That was morning and now it is evening. Treppie stands on the little front stoep with a glass in his hand. With his other hand he clutches his shoulder. It’s jerking like mad, as if someone’s throwing a switch on and off inside his body, somewhere near his navel. But the current has nowhere to go, so it slams into his skull and shoots back down into his shoulder. He feels wired, from head to toe. Vibrating, all the way down to his guts. It must be that bite he took from Lambert’s cold Swiss roll this morning. Fucken cardboard roll from Spar. Smeared full of slimy jam, although that might also help a bit. Unfathomable are the ways of digestion. If the Holy Spirit ever descends upon him, he reckons, it will be in the form of gippo guts. Then he’ll be truly blessed. He should actually try going to the toilet now, try to tune it in for a symphony, but this business here in the yard is something he wouldn’t miss for all the money in the world – not even for a turd in the toilet.
It all started this afternoon, when Pop woke up in his chair after sleeping like a dead thing right through all that shooting in the back. He’d hardly opened his eyes when he said, right, now Mol must come, he’d had a ‘visitation’. If there was one last task awaiting him before he was taken up into the house of the Father, it was to teach Mol to drive. Lambert wasn’t allowed to drive, and what would happen if there was suddenly a crisis and Treppie was ‘incapacitated’? he asked. Then Mol would be stranded. Believe it or not, that’s what he said, as if they were all quite happily on their way to paradise in the Drommedaris. And yes, he said, no matter how exhausted he was, the final driving lesson would have to start immediately. He just wanted to check, first, how things were going with Lambert there at the back. They said nothing about the shooting. He and Mol just sat there rolling their eyes at each other as Pop shuffled down the passage towards the den.
After the first shot, Mol had started screaming. She wanted to go to the back to stop Lambert. But he sat her down on her chair and explained to her nicely that she’d just have to leave it now. History had to take its course and none of them could do anything more about it. By the thirteenth shot, when Mol began shivering and shaking, he told her it sounded like Lambert was shooting at a tin in preparation for tomorrow’s election. No need to worry, he said. But he didn’t tell her about the visions he’d been having of the whole of Fort Knox lying in a bloody heap in the backyard.
So, he and Mol were both relieved when Pop came back and said everything was okay. Lambert was still sleeping. He said he couldn’t figure it out, but Lambert’s paintings were full of holes and there were chunks of plaster all over the floor.
The bastard should fuckenwell have shot himself in the head, and the rest of them too, one after the other. Then all of their problems would’ve been solved for good. And then this whole blasted story could have ended in blood and guts and a smoking barrel. The perfect South African family murder. Then everyone would’ve been happy – common rubbish living their common lives, making the rest of the fucken scum feel good about themselves. He can just see the headlines: BLOODBATH IN TRIOMF, THE LAST OF THE POOR WHITES IN OLD SOPHIATOWN, MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. Take your pick. Better than any Western. Then, after their death, they’d maybe even become the flavour of the month with all the fools who think they’re bigger and better than everyone else. Well, no one’s going to get rid of them quite so easily. In any case, he’s far from ready. And what’s more, he won’t just lie down for any old trick. He has his pride, for fuck’s sake. And just let anyone – let alone that wretched Lambert – try to run them down like they’re the Big Five (the fifth being the Klipdrift bottle). For that arsehole he’ll set a booby trap in which the bastard will get stuck for the rest of his goddamn life, right here among them. Under their roof. Then the sod can run up against the walls, trying to escape, north-south-east-west, until kingdom come. Like an ant in a saucer.
And as a consolation prize he’ll see one hell of a performance every now and again. Like Pop in front here, for example. He’s busy putting up candles on a row of Dogmor tins, all along the prefab wall. He told Pop it looked more like a landing strip for a Dogmor-angel than a parking lot for Mol.
This is now going to be a lesson in the dark. ’Cause this afternoon it was party-time in the street again. He’d half hoped they’d forget about the driving lesson. It felt to him like they’d all been in a long nightmare for weeks now, with Lambert’s birthday and everything. Like they can’t wake up, no matter how hard they try, and it’s just night all the time. And now, on top of everything, there’s one bomb after another.
First, this afternoon, he felt the ground rumble under his feet and he thought, this had to be the bomb for Jo’burg-West. Then Mol called him from his room. He must please come, there was a roof-removing machine outside in the street. Poor Mol, all she can worry about is whether they’ll still have a roof over their heads. The fact that it’s been leaking like a fucken sieve for years doesn’t seem to worry her at all. She spent half the past summer walking up and down with pots and pans and things. When they get full, she empties them. Then she puts them down again, over and over, like she’s scared the house will sink if she doesn’t. As if the threat’s coming from below. Anyhow, the thing outside had nothing to do with the roof, it was a helluva show the NP was putting on here in Triomf for the election. That’s what he calls a last-ditch attempt – in a fucken crane, can you believe it! He feels like declaring tomorrow his own personal holiday and fuck the rest. He’s already told them, if only he had the money, he’d fuck off to the Lost City and spend a few days there, they’ve got bed and breakfast on election special over there. Then he could have settled himself comfortably in those artificial little waves and forgotten about everything else. The whole business is working badly on his tits. He has to drink himself almost paralytic every night just to get some sleep.
He rubs his jerking shoulder. He sees Toby looking at the candles on the tins, inspecting them one by one as Pop puts them up. Must think it’s Christmas all over again, the poor dog, like he’s in a time-warp or something. He’s been completely mad recently, barking at fuck-all half the time. Must be the bombs going off all over the place, and the shooting in the middle of the night. More and more bombs going off by the day. And now it’s guns with hand-pump action, he reads in the papers. When Toby hears those things going off at night he runs round the house like he’s got a Guy Fawkes movie in his head. Not to mention all the cars that race and crash and the sirens and things on Ontdekkers, a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. The dogs feel it the worst. This afternoon again, when that thing came wheeling down the street, the dogs thought it was coming for them. A monster of a yellow crane with a small head and a long arm. You just saw dogs barking and teeth snapping at those tyres. The wheels were half a house high. So he decided to let Toby out so he could also blow off some steam.
And guess who was sitting up in the cab, along with the kaffir who was driving? None other than those two little lapdogs from RAU. Waving their little white hands from a dizzy height behind a tinted windscreen, as if they were fucken royalty or something. Colour-combined too, like Christmas trees – margarine suns on her ears, and him with a fig-leaf tie in NP colours. Underneath the tie, his stomach was sticking out like a plump white pumpkin.
They all went down to the oak tree at the bottom of the street. The crane stuck out its arm a little further, ‘bzzzt!’, with Jannie White-Pumpkin strapped into a little chair at its tip. He stretched a big banner right around that tree’s crown. It looked like a bad joke, like an ancient creature with a sore head. The banner said, in big, fat letters: THE TIME HAS COME TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THE BUILDERS AND THE BREAKERS! Underneath, someone had written in, just for the occasion, in slanted writing: F.W. LOVES TRIOMF. FORWARD WITH OUR MINORITY! KEEP OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD CLEAN! Pop asked him what he thought it all meant, but all he said was, no comment. He was listening out for his stomach.
So, that was diversion number one. And, he must say, they needed a little break after the shock this morning when they got home and found the house looking like a ghostbuster had ripped through it. Not that he was surprised after all that build up. He’d promised Lambert he’d bring the girl, and there was no way he could go back on his word. He was too deeply dug into the whole story. That’s how it goes in this place. You plug one hole with a story and then the story blows up in your face. Then you’re left with an even bigger hole. Now even the lounge window’s got a fucken hole in it. Well, it keeps him busy, that’s all he can say. Deeper than a hole you can’t go.
Then it was time for diversion number two. Mol again. They must come see, she says, here comes Miss South Africa. But it wasn’t her, it was soft-serve with a difference, ’cause that ice-cream kaffir was covering his backside – the Ding-Dong was decorated with every flag under the sun. From the NP’s flag right through to the DP, the ANC, the PAC and the AWB. And, just for luck, he chucked in a zebra flag from Trek Petroleum, as well as a Vierkleur, a Red Cross, a flag with the Malawian rooster on it, and a Toyota horse. The works. On the aerial, of course, he had a blue peace-flag with little doves on it. Yes, he said, that was the only way. A kaffir couldn’t take chances with ice cream on a day like this, especially in Triomf. That man had a very good nose for business, not to mention a grand sense of occasion.
The only flag he hadn’t seen on that Ding-Dong, he told them, was the flag of the New South Africa, thank God. Then of course Pop wanted to know why, ’cause Pop’s a sucker for adverts. As long as it’s new. So he told Pop he hoped to heaven that he, Treppie, would be six feet under when the New South Africa started to see its arse, ’cause he’d been forced to watch the old South Africa go down the drain and he couldn’t bear to see the new one dying on a life-support system while it handed out golden handshakes left, right and centre. With the bugles of the last tattoo in its ears and a Y-front flag blowing at half-mast in the wind of its last breath. Thank you very much. Two nationalistic fuck-ups, he told Pop, would be too much for a finely tuned and constipated mortal like himself to handle.
All this time Pop just stood there, looking at him like he wanted to start crying. He mustn’t go and start blubbering now, he told Pop, ’cause he could see what was going on in his head. Pop must just understand, he said, a life-support machine was a lie against the truth of death. It didn’t save you from your unavoidable end. He was fed up with this whole show just for Lambert’s sake, he said, and that’s why he’d let the cat out of the bag this morning. Lambert must take the whole fucken lot now and get finished. If he was good enough to inherit all that they still had of any value, namely his fridge book and his fridge tools, then now was also the time for him to inherit the secrets of the fathers, so he could seek his own salvation with open eyes, like a man.
Then Mol echoed him, of course.
‘Yes, fathers,’ Mol said. ‘That’s right. Lambert actually had two fathers, the good father who tried to keep him on the straight and narrow all his life, and the bad father who fucked up every inch of that road, as far as he went.’
Well, what can a person say? Who does she think she is, anyway? So he asked her, in that case, what did she think of a house with no mother? But of course you have to say everything twice before Mol understands, and this time she was really looking for it. So he told her, maybe he was in fact the vital ingredient in their story, and Pop the saving grace, but she should just realise that she was the joy of their desire, in other words the queen bee, and if it hadn’t been for her, then Lambert, club-footed cretin that he was, would never have seen the light of day.
That shut them up. The sun was almost down and Pop said, well, maybe they should have the driving lesson now. In Flossie, he said, just in case. Why not in Molletjie? he asked. Then it would be Mol-on-Mol violence. But no one else thought his joke was funny.
To tell the truth, it wasn’t funny, but these days he can’t help himself any more. It’s his stomach that’s jammed so badly. No one believes him when he tells them it’s enough to make a person write a whole book full of cheap one-liners. And it’s been like this ever since he can remember. What goes in, must come out. And what won’t come out of the one end has to come out the other end. Top-dressing, that’s what he calls it.
Anyhow, then it was a whole palaver again to get Mol into Flossie, ’cause she’d seen in the past how the petrol pedal got stuck when Lambert played go-cart around the house, and how he bumped into things – so hard he sometimes fell right out. There weren’t any seat belts in that thing, either.
So Pop first had to take her for a ride, up and down the lawn next to the house, around Lambert’s rubbish dump at the far end and down to the postbox again, just to give her the feel of it. And when she eventually got into the driver’s seat, Toby went ‘whoof’ and jumped right over her on to the bricks at the back, which Lambert had packed there for weight. There was no more back seat after that fire he made for Guy Fawkes. Toby’s breath on her neck made Mol feel more relaxed, and now Pop could show her exactly how the gears worked. First, second, third, fourth, reverse. Over and fucken over again. Later, Pop even made a drawing to show her how the gears went, ’cause the gear stick no longer had its knob with that diagram on it.
And eventually, there she went. ‘Oo-eee! God help me!’ she shouted. Slowly, she lurched over the molehills in first gear. Pop was treading like mad with his feet, letting the clutch go and trying to find the brakes. It looked like he was in a paddle-boat or something.
The next exercise was to go from first to second and to work the pedals. It looked like a paddle-boat for two. Mol lost her bearings and almost went right through the gate. Then she just wanted out of that car, clutching on to Pop like she was about to drown or something. Well, he supposes the past few days must have been a bit too much for the old thing, ’cause she suddenly started blubbering, and he saw Pop’s hanky come out to wipe her tears. First her tears and then his own. And then he put his arm around Mol’s shoulder. She, again, put her hand on his leg. Not exactly driving off into the sunset, but there they sat, on the lawn in Flossie, with its bumper against the pole holding up the postbox. They sat there, staring at that backside-front postbox, and the postbox looked back at them through its receiving end, twisting its head.
What Pop told Mol to make her feel better, he doesn’t know. All he could see was Pop pointing his arm this way, that way, and then up into the air. Maybe he was pointing out all the places they were still going to visit. Heaven help them. And Toby too, he kept following Pop’s hand. This way, that way, up into the air. Man’s best friend.
It was then that he began to hear the sound of old pianos. At first all he heard in that bit of late-evening silence was the nervous traffic of cars beginning to drive faster and faster around Triomf as the election approached. But then, coming right out of his centre, he heard those old pianos, handfuls of old chords. It was so bad he felt like his heart wanted to combust. So he took a little turn past the fig tree at the back of the house. The autumn sun was shining so brightly through those leaves he could see every vein. And the light shone through the holes in the rust spots. The late figs looked as though they’d been preserved in golden syrup as they hung there, so sweet, so sweet. His gills contracted with tears.
Not enough sleep over the last few days. That must be his problem. So he came back to the front and drowned those terribly sad pianos with a few neat shots of Klipdrift. Then all that remained of the combustion were a few hissing and spitting coals in his insides, and a shoulder jerking like it wanted to shoot right off its socket, arm and all, so it could bugger off somewhere on five fingers. But he can’t fuck off from here, neither he nor any of his parts. He’s just going to have to see this one through to the bitter end.
He told Pop he should rather leave third and fourth for another day, ’cause he doesn’t have the time tonight to cure damaged Mol-skin. But all Pop wanted was to fuck off into the street with that Triomf-turbo of theirs after they’d finished their crying and comforting.
So now it’s dark and Flossie’s ready for the last round. Not for spare parts, but for geriatric training in parallel parking. The candles are burning on the Dogmor tins, one car’s length apart from each other. That’s how Pop set them out. Christ, if you didn’t know them, you wouldn’t believe your eyes tonight. It looks like a church. Half-holy, kind of beautiful, the dogs on the tins smiling with their mouths open through patches of rust in the candlelight.
He sees Pop flick on his lighter to show Mol where reverse is. She can’t find it. There goes her lighter too. The light from the little flames shine through their hair as they bend forward to look at the gear lever: through Pop’s white tufts and Mol’s loose strings next to her face. From her bun that’s been unravelling for the past two days. Woe is me!
There she starts now. Into reverse. Pop gets out. She must go slowly, backwards, he calls out to her, he’ll show her. Pop has to shout hard ’cause Mol’s revving Flossie to hell and back. Pop’s holding a lighter in each hand. With large circles he motions to her, now she must turn the steering wheel, now she must let go of the clutch, slowly, now she must give petrol, just a little.
Mol’s sitting with her neck twisted around. Here she comes. Well, he must say, for someone who can’t even open a Tic-Tac box she’s learnt very quickly. Here she comes now, here she comes, steady does it. She reverses slowly, towards her goal, with neither a roof nor a mirror.
‘You’ve got the angle, Mol!’ Pop shouts. ‘Just perfect, old girl, just carry on like that! Now swing her nose in! Turn the wheel the other way! No, the other way. Slowly, look in front of you, Mol, there’s a tin in front.’
Mol looks. She bumps the Dogmor tin, just a little. The candle doesn’t even fall over. Just the flame nods up and down and the Dog laughs once, a flash of red tongue showing. Just a little more, a little more, Pop shows her, with a lighter in each hand. Like he’s conducting a big Jumbo on to a landing strip in the middle of the night.
‘Hold it now, hold it just there!’ he shouts with his hands up in the air. The glow from the lighters falls over his face and over the back of Mol’s head. Happy landings! She stops. Hic, off! goes the car – she forgot to step on the clutch and put the car back in neutral. But she’s done it. Parallel parking! Bull’s eye, first shot! Who’d ever have believed it! Just look how she’s smiling as she gets out of that driver’s seat, between two of those tins with candles on top.
Chord upon chord, there’s the piano again. Take another swig.
Why’s Pop telling him to shuddup now? He must stop singing and go to sleep, Pop says. He must let this day come to an end now. He mustn’t stand here and make himself sick for nothing. It’s all over. They’re still alive and Mol has just parked Flossie. Does Treppie want to borrow his hanky? Not a hanky, thanks, he says to Pop. What he needs is a fucken sheet.
‘Come, Mol, it’s bedtime!’ Pop calls out.
‘I’m coming now,’ Mol shouts back. ‘I just want to sit here a little. Rest a bit. Pass my lighter.’
‘Blow out the candles,’ Pop says as he goes inside.
‘Yes, put them out, put them out
before the Milky Way goes to sleep.
What you sow you also have to reap.’
Treppie stays on the stoep for a long time, watching Mol light a cigarette and smoke it all up from beginning to end, there in her victory chariot. And all the while her other hand plays the giddy goat with the gear in neutral.
Pop’s sitting in his chair in the lounge. He came and sat here ’cause it was the only place he could still find in all the commotion. He was so tired and everything suddenly looked so strange and far away, as if he was in a different country. It was all he could still do for himself and his chair. They were both out of their depth. The chair had hardly found its way back from the den when it was shifted again, this time on to a heap along with everything else in the lounge; and he himself felt like his flesh was about to start falling off his bones.
So he squeezed his way between the sideboard and the crates, his knees knocking against the sharp edges of things. Now he’s sitting here and letting it all wash over him. In the end, everything passes anyway, then it’s over and it turns out to be totally meaningless. Even if it felt bad when it was happening.
They got back from voting at about half past eleven this morning. At the Westdene Recreation Centre. In the end it wasn’t at RAU after all, where they’d gone to vote Yes the last time. He was glad it was just around the corner ’cause he really wasn’t in the mood for a whole to-do all over again. As it was, they had to stand in a long queue while the police and officials and other people walked up and down, shouting that the boxes were full and the stickers were running out. By the time they’d all got their right hands sprayed with ink and put them into that purple gadget for the umpteenth time, they weren’t even sure any more whether they’d voted or not.
And those ballot papers, like entrails with such a lot of stuff written there, he couldn’t read further than the first four. So he made a wild cross just anywhere. Everyone in the long queue outside the hall was confused and in a hurry.
Anyway, when they got back home, they saw a white lorry plus another two trucks standing in front of their house. And their whole yard was full of workers in white overalls. On the other side of the road, a different lorry was loading up those two women’s stuff.
What now, he thought, stopping in the street outside to see what was going on. Who was this coming to fetch them?
‘Whiter than snow,’ Treppie began singing before they even lit up cigarettes, and only then did he realise, but of course, this was the painting team here at their house. It was the big paint prize they’d won, the one Lambert made him sign for. The one Treppie also signed for, afterwards. At the time he’d wondered if they weren’t signing themselves into a fix, but he’d let it go ’cause Lambert was in such a bad way.
And then, when they didn’t want to paint on election day, Treppie went and said he’d take them to court, so they said in that case, okay, it was the owners’ risk and they reserved the right to paint any time of the day, even if the owners were out. It was going to be a day full of unpredictability, they said.
The painters were busy unpacking their equipment. He must look, said Mol, there on the front lawn. That white flag hanging on a long, thin pole, with the painting company’s name written on it in red letters. Red and white spells what? he thought, but Treppie had already read between the folds: WONDER WALL. If you ask him, Treppie said, it looked more like rescue workers at a disaster site than jasper workers from the New Jerusalem.
Treppie’s trying to be terribly nice again, telling jokes and things after his doings on the koppie, not to mention his terrible tormenting of Lambert. And on his birthday, too.
This morning, as they stood in the queue, he had no choice but to cut Treppie short again. Treppie was standing there in the middle of the queue, talking at the top of his voice about how it was a disgrace that the officials had to do all this dirty work. It was the NP’s duty to put those stickers on. That would be poetic justice, he said. After all, they were the ones who wanted to offer Mangosuthu for sale, first under one label and then another. You could actually call him a many-branded Buthelezi, Treppie stood there saying, standard on the one rump and prime on the other. Ja, that Treppie. He’ll just have to learn in his own time to control his mouth. People with his kind of talent face terrible temptations. It’s a great struggle for them to choose the straight and narrow path. Treppie has the character. He just lacks the will.
Anyway, Treppie was right, as usual. It looked more like hell than heaven around the house. Big blood-red rectangular machines stood all over the place, with fat, red muzzles stretching out as if they wanted to pump the house full of air. With shiny ladders against the walls, stretching up high above the roof like fire-engine ladders trying to reach a fire in the sky somewhere. At the front door, a silver trolley full of folded sheets.
Shame. And all Mol could say was: ‘Sinkhole!’ She was terribly disturbed by all the broken stuff in the house and Treppie’s stories in the den, and then this voting business on top of everything else – soldiers and low-flying helicopters and waiting ambulances. And, believe it or not, a friendly little piccanin came up to them at the voting station to ask if they didn’t want to help swell the peace fund, taking a handful of blue paper flowers from a big basket, each flower on its own stem with a ribbon and two little plastic doves. Then Mol just wanted to go home. But with all the painting going on there was no peace and quiet to be found here either. And Mol’s always been so scared of machines and things, too. She was in a complete state.
He explained nice and gently about the paint prize and how she must just keep calm. Just now she could go and see if there was any Oros inside. It was hot and the painters would be thirsty. Then she’d have something to do, he thought, something to occupy her mind.
About Treppie’s salvation he really can’t do anything. Treppie was busy embroidering again, about things that had nothing at all to do with painting. ‘Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,’ he began singing loudly in their faces. And he kept bugging Lambert, telling him to listen. If he, Treppie, didn’t get out of the car right away and go to the toilet, he was going to shit his pants full. It was a whole week now that his guts had been as solid as a rock. But, he said, now that Lambert’s lubrication service was behind them, and now that he’d voted for that mad woman from the Keep it Straight and Simple Party, the one who says she can kick a hole in any government’s drum, and with their house on the point of being painted white, he at last felt something was giving way in his insides.
Yes, he said, Lambert should take note, this was what he’d meant all along about the shit flying after the election, and Lambert should get ready for a shitstorm, or, as it was written, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.
He must say, the way those paint people were carrying on it really did look like they were getting ready for a storm. They covered the windows with heavy, shining screens of aluminium. Flossie got a thick plastic sheet and they draped the fig tree with something that Treppie said looked like a thermal blanket, red on the inside and silver on the outside, which they pinned to the ground with tent pegs. They even pulled a white bag around the overflow and a little red sail over the TV aerial on the roof.
With all those bags and sails and sheets and flags and stuff stirring and rustling in the breeze, the house began to look exactly like a ship lying ready to sail. He said as much to Mol, but Treppie overheard him and then of course he had to make his own little contribution. That ship, he said, was on its way to a country where the citrons were still blossoming. Mol said he was talking bull, and she said it with such conviction that it sounded like she wanted to shut Treppie’s mouth once and for all. A vain hope, of course. Treppie said, okay, if that wasn’t good enough, then the ship was sailing to the shore where love did last eternally, and would that make her feel better?
Shame, then the poor thing broke into a big smile, sitting there without her tooth and all. Pop’s heart wanted to break he felt so sorry for her. She sometimes reads to him from her library books about people who’re in love. Under the circumstances, he thinks, he’s done the best he could. It will just have to be enough. And with good faith they might yet reach those eternal shores, in their own kind of way. It’s just a matter of time.
He would have been happy to remain sitting outside in the car, but the foreman came over and asked them to unlock the door. It was hardly open before lots of workers in white overalls started getting the house ready for painting inside. They worked fast. It must be something they do every day, and maybe they were in a hurry to get finished so they could still have some of the holiday for themselves. Not that it feels like a holiday. It feels more like a war or something, with all those army lorries and little bursts of gunfire every now and again. Celebration shots, Treppie says, but he can’t say he’s seen any ribbons or balloons.
They started at the back, pushing each room’s things into a heap in the middle and covering everything with those white sheets from the trolley. Hell, all their old stuff looked so little, covered like that in the middle of each room. But he must say, the Wonder Wall people showed respect for their belongings. They took the brick out from under the sideboard and clamped a length of iron there before moving it away from the wall. And they first re-glued the loose joints before moving his chair, tapping the little pegs back into the arm-rests with a silver hammer. Now his chair’s sitting nicely again. Now it’ll be good for a while again.
Maybe this is a good time to take a nap. The workers are taking everything off the wall. They’re even wearing gloves to do the job – the calendar picture of Jo’burg, the answers to Treppie’s multiple choice, the advert for Cochrane’s security fencing, Treppie’s poem about peace and the portrait of the three of them with roses. The works. The wall looks bare. White squares where the stuff used to be. As it comes down, gloved hands place the items one by one into a big, white, double-carton, as if they’re fragile antiques or crumbling old masterpieces.
And here comes a soft, white bag made of felt. He hears a dull rustle as the china cat from Shoprite is carefully lowered into the bag. The distributor cap with the old and the new NP flag goes in too, plus a few of Flossie’s ball-bearings in a saucer. What else? The moon and the stars and the sun that must shine on everyone who remain behind. Three more panfuls of loose floor-blocks from the dark passage. Everything into the bag to make sure that nothing will be lost. Not him either. Now they’re throwing sheets over everything. All is white. White for the crossing over.
High above the roofs of Triomf, the roads and the towers and the flat, yellow mine dumps. The chimneys that smoke and blow fire to one side, as if in a salute, beyond the earthly city’s limits. Higher and higher, a seed in a white husk. Cries and psalms from other windborne souls.
And then again, from far off, the ground approaching at long last, rocking to and fro, the horizons tilting from side to side. To one side, a small, white house, its doors and windows tightly shut, where he can finally come to rest against the clean, sun-warmed walls, nothing but the whisperings inside as if his ear were pressed to a shell, throughout the bright and endless winter.
Lambert stands in the lounge, watching the painters. They’re busy on ladders all over the house, as if they’re not even aware of him standing there. They dip their big, fluffy rollers into wide, flat pans, painting the walls in brilliant white with quick strokes. Where they haven’t painted yet it looks dirty. Their mouths move as they talk but he can’t hear them. He can hardly hear himself thinking. It feels like a silent movie inside his head. The house shudders from the sandblasting. He can make out a fine hissing sound as wet paint-flecks splatter against the aluminium screens. Inbetween he hears the dull thuds of people working on the roof.
He’s alone. When those big machines began zooming and revving through their cycles, from warm-up to stand-by and ready to blast, his mother took Toby in her arms and shouted to Treppie she was going to wait outside in the car until it was all over. By then Treppie had been on the toilet for a long time already. He saw him go in there with a stack of newspapers, enough for a week’s reading. Even before the noise started, Treppie had begun swearing and growling. Now, he said, he was officially withdrawing from Operation Whitewash. And he wouldn’t mind if the bathroom didn’t get painted either, ’cause then at least there’d be one place left in the house he could still call home.
Fuck, the noise is so bad now it’s hurting his ears. And the paint fumes make him want to choke. But he has a very good reason for being here. When they were throwing sheets over the wardrobe in Treppie’s room just now, three little keys fell on to the floor. The workers brought the keys to him; he was the only one they could still find in the house. The key to the trunk, the key to the cupboard and the key to the sideboard, which his mother had wanted from Treppie just two days ago so she could take out the stag bowls. That key also opens the top drawer – forbidden territory for as long as he can remember. The only time he’s ever seen it slide open has been when Treppie decides that he wants to open the drawer. And Treppie hides that key in a different place every time, to make sure ‘curiosity won’t kill the cat’. The only thing he’s ever seen coming out of that drawer is Old Pop’s mouth organ. Each time, Treppie asks Pop to play a song ‘from days gone by’.
But there’s more than just a mouth organ in that drawer. Without a doubt.
Whenever he’s begged Treppie to look in there, Treppie just says: What the eye doesn’t see, the heart can’t grieve for.
It’s a double bind, he always says, ’cause what lies in that drawer is the key to his, Lambert’s, existence. But he’s convinced that if he, Lambert, were to see what’s inside there, he’d fit himself to death on the spot. So what’s the use? It’s not the kind of information that a dead fit can put to any good use, neither for himself nor for anyone else. That’s always been Treppie’s last word on the topic, and after that all he would do was give a whole long string of devil’s winks.
But it hasn’t been Treppie alone who’s stopped him from breaking open that drawer, many times over. What really stopped him, in the past, was Pop’s face when he put that old mouth organ to his mouth, cupping his hands around its sides as if he were trying to suck some sweetness out of a thing with a red peel, although what he got wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. It was almost as if he wanted to taste something different, something beyond bread and polony, beyond their house and their car, beyond the whole of Triomf. Ambrosia, as Treppie would put it. It’s as if Pop wants to say: I’ll taste what I want to taste, it’s not of this world and I don’t give a damn about the aftertaste.
Whatever it is inside that drawer, it’s always felt like the part the Witnesses read about the stuff inside the Ark of the Covenant. You never know what it is. All you know about are the cloths and the rings and the sockets and so on. And the girdles outside and the candlesticks with seven arms and all the carrying across the desert.
That’s why he’s kept a distance from the drawer all these years. If he ever finds out what’s inside there, he’s always schemed, then he’ll have to carry it through the back-streets. On his shoulders in Triomf, for the rest of his life.
But today he couldn’t give a shit. Not after his birthday. Not after that whole fuck-up.
So when the man in the white overalls held out the keys to him, and said, ‘These fell from somewhere,’ he replied, ‘Hey, thanks, man, they fell from heaven, I’ve been looking for them all my life.’ And when the man asked, ‘So, can I leave them in your safekeeping?’, he answered, ‘But of course, they are the keys to our family treasures, I’m in the shit if I lose them again.’
Then that man laughed a strange little laugh which he very quickly swallowed again. He must’ve seen it was no fucken joke to be holding the key to your existence in your own two hands.
So, today’s the day he’s going to unlock this drawer. All around him the painters are busy on their second coat. Wonder Wall’s paint is ‘quickdrying’, the papers said, ‘matt-white’ and ‘quick-drying’. Like pistons in white sleeves the arms of the painters go up and down as they paint. He looks at the things under the sheets in the middle of the room. He knows them by their shapes: Treppie’s crate, his crate, Pop’s chair, his mother’s chair, the TV, the toolbox. And then there’s the sideboard, with its riffled edge in front.
Lambert works his way in amongst all the stuff. The little key sweats in his hand. It’s the flat one with a round head and a little hole in the middle. He opens his hand and sniffs it. The iron smell is still there, right through the paint fumes. The other two keys he’s put in his shorts pocket. Treppie must just keep shitting for all he’s worth now. But if he does come out, then he’ll see him right, just like that. He’s not scared of Treppie any more. After forty there’s nothing Treppie can say to make him feel small any more. Treppie’s tools and Treppie’s book and Treppie’s keys are all his now. Treppie’s a dead duck.
It’s only Pop. He can feel Pop’s eyes on him somehow, but Pop’s not here. He must be outside, sitting with Mol in the car. Pop’s become very touchy lately. Must’ve found the noise in here too much. At the voting this morning, when the man took Pop’s right hand and pulled it across the table so he could spray his invisible ink, Pop’s arm came out of his sleeve in such a strange way – like the hand was coming right off his arm. Nothing but skin and bone. The point of his nose was white and he was shaking, too. His mother said Pop took so long to vote she started thinking he’d given up the ghost right there in his little booth. Treppie said she was worried for nothing. The whole Transitional Executive Council had Pop by the short and curlies. He knew he had to vote for volk and vaderland.
He lifts the sheet covering the sideboard. Chairs and things stick into his back, but he doesn’t want to shift too much furniture around now. He just gives Pop’s old boots a bit of a shove. They’re sticking out from under the sheet. Jesus, but they’re heavy.
He unlocks the drawer. The little fitting around the keyhole came off a long time ago and where it used to be the wood’s discoloured. He notices he’s short of breath. He rubs behind his neck. What ghost is breathing down his neck now? No, he mustn’t think about that kind of thing.
The mouth organ is lying right in the front of the drawer. He knows it well. It was his grandfather’s mouth organ. Old Pop, they call him.
He remembers, once, how Pop sat and played ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, but then Treppie came and messed around with him again. He said Pop mustn’t sit there like that and tell lies with a straight face. And he mustn’t start imagining all kinds of things about his family tree, either. Pop’s family tree, he said, was a tree full of hillbillies without any music in their bones. He said Pop might be the musical one in the family, but that was only ’cause Pop’s father hadn’t hit him the way Treppie’s father had hit him. And if Pop didn’t believe it, he should ask Mol – she still remembered how their father had disciplined him, out of the love of his heart, so he’d at least achieve more in life than to sit and play ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ over and over again.
Well, now he’s going to find out what goes for what in this house, and whose father is whose father and what’s a hillbilly in a tree with music in his bones.
’Cause if there’s one thing that has to come to an end now, then it’s Treppie’s fucken bullshit-stories. He says he lies for the sake of truth, the shit. He says it’s a paradox. He once heard Pop say to Treppie that whatever it was, para-this or para-that, if you couldn’t convey the truth with a pure heart, then it didn’t count for the truth, anyway. Then of course all hell broke loose. Treppie said Pop was mixing up truth with goodness, and if there were two things under the sun that were further apart than chalk and cheese, it was those two, and did he, Pop, want Treppie to start telling lies now, just to spare people their pain and sorrow? Pop said if he wanted to put it that way, then his answer was yes, and he, Treppie, would be terribly dirtied and infected by sin if his own answer was no.
‘Infected! Infected!’ Treppie shouted. Was Pop trying to tell him God was a bath full of Dettol-water for washing off the germ of being human?
When those two start on God and stuff, it doesn’t take long before Treppie goes completely berserk. He starts swearing and performing up and down the passage. But it’s not just for show, like when you can’t get the lawn-mower started or the postbox won’t stay on its pole any more.
Then it’s for real.
He’s already seen how Toby, and Gerty too, when she was still alive, used to hide behind the bathroom door with their ears flat against their heads. And his mother would sink on to her knees, right there where she was standing on the loose blocks in the lounge, or on the lino in the kitchen.
Pray, Treppie would shout at her, conceited fucken old cunt, who did she think she was? Did she think she could talk to someone and he’d listen? That almighty tinpot of a God sitting up there welding time together all by himself? Hearing deaf, that’s what he was! ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ There he sat, slamming the moon and the sun like pot lids over our heads. Did she think he had a beard and saucer ears like Father Christmas or someone? Forget it, Mother Superior, forget it! She should listen to the way her heart beats in her chest. ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ Buggered by Lucky Strikes! That’s what He sounded like! Just look what God’s Providence had wrought over time, creasing the wattles on her throat, weighing down her old gut and cracking the soles of her old feet – being one of the chosen had worn her out good and proper! The whole lot of them in this house, first they were young with God and now they were old with God. God-infested to the back of their teeth! Meanwhile, up there He just kept running down like a king-size bobbin, back and forth like a shunting train. Like the ants, up and down, up and down. If you stepped on him he’d stink like a Parktown Prawn. All he could do was kick up heaps with his back paws. Molehills! Molehills! Molehills!
One day, when things were going like this and Treppie was shouting and screaming, Pop took a swing and connected him a shot just under the chin. Treppie went down like a bag of cement. Out like a candle on the flat of his back, in the passage.
That was the only time he’s ever seen Pop cry. Pop’s tears come very easily, and he’s always got that drop hanging from his nose. The essence of life, Treppie calls it. But that day, when Pop took hold of Treppie under the arms and dragged him away to his room, Pop was folded over double from crying. His tears were dripping on to Treppie’s face, so it looked like Treppie was also crying as he lay there, lights-out.
Pop had tears for Africa, his mother said. Then she looked at him and said he, Lambert, was born in tears and received in tears, never mind sin, and maybe one day she’d tell him what was what, otherwise he’d never understand why they were the way they were in this house.
Well, she waited too long. Now it’s tickets with ‘one day’. One day is today. Today he’ll know what’s what.
The paint machines suddenly sound louder outside. Something falls ‘bam!’ on the roof.
He puts the mouth organ down on top of the sideboard, on the folds of the white sheet. His legs have gone to sleep from sitting in front of the drawer. He gets up. It’s hot. Must be all the closed windows. He pulls the drawer further out. Something sticks. He gives it a hard pull. The thing comes out, with a dent on the one side. It looks like a pair of goggles made from a thin piece of tin with a little arm in front. Here’s a little handle sliding on a groove in the arm. He can shift the handle. He shifts it up and down. What the fuck? He reads the letters on the goggles. Viewmaster.
Where’s he heard that before? He’s heard his mother say it: Viewmaster. But she’s like that, she says funny stuff at odd moments. Light blue, my beloved, she said to the postbox one day. Or was that Pop? Soft in the head, both of them. When she sees a moth she says TB butterfly. Must be thinking of the J&B butterfly on the whisky advert. She can’t tell TV apart from real life any more. He’s told her so, but Treppie says it’s a highly justified attitude, that, ’cause what else is the world if not one huge sitcom? Then Treppie tells one of his stories about corpses. Like when the Germans put dead babies into their BMWs so they could crash-test them to see if they were sufficiently roadworthy and people-friendly. Some things never change, Treppie says, but after the BMW story, ‘post-mortem’ is a completely new concept to him. Then he kills himself laughing and his mother says she really doesn’t see what’s so funny.
Lambert sees how the painters all around him are starting to climb down from their ladders. He’ll have to start hurrying up now. But then he sees them tying hankies over their mouths with little strings, like doctors before they do operations. Each one clamps a big spray-can on to his back. They climb back up their ladders and start spraying a fine, white mist on to the walls. That must be the matt of the matt-white. In the drawer he sees a pack of pictures held together with an elastic band. Old and faded black-and-white pictures. Underneath each one it says Viewmaster and something else that’s too small to read.
He puts a picture into the groove and moves the handle up and then down again until he can see what’s what through the magnifying glass of the goggles. Now what’s this got to do with the price of eggs, he wonders. Buckingham Palace, he reads. The Changing of the Guard. He tries another one. The Queen Mother, with Windsor Castle in the Background. He looks through them quickly, till he gets to Royal Picnic at Balmoral, where the queen sits on a blanket among her dogs, holding a boiled egg in her hand. No, fuck! This is definitely not the key to his existence! He puts the Viewmaster down on the sideboard, next to the mouth organ.
He scratches deeper in the drawer. Lots of old papers and other rubbish. Their IDs fall out from a plastic bag. He saw Treppie putting them back in here after the voting this morning. That must have been when he left the little key out, and the other ones too. He was in too much of a hurry to go catch his shit! That’s what comes from being in a hurry to shit. Quickly, he pages through their IDs. Lambertus Benade, Martha Benade, Martinus Benade. That’s Treppie. Once or twice, when they all go to fetch their pensions, and him his disability, he’s asked them how come Pop’s also a Benade. And each time Pop explains that he’s from the Cape Benades and Mol and Treppie are from the Transvaal Benades. Their forefather must’ve been the same old Dutchman or Frenchman, but if they were family, then it was very distant family. And in any case, Pop said, it made things easier, like getting the house in Triomf, ’cause in those days families used to get slightly bigger houses than other people. So they lied a bit, saying they were two brothers and a sister plus her illegitimate child from she doesn’t know where any more. But that was all just a lie for the sake of a roof over their heads. He, Lambert, was really Pop and Mol’s love-child, the one she was already expecting when they got married in Vrededorp in nineteen-whenever. And then Pop always tells the story about Treppie’s speech at the wedding, when he talked about the holiness of matrimony and sowing the seed of the watermelon.
Love-child! You wouldn’t say it if you saw how they treat him! If he gets iron, it’s scrap iron. If he gets a girl, it’s a darky. If he gets meat, it’s polony.
Lambert feels his tail-end starting to jerk. He wonders if it’s his conscience that sits there, ’cause it’s not just them, it’s him too. He knows he treats them roughly sometimes. But he supposes once a Benade always a Benade, as his mother says. They’re past praying for, as his father says. Same difference.
Lambert scratches around in the drawer among all the papers. His hands touch a wooden frame somewhere at the bottom. An old family picture. It shows the outside of a house, with a wire gate and bricks at an angle lining the garden path. A man and a woman and a youngish man are standing there, and then there’s a girl and a small boy. The woman’s wearing glasses and a hood. She looks tired. The man’s in a boiler suit. He looks fed up. The little boy’s holding a little toy whip. He looks like he’s pinching his mouth closed. The girl looks sly. She’s got black rings under her eyes and she’s wearing a bonnet, like her mother. The young man’s wearing a waistcoat and a hat with the brim turned up on the one side, with feathers in the band. And a white scarf tied into two silly points under his chin. Looks like he’s on his way to a fancy-dress party.
He taps the underside of the portrