he’s now fast asleep at the back here with his mouth wide open. ‘Gaaarrrgh-gaaarrrgh’, he goes. She can smell it from where she’s sitting. Lambert says Treppie’s breath is enough to fire off a rocket. Lambert. How will he know what to do with that woman he doesn’t know from a bar of soap? Maybe she should wake them up now so they can go and look. But then again, maybe not. Pop needs his rest. Let him sleep. And maybe Lambert’s still awake. Maybe he’s waiting up for them. In that case, she’d rather sit here until sunrise.
Pop also asked Treppie, because of what? It wasn’t their fault they were in the furnace pit, because of what? Not that he knew, Pop said, what that had to do with knowing you were dying and what you should do in the circumstances. Can you believe it, there Pop went and said should again. She thought something must have come over Pop. Once was enough, and she could see Treppie wasn’t even finished with the first should, not by a long shot. And here Pop came with another one. And it wasn’t as if you could duck out of Treppie’s way.
‘Everything!’ he shouted into their faces. It had everything to do with it, ’cause if their mother and father hadn’t been so backward, and if they had been raised better, and Old Pop hadn’t shouted at him, Treppie, so terribly before he even knew what went for what, and if Old Pop hadn’t beaten him to a pulp when he did know what went for what, then everything would’ve been different.
Then what would have been different? Pop asked, and she thought to herself, now Pop was really asking for trouble, he should know he can’t square up with Treppie. But she was wrong, ’cause Pop just pushed on. Then what would have been different? he asked again.
What would’ve been different, Treppie said, was that he might’ve had a choice. He might’ve been able to choose how to die and what to do if he knew he was dying. And with that he sat back, boomps, against his seat and said it may be that Pop had begun to die only recently but he, Treppie, had been dying ever since his eighth year, and it was the kind of dying you do twice over – in body and in soul. The ruination of his soul, and the blood of his limbs, he said, was on Old Pop’s hands. May Old Pop hear him wherever he was and may Old Pop gnash his teeth in the outermost darkness for ever and ever.
At that point she wished she was a Catholic so she could’ve crossed herself against Treppie’s terrible Satan words, ’cause Treppie began swearing hellishly terrible words inbetween every other word he said, above and below and on each side, so much so that she and Pop were wiping his spit from their necks after a while.
All Pop said then was, honour thy father and thy mother, and she recited the rest, ’cause that was all that came into her head: ‘“That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”’
That was the last straw.
‘Honour, for what should I honour him – all that’s left of me is a drop of blood, a wet spot with some skin around it struggling for breath. A lump of scar-tissue with a heart in the middle.’
Suddenly Treppie told them they must switch on the inside light. He plucked up his shirt and pushed his pants down over his hips so they could see his scar-tissue.
‘Krrrt-krrrt!’ she heard as Treppie scratched around here above her head to get the little light on, but it didn’t want to work.
So they had to use their lighters to look. Toby jumped right over the back seat – he also wanted to look – but Treppie let fly and smacked him so hard he didn’t even make a sound. His head just went ‘doof’ against the door. Shame, the poor dog.
‘Hold closer!’ Treppie yelled, and she and Pop turned around completely in their seats, lighting up his stomach.
Then she saw how terribly those blows had set into Treppie’s skin. She hadn’t known. She’d thought people outgrew things like that. Treppie’s stomach and hips were covered with nicks and grooves, as if he’d been tied up with ropes and beaten over and over again.
Treppie must have seen on her face she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. So he said she mustn’t come and act holier-than-thou all of a sudden. Didn’t she remember what he looked like that night when they dragged him out of the train? ‘Marked for life!’ he said, prodding his finger into the nicks and scars on his skin.
What could she say? So she lit up a cigarette – her lighter was burning anyway – and said: ‘Shame.’
That was also not the right thing to say.
Fuck shame, Treppie said. That’s all that she and her mother could ever say, shame this, shame that, and shame everything else. But they never stood up for him, not once, when Old Pop screamed at him so terribly and hit him for no reason at all. Not once did they take his side.
It was then that Pop said he could explain to Treppie why Old Pop used to beat him up so badly. It was something she and Pop had known when they were still small.
Treppie was a chip off the old block, Pop said. Of all of them, it was Treppie who took after Old Pop the most. Yes, he said, it was ’cause he had the same light blue eyes as Pop and the same stuff-you look in his eyes, too.
Then she felt Pop take her hand and let it go again and she knew they were both thinking of Old Pop. There they sat, looking at Treppie in the glow of their lighters, and it looked almost like Old Pop sitting there in front of them, just smaller.
The same short fuse, the same moods, the same delicate constitution, Pop said.
And then she remembered how Old Pop also used to struggle to shit, but she decided not to mention that ’cause Pop had already mentioned more than enough similarities. ‘Chip or no chip off the old block,’ Treppie shouted, ‘it’s no excuse for smashing up your own flesh and blood.’
He was one to talk, she thought, but she kept quiet. Treppie knew what she was thinking. He thumped her seat from behind.
‘Tsk-tsk-tsk!’ Pop said.
Then Treppie suddenly wanted out of the car. So bad that he didn’t even wait for her to get out. He just shoved her forward in her seat, almost climbing right over her.
She and Pop also got out, and she suddenly felt a chill, not from the cold air but from the height. That tower reaches up very high into the sky and its little head on top looks like it wants to bend down and fall over. Toby also wanted out, but they made him stay in the car. They could hear him going ‘ee-ee’ from behind the window. Then it was quiet again for a long time. They just stood there, looking at the lights and passing around the Klipdrift.
And then Pop started again. She’d thought he was finished, but he actually went and started all over again. About the forgiveness that Treppie had to find in his heart and that he’d thought Treppie had already softened when he gave Lambert all his stuff and helped him so nicely with the fridges. That, Pop said, had looked to him like a kind of forgiveness, and forgiveness was infectious. If you forgave the small things the big ones followed. Or the other way around, forgive the big ones and then the little things would begin to look like small fry.
Pop tried so nicely to get through to Treppie there on the koppie. She took his hand again and said, yes, if Treppie could make a circus and play the fool like that, then he couldn’t really still be so angry with Old Pop, then deep down everything was surely okay.
Treppie didn’t have to chastise himself so, Pop said. She didn’t have much time to wonder what chastise meant ’cause Treppie suddenly exploded. His eyes went white with anger, lighting up from the inside. He was so angry he got the shakes. Up and down he paced, poking the air with those little bird claws of his, as if he wanted to grab on to something and pull himself up into the air, right out of his skin.
Fucken shit, he said, they were talking the biggest lot of shit under the sun. What did they know, anyway, fuck forgiveness, fuck it right into its glory. Phew! Her ears are still burning.
Then she thought, no, God, now she must get away in a hurry before he goes and murders her and Pop right there on the koppie. She looked around and saw she could run this way or that way, but no matter which way she went there weren’t any people, so what would it help, anyway. She looked in front of her and all she could see was the tower. It looked like it was growing out of the back of Treppie’s head. Up, above her, and all around, she could see nothing but dull lightning going off inside the clouds, big black bunches of clouds that were blowing towards them. She looked down to the bottom of the koppie and there she saw ambulances racing past, going ‘pee-poh-peeh-poh’ with their red lights flashing. A horrible accident somewhere.
Even though it was so dreadful and scary up there on the koppie, the thought crossed her mind that it was just like being on a stage. And that Treppie would probably even want to breathe his last on a stage one day, with lights and curtain calls and people shouting, ‘Encore!’
There he stood beating his breast like Charlton Heston in a Bible movie. He shouted, forgiveness be damned, no one was going to get forgiveness out of him. He was angry and he’d stay angry until his last breath and he was going to shove their noses in it so they would be forced to partake of his legacy of anger. And why, he shouted, should he be the only one who felt haunted? From now on he was going to do the haunting.
Pop still tried to stop him, but Treppie just went on and on. Forgiveness, he shouted, was just wallpaper. Like a drizzle after thirty years of drought. Who needed that? Then everyone posed for the Farmer’s Weekly but the ground water was still rock-bottom. All this time Treppie was drinking non-stop from the bottle, but he was spitting out more than he swallowed. He said if Morkels could they’d sell forgiveness together with their five-piece bedroom suites. That was why the Day Spring Church was so full of policemen every Sunday. It was a branch of Morkels – forgiveness at a special price. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. One down payment with the collection every week.
Then she said amen, from pure panic. It was all she could think of saying. Pop moved closer to her and said she should not say anything now, but Treppie had already heard. Yes, she must shuddup, he said, ’cause if anyone should know all about suffering, it was her, but for some reason she refused to understand it. She thought to herself, yes, he was right, suffering existed. That was all there was to it. Why should you also tire yourself out by understanding it – it was there, deep in your bones. But she didn’t even finish her thought before Treppie started shouting again. If he had to suffer in his heart and his head, he shouted, then they had to suffer too. That was his hand, he said. That was his trump card!
She heard Pop say softly, ‘Joker,’ and she didn’t understand at all, ’cause the next thing Pop was standing up straight and grinning right into Treppie’s face. Pop normally sits with his head in his hands when things go mad like this. Maybe these were the very dregs. Maybe Pop thought he had to take it like a man.
And she thought to herself, if Pop could do it then she could do it too. So she said: ‘Sis man, Treppie,’ as if he’d only farted. She thought if she acted like his whole dreadful sermon was no more than a smelly fart, he’d maybe shut up by himself.
‘Sis man, Treppie, sis man, Treppie!’ he mimicked her.
At that stage she already saw foam bubbling in the corners of his mouth. Pop still tried to put his hand on Treppie’s shoulder, but he slapped that hand away like it had stung him. He grabbed Pop by his shirt and shook him so hard his head jerked to and fro. Toby was going crazy behind the closed windows of the car. He thought they were playing a game and he didn’t want to miss out on the fun. Then she remembered how poor old Gerty always knew the difference between fun and fighting. But what would poor little Gerty have done on this koppie tonight? It was more than just an argument, it was like Jacob wrestling with the angel, if she remembers her Bible correctly. Treppie began pushing Pop further and further backwards over the patches of grass next to the road. She could see them getting knocked over if they didn’t watch out. Careful, she tried to say, but there was no stopping Treppie.
‘Brother Addlebrain!’ he shouted. Shove. ‘Brother Stickdick!’ Shove. It was terrible. And then he wanted to know what Pop’s dick was looking like nowadays ’cause he thought it must be looking like a five-day-old Russian behind the counter at Ponta do Sol. That dick of Pop’s was the place where all the trouble started, he said. He had to suck Pop’s dick like it was a lollipop, remember? And he hadn’t understood anything, he was still too young, but when the lashes were dealt out he was always the only one who got them. And why had Pop always just stood there with big eyes while he got the hidings, while he got beaten to within an inch of his life? Would he just answer that one question for him? Would he, please?
Then, thank God, a car came driving up the hill, slowing down and shining its lights on Pop and Treppie. The car was full of people stretching their necks out the window to see what was going on. The three of them must’ve looked like wild buck or something with their eyes shining in the dark. It was a chance for her and Pop to stop Treppie’s shoving. Pop said he was cold and if they all got back into the car, he’d tell them a story.
Treppie, she said, the people are staring at us. She knew Treppie hated people looking at him. He’d rather get back into the car than be looked at. But this time she was wrong. Treppie showed them the finger and then he walked quickly towards the car, which was now idling on the slope. ‘Kaboof!’ He slammed the roof with his hand, so hard that the driver clean forgot how to pull off. You just heard gears crunching. In the middle of the crunching she heard Treppie screaming at them. They could watch if they wanted to, there was a variety concert here under the Brixton tower tonight, and if they stayed a little longer they could hear a story too, a story by Old Sweet-Sucker over here. ’Cause very soon the Benades would be flying off into their glory, anyway, and then no one would’ve heard their story. They must be on the look-out, next time he’d send out complimentaries for the famous Benade roadshow, ta-te-raa, the tallest story in the western suburbs, better than any cowboy movie they’d ever seen. Good value for money. Then that driver finally got his bearings and pulled off up the koppie. ‘Doof!’ Treppie kicked the bumper as it took off. Only then was he ready to get back into the car, but Toby first wanted to take a little walk. So they all stood there and looked on while Toby found a pole to piss against and a patch of grass on which to do his business. He bent his back and stretched his neck and pushed out a long turd, followed by a few small ones, ‘clip-clip-clip’, and then he did a few little back-kicks, making the stones fly out behind him.
Aaah, said Treppie, lucky dog. At least one of them had found some relief here tonight. They might as well get back into the car and listen to Pop’s story now. And it’d better be a good story, he was fed up with fucken fairy tales full of forgiveness, fed up with fucken ocean liners with forgiveness in champagne glasses on all three decks, allow me to top you up, sir.
See-saw. That’s what she says.
So, that was the end of Treppie’s sermon on the mount.
And only then was it Pop’s turn to preach. They should be grateful she isn’t one for sermons, ’cause then their bums would’ve all been worn down and they would’ve needed an interval, first. It makes her tired just thinking about everything that went on there tonight on top of that koppie.
Mol winds down the window. The rain has slowed down a bit. She feels in her housecoat pocket for her cigarettes. Only one left. She was smoking one after another there under the tower tonight, but she wasn’t smoking any of them right down to the end. She kept throwing them away half finished, ’cause every five minutes there’d be a whole new flare-up all over again. Now she’s struggling to get her lighter working. She has to turn it upside down before it takes. No wonder, after all that lighting up to look at Treppie’s scars. Lighters weren’t made for inspecting damage in the dark. She looks at Pop. The way he’s sitting there now you wouldn’t say he could string so many sentences together. His head is propped up against the window and by the light in the parking lot she can see the little hollow above his collarbone in front where his shirt hangs open. It looks like the skin on top of boiled milk when it goes cold – like fine little crinkles. She has to look long and hard before she sees the shadow of a pulse under his skin. When they all got back into the car on the koppie and Pop started talking, she prayed that he’d just keep going. He even held up his hand to show Treppie he didn’t want to be interrupted. Clever old bugger. He started by buttering Treppie up. More than butter. Toffee! He said it was true, all of them would’ve come to nothing if it hadn’t been for Treppie. As it was, they were little more than skin and bone, but without Treppie they wouldn’t even have cast a shadow. Then Pop stopped talking ’cause he couldn’t find the exact word to describe how important Treppie was in their lives. By now she’d caught on to Pop’s plan and she thought, let me quickly chip in here. She had just the right word for him: ‘Vital ingredient’. That was exactly the word, Pop said, winking at her to say thanks. Treppie was their vital ingredient, he said, and he wasn’t really talking about Treppie’s job at the Chinese either.
Of course not. Treppie says he does odd jobs for them, servicing their fridges and writing up their menus in English, but she thinks he just sits there and gambles. Gambles and plays the horses. Sometimes he’s suddenly flush and then for weeks on end he’s broke again. So she agreed with Pop, it wasn’t really a matter of working at the Chinese. Pop said what he was really talking about was wiring. Treppie kept them wired up with his stories ’cause Treppie always had an angle on a thing. He always saw a corner or a twist or a side or a colour in a thing, no matter how flat and white and nothing that thing was.
Then she saw Pop’s eyes starting to shine like in his younger days when he had a plan. She could see he was getting right into the heart of his sermon now. And so she also began to feel stronger.
But that was only one side of the matter, Pop said. Yes, she said, it was just the one side, and then she threw in one of Treppie’s favourite sayings: ‘It takes two to tango.’ Spot on, she was spot on. Pop squeezed her hand a little so that Treppie wouldn’t see and he said, spot on, now she was reading his thoughts. Spot on.
The point was, Pop said, and he turned around in his seat, pointing his finger to the back, but she quickly took that finger out of Treppie’s face. She knew that was another thing Treppie couldn’t stand. A finger pointing in his face.
The point was, Pop said, if Treppie hadn’t been stuck with the rest of them, who were nobodies, and if he hadn’t had their never-ending bullshit around him all the time, the pointless bullshit, the insignificant bullshit, if he, Treppie, hadn’t had that, then he’d also have been nothing, ’cause that’s what kept him going. It was he who stomped and kicked and lied and went wild in that bottomless pit, Pop said, until he began to see some sparks inside there. If Treppie didn’t understand him, then he’d explain it to him in his own language. They were like a system with a dead earth. And if he got some spark out of them, then they got charged up like a turbine. Pumped up like a power plant. You could say, Pop said, that if you managed to connect them up properly you had power for Africa.
Pop isn’t the only one who understands Treppie’s language, so she slipped in her own word: ‘Generator.’ That’s what Treppie was, she said. He was their generator.
Now she’d really hit the nail on the head, Pop said. Through thick and thin, in sunshine and in rain, until death do them part, high current, dead earth, hand-in-glove, the one couldn’t do without the other.
Pop took a deep breath and she also took a few. The car was blue from all the smoke and they both turned around to take a good look at Treppie in the back seat. But he just sat there with his head down.
Now Pop came to his second point. If Old Pop hadn’t beaten Treppie to a pulp, he said, then Treppie wouldn’t have been the man he was today. Then he’d have been just like anyone else and he would have been at peace, not giving a damn. So, in fact, Treppie should be grateful to Old Pop, ’cause without him Treppie would have been nothing.
Treppie just sat there and mumbled, with his head hanging down like that, so you didn’t know if he was saying yes or no. Pop lifted his finger again, and this time she left it, ’cause she saw this was his third point, and it wasn’t just any old point. The only true peace Treppie would ever find, Pop said, was the peace he made with himself, ’cause peace wasn’t something you just got for nothing. Pop said if Treppie made peace in his heart with Old Pop, he might stop shorting out all the time. If they didn’t mind, Pop said, he wanted to use the language of electricity again. His theory was that Treppie was scared of making peace with himself ’cause if he did he might unplug himself and lose his spark completely.
Then Treppie mumbled something that she couldn’t make out, and Pop said, excuse me, what was he saying, but she could see he wasn’t finished yet.
Well, said Pop, he didn’t care if Treppie thought he was talking Boereelectricity or Boere-psychology. It was worth the trouble to try making that peace. Just look at you, Pop said. Ja, just look, she said. Nothing but skin and bone, said Pop. Ja, skin and bone, she said. At this rate, Pop said, Treppie was going to fall down and die like a dog. Like a dog, she said. And dead is dead, and Klipdrift is Klipdrift, whether or not Old Pop ruined him and beat him to a pulp. What did he have to say to that? Was it maybe Treppie’s way of paying them all back? Must they now feel bad for the rest of their lives, and must they feel even worse one day when Treppie died from the horries? If you asked him, Pop said, that was what the English called retribution from the grave, and that was indeed one way of doing things. But it was a very unfair and selfish way of dishing out punishment, to say the least of it. It was a terrible way to make sure people didn’t ever forget you.
Stop now, or you’ll make him cry, she said to Pop when she saw Treppie’s head stay down. She couldn’t stand the thought of anyone crying, especially Treppie. As far as she knew he’d never once cried properly in his entire life and she didn’t want to be in his company when he did.
But by this time Pop was so into his sermon that he was ready for anything. No, he said, everyone needs to cry a little, from time to time, and the next thing he was wiping his own eyes with his Christmas hanky.
Then there was a long silence in the car again. All you heard was ‘tiffa-tiffa’ as Toby scratched for fleas and kicked the seat. Pop held out his hanky so Treppie could take it.
But Treppie didn’t take it. He didn’t even sniff. He just let out a little sigh, and when he opened his mouth again, his voice came out straight and cool, like Klipdrift on the rocks.
Thanks for the sermon, old boy, he said, but Pop should understand, it was too late.
‘Too late for tears,’ he said. ‘But never too late for a laugh.’
Then he almost sounded like he was sad in an old-fashioned way, and when they turned around, he surprised them again. There he sat with a smile on his face. Such a mixed-up little smile, half-shy, half-soft, with a little gleam in his eye. Like he was saying to them, here’s a smile for your trouble. Take it! Now what could they say after that?
So she said it was nice of him to smile for a change.
Ja, said Pop, he could go ahead and smile, it wouldn’t kill him.
But then she looked at Pop and saw that he was looking straight ahead of him. He wasn’t smiling at all. Suddenly he looked like the whole world was pressing down on his shoulders.
She had to nudge him three times and tell him it wouldn’t kill him to smile either. And only then did he smile for her. He opened his eyes wide and gave her a look that said, everything’s okay, she mustn’t worry.
Well, by then they’d outstayed their welcome on that koppie. They’d had enough looking at lights and listening to sermons and drinking Klipdrift. And they were hungry. So they drove to the all-night café in Brixton and bought some take-aways. Nice sloppy hamburgers. Between the bites Treppie said he reckoned Lambert was doing an epileptic striptease for that floozy in his den right now. But neither she nor Pop thought it was funny and Treppie didn’t say anything more on the subject.
Then they went for a joy-ride, all over the place. She thought now she was finally going to see the end of Jo’burg, but the lights just carried on and on, forever.
Where did they stop? she kept asking. Treppie said she should understand, a city like Jo’burg was like a human heart. It was boundless. There were as many lights in a city, he said, as there were hopes and plans in the human heart. Then Pop said, ai, that was now really nice and philosophical, Treppie should write it down sometime.
And then they were allowed to switch on the radio again. First it was speeches by that Eugene-man, explaining how Paardekraal was a beacon in the nation’s history, and how the Waterberg was the place where the soldiers of Jesus were being trained to defend God’s chosen people on earth against the black heathen hordes. It turned out to be Radio Pretoria, broadcasting from Blackangle. Another city.
Treppie said that lot were sitting in more dark corners than they realised. Then he started singing ‘Jesus bids us shine with a pure, pure light’ before switching to another station. Highveld Stereo. Just love songs, one after another. But Treppie was on form again, and he made them laugh by changing the words of all those love songs. Like the words for ‘Distant Drums’. Treppie made up his own ballad to that tune, about Eugene Terre’Blanche and all the different colours of his underpants, with bits of speeches inbetween about how the mummies and the daddies and the grandmas and the grandpas and the dogs and the cats and everyone must learn to shoot with stolen guns, ‘boom! boom! boom!’ It was very funny.
And they even stopped to buy soft-serves before going to Zoo Lake. To rest a bit, Pop said, but they all fell asleep very quickly.
Mol turns around and makes big eyes at Toby. ‘Whoof!’ says Toby. Oh God, she didn’t mean to make him bark now. Toby jumps out of the dicky, over Treppie and into the front. He’s tired of sitting in a car. He wants out. Mol opens for Toby so he can go for a walk. Her too, she also wants to stretch her legs a bit. She walks around the back of the car. Raindrops glisten on the car’s roof. She looks out, first to one side, then to the other. Her neck is stiff from sitting. She sees the sky’s getting paler on the one side.
‘Come, Mol, we’re going now.’ It’s Pop, he’s awake.
‘Did you sleep all right?’
‘Ja, fine,’ says Pop. ‘Just not enough.’
They drive home through the grey morning and smoke a last cigarette for the night. Treppie says right now a cup of coffee would hit the spot. She asks Pop if he thinks everything at the house is okay. Pop says he can feel in his bones everything’s just fine.
‘All quiet on the western front,’ says Treppie. They take the top route, along Jan Smuts Avenue. The big lorries are on the road already, splashing water on to the Volksie’s windscreen as they pass. Pop switches on the wipers. In Empire he turns down his window for some fresh air. Deep in the hearts of the trees, she hears the sparrows starting to chirp.
It’s a quarter past eleven.
There’s a soft knock on Lambert’s outside door. ‘Rat-a-tat-tat-tat’. He knows that knock well. It’s Treppie’s ‘look who’s here’ knock.
Take a deep breath. Stand up. Stomach in. Back straight. Now, slowly to the door, just like he practised it, with footsteps like those in the movies when you see someone’s feet walking in the underground parking but you don’t know who it is, and you figure it’s the unknown hero.
Let him first check if everything’s ready: rose, sheets, lounge chairs, fridges, service counter, all glowing in the red light. It looks full and empty at the same time. A carpet, he could at least have got a piece of carpet somewhere for the cement floor in front of the chairs. Or in front of the bed. There’s a stabbing feeling in his tail-end.
The doorhandle feels cold in his hand.
‘Ta-te-ra-a-a-a-a!’
It’s Treppie. He’s blowing through his fist like a trumpet. Pissed again.
‘Triomf, Triomf, the time is ripe and here comes the stag over the hills!’
Treppie shows with his one hand how the stag approaches, but it looks like the stag’s doing something else. Christ, can’t he fucken behave himself just once? With his other hand Treppie pulls someone into the light.
‘Straight from Cleopatra’s Classy Creole Queens! Meet Mary, the Creolest of them all!’
Mary. She looks at him. She looks like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Well, neither can he.
‘Lambert,’ he hears himself saying. ‘Lambert Benade.’ Now he must greet her nicely. A firm handshake, but not too firm, like Treppie said. The way he tried it out with his mother.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says, just the way he practised it, over and over again.
‘Hi,’ is all she says. ‘Mary.’ She doesn’t take his hand. She looks over his shoulder, into the den. She’s standing right here in front of him.
Her whole head’s full of shiny little curls. Her face is thin. It looks tanned, with lots of make-up. And her mouth seems a bit too big. But her lips are shiny and she’s not sucking them in like his mother does. Red, her lips are red. Her shoulders are high, like she’s pulling them up to say she can’t help it, or sorry, she doesn’t know what to do. She needn’t worry. He’ll show her everything. He’ll show her everything very nicely. A bag hangs from one shoulder on a long, thin strap. She’s got tiny, shaky little hands and she’s holding one hand inside the other, in front of her bust.
‘Well, I leave him in your capable hands, Mary, my dear! I hope you have a Creole of a time!’ Treppie squeezes Mary’s shoulder as if he’s known her for a long time. Is she maybe his piece or something? No, he doesn’t even want to think about that. She doesn’t look Chinese, anyway.
Treppie winks at him. For fuck’s sake, this isn’t the time for winking!
Now he must stand aside so she can come in. He wants to take her softly by the arm and welcome her into his den. Help her up the step. Show her that he knows his manners at all times and in all places, whether she’s Chinese or Creole or whatever.
But his hand comes up too fast and he grabs her too high. She feels soft and slippery. He can see she’s upset about his hand touching her like that. Maybe she noticed his buggered fingertips. But that’s nothing. Apart from his fingers he’s okay. She’ll still see. Completely okay.
‘Steady, old boy,’ he hears Treppie say. ‘Don’t grab, it’s bad manners.’
Treppie must shut his mouth now. Fast. Couldn’t he see it was an accident, that high tackle?
‘Don’t worry, Mary, old Lambert here is fully domesticated. Our local hero with a heart of gold. Meek as a lamb!’
He must close this door, now! In Treppie’s face, so he can fuck off here from his door. He mustn’t come and make big eyes at him now. Treppie looks like he wants to say something with those big eyes of his, like sorry, she’s all they could find and he must just make the best of it. That’s not what he needs now. Right now he’s ready to make a whole new start. That’s what he wants!
He turns around. He feels funny, like he’s too heavy or his feet are sticking to the ground or something. Now Mary’s standing in the middle of the room. She’s looking at the painting above his bed.
‘Holy Jesus!’ she says. She walks closer to the wall, bends down and looks at the postbox, where South Africa begins.
‘Who’s this supposed to be?’ She points to both sides of the postbox.
He moves closer. Just stay nice and calm now. His voice jams. First clear the throat a bit. Yes, like that.
‘This here is Jan van Riebeeck, and that’s Harry.’
‘Harry who?’
‘Harry the Strandloper.’
‘The what?’
‘Harry the Hottentot, man!’
What’s this peeling off here now? Let him scratch it off quickly, then it’ll be okay again. Harry’s got three coats of paint on his body.
‘Government brown. It peels.’
‘I see,’ says Mary, in a shriller voice. ‘Is that how the cookie crumbles around here?’
What fucken cookie’s she talking about now?
He stands away from the bed with his hands on his hips. He feels her eyes moving over him. And now? What’s so funny now all of a sudden? He must have checked in his mother’s mirror at least six times. His back feels strange from walking so upright all the time. Did he say something wrong now, or what?
He hears people talking outside. Pop says: ‘Quick!’ Then the front gate squeaks and the Volla takes off. It’s Molletjie. She roars through first, second and third, and then she’s gone. Now it’s just him here at home. Now he must smile. The time has come to say: We’re on our own now, just me and you. But his mouth opens and closes and he can’t get a word out.
Mary’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a far place. Mister, she says, if you want me to go, I don’t mind. Her voice fades. He tries to cock his ears so he can hear what she’s saying. How do you cock your ears? he wonders. It’s like focusing your eyes, but different.
‘I really don’t mind leaving, you know. In fact, I don’t give a shit! Not this much!’
She clicks her fingers in the air. She doesn’t care shit. No, wait. No, fuck, just hold on a minute now! He sticks out his arms to stop her. No, that’s not what he means, not at all. His feet move towards her. She moves out of his way. She keeps dodging him. Why? He’s not a leper or something, is he?
‘No, no please! I haven’t got the plague, man, please don’t go. That’s just old personal stuff. It’s my hobby. Painting. Wall painting. Yesterday I put the wings on. Finishing touches, like my uncle says. They did it in the churches, overseas, way back, everything had wings on, he says, even the donkeys. My uncle’s a very clever oke, you know, he runs the show here, he’s a very educated man, self-educated and all, he’s a, how do you say it, auto-addict, he remembers everything. Got a photographic memory.’
What else does she want to hear? She just says, ‘Hmm.’ She must still be feeling a bit strange here in his den.
‘Well, and I’ve burnt the Watchtowers, the whole lot of them, and I jump-started the Tedelex, for you, from a car battery, even. Hey, can you believe it? That was nearly a big fuck-up. But it was a miracle, afterwards. And over here’s chips and dips and peanuts. You like peanuts, Mary? Like I said, everything I’ve got. Even a Swiss roll for breakfast. And I have a party trick as well, you look like you will make him cook, I say, but that’s for later.’
She pulls a face. But she needn’t worry. When he puts his hand over hers that thing will really start boiling.
‘And I got music too, specially for us tonight. Listen.’ He points with his finger, but his finger feels funny. He takes it away again.
Now he must get to the music, quick, but his body doesn’t want to move. He mustn’t start tripping over things now. He turns the little dial. He tuned the radio already, earlier this afternoon, setting it to FM, 94, 95, where Radio Orion used to be, and where Highveld Stereo is now. Christ. Now it’s too loud. Turn it down! Quick! Keep smiling, like Treppie says. It keeps your customers happy.
‘Did you get a fright? Nice little radio, hey?’
He knows she’s just standing there looking at him. She’s still not in the mood for smiling. He turns the dial, first this way and then that, playing for time. Just a little time. What do you say to a girl who just stands there and looks at you like you crawled out of a fucken hole or something?
‘Nice romantic background music.’ He tries a wink, but both eyes close at the same time. Now he can’t even wink here tonight! But it doesn’t matter, she’s turned around again. Now she’s standing there with folded arms. She’s checking his service counter. Eat, that’s what, eat something nice. He must get in front of her so he can be next to the snacks and offer her some.
‘Like I say, anything you need, anything you want, you name it, I’ve got it. Late-night snacks. Dip a chip, Mary, man. Here you are.’
Which one? Make it two. A dip and a chip. Avo and a crinkle cut. He holds them out for her.
She shakes her head. No thanks. But he stands firm. She shakes her head even harder. Now it’s more than just no thanks. He puts down the bowls. Maybe she’s not hungry. Maybe she’s thirsty.
‘What about a drink, hey? I got everything.’ Let him open the Fuchs a bit so she can see.
‘Everything to please a queen!’ He points to the things in the fridge. He packed and repacked those drinks so you could see them all at a single glance. His beers and his Cokes, all in tins so they won’t go flat like in the bottles. His Drostdy Hof Blush, right through to the orange juice, for just in case.
‘You see, enough for a week.’
No see? Okay. Later. Why’s she saying fuck-all now? All she does is put down her handbag and take off her black jacket. She hangs the jacket over his mother’s chair.
‘Well, maybe enough for two days, hey? What do you say? Then we can go get some more!’
Now he sticks to his spot, here next to his fridge. His hands are opening and closing from not knowing what to do next. Things must start clicking here. Fuck! This night must get a move on!
‘For the rest, everything’s right. You missed the bubbles man, Mary, just bubbles, bubbles, bubbles. Everywhere. But now this old thing even makes ice, hey, I swear. I couldn’t believe it. Check here, man, just check this!’
He takes out the ice-trays. Now look, woman! Fucken rock-hard ice! No dice. Put it back again. Maybe she’s a bit raw. Not used to things. If your audience is asleep, Treppie always says, try another angle.
‘And the postbox is fixed. Did you see it? I made him myself, quite a tricky one, that one, kept falling off. Can’t tell you what trouble I had with that piece of shit. But now it’s even painted the colour of peace, thanks to my old man, he’s got a knack for the finishing touches, for sure! And tomorrow they come to paint this whole house, white as snow, good as new, you won’t recognise it. And when they paint, we go, you and me, to get the petrol. I checked all the bags for leaks, two times. And I’ve got a hole!’
Now he’ll show her something! She needn’t keep her face so straight. There’s only one hole like this in the whole of Jo’burg, that’s for sure!
Lift up the plank. Shift it away nicely, so she can look inside. Come now, woman!
‘Come, come here, Mary, come look! Now this was the biggest job of all, hey, nearly broke my back here, just rubble, rubble, rubble. There was another town here, a black one, just bricks, bricks, bricks, kaffirs didn’t live under plastic and cardboard in those days, hey! But now it’s big enough for the petrol, for an emergency, you know. You never know, that’s what I say. And my uncle agrees. A person must be ready, hey? What do you say? For when the shit hits the fan. You know what I mean, hey? Then we hit the great road to the North. I checked on the map. In the CNA. Will take a day or so. Then we’re over the border. First we make a picnic and then we make a new beginning.’
She doesn’t look like she’s making the connections. His hole is open, his fridge is open and he’s wide open. All his stuff is lying here, open. But she’s not looking. Maybe she wants to look at the painting again, at his map.
‘Check, here’s our route, in red, here, here, here.’
Christ, she must be able to see a dotted line! The line’s in red, too. It goes over the lawn, the molehills, the black arrows, the yellow arrows, his mother’s body and the tennis ball in her mouth. He points it out to her.
‘Tennis ball in the mouth. Didn’t have enough space here. Dog’s games, you know? But it’s my mother, this one. Nice lady, full of sports!’
He feels too big, standing here next to his painting. His body doesn’t want to shrink. He tries to grin but his mouth doesn’t want to. Grin! That’s his mother, she’s enough to make anyone laugh. Fuck! Let’s try the mermaid. Maybe she’ll think it’s cute. That mermaid is actually her!
‘And this is you on the car here, Mary. I dreamt of you, long before you even knew me.’
Maybe she doesn’t like laughing at herself. Well then, let her laugh at him then, him with his big ears and his sideburns, sitting in the driver’s seat.
‘And that’s me, ready to take you wherever you want to go, to the wild open spaces …’
At last! A smile! About fucken time too. Just a half-smile. But that’s all he needs. Take the gap, Lambertus, take it!
‘… to the sleepy villages, where the lion roars tonight! Hawhimbawe! Hawhimbawe!’
His mother always laughs when he sings that song. Ever since he was small. But now the smile’s gone again. Maybe she thinks his plan isn’t good enough. Maybe she doesn’t like the sound of his lions.
He points, north, north, north, he points where he wrote in the names this afternoon. Those are not petrol stops. The petrol’s been sorted out. They’re just piss-stops. Pretoria, Nylstroom, Naboomspruit, Messina. He wrote Messina in big letters. Across the border. His plan is fine. There’s nothing wrong with his plan.
‘And she’ll make it, Mary, don’t you worry, she’ll make it. I tuned her, I checked her points, I tapped off her oil. And in any case, we’ll take Flossie with us, the beach buggy, for spares, for in case. As we say in Afrikaans, there’s always a light at the end of the wagon-trek. Hey, old Mary, man, even if it’s a long way to Tipperary, hey? You know that song?’
Fuck, he’s really doing his very best here. Maybe he should sing instead, he’s in any case singing for his smiles tonight. It’s a long way to Tip-perrar-reee! She’d better open that red mouth of hers for a change. He can’t do all the fucken talking all fucken night long!
‘Listen, my china.’ Here she comes now, but she’s coming too slowly. Oh, shit, what now? Now she’s swaying her backside at him. She’s even turned around so he can see her backside.
‘I haven’t got no time to waste, hey. I’m a busy lady!’
Fuck! Let him get out of the way here. She mustn’t come and act all high and mighty and start swinging her backside around. He’s also been fucken busy!
Jesus. Now she’s on the bed, legs and all. Loosening buttons. Yes, that’s what she’s doing, she’s unbuttoning her blouse. Lots of buttons. What’s that underneath? A bow, a fucken little red bow. In the middle. Between the tits. The tits are in a see-through bra. Black net-stuff with holes in it. Sit, she motions to him, he must come and sit here next to her on the bed. Please, God! Those long red nails!
‘Hey, hey, wait now, Mary, man, let’s not rush things now, man. Come, there’s nice chairs here, man, look, specially for you!’ Pop’s chair. His mother’s chair. Next to each other. ‘Nice chairs, I promise, family chairs, they come a long way, they can tell stories, these chairs, man, like you won’t believe, stories for Africa.’
It’s the truth. He’s not talking nonsense now. Right. That’s better. She’s buttoning up again. Yes, better.
‘As you wish. I hope you know what you’re doing. Time is money, you know that?’
Of course he knows. What’s the time there on Treppie’s clock–radio? Only twenty to twelve. He checks his watch. That’s fine. The night’s still young, as Treppie always says. What’s she getting so worried about, anyway? There she sits in his mother’s chair now. It looks funny, but at least she sits nicely, with her legs closed.
‘Don’t worry, just relax, Mary, I’ll get you a drink. What do you like? I also got brandy and Coke. Come on, what do you say?’
‘I don’t drink on the job, Cleopatra’s house rules.’
Why’s she grinning again? It’s the oldest trade in the world, after all. Her kind fancies a snort. She mustn’t think she can come and spin him a lot of crap here.
‘Cleopatra’s foot in a fish tin, man!’
‘Just Coke, I mean it.’
‘Suit yourself, lady.’ If he can just get a snort or two into her. But he must tune her nicely now. Don’t rush a woman. That’s what Treppie always says when his mother takes so long to do things. When a woman’s revs finally get going, they really run high. Then you struggle to bring them down again. He says he’s seen it time and time again.
‘I have lemons, I have ice, might I make you a Lee Martin, just like in the Spur? You know what a Lee Martin is? No? Crushed ice and lemon and things?’
She shakes her head. No.
Looks like she doesn’t know bugger-all. Fucken weird, that’s all he can say. Maybe the Cleopatras don’t go to Spur.
‘Never too late to learn.’ Take a deep breath. ‘Never too late, my baby.’
Mary just sits there, looking at her nails. She says fuck-all. It looks like that ‘baby’ went straight over her head, like she didn’t even feel it. Maybe he said it too early or something. Fucken worse than a jammed compressor! And he can’t very well go and kick her, but he’s tempted, hell, a nice kick under the backside is exactly what she needs. There go his knees now, jerking up and down under the skin. It must be ’cause he’s thinking about kicking her. He mustn’t kick her. She’d fall to pieces, first shot. No, he won’t kick her. He’ll just stand here next to his work bench. Stay nice and cool. He grabs the edge of the work bench, his service counter that he prepared so neatly, with so many nice things on it. Ai, fuck. He hears her lighting up, here right behind his back. That’s what he needs too, a good old cigarette. Sit for a while, in Pop’s deep chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him so his knees can stop jerking. Yes, a cigarette.
A thought begins to form in his head, but he can’t get hold of it properly. Come now, Lambert! Got it! It’s the thought of an ashtray, and an ashtray is the other thing he forgot. A carpet and an ashtray. Can you believe it? Most of the time he tips his ash on to the floor and he stubs his cigarettes against the wall, just anywhere. He had to sweep so many cigarette butts out of here … never mind, she won’t know the difference. He picks up one of the bowls with painted stags and passes it over to her.
‘Ashtray.’
‘Thanks,’ she says.
‘Some ashtray, hey.’ Mary looks at the ashtray. Then she turns it round and looks at the back.
‘I inherited it from my grandmother. Grand old lady. They did it in style in those days.’
‘Hmm,’ is all she says. ‘How’s the Coke coming along?’
‘Won’t be a minute.’ But before the words are out of his mouth he realises he’s got a new problem. How’s he going to give her crushed ice without making a mess? If it was just him alone it would be a simple matter – he’d take a hammer and smash the ice-blocks to pieces on the work bench. Not that he needs crushed ice every day. Ice-blocks are good enough and even those came into his life only after the fridges were fixed. He’s seen in the movies how they put ice in a dishcloth or something, in those fancy American kitchens where everyone stands around with drinks in their hands, then they knock the ice against a wall with neat little thuds, like it’s something they do every other day. But now he hasn’t got a dishrag. And it’s not something he does every other day. When he does knock things in kitchens he makes holes in the doors of dressers. Fuck! As far as he knows, the only dishrag in the house got used up today, to clean all that drain-goo on the floor. And he’s not going to open up his steel cabinet to look for anything ’cause then all those pipes and dirty clothes and GTX tins that he stashed in there will come piling out.
Maybe he should go fetch something in the house. Look in his mother’s room. Suddenly he sees himself crushing ice on the den’s wall with his mother’s dirty housecoat. Crush, crush, crush. No!
He’ll just tell her the ice-crusher’s broken. Out of order. He’s never seen one, but he’s sure you can buy them.
‘So, have we suddenly gone as quiet as a mouse, big boy?’
Is she really smiling at him here behind his back? Yes, she is, with a pouting mouth too. Well, well, what have we here? Wait, let him first get this ice out of the tray. Fucken ice-tray. Hit the blarry thing, that’s the only way. ‘Thock! Thock!’ he slams the tray against the edge of the work bench.
‘I’ve just got a problem’ – ‘Thock!’ – ‘with my ice-crusher. Looks like it’s out of order.’
‘Well, I’m getting mighty thirsty here, ice or no ice.’ Now she doesn’t sound like she’s smiling. She switches that smile of hers on and off, on and off, faster even than Treppie. Get that smile going again, lady! If I can, you can! Keep smiling, girl!
‘Thirsty, hey, and we haven’t even started yet!’ Shit, that one just slipped out before he could stop it.
‘Well, at this rate …’ Mary says, but that’s not what he wants to hear. He pours himself a stiff brandy and Coke. One glass in each hand. Steady, now. He’s standing in front of Mary. He’s standing wrong. He can feel it. He mustn’t stand still, he must move, keep moving. Make a noise.
‘Listen. Nice song they’re playing there.’
The Highveld Stereo woman is talking. She says it’s Leo Sayer. She says he’s always so spot on about the eternal questions of love.
When I need you
I just close my eyes and I’m with you
And all that I so wanna give you
Is only a heartbeat away
Mary takes her Coke. Right. Now sit down a little. With a cigarette. It’s in his jacket pocket. But where’s his fucken matches now? He checked a hundred times to make sure they were in his pocket. You don’t want to get stuck looking for matches in the heat of the moment. Just shuddup a second, there, Leo. Fucken close my eyes and find my fucken matches, now! He can feel Mary looking at him as he digs in his pocket.
Here she comes with her lighter. Come closer, she motions. He doesn’t trust this.
‘I don’t bite, honey. Come, let me light your fire.’
There’s that half-grin again. That tongue, licking her lips.
Grin back at her, Lambert. Now you’re even her honey! But it doesn’t sound right to him, this ‘honey’. And what’s this about a fire? He still doesn’t feel warm. He feels strange and cold. The insides of his hands are sweating.
He leans over. No one has ever lit up for him like this, let alone a woman.
‘Chick!’ goes her lighter as she flicks it on. ‘Sssss!’ goes the little flame, here next to his face. Those longs nails right here next to his cheek. Christ! Now he’s gone and breathed too hard. Out goes the lighter. God in heaven!
‘Easy, boy!’ She flicks it back on again.
Now he gets it right. He leans back in his chair. Man, this cigarette’s going down well. He takes deep pulls. Nothing helps like a nice deep pull. He feels a slight shudder down his tail-end.
From where he sits he has a full-frontal view of his fridges. The cigarette’s helping, but it’s not helping enough. And his fridges can’t tell him fuck-all, either. They look fucked. Small and dirty and fucked out.
He steals a glance at Mary. She also says nothing. She’s smoking with her eyes screwed up, drinking her Coke in small sips. She doesn’t take her glass away from her mouth.
Now their conversation mustn’t go and dry up. If push comes to shove he can always go and fetch the TV from the lounge. Maybe there’s a scary movie on Bop, or fast American news, there-then-here-now. If only Treppie was at home. He would have known what to do. But maybe not. Treppie would’ve stuck around too long, until it was too late for him to make his birthday happen.
He sees her looking at her watch. She looked just a minute ago. Ten to twelve. Time to try another angle.
‘So what do you think’s going to happen on the twenty-seventh?’
‘Why?’
Why? Why? He’s not fucken asking her which side the sun rises every day.
‘Well, uh, it’s a turning-point in the history of our country!’
She gets up quickly.
‘Jesus Christ! You need to find your own bladdy turning-point. Come on, now!’
What’s that she’s taking out of her bag? She throws it down on the bed. Fucken FL’s! Right, if she can push, he can also push.
‘Are you challenging me, lady? I’ve got my own, you know. Rough Riders. Very nice. So get ready for a bumpy ride!’ He gives her a fat wink. Now he must move!
‘Shall we dance first?’ Turn up that radio. For Christ’s sake, let’s have a good song now! ‘Just right for a cheek-to-cheek, hey. Nice song. Jim Reeves. Golden Oldie. Big fan of Jim Reeves. Do you know him?’
‘Lord, have mercy!’
Just look how she flicks away that stub with her fingers! Not bad! Stamp on it, girly, stamp on it with that dainty little shoe of yours. That’s more like it. A bit of a temper is better than nothing. Here she comes, on her high horse.
‘That’s what I like in a woman! She must be game for everything!’
Now he must hold her tight. Like the heroes in the movies who dance close with their girls. Soft guava! That’s what Treppie always says when those scenes come up. Soft guava and cucumber power!
Here she is, now. Right up against him. With that shiny hair of hers right under his nose.
‘So, what are you waiting for, Prince Charming?’
She smells sweet. Too sweet.
His hands feel her hands taking hold of them. She puts his hands on to her hips.
‘Come on, Lambert, we haven’t got all night.’
Now she’s swaying her body into his, but the beat isn’t actually right for a slow dance. She pulls him so he can start moving. No one has ever pulled him like this before. His hands slide further and further down her dress. Smooth, no funny bumps. No, hell, wait. He moves his hands up again. Rather listen to Jim Reeves.
Mary marry me
Let’s not wait
The time we have
Is all there is
And then it might be too late.
‘Do you hear that?’ She’s pulling him by the jacket now. ‘The time we have is all there is.’
But now she’s starting her shit again. Here comes more loosening of buttons. This time it’s his buttons. Three, four, five, look how quickly she works those thin, brown hands of hers. Christ, those red nails here high up against his white skin! Well, at least it’s just here around the top. Don’t lose it now.
‘You know what we call this type of dance, Mary?’
She shakes her head so hard the curls whip into his nose.
‘Soft guava, we call it the soft guava.’
‘Papkoejawel! You think I don’t know that word?’ Mary laughs.
He doesn’t like that laugh. Is she trying to play the fool with him or something? Let him rather laugh along. Ha-ha-ha! Then he can button up his shirt again, pour himself another drink. If she wants to laugh she can sit down and laugh till she’s finished.
‘So, you can speak a bit of Afrikaans?’
Now she’s suddenly packing her cigarettes back into her bag. Where does she think she’s going? Maybe she thought he was talking about her guava.
‘Look here, man, what do you take me for? The man in the moon? Of course I can speak Afrikaans.’
‘I thought you were a Creole, from Creolia or someplace!’
‘Creolia? Ha-ha-ha! Very funny. A Creole, lat ek vir djou sê, Mister Ballroom Champ, is ma’ just a lekker coffee-colour dolly what can mix her languages. So if that’s your problem, if that’s what’s putting you off, I’ll just leave sommer right now. I’ve got my money. I’ve got nothing to lose. Time’s nearly up anyways.’
24:00, it says on Treppie’s clock–radio. Forty!
‘Please, please don’t go. I don’t mind. Really, I don’t.’
A darky. So, that’s what Treppie was making big eyes about. Well, he’s not bothered by a piece of coffee-skirt, if that’s what Treppie’s idea was. A bit of the dark stuff is no problem for him!
A neat brandy. Without Coke. Then he’ll be ready. ‘It’s all right, man, anyway, you are so nice and smart with your make-up and everything, I bet you can actually pass for white any time, Mary, hey? You get my drift? I mean, it can’t be too difficult for you. What about another Coke, hey? With half a tot? What do you say?’
Dead silence here behind him. What’s it this time? He turns round. Mary’s looking at him with wide eyes that shine like daggers.
‘You bastard! Look at you! Look at this place! Who the hell do you think you are, hey? You’re not even white, man, you’re a fucken backward piece of low-class shit, that’s what you are. Useless fucken white trash!’
‘Excuse me? What did you say there? Is there something wrong with my ears or is somebody calling me a piece of shit in my own house?’
Now all hell is loose. But no one can teach him anything about talking shit or making shit. If this off-white number doesn’t watch out he’ll knock her and all her shit as flat as a pancake! Yes, retreat, retreat, you’d better, you toffee-cunt. Let her, she can’t get further than that inside door. He sees her feeling for the inside door’s handle.
‘You’re too late, Mary, too fucken late! Rather give that hand of yours here.’ He locked that door before she came, early tonight, to keep out his mother. And Treppie. They said they were going out but you never know with them. Fuck, if only they were here now, then he could go and call them to come help a bit. Then they could all help him to put this cheeky slut in her place, for once and for all.
‘I said, let go of that door!’
Her breath’s on his face now. Her mouth is thin. She’s got lines round the outside of her mouth. ‘Zing!’ goes his head. Through the zing he picks up a song playing on the radio.
You are the sun
I am the moon
You are the words
I am the tune
Play me!
Forty years and a few seconds old! Fuck! She turns her face away. Red stuff on that Coloured cheek of hers.
‘Do you hear that, Mary? You must be nice to me now, hey. You’d better behave yourself now, hey! I don’t like spoilsports, that’s one thing I don’t, um, tolerate.’
Nice that he remembered that word.
‘Let go, you’re hurting me!’
She doesn’t sound very hurt to him. She sounds more like a coon-girl with designs in her head.
‘Don’t be a sissy, man. Your sort have seen it all. As long as you play nicely, you won’t get hurt. Got it?’
Another cigarette, that’s what he needs now. Matches. Where? In his shirt pocket, top pocket. He sees his shoes. They look too big. He sees them ’cause he’s not standing upright. He’s bent over forwards. His arms are hanging out. He must get back into his gentleman’s pose. He’s got half a hard-on after that bit of action, but it drops quickly again. This business must get back into swing. Christ, this is worse than fucken fridge repairs.
He tells her she must look on the crate, there next to the bed. In the Coke bottle.
‘Look, I even got you a rose, man, want to smell it? My mother is into roses, you know. Her whole life long. This one here is a Whisky Mac. But there are lots more. Prima Ballerina, Red Alec, Las Vegas Supreme. That last one is an orange one. Hell, I must tell you that story! You won’t believe it. We were in the HF Verwoerd Institute for the Mentally Retarded that day, me and my uncle, he put me up to it, when we became a republic, you know, at the Voortrekker monument.’
Must he go and take it out for her or what? There, let her take the fucken rose. Can’t she see he’s okay again?
‘Go on, smell it!’
Move it, slut! He waits for her to smell. Christ, no, he must get another drink. And this time he’ll stay right here in front of his counter. She mustn’t start getting scared of him now. That business a second ago was nothing.
‘So what’s your favourite colour, Mary? Come, sit down again, come, sit here by me, in my mother’s chair. Let’s make friends again, hey? Let’s talk nicely now, like civilised people, hey?’
‘Civilised! Hmph!!’
To hell with hmph! Now it looks like she doesn’t even want the rose. She’s singing something.
‘The night was heavy
And the air was alive
But she couldn’t push through.’
‘What was that, may I ask?’
Fucken full of shit, that’s what. And she mustn’t look up at the ceiling, she must look at him!
‘Just a song. You know Highveld Stereo, like all the songs they play, say just the things you want to say?’
Fucken chancer! What’s that she’s looking at now?
‘So tell me, Michelangelo, what’s all this here supposed to be?’
‘You can read, man, just read it.’
At least she wants him to tell her something. Stand up straight. Tummy in. Let him show her. Michelangelo. Who’s that?
‘It’s my gallery of foolproofs. Much better than that stupid Cindy Viljoen from Tuxedo Tyres. Blue bikini, pink bikini, they think they can fool me!’
‘Cindy Viljoen?’
‘Yes, man, old Cindy on the calendars, I had them all, from ’76, all round here, to keep track of the time, you know, but then I discovered it’s the same Cindy in the tyre, just with different hair and things. It was all the same. People are not stupid, you know. On last year’s calendar she had so much make-up on, even on her neck and all, past redemption, not even worth a retread. But these things here, they’ll last forever. I finished it yesterday, just for you. They can all fly now, you see? They don’t wear and tear like lawn-mowers, or cars or fridges. They work, like, like, um, like paradise!’
‘Huh?’
‘You still don’t get it? Look, they all got wings on. It’s like heaven. Everything can be an angel in heaven. Rats, cockroaches, everything. There’s even a mole, MOLE II. It’s my mother, you see, even she has wings there. Not in MOLE I, there she’s in a fridge, frozen mole, ready to be fired off, but that’s another story. I gassed all the moles this morning, Mary, so you don’t have to look at them pushing heaps with a mouthful of Swiss roll.’
He can hear his voice going quicker and quicker. It feels like when you try to weld leaks. You can’t keep up with yourself. She looks like she thinks he’s got the horries or something. Stupid fucken floozy, that’s what she is.
‘So on the ceiling I will go on with heaven, all the stars and things, some dead, some alive, the black holes and the time warps and the sundogs and the rim of the dark moon that one can see in the earthshine, ’cause the earth shines too, did you know that? And old Gerty, shame, she’ll also be there, we buried her, jersey and all, in the back here, with a poem on the prefab wall. My uncle is a poet, you know, but he doesn’t know it, not always. He rhymes like shit, I mean, he can make a poem out of nothing. And a speech, without thinking. He made an unforgettable speech at my mother’s wedding, master of ceremonies. He’s quite a devil, you see – just needs horns. Even he liked Gerty, but not as much as my mother, my mother liked Gerty more than soft-serve, but Gerty coughed so much, she died of TB in the bathroom, just like my grandmother.’
‘Allah preserve me!’ Mary puts her hand in front of her mouth.
‘It’s just a dog, man. Toby’s mother – he’s also a dog. Gerty’s son, like our streets here, Gerty Street, Toby Street. But he’s still alive.’
He can’t very well tell lies about the streets. Maybe he should take her for a walk so she can see with her own two eyes.
‘I dipped him this morning, that Toby, so that the fleas won’t bite you. Very much alive that dog. He pisses on carpets. It’s like the AWB. Do you know them? They also piss on carpets. Like at the World Trade Centre, that time. All the policemen took off their caps after the pissing and prayed with the pissboys, they pissed inside and prayed outside!’
‘Have mercy!’
She’s looking up at the ceiling again. Wait till she hears his next story.
‘You know, they even wanted to recruit me, the AWB, just up the road here, opposite the stewing meat, with Oros, ’strue’s Bob, for their task force, they wanted a mechanic.’
‘Not surprising.’
‘Not at all, hey? But they can forget it, there’s more to me than nuts and bolts, I say!’
‘More nuts.’ She laughs loudly.
See, it just takes a little time. Wait, let him get some peanuts for them. From his counter.
‘I’ve got a gun, you know.’
Nice, these peanuts. Now she must watch carefully. Let him just finish chewing this mouthful, then he’s going to get the gun out of his cabinet. Why’s the door jammed like this? Come, bastard! Boom! It’s open. The stuff starts falling on to his feet: scrap iron, pipes, spanners, tins.
‘Holy shit!’
‘Sorry about that, odds and ends, you know.’
No, Lambert! You knew you shouldn’t have opened the cabinet!
‘Sorry if I gave you a fright, man.’
Where’s that gun now? Here at the bottom, under the rags. Now he’s going to impress this Cleopatra big time.
‘Don’t come near me with that thing.’
‘Don’t worry, man, it’s not loaded. I’ve got bullets, but it’s not loaded. I load it only when I go on patrol. This thing was a real bargain, man, I tell you. You don’t know how lucky a person can get on a dump. I got binoculars too, but that’s for sightseeing – the moon and the stars and the belly of the Jumbo. Big sports. But this is serious business, this is for protection.’
First just move away this rubbish a bit. Under the bed with this lot! He sees her putting her hands over her ears. Bit of a nervous girl, this one. But she’ll still learn, they make a lot of noise around here sometimes.
‘So you, er, patrol?’
‘I patrol, man, I patrol. These days you can’t leave anything to the police, you know, they’ve got their hands full, man, they don’t have time for open manholes and that class of thing. In any case they’re a noisy lot, they drive like maniacs.’
‘But I mean do you patrol for a living, like, I mean for Springbok Patrols or such?’
‘Over my dead body, I’m my own boss. I patrol as a, um, concerned citizen. Free and for nothing. I service the whole of Triomf. But mostly Gerty and Toby.’
‘So, er, what do you do for a living, like?’
It’s high time. Now she’s nice and mellow. Looks like she’s going to dip herself a chip at the counter.
‘Well, um, we’ve got a little fridge business. Triumph Appliances. But these two here I fixed on my own, just for you. Shit, you should have seen the bubbles, man. Just so big as my head, hey. My whole room was in it, heaven and Africa and everything. Looked like magic, I must say. Not like I painted it myself, I mean like a masterpiece it looked. Like the Lost City. My uncle is not from this world, hey, he gave me an exam with Brylcreem on his face. Multiple choice with a red nose. It was very funny. My uncle’s an operator, you know. He sings when the Ding-Dong passes. And he taught me to make the dogs go funny, I’ll show you one day. But I passed with distinction that time. Do you want to hear the dogs go funny?’
Is she getting cold or something now? It’s a nice little coat that. There’s more to life than a housecoat, if you ask him. But what’s she doing now with that bag of hers? Over her head, around her neck goes the strap. And then under the one arm!
‘Ag no, man, Mary. Where are you going now? Everything is going so nice now, man. Let me show you my penny-whistle. It’s from the kaffir hole. It has ar-chae-lo-gi-cal value, my uncle said.’
‘Penny-whistle, my foot!’
What’s she pointing to now, here under his belt? She’s pointing this way but she’s walking that way. Christ, has his zip been open all this time! No, it’s closed. What was that pointing all about then? No manners.
‘I figure you got a French horn or something in there. Out of tune. From playing solos all the time!’
‘French horn, ha-ha! But you’re full of sports, girly!’
‘Time’s up, mister! You’ve had your chance. A woman must eat, you know.’
Shit, where does she want to go and eat now? What’s she doing at the outside door with her hand on the handle? And it’s not locked!
‘There’s all this food to eat here, man. I spent all my money, every fucken last cent, chips, dips, drink, everything. Why don’t you stay, man, my family’s not so bad, man! My old man can play the mouth organ like you won’t believe. I swopped the beds, I took the sheets from the windows, we washed them. And there’s a mirror in the bathroom and a toilet seat, light blue, for a shit in peace, and lampshades from China. It was a lot of trouble, man, the pelmet is panelbeaten straight as hell, and there is a hole in the front door but it’s for Toby, he’s really a decent dog, I promise. Pedigree don’t count, that’s what I say, just decency. Decency, do you know that word? Decent? I’ve got a passion meter too, you want to see it? Educational value, relieves stress and boredom. Give me your hand!’
‘I’m leaving, Rambo, you sit here nicely and relieve yourself like a good boy. I’m getting out of this fucken madhouse, before it’s too late!’
Let her just fucken try. Now she’s twisting her hands, trying to slip them out of his! Quite strong, for a Coloured chicky like this.
‘Listen to that nice song they’re playing, man. Let’s have a shuffle, what do you say? Come, wrap your arms round me, like just now. Let’s sing along, come on!’
Rock me gently, rock me slow
Take it easy, don’t you know
That I have never been
Loved like this before
‘Jesus, Lambert, what have you done to your hand, man?’
His hand? Okay. If she wants to know. His tongue feels like it’s moving in slow motion as he tells her. About time that zings, about how all your birthdays tick past, about how Treppie told him you can make that tick go tick once more, about how he wanted to show Treppie a thing or two, but his hand went right through the dresser, and what a big joke that was, a big hole, and his mother pissed herself from all the laughing and everything.
‘But what’s a little hole, after all? Now things can breathe a little.’
‘And that other hand, Lambert, what happened there?’
The plaster-hand? That plaster still looks fine to him.
Christ! How did she get his belt loose and his zip open so quickly?
‘Ooh, Big Boy, and all in red, too!’
‘You mean my fingertips? That’s nothing, man. My uncle pushed me, by accident of course, got stuck in an escalator.’
‘No, I mean that plaster, man.’
She must go nice and easy with his plaster-hand, but she grips it too hard. Ouch, fuck! What does she know, anyway? Does she really want to know? Okay, let him tell her then. Does she have any idea how hard it is to file open a compressor, does she know how poisonous the oil is, would she know what to do if she got it on to her hand one day? He knows, he’s an old hand with fridges. But that still doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt if people grab too hard. Not that that’s the point, the point is there’s nothing these two hands of his can’t do. Look! She must look at his hands!
‘Maybe you’re handy with fridges, honey, but your hands are a bit too rough for women. Have you ever had one at all, hey?’
‘Of course! Plenty! There’s this girl from the Jehovahs. She gets the hots from Exodus, from the frogs that jump, in the lounge here, and the pillar of fire, that kind of thing. She fancies me, that one, and I give her quite a go, but she isn’t my type, she’s too, um, how shall I say?’
Too what? Where’s the word he’s looking for? Just in front of him in the air here.
Fuck! Here go his pants now. Speedo and all! Down, over his knees!
‘Your uncle’s advice if it gets too hot. Sorry, man, but you’re also not exactly my type!’
All he sees is patent leather. Flash! Out! Hey!
Tackle her! But his feet stick to the ground. Just a bush of shiny hair in his hands. Without a head. Fuck! Trying to run away, hey! Just wait!
Ouch! He feels blood. He’s flat on his backside. Ow, Jesus!
‘Fucken whore! Fucken rotcunt. Fucken cheapskate! Stupid Swiss roll of a slut!’
He feels his nose. It’s still bleeding. He wipes the blood on to his naked leg. Flossie doesn’t want to go any further. Nor does he. He can’t. He’s fucked out of his mind. Klipdrift and beers and Blush. Out of the bottle, out of the cans, out of the box.
He took the stags and smashed them, mountains and all, one by one against the ceiling. He stashed the Fuchs full of sheets and papers and then he set the whole lot on fire. He stoked the fire in the fridge till it made a soft ‘boof!’ sound. And then he sat for a long time, watching the long, thin lines of blue smoke coming out of the seals. ‘Tip-tip-tip’, he heard as something dripped out of the condenser pipes at the back. One down, one to go. He must still sort out the Tedelex.
But he didn’t forget the postbox. He ripped it out of the pole and swung it round and round, like a slingweight, until it was going nice and fast. Then he lobbed it, one shot, through the lounge window. Ting-a-ling! Boom! Crash! Sail on, silverbird.
He rattled those loose slabs on their walls till all the dogs in Triomf were barking. Till they were going strong. And he started crying, and after a while the dogs were also howling much better.
Then he thought, wait, let him get into his dream car. He started her up, ’cause he wanted to drive off somewhere, to get lost good and proper, God alone knows where, with all those dogs running after him. Like he was in a circus or something.
But now it’s raining. Thunder and flashes of lightning crash into his ears. And now he just sits.
He looks up into the sky. He’s sopping wet. Hot and cold on his face. Blood and tears and rain. Where’s Mary motherfucker’s curls, let him wipe his face.
He rubs his dick. For what, anyway? For fuck-all. It feels like it’s getting smaller and smaller. But he rubs, anyway, harder and harder. It’s all he can think of doing.
It’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon, 26 April.
Mol stands in the passage, behind Treppie. They’re in front of Lambert’s inside door. She’s holding on to Pop’s sleeve, here behind her. At first she and Pop didn’t want to come, but Treppie said no, this was their baby too, they couldn’t start ducking out now. It was time for Lambert’s reportback.
You wouldn’t guess Treppie was given a talking to just a few hours ago. He’s so full of the devil it looks like he’s ready to start hopping. When they got home this morning he just smashed his way through the hole in the lounge window. Glass breaking everywhere. No, he said, now he was entering a war zone. Doors and thresholds were for civilians, and if they wanted to play doorsy-doorsy under such circumstances they were free to do so, they must just remember FW said war wasn’t for sissies. Then she said as far as she could remember FW said nothing about doors and thresholds, he said elections weren’t for sissies. Treppie said, no, now she was really falling behind, hadn’t she realised they were holding their own fucken election here in this house and they were allowed as much foul play as they liked, ’cause the playing fields under their feet were never, ever going to get level.
Then she gave Pop one look and they both knew they were just going to have to shuddup, ’cause Treppie’s head was like a merry-go-round. Even after three mugs of coffee.
So, here she stands behind him now. His one shoulder’s twitching again, like a broken jack-in-the-box. He signals to them they must get ready, he’s about to start knocking on the door. Not with his knuckles, she sees, but with a shoe that hasn’t got a heel. He found the shoe near the front gate. A small, black shoe made of patent leather. When he saw that shoe he said it looked like someone had popped Mary Poppins right out of her shoes, and he just hoped, for their sake and for the whole of Triomf’s sake, that the rest of her was unscathed. And intact.
Intact.
‘Rat-a-tat-tat-tat’, Treppie knocks. No answer. There’s a funny smell coming from the den. Treppie raises his eyebrows. What should he do now? Lambert’s coffee’s getting cold here in his other hand. How’s she supposed to know? He won’t listen to her in any case. Pop pulls at her from behind. He doesn’t want to go any further. He wants to go sleep, she knows. Where he got the strength from, she doesn’t know, but this morning he still wanted to patch up the front window with the plastic cover Lambert uses to cover Flossie when it rains.
‘Leave a shooting-hole,’ Treppie said, but it wasn’t necessary ’cause that plastic was no longer covering Flossie. It was under Flossie. And it was rotten with holes. Flossie was sopping wet. She stood there like a little bulldozer, her bumper pushed up against the prefab wall. She looked properly pooped.
Now Treppie pushes open the door. He has to shove with his shoulder, there’s so much stuff in front of the door. He makes high-stepping motions like the kaffirs when they march. The coffee goes ‘plops-plops’ over his hand. Come help, he signals to her with the shoe.
‘Viva Lambert, viva!’ he shouts as the door gives way.
‘Whoof!’ says Toby, pushing past everyone’s legs to get through.
Not her, God no, she’s staying right here where she is. All she can see now is Treppie and Toby and how they’re staring at Lambert. She can’t see Lambert. He must be sleeping.
Earlier, Treppie picked up a whole bag of beer tins and a Klipdrift bottle outside the den. Judging by the damage, he says now, it looks like more than just a hangover that Lambert’s sleeping off here. It looks like Lambert’s sleeping from pure despair, the kind of despair that comes from one thing and one thing only: not enough blood to the balls.
Couldn’t get it up.
Well, then, maybe that Mary was very lucky here last night, and, if you ask her, that kind of luck is worth the price of a shoe.
It’s them who’ll have to pay the price. The first thing they found was the postbox on the lounge floor. Shame, and Pop fixed it up so nicely for Lambert, painting it and everything. The paint must’ve still been wet ’cause there’s a blue smudge right in the middle of Jo’burg. What’s more, the whole house had been turned upside down.
That pelmet was so bent and twisted, Treppie said even the devil in hell wouldn’t be able to panelbeat it again. And her mirror, the one Pop specially put up in the bathroom yesterday afternoon, was in a thousand pieces all over the bath. And there were loose blocks everywhere, from the passage. It looked like they’d been dug out in big patches with a spade.
Pop pushes her from behind. They must either go in or go out, he motions, but he’s not planning to spend the whole day standing here in the doorway. Let them see what’s what and be done with it. He’s tired.
Just one step, so Pop can also see. Glass wherever you put your foot down. And a thick line of vomit on the floor. ‘Sis!’ Toby sniffs it. ‘Yuk!’
Pop must go fetch some newspapers in his room, Treppie says. Then they can use dry vomit to cover up the wet vomit.
‘God help us,’ Pop says. She watches him as he walks down the passage. It’ll be a miracle if Pop survives this day. Well, she’s stronger, let her take the lead here instead.
Treppie spins the little shoe on his finger like he’s doing a circus trick, spinning a plate on a stick. Just look what they found on the front lawn, he says. If they look long enough for her other parts they might even be able to reassemble the Creole Queen before the end of the day – is that what Lambert understands by value for money.
Lambert doesn’t hear a thing. He’s lying on his stomach in his shirt and his red underpants. The underpants reach only halfway up his backside.
Come, sing along, Treppie says.
‘Wake up, wake up, it’s a lovely day!’ Treppie sings. ‘Oh please, get up and come and play!’ Let him sing if he wants, she’ll just pick up the broken glass. Before there’s another accident.
What’s this flying through the air now? A shoe. Treppie’s thrown the shoe at Lambert.
‘Huh-uh,’ is all Lambert says. He rolls on to his other side. His shirt is full of vomit.
‘Time for reportback!’
How does Pop always put it? Treppie will drill into a dead hole until he finds a spark somewhere. Well, he can try, but this time she’s not so sure. Lambert looks like he’s lost to the world. His mouth hangs open.
Treppie mustn’t come and shove things in front of her nose now, it’s not her who has to do the reportback.
‘Hey, old Mol, check, he even stole your rose for the occasion!’
A rose is a rose is a rose, he always tells her, but she better not throw it back at him now, ’cause today she’s sure a rose will be something different.
Here’s Pop with the newspapers, but he won’t give them to her. He throws them down on top of the vomit himself. Looks like he’s throwing big, thin leaves into a hole. So carefully, like he’s at a funeral or something.
‘Did he fit?’ Pop asks.
Treppie bends over Lambert. He pinches his nose closed, holding his pinky up in the air.
‘His tongue’s still here!’
Treppie takes Lambert by the shoulders and shakes him hard. He must be careful, or he’ll set off more than a spark in there.
‘Fuck off!’ is all Lambert says.
They must get him awake and moving again. That’s what she thinks.
‘Bring some water,’ says Pop.
Treppie bows. ‘Allow me,’ he says. He winks at them and goes out the door. He’s capable of bringing in the hosepipe. She looks at Pop. What does he think? But no, it’s Toby’s red bowl full of water that Treppie carries back with him into the den. He holds it up solemnly over Lambert’s body.
‘Let oh Lord thy countless blessings rain down upon thy servant here,’ he says, his head tilted up. Treppie pours the water from high up in a thin little trickle, first on to Lambert’s crotch, then over his stomach and chest, and then, suddenly, he chucks the rest straight into his face.
‘I told you to fuck off!’
This is what she’s been afraid of. More than just a spark. Let her just get out of the way here, quickly. The outside door is open, thank God.
Lambert sits up straight. His eyes are wild. She can see he’s looking this way and that, but he can’t find his focus. Water drips from his face.
Pop stands in the one corner, Treppie in the other. She’s in the outside doorway.
Now it’s very quiet. Something goes ‘tick-tick-tick’, but it’s not her. It’s coming from the Fuchs, burnt black on the sides. Brown stuff runs out of it.
Lambert sits on the bed with his legs spread out wide in front of him. His shirt’s too tight. He tries to use his arms to stop himself from falling over.
He wants to know what they’re all looking at. What’s so funny and who do they think they’re looking at? She uses her hands to cover her ears. He roars like a lion, this Lambert. Now his arms give backwards and he falls over. His thing is hanging out from his underpants.
‘Pit bull terrier!’
Oh heavens! What’s she gone and said now? Pop looks at her. She covers her mouth with her hand.
But here comes a thing now flying towards her through the air. ‘Whirrr!’ Lambert’s thrown something right into her face. What is it? Oh God, no, it’s all hair and it smells like a person and now it’s stuck on her face like a thing with claws and it won’t come off!
What’s Treppie singing there now? A ‘disjointed’ piece of what? No, he’s singing about a ‘Creole tarantula’. What can that be? She can’t see anything. She throws the thing down. Oh God, it’s a head full of hair. But where’s the head, then?
Pop takes her hand. She mustn’t worry, it’s okay. ‘Wig,’ he shows with his mouth. It’s just a wig.
‘Get out, get out of here!’ Lambert shouts, but he can’t pull himself up.
He must rest, Pop says, they’ve just come to see how things are going with him.
‘My boy.’ That’s what Pop says to him.
‘Ja, old boy,’ Treppie says. Lambert must just calm down, they only came to say happy birthday and good morning and viva Lambert and he must look, there’s some coffee on the table for him, he can’t say his uncle doesn’t have his best interests at heart.
Pop picks up Lambert’s boxer shorts in front of the cabinet. Here, he says, put on some decent clothes. Pop picks up things lying around and then lets go of them again. He picks up the fallen-over chairs. Their chairs. Hers still looks okay, but Pop’s chair looks like someone broke its back. Its one arm is loose. Pop pushes the little peg under the arm-rest back into its hole. Poor old chair!
Now Lambert’s got his shorts on, but he can’t get his balance. Her too, she also feels paralysed.
She must come and sit, says Treppie. He pulls up her chair. He even makes as if he’s dusting off the cushions, just for her. Full of tricks. Never before has Treppie pulled up a chair for her. She’ll only sit when and if she herself decides to. She’ll first stand here for a bit, although that tarantula made her legs feel like jelly. Now Lambert’s drinking his coffee. He goes ‘shlurrrp!’ as he drinks. Now she’ll sit. But just on the edge.
‘We thought we’d leave straight away last night, so you could have some privacy,’ Pop says, trying to soft-soap Lambert, but Lambert just says ‘Uh!’ like an ape.
Let her look at this hair again. Lots of curls that jump back quickly when you pull them out and then let go again. What’s this sticky stuff here? Sis!
Now Toby’s on the bed too, lock, stock and barrel. He wants to say, hullo, Lambert, but all he gets is a kick. He’s sniffing in the wrong place. Come, Toby, come sit here with your missus.
Lambert holds his head. He wipes the drops off his face, then he holds his head again.
She must go look in the kitchen dresser, Pop says. There’s some Panado there. And while she’s in the house she can bring a towel so Lambert can dry himself off.
Maybe Pop wants to talk to Lambert on his own. He tells Treppie to take Molletjie and go and buy a Coke at Ponta do Sol. Lambert’s Cokes are finished. But Treppie doesn’t want to. He wants to be here so he can hear the father-to-son talk. Her too, she also wants to hear it. She stands behind the door and peeps through the chink. But Pop says nothing. He says if Treppie’s got something to say, then he must say it now. All he wants to say is that he’s here to support Lambert.
Lambert needs more than fucken support, Treppie says. All the Panados in the world won’t take Lambert’s headache away. And all the Cokes under the sun won’t change the facts. And he, Treppie, thinks that what Lambert needs after a night like last night is a beer. He’s sure he can find a beer in one of these two fridges.
Facts, yes, she also wants to hear about those facts, but all she hears is ‘eeny-meeny-miny-mo’. It’s Treppie. She stretches her neck. He’s standing in front of the fridges, pointing to each one in turn as he says his rhyme to determine which one to open. It’s the Fuchs, the one that’s been burnt black all down the sides.
‘Lambert,’ he says. ‘This thing’s leaking again, isn’t it?’
Treppie tries to open the fridge. She can’t see him, but she can hear him pushing and pulling the fridge. Then there’s a ‘boom!’ Treppie almost falls right on to his backside. He’s pulled the door clean out of the fridge. Its rubbers hang down from the sides, burnt to cinders. ‘Kaboof,’ goes the door as Treppie throws it on to the floor. Now he must be looking into the open fridge ’cause he’s brushing soot and stuff from his face.
‘Jesus,’ says Treppie. ‘I thought I knew what a burn-out looked like, but this looks more like the eye of Etna!’
Who’s poor old Etna now? And why’s her eye burnt out? It doesn’t sound like a fact, it sounds more like a fairytale to her.
Did he stick his immersion heater into the Fuchs or something, Treppie asks Lambert. Or his dipstick? In that case he must have been overheating something terrible – no decency, as usual.
‘Or,’ says Treppie, ‘maybe it couldn’t take a service. Probably too old for servicing. And to think of all those leaks we had to weld! But some things are simply beyond redemption. Those kind of things just fuck out, anyway. Boom! But, well, we did our best, didn’t we, Lambert? And this kind of mistake happens in the best of families. Or what am I saying, hey, Pop?’
Let her go fetch the Panado. All this talking is just a lot of rubbish. She wants it to be tomorrow so they can go vote and get it over and done with. And if the house has to get painted, then let it get painted and be finished. Maybe they’ll all feel better and a bit stronger then. Hope springs eternal, Treppie always says, and as far as she can see, she’s the only one with any hope left, although she’s not sure she wants to put much hope on a white house. It’s really just the roof that matters. The rest is the rest. She almost feels like this year should start all over again. It’s been one long struggle to get everything fixed and ready. First this, then that, then the other thing. And for what? Sweet blow all! And there was nearly another disaster to top it all ’cause right at the last minute they went and shifted the election date all over the place as though it was a Shoprite trolley. First to the one side, then the other, and then the far side as well. Now there are no fewer than three days for the voting. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. And all of a sudden tomorrow’s a holiday, too. Wonder Wall sent them a letter saying they don’t work on holidays, so Treppie phoned them up – she was with him, at the Westdene public phone – and told them they must understand, nicely now, that this was an ad-hoc holiday, and a contract was a contract. They must watch their step, otherwise he’d take them to the small claims court. So they said, no, fine, sorry, they’d come.
Let her first go and see if it’s safe in the den. She can see neither Treppie nor Lambert. Just Pop, looking down at the floor. He’s puffing out clouds of smoke.
Now Treppie appears in the gap between the door and the frame. He’s taken a beer out of the Fuchs. Why does that beer can look like it’s got a bulge on one side? Treppie takes the beer to Lambert, going round the other side of the bed. ‘Down a Lion!’ is all she hears.
Right. If Lambert’s drinking beer, then he must be feeling better. She pushes open the door.
‘Watch out, Mol!’ It’s Pop. Now what? Why must she watch out all of a sudden? ‘Ka-pssshhhht!’ Treppie’s spraying Lambert full in the face with the beer, a long white jet, and she’s getting some of it too.
‘Oh, sis, God in heaven!’
Her front is full of foam and little white crumbs.
Lambert looks like he wants to murder Treppie, but he half falls over instead. That’s also why Treppie keeps standing there – he knows Lambert’s useless. Chuck that towel this side, he motions to her. Sis, now she smells of beer.
So sorry, Treppie says, passing Lambert the towel. Here, wipe off your face.
Ja, always so sorry, this Treppie. And what about her housecoat? Lambert sits up on the bed with his face in the towel. He doesn’t wipe off anything. He just sits there. But she can see his cheeks, they’re bulging, just like that beer can. Let her quickly put these Panados down where he can reach them, before he explodes like that beer. Once was enough, thank you.
Pop gets up. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘Let’s leave Lambert for a while so he can wake up in peace.’
‘Ag never! He’s as strong as a horse, man.’
Treppie makes rude movements to show how strong Lambert is.
‘And horses like him usually have wonderful horsey-stories to tell, especially when they’ve had a birthday as good as old Lambert here’s just had.’
Pop must look, and she must look, Treppie says, Lambert’s having a big birthday, it’s a birthday for Africa. They must sit, here’s a chair, and here’s another, and there’s even a crate for him, ’cause now they’re going to visit nicely here with Lambert in his den, on his birthday.
She doesn’t visit where there’s vomit, she wants to say, but she says nothing. She can see he’s the one who wants to tell all the stories, not Lambert, even though he’s on a crate and not a pulpit. And when Treppie wants to tell stories, then you’d better just sit and listen, otherwise you don’t hear the end of it, especially when it’s a bullshit-story. Just listen how he’s lying to Lambert now about how the girl they found for him wasn’t just first choice. About how she was such a livewire, you could just see it immediately there in the showcase at Cleopatra’s Creole Queens. That’s what makes Treppie’s bullshit-stories so terrible. They’re not outright lies, they’re semi-lies he builds on to. And it’s not like he first tells the truth and then adds on at the end. He lies all the way through the story, as far as he goes, and after a while you don’t know what’s what any more. Now he’s saying she was a livewire in a showcase, a dynamo and a back-kicker and a high-powered escort and a Voortrekker of a woman – with enough volts to set Lambert’s compass permanently due north.
And all Pop said about her was that she was a livewire on a street corner. Period.
So what was the truth about her, then?
Cinderella, says Treppie. A Cinderella who wanted to cross the Drakensberg mountains on bare feet, together with Prince Lambertus the Third. And does Lambert perhaps know where her other shoe is? Or maybe they can find this one’s heel and give it back to her tonight. Once she’s had a chance to catch her breath, that is.
See? How does Treppie know she’s out of breath? She can see that’s what Lambert’s thinking, too. He takes the towel away from his face to ask Treppie how, but Treppie’s looking up at the ceiling as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen it. He blows smoke rings and looks up through the rings.
‘Look, Pop, look, Mol, look, Toby, see how the stars shine in the firmament,’ Treppie says.
All she sees are blobs. Pale blobs. Some are pale green and others are pale red.
‘I can’t see that far, Mol!’
‘Ja, old dog,’ says Treppie. ‘It’s a pity they sit so high, hey, all the Great Dippers, fish dip, avo dip, garlic dip!’
Toby licks his lips. He looks at Treppie and then at the blobs, up and down, up and down.
‘Also curious, hey, even if you’re just a dog,’ Treppie says. ‘You’d also like to know how the young master created that universe, hey? Maybe she said to him the sky’s the limit and started throwing the fish around. And then maybe he asked her whether she fancied a pie in that sky and threw up the garlic and avo on high!’
‘Hee-hee.’ Quite funny.
She can see Pop’s also got a smile on his face now.
Toby too. ‘Tiffa-tiffa-tiffa’ goes his tail against Treppie’s crate. His red tongue hangs from his open mouth.
‘Garlic yourself!’ is all Lambert says. He’s drinking down the Panados with rose-water. Sis, he just chucks that rose on to the floor and then he empties the whole bottle, ‘ghloob-ghloob-ghloob’.
‘Hell, but you’re thirsty, hey?’
Oh shit! Duck! Here it comes, but it’s not coming at her, it’s sailing towards Treppie, not straight but in a slow arc. Treppie’s got lots of time to duck. He ducks in slow motion and then watches the bottle as it falls. He whistles, ‘pheeeeeeww!’ like a slow-motion bomb. ‘Boof!’ it goes against against the wall. Treppie wipes off his shoulders with finicky little fingers, like he’s flicking off little flakes of dust.
‘This Mary, could she at least duck?’ he asks Lambert.
Pop points his finger at Treppie. He must go easy, now. No, Treppie signals back at Pop, it’s okay, he just wants to get Lambert going again, just like she, Mol, said he must.
Poor Lambert. He really looks like he’s had it. But she says nothing. If he has to suffer, then so be it. Just look at the house! And she’s the one who’ll have to do most of the cleaning up, as usual, even with three men in the house, or maybe one should say two, ’cause Pop can’t do anything any more. She’s got to cut the grass and she’s got to wash the car. And when Lambert goes wild, she has to pick up the pieces.
Like Treppie’s saying now, it looks like they were doing a bit of kickboxing here in the den, fridge-kicking and chair-kicking. He says it depends on your taste, but some people get turned on by the strangest things – Chippendales, crinkle cuts, fruit salad, fridges, frescoes, kick-boxing, you name it.
She pushes Pop. ‘Frisco, not fresco, Frisco. Tell him.’
‘No, Mol,’ Treppie says, ‘fresco, it’s not instant coffee, it’s paintings that they do on wet cement, on the walls of churches, about the so-called beginning and the so-called end.’
She catches Pop’s eye. Here we go again.
‘Pay attention, Mol, otherwise you won’t ever learn anything. You remember that story about the sixth day, when God felt a little lonely up there among his carp and his cactuses and things, and he made people so they could keep him company?’
No, she doesn’t remember God feeling like that. He’s God, after all. He always feels good.
‘Always is a very long time, Mol. And don’t forget, even God has a problem ’cause it’s the devil who finds work for the hands of the bored.’
‘The hands of the idle, Treppie, not boredom, idleness.’ It’s Pop. He must be so tired of correcting Treppie. He’s been doing it all his life.
‘Same thing,’ says Treppie. ‘Now watch nicely.’
What’s he doing now? He’s shaking and jerking Lambert’s mattress.
‘Hey, Lambert, you want to see some fireworks, my man? You can’t sleep now, life’s too short, too valuable!’
Treppie holds his two forefingers together, the one pointing and the other limp.
‘And so the Great Idler, sitting around during his Sunday rest, schemes up a little ploy to amuse himself. Suddenly he’s the Great Electrician in the sky. Bzzzt! He jump-starts little Adam right out of the earth!’
Open, closed, open, closed, the limp hand responds to the charging finger. Then suddenly he meshes the fingers of both hands so hard that the joints crack.
Pop just shakes his head here next to her.
‘Founding the nation!’ says Treppie. ‘Refreshment station. Off you go, now you can paint him on your wall, your Adam. Fit for small talk till the end of his days, dust to dust, tall stories, world without end!’
No, hell, man, now she doesn’t understand so well here. Pop looks like he understands some of it but not everything. He tells Treppie God will punish him but he doesn’t say what for.
Treppie pretends he doesn’t hear a thing Pop says.
‘I wouldn’t like to guess what he’s feeling now,’ Treppie says.
Who’s feeling what now? Adam?
‘Never mind, Mol,’ says Treppie. ‘Feeling is feeling. Whether it’s the Creator or Adam’s sister’s wife or the painter or the poet’s distant hellbent family it cuts no ice, ’cause it all started at the same point and it all boils down to the same beginning in the end – the smoke that thunders!’
What’s Treppie on about now? Pop just sits and smokes here next to her. He’s dead-quiet.
‘Waterfall,’ says Pop.
‘That’s it! Ai, Pop, I’m so glad there’s at least one person who understands me here today. We are the waterfall, hey, and if a person looks carefully you’ll see it’s a never-ending story of evaporation and condensation. Liquids, gases and solids, an automatic cycle and a closed circuit. Perpetual motion!’
‘Well, I think I’m going now,’ says Pop. Yes, her too, if Treppie wants to sit here and tell stories to prolong the agony then he can do so on his own. Life must go on and you dare not slow down if you don’t want to be left on the shelf. That’s what Old Mol always used to say. Shame, Old Mol had such high hopes for her. She said men would be men and in the end it was the women who took most of the strain, no matter what the men said, and never mind if they did have the whiphand, pretending they were experts on everything. That’s what Old Mol always used to say when Old Pop started drinking and talking politics at night while she had to sit there and stitch the shirts, patch their clothes, cook the food and pack Old Pop’s lunch-tin, all at the same time. At nights, long after they went to bed, she would hear Old Mol say, from behind that sheet: ‘Oh hunted hart with trembling haunches who from the huntsman did escape.’
Shame, Old Mol would turn in her grave if she had to see how things were going with her now – not on the shelf but underneath it. And that’s where she’s remained, even though she kept on trying. As for the hunt, she’s never gotten away.
Just listen to Treppie now. No, he says, they mustn’t go, it’s still going to get jolly here in this den of iniquity today. Lambert’s going to tell them a story or two. They must just give him a chance. It will be a story, he says, to comfort and to edify them and to make them long for the days of their unprofaned youth.
Unprofaned.
Ai! God help us!
Look how Lambert’s sitting there and looking at them, his head moving left-right, left-right. He supports himself against the pillows, arms on either side. She can see he doesn’t know which way to go ’cause the whole lounge is inside his den now, chairs and all. Everyone’s got him in their sights. And she can see he hasn’t even got a plan, never mind a story. He can’t even focus properly. And now Treppie’s on to him like a swarm of mosquitoes. Bite here, sting there. Won’t let go until he’s finished, she can see that. Treppie’s smelt blood and, if you ask her, he smelt it back there on the koppie already. Now he’s followed it all the way here to the den. He looks like he knows the death blow is close, but whose death it is, she doesn’t know.
‘She was nice,’ says Lambert. ‘A nice piece.’
‘Aha!’ says Treppie. ‘At last. Pop, come, come sit up nice and straight now, here comes Lambert’s story, at last. Right, you old tomcat, you, everything from the beginning, hey!’
‘We talked. We talked a lot!’ Lambert doesn’t sound like he’s so sure of his case.
‘Ja-a-a-a,’ says Treppie.
‘That was just the beginning, the talking.’
Treppie’s waiting to hear if there’s any more. But there isn’t. Lambert slumps on to the cushions. He looks sick.
‘Shot!’ says Treppie. ‘Glad to hear it. You hear that, Pop? And remember we agreed that if we brought Lambert a girl she’d have to be a talker, a real companion, one made from the rib. A girl who can guess the word that’s on the tip of your tongue. Ja, someone who can pick up your broadcasting, wireless, or who you can wire into if you need to get totally enmeshed!’
Cochrane’s wire.
‘Pof!’ Treppie slaps Pop on the back. ‘Come on, Pop, don’t you want to know what the kids were talking about all night long?’
‘What were you talking about?’ Pop asks. She can see Pop’s only saying it ’cause Treppie’s pushing him. And Pop can’t push back.
‘What about what?’ Lambert doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. He looks at her, as if she should know, but how’s she supposed to know?
‘The topic, Lambert. What you talked about, you know, the subject of your discourse!’
‘Well, um,’ says Lambert. He tries to straighten himself against the wall. It looks funny. It looks like his head’s in the postbox and Van Riebeeck’s talking into his one ear with Klipdrift, while Harry’s talking into the other with Coke.
‘And, um, she asked what I thought would happen on the twenty-seventh.’
‘I say! And then?’
‘Then I asked her, why?’
Treppie nudges her. And he nudges Pop.
‘Hey, you two, bladdy good question that, don’t you think? Why indeed?’
Treppie leans forward on his crate. He wants to hear some more.
‘And then?’ he asks Lambert.
Lambert rubs his eyes as though he’s got dust in them. Must be those little white crumbs from the burnt-out beer.
‘Then she said how can I ask why, it’s a turning-point in our history!’ Lambert’s face looks funny. It looks like he first has to think who said what.
Treppie cups his hand behind his ear, as if to say, come again?
All you hear is ‘tiffa-tiffa-tiffa’ as Toby scratches his ribs. Lambert looks at Toby like Toby must please tell him what to say next. No, hell, let her light a cigarette here. This isn’t funny. And Lambert mustn’t start picking on her now, either. She’s not a dog. Why’s he looking at her like that? She hasn’t done anything.
‘Close your legs, Ma,’ he says. ‘And wipe that stupid grin off your face. Now!’
As she says, she never escapes.
‘Yes, Mol, wipe that grin off your face. There’s nothing to grin about.’ It’s Treppie.
What her legs and her grin have got to do with the price of eggs, she doesn’t know. She looks at Pop but Pop doesn’t look back. He just takes her hand and then lets go of it again. That means she must accept her lot. She knows this from the way he takes her hand. Sometimes it means ‘never mind, it’ll pass’, and other times it means ‘don’t worry, it’s not your fault’. But this time she must accept her lot. Heavens above!
‘Turning-point. How come?’ It’s Treppie. He’s trying to get Lambert back on track now, ’cause Lambert’s clearly lost it again.
‘Then I told her, that may be the case, turning-point and everything, but it’s fuck-all compared to the way I can turn on a point. I’m the turning-point of Triumph, I told her, just watch how nicely I can turn! Corkscrew!’
Corkscrew. What’s so funny about that now? But Lambert thinks it’s very funny. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ he laughs at his own joke. Treppie laughs with him. ‘Hee-hee-hee-ha-ha-ha!’ Treppie shows with his hands how Lambert turns on a point. ‘On a pin,’ he says, ‘neat as a pin in Triomf!’
‘And then she wanted to dance as well.’
As well. Hmph! Lambert’s telling lies here, she can see it on his face. He thinks he can lie to Treppie. Treppie looks like he can see the dancing before his very eyes. He’s putting on a helluva big show again.
‘Classy girl, hey, and then you two rock’n’rolled until the legs fell off these chairs, hey?’
Treppie’s up in a flash. He sings:
‘When I was a little bitty baby
My mamma would rock me in the cradle’
Out comes his foot now. He pretends he’s dancing, but he’s not dancing, he’s kicking. He kicks the bed’s leg, ‘crack!’ It sags slowly on to its one side.
‘Whoof!’ says Toby.
‘Oh, shit, sorry, old Lambert. Just a little accident,’ he says. Just look how sorry he looks.
First he sprayed beer and now he’s kicked the bed, but it’s all just a little accident. As if there isn’t enough of a mess in this place already.
Lambert mustn’t worry, says Treppie, if he just gets off the bed for a second he’ll shift a crate underneath. Then everything will be fine again. There, see? No problem at all. And if it wasn’t rock’n’roll, then what kind of dance was it?
‘It was a slow dance,’ says Lambert. Mol can see he’s holding himself back. She saw how long it took him to weld that leg back on to the bed. He doesn’t sit down again. He props himself up against the wall.
‘It was a shuffle,’ he says. ‘On Highveld Stereo.’
That’s just what Treppie wants to hear, ’cause now he’s standing at the ready with the radio that he just picked up from the floor. The radio’s in its glory. Its insides are hanging out on the one side.
‘I see,’ he says. ‘Cheerio, Highveld Stereo!’ he says, throwing the radio down on to the floor with a ‘crack!’ and then kicking it under the bed. Toby thinks it’s for him to go fetch. All you see is his tail wagging as he dives under the bed, chasing after the radio.
Does Lambert remember what song it was? Treppie wants to know. The song they were shuffling to.
No, says Lambert, he can’t remember so clearly now, but it was a Jim Reeves song. A Golden Oldie. Oh yes, she can see a thing coming now, now Treppie’s head’s working like a clock.
‘Soft guava!’ he shouts. Doesn’t she and Pop also think this calls for a demonstration? There he goes again. No stopping him. Pop sinks deeper into his chair here next to her.
‘Mary, marry me,’ Treppie sings. He makes his voice deep and smooth, like Jim Reeves. Too many voices in there for one voice box, she always says.
Now Lambert is moving. He unsticks himself from the wall, bends down and grabs that broken leg, swinging it at Treppie.
‘How do you know it was that song? You fucken bastard! How do you know? Did you fucken stand outside and listen?’
Treppie stumbles backwards over the newspapers. ‘Hold it, hold it!’ he says. It’s all just a coincidence. They all heard the song on the car radio, and if Lambert really wants to know, he should ask his mother, she’s the one who wanted to listen to the radio. She wanted to be with him in spirit, she said, and there was nothing like love songs, she said, to transport her spirit.
‘She said!’ Sis, Treppie! It’s not her who’s been looking for trouble here. Why’s he doing this to her now?
‘Not so, Mol?’ Treppie asks. Now he stands there looking all innocent. But he doesn’t really want her to say if it’s true or not. He wants to sing. He’s holding that little heel-less shoe tightly, with both hands, in front of his heart, and he puts on a face of love and yearning. He sways on his feet, like a little tree in the wind.
‘I hear the sound
Of bugles blown.
Far away, far away.
‘Tate-raaaa-tate-raaa!’ he blows on his trumpet inbetween the singing.
‘Lambert,’ Treppie calls between his singing. ‘Come show us quickly how you shuffled, man, or we’ll start thinking you’re telling lies again!’
‘I’m not lying!’ Lambert shouts. ‘We danced the whole fucken place to a standstill, man!’
Well, then there’s no need to be so modest, says Treppie, then he must come here and show them. God, what now? Now Treppie’s got Lambert round the neck and he’s making rude movements. He’s pushing his hips between Lambert’s legs.
‘Where’s the guava, where’s the guava? Oh shit! No guava and no cucumber either!’
Sis, Treppie, sis!
Toby jumps up against them. This looks like a nice game. If she’d been a dog she’d have thought so too. But she isn’t a dog.
Lambert shoves Treppie so hard that he almost lands with his backside in the fridge.
‘My goodness, Lambert, are you trying to send me to the cooler, old boy?’ says Treppie, as if honey’s dripping from his tongue, but he’s up on his feet again, ready for more. If only Pop would do something.
Well, says Treppie, if he’s not good enough, then Lambert must try his mother. ‘Nothing like a mother’s touch!’ he says. Treppie plucks her clean out of her chair. Now he’s putting that wig on her head! Here she stands, and no one’s even helping her! Pop just looks at her with those dead eyes of his.
‘Woman, behold thy son,’ Treppie shouts.
He shoves Lambert right into her. She feels Lambert’s arms going around her. He squeezes her so hard her voice goes ‘eep!’
‘La-la-la-eep!’ Treppie sings.
‘Shuddup! Shuddup!’ Lambert shouts.
Lambert’s pushing her across the floor like a wheelbarrow. Newspaper and glass under her feet. Lambert’s barefoot. Doesn’t he feel anything?
‘Shuffle, Ma, shuffle!’ Lambert shouts.
Pop’s holding his head in his hands.
Toby barks.
Treppie sings his song.
‘Just you shuddup!’ Lambert shouts at Treppie. He’ll sing his own song, he says, and she must keep her feet together, she must keep them flat on the ground so he can demonstrate, Lambert shouts. From the one side of the room all the way to the other side. All you hear are feet. Now Lambert starts singing.
‘Rock me gently
Rock me slow’
he sings, but his voice is low and tuneless. She can feel his voice trembling against her body.
‘Yippeee!’ shouts Treppie. He claps his hands and whistles. ‘Just check, Pop, just check how our old sis here can still soft-guava with this boy-child of ours. A person would swear they’re sweethearts. Our own sleep-in Cleopatra, queen of the hive. We needn’t have spent so much money at all ’cause what more does a person want now, hey?
‘Take it easy, don’t you know
That I have never been
Loved like this before.’
She squirms but Lambert’s holding her so tight she can’t even breathe. He shuffles her right up to her chair and then shoves her so hard she sits down with a ‘hic’.
‘Ai, ai, ai,’ says Pop. His eyes are wet.
‘So, are you lot satisfied now?’ Lambert asks. ‘I shuffled that darky until she couldn’t any more, ’cause that’s what she wanted. After a while she didn’t even know where she was.’
Darky? Why’s he calling her a darky now? Does Pop know?
‘Ja, Ma,’ says Lambert. ‘He knows, him and Treppie. They think they can bring me a Coloured floozy for my birthday.’
‘And then he kissed her!’ Treppie sings.
‘Fuck you, you motherfucking bastard!’ says Lambert to Treppie.
She’d better make herself scarce here.
‘There’s your mother, son, fuck her!’ Treppie points to her.
‘What do you say, brother?’ he asks Pop. ‘There’s a mother and there’s a son, even if the fathers were poorly shuffled.’
Treppie shakes Pop by the shoulder. Pop sits with his head hanging down.
So, has this been Treppie’s plan all along? Does he want to go and bugger up the whole perspective now? After all that practising? He’s still not ‘immune’. All for nothing!
Suddenly Treppie looks like he’s a video on fast-forward. He ducks to one side and quickly picks up something from the floor. It’s the little packet with the cowboy on top. He shakes it under Lambert’s nose.
They must just check, he says. Lambert took her with his bare hands. ‘Boom, boom,’ he shouts, pretending to shoot into the air.
‘As long as Lambertussie can shoot his load, hooray for the scent of a kill!’
Treppie quickly bends over again and picks up something on the other side. What’s that, now? Christ! A gun! It goes ‘pof!’ as Treppie throws it down on to the bed. It’s pitch black, with a curved handle. Where did that come from?
‘Oh, trusted steed, don’t fail me in my greatest need!’
Please, Pop, help! But Pop’s already seen it. Where’s the head that belongs to the hair? There’s a corpse here in the den! Lambert stuffed a corpse! No, God help us, was there really a murder here last night? While they were sitting so blissfully there on the koppie?
‘Grandpa rode a porker!’ shouts Treppie. ‘And then he went and pumped his floozy into her triumph and glory!’
Ja, Treppie, now all hell is loose, just like you wanted. She looks at him standing there and rubbing his hands, like he’s making a fire with sticks. The fire’s nice and wild now. Now things are going to start flying.
Just as she thought. Lambert grabs a long piece of iron from under his bed and swings it like a golf club, but he doesn’t hit a ball, he hits an empty GTX tin.
‘Hole in one!’ shouts Treppie as he catches the tin in mid-air. Softly, softly Treppie puts the tin back on the ground. He gives it a little tap on the lid, as if to tell it to sit there nicely now, ’cause there’s a lot of hustling going on and they must all sit dead still. That’s also the way she’s sitting, here in her corner. Dead still.
Doesn’t Lambert want a cigarette? Treppie asks.
Lambert doesn’t hear.
‘She brought her own fucken FL’s!’ he roars.
No, that’s fine, says Treppie, he was just teasing. You’re forty only once in your life, and it’s fine to have the night of your life with someone, just once in a lifetime.
Treppie’s breathing fast. It looks like his sentences are coming too quickly.
‘And then you took her for a proper spin, didn’t you, old boy? I see you parked Flossie in front, so she’s ready for us when we take back your girl’s wig and her shoe, later tonight.’
Lambert says nothing. He’s still holding on to his golf club. Treppie’s smoking hard.
‘And did Flossie at least behave herself, Lambert? She’s not really used to, er, joy-rides, you know!’
Lambert throws down the piece of iron. He turns around. All you see is his fat back. His lifts up his head and looks at his paintings, like he wants to start praying or something.
But here comes Treppie, the mosquito-man.
‘Er, tell us a little, old boy, was the joy-ride before or after?’
He doesn’t say what came inbetween, but she can imagine.
‘I mean, did you take her home, old boy? Did you put her back nicely in her show-case, like the little doll that she is, end of story? Hey, Lambert? Tell us, man, or where did you go driving around?’
Lambert’s in a corner now, she can see. They all know he’s not allowed to drive, ’cause of the fits, and he hasn’t got a licence. They’d catch him very quickly among the grand cars in that crock of his without its shell.
Treppie acts like he knows what Lambert’s busy thinking, and that those thoughts are very impressive. Very quick on the ball. He does it with all of them. He gives them ‘perspectives’ and things so-called to save their backsides, but then he cancels them again, laughing at the lot of them for even falling for any of it in the first place.
‘Aha, you naughty boy!’ says Treppie. ‘So then you took your girl for a ride around the block for a smoke break, ’cause that barrel of yours was hot, hey! Martha, Toby, Gerty, and then, when you’d finished the holy trinity, you came back for more, right?’
Wink, wink at Lambert, wink at her, wink at Pop.
Lambert tries to wink back, but his eyes are too wide open. All he does is shut them.
‘Yes, first we went and patrolled around Triomf a bit, but then she wanted to see my paintings again. She said she’s seen lots of paintings in her life, but not, um, as you say, frescoes like these.’
She must remember to go look inside that Frisco coffee tin in the kitchen. Doesn’t taste like paint to her, but then again her sense of taste isn’t so good any more. The other day she poured Vim scrubbing powder over the eggs and everyone except her tasted the difference. Treppie asked her if she was playing Daisy de Melker. He wouldn’t hold it against her, he said, but she’d have to increase the dosage. Then, luckily, she found the salt under the sink. No need to swing by the neck for nothing.
‘Where did you get that thing?’
It’s Pop who’s suddenly talking now, here next to her. He sounds like he’s trying to scold Lambert, with his last breath.
He points to the gun on the bed. Look how his hand’s shaking! Let her take his hand and put it back on his lap. It makes her feel eerie, hands shaking like that.
‘I bought it from a kaffir at the dumps for fifty rand. Pop. It’s for our protection, for when the shit hits the fan.’
Pop looks at Treppie as if to say, look where all your talking’s got us now! But Treppie pretends he doesn’t see Pop.
‘Yes and no,’ says Treppie. ‘It’s for the shit when the shit hits the fan, but it’s actually for shooting the fan when the fan doesn’t work.’ He sticks his index finger in his mouth and pretends he’s pulling a trigger. ‘Boom!’
‘Give it here!’ It’s Pop again, with that shaking hand of his.
‘Not a damn will I give it to you,’ says Lambert. ‘It’s my gun and only I can touch it!’
‘Give it to Pop, he just wants to look at it. It’s true, isn’t it, Pop, you just want to look, don’t you?’
She wishes Pop would say ‘just want to look’, but he says nothing. He keeps that trembling hand of his held out. It’s shaking all the way up to where the arm connects with the body.
‘Not a fuck am I going to give you my gun, Pop!’ says Lambert. ‘The AWB has already recruited me to help shoot when the, um, when the …’
‘When the what?’ asks Treppie. He looks like he’s conducting exams again.
‘When the fan breaks. Fuck!’ Lambert looks like he wants to cry. Treppie claps his hands. Now, he says, Lambert has demonstrated an insight into a particular mentality. And Pop must leave him alone, too. One thing at a time. Treppie says, he first wants to test that insight a little.
Whoosh! Treppie grabs the gun out of Lambert’s hand.
He walks up and down with his hand under his chin. He pretends he’s thinking so hard that he’s kicking little stones, but he’s actually kicking tins and newspapers and the insides of radios. Then, suddenly, he gets a brainwave. He goes ‘snap!’ with his fingers in the air.
Jeez, he says, he hadn’t thought of it before, but maybe Lambert will land up on Robben Island. He mustn’t worry, though, they’ll send him polony so he won’t have to eat that watery porridge they give people there. And then, he says, Lambert can write a nice letter to Mandela, asking him if he can paint on the walls, but he’ll have to promise nothing but the New South Africa – just doves and AKs, doves and AKs, from the Cape right up to the North, on top.
Should she go make some tea? she wonders, to bring some relief here.
‘Detention without trial!’ says Treppie. ‘Article Twenty-nine! Mind you, there’s a new rumour doing the rounds. Want to hear?’
Yes, they want to hear, Pop nods.
‘They say Robben Island’s not going to be a prison any more in the New South Africa. It’s going to be a museum. But that makes no difference. They’ll still need Lambert there. He’ll be indispensable. Behind glass. Instead of Bushmen and Hottentots. Then he’ll be able to demonstrate nicely, hey?’
‘Give back my fucken gun!’
‘Aren’t you tired of your own voice yet, Treppie?’ asks Pop. ‘Don’t you think you’ve showed off enough for one day?’
‘Yes, ask the fucker, ask him!’ says Lambert. He lunges for his gun, but it’s not necessary. Treppie gives it to him nice and neatly, with the grip facing forward. Lambert puts the gun under his pillow. Then he sits down on top of the pillow, on top of the gun.
No, Pop needn’t worry, says Treppie. Everything’s okay. He’s finished playing games. Now he’s coming to the serious business.
What serious business? In that case, she’d rather play games.
‘You want to know what it is, hey, Mol?’ Treppie says.
Treppie can see right into her head, that’s for sure. Never mind, he says, she must strap on her life-jacket, so long, and Pop must throw the goat overboard and then comb the horizon, ’cause this leaky boat of theirs is heading for the rocks, fast.
She sees Pop looking at Treppie and wondering, what now? She also wonders, but Treppie’s on the move again.
‘Now, where were we?’ he asks Lambert.
‘Oh, yes, you came back from Triumph by night and you looked at all the paintings, from Genesis right through to Revelation. But wasn’t your time up by then, Lambert? Hell, man, we had to drive a hard bargain for that slut, my man. And in the end she wanted two hundred rand just for one hour. Look, you have to realise, she wasn’t exactly on a special offer, unless she was on top of you, old boy.’
‘She didn’t say anything about time,’ Lambert mumbles. He doesn’t look Treppie in the eye. He’s looking at the wall.
‘She visited nicely here with me, and I’d watch out if I were you, ’cause she said she’s coming again next week. I told her she’s welcome, we’ve got plans for when the shit starts flying.’
Treppie holds up his hand. What did Lambert say, there?
‘For when the shit starts flying, Treppie, and you can take that stupid joke of yours about the broken fan and shove it right up your arse!’
‘In it goes!’ says Treppie, pretending to stick something up.
‘I hope it does something for my constipation. Then at least there’ll be one thing left in working condition in Triomf after the election, even if it’s only a working stomach!’
‘Shuddup, you!’ Lambert shouts at Treppie. Now he’s talking to her and Pop. It sounds like he’s begging.
‘There’s no more apartheid, so she could easily come with us and everything. I told her we don’t mind smart Coloureds like her.’
‘Try for white, I see!’ says Treppie. ‘And then I suppose she went and powdered her nose?’
Now he makes as if he’s in the bathroom, pretending to powder his nose.
‘Mary, Mary on the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?’
he asks a make-believe mirror here in front of him.
‘And then she saw, oh Lord, but I’m not a blonde mermaid on the roof-rack of a Volkswagen. And then that mirror cracked into little pieces, all over the bath!’
Or can Lambert tell them how the mirror got into the bath? Did they do it on top of the mirror, inside the bath, under the water? Hell, that takes his mind very far back, he says. Can she, Mol, still remember those naughty days?
No, Treppie. She shakes her head. He must really stop now.
‘Well,’ Treppie says to Lambert, ‘maybe I’m the only one, but I remember well, your mother was still very young, and she used to take her older brother in hand too, in the bath. Those days her little brother was still very small, smaller than her, but when his sister got tired, then kid brother just had to take over. And you wouldn’t say it today about your mother’s older brother, would you, but in his young days he just couldn’t get enough. There was no satisfying him!’
She can feel Pop looking at her, but she’d rather not look back right now. She looks at Lambert. Thank God in heaven, it doesn’t look like he’s clicking. He just looks upset. Thank God he’s got other things eating him today – a broken shoe and a headful of hair. A hangover on top of a night that went soft on him. He won’t be making any missing connections today.
‘Ag, you’re just talking shit, Treppie. Just shuddup!’ he says.
‘Yes, Lambert, he’s just talking shit!’ Her voice comes out louder than she means it to.
‘Now listen to me carefully, both of you. It’s not a shit-story, it’s the story about how everything began. And if there’s one thing about a good story it’s that it has to have a beginning. The second thing that makes a story good is that it must be true. Now this story is a true story, as true as true can be. And the third thing about a good story is that no one must ever have heard it before. Okay, granted, the only one here who hasn’t heard it is Lambert, but where will you find a better audience than Lambert? Like a lamb to the slaughter. Innocent! Those who don’t know won’t be punished. So it is written. And I, for my part, don’t take punishment for other people. So Lambert must hear the story. He’s grown up now. He can hold his own. We know that. He can fix fridges, he can drive a car, he can shoot, he’s been recruited and he’s just been serviced, so why can’t he know where he comes from? It’s his right, isn’t it? Or what do you two say?’
Treppie looks at them and then he looks at Lambert. Treppie’s face looks like he’s making ordinary conversation on an ordinary day. He takes out his pocket-knife and begins to clean his nails with long, fancy strokes. ‘Grrtt-grrtt!’ goes the knife under his nails. He holds them out for inspection. He’s not happy with them.
He’s talking to Lambert, glancing at him sideways as he scrapes.
‘You’re a person who knows your rights, hey. You must stand up for your rights. That’s what I say. And this right is a basic one. It’s your birthright, and that’s a human right. To know about your, er, origins.’
Treppie stops talking. He holds both hands out in front of him. Now he’s satisfied. ‘Click’ goes the pocket-knife as he closes it again. He puts it back into his pocket.
‘Anyhow,’ he says, ‘everything in good time, right? Where were we now? Oh yes, the mirror in the bath. And what else? The postbox. Just imagine. After all this time, that postbox is still an invariable in this story of ours. You weld it, you paint it, but when you look again, it’s fucked up and it’s lying in a whole new place. But this time, Lambert, the angle of displacement is a little too wide. On the lounge floor! Via the window! A spot of wet peace in the heart of Jo’burg.’
‘Ja, Mol, via, Via Dolorosa. But let me finish questioning Lambert here. Come, Lambert, explain a little now. When you and Mary came back from wherever, you were so, er, hard-up, that you rather went for the postbox instead, hey? But that hole in the front is too small, if you ask me. And its sides, wow man, they’re a bit on the sharp side, not exactly what I’d call, er, nesting material, er, for a pecker, er, I mean, even if it was a Sacred Ibis or, er, a pelican or something like that! But that’s the only way I can figure out how it came flying through the front window. Some or other monster of a pecker. Shot clean off its pole. Maybe it was a freedom dove!’
Lambert’s sitting with his head down. He’s twirling his thumbs around each other. His whole body heaves as he breathes.
‘Now, Lambert, I don’t know how things are on your side of the Speedo, but that postbox, er, saw its arse. And notwithstanding that …’
Why’s he stopped talking now? He looks at her, then he shuts his eyes tight as if she’s about to throw something at him.
‘Notwithstanding,’ she says.
Treppie jerks his head as if something just hit him.
‘Right!’ he says. ‘Now we can carry on. Thank you, Little Miss Echo! And notwithstanding that, the postbox now has a whole new look about it. It’s back on the gate, I put it back, but it’s taken quite a blow. Now it’s a postbox with an attitude. And I’d say it’s rather an artistic attitude, an attitude that holds promise and one that, er, radiates expectation. Now it looks like it’s stretching its neck to look up Martha Street. To see which way Mary’s coming. Oh, dear little Mary with her one shoe!’
Treppie’s got that little shoe in his hands again. He throws it into her lap.
‘Try it on quickly, dear sister, maybe the two of you wear the same size. Wonders never cease!’
Now Treppie’s on fast-forward again. He’s at the Tedelex. Open goes the door. Out comes the little white box.
‘So, my old hotshot,’ he says to Lambert, ‘do you also feel like a piece of birthday cake, old boy? People who swing from pelmets like Tarzan the apeman also need something sweet in their lives, don’t they? Me Tarzan, you Mary, low white, high brown!’
‘Chomp!’ goes Treppie as he bites into the side of the Swiss roll. He passes it on to Lambert in the same way he passed Lambert the gun – with the thick side to the front.
‘Hmmm, hmmm,’ he goes, his cheeks full. Now he’s a monkey, scratching the underside of his armpit with his loose hand.
Lambert’s white in the face. Out, she signals to Pop. When Lambert looks like this, there’s a fit coming. She feels in her housecoat’s pocket. No peg.
Lambert takes the Swiss roll, but he doesn’t eat. He just puts it down on the bed without taking his eyes off Treppie. Jam drips from the one side of the Swiss roll. Toby’s wondering who the Swiss roll belongs to. He puts his front paws on to the bed and takes a bite.
Stupid dog. Sis! Off!
‘Yes, off!’ says Treppie. ‘That’s not your cake.’
Treppie waves at them, as if he’s enjoyed his visit and he’ll come and see them again some time.
‘Well, then, cheers, I’m going now. All’s well that ends well, as they say in the classics, or, further west down the road of suffering, as ye sow, so shall ye reap, even when the harvest is in Martha Street.’
‘Biff!’ he hits Lambert on the back. Thanks for that nice piece of cake. Lambert must eat it now before it gets stale. Lambert says nothing. He’s looking straight in front of him.
But Treppie’s forgotten something. Oh yes, Lambert must please let him know when he’s finished with the sheets. No rush, mind you, Lambert must take his time, ’cause life only begins at forty.
At the door, Treppie turns around one last time. He looks at her and Pop, and then he shows them they must smile. What the hell, it’s all over now.
Toby goes with Treppie.
‘Whoof! Whoof!’ says Toby as Treppie kicks blocks for him all the way down the passage.
Let her also go now. She looks at Pop. Then she looks at the Swiss roll. Two bites. A human bite and a dog bite. On any other day she would’ve taken a bite too, from the clean side, but today she feels sick to her stomach. Any moment the ants will be there too. She points, but Lambert’s not looking. He’s just sits there on his bed. She really hopes he won’t have a fit now, too.
Pop gets up. He looks like he wants to say something. He looks like he wants to say Lambert mustn’t worry, everything will be okay and next year they can try again. But he can’t say it out aloud. She takes him by his sleeve so he can come. He doesn’t want to. Come now, Pop. As they shuffle out, Pop wants to touch Lambert’s shoulder, but Lambert sees Pop’s hand coming. He turns away. She really hopes he’s not going to have a fit now. ’Cause his lips are trembling.
Lambert takes the gun and shoots his list right off the wall.
Items one to ten are hard to shoot, but the further down he goes the easier it gets, ’cause the plaster’s soft from a damp spot in the wall. After every shot big pieces fall out of the wall.
He counts his bullets. He works it out. He’s got three for each of his gallery paintings, and then there’s still one left.
First the wings. One bullet on this side and one bullet on the other side of SUPERBEE. Sorry, SUPERBEE, but I’m going to have to shoot you from close up. He puts on his welding helmet in case the bullets bounce back. Right, straight into the wall and out the other side again. Small holes. Cheap bricks!
Now for the welding torch. He burns SUPERBEE’S wings with the flame till you can’t see any more of him, and also nothing around him, neither his heaven nor his earth.
He keeps the last bullet for his mermaid, but as he points the gun, first at her silver fin, where the paint’s peeling off, and then at her yellow hair, which is too long and too much, he starts shaking so much that he shoots himself instead. A direct shot, right in the head. There’s just a black hole between the two ears in front of Molletjie’s steering wheel.
His head’s zinging from all the shooting. And his tail-end’s jerking hard. Let him put this gun away nicely now. In the steel cabinet. Let him go lie on his bed. Let him sleep.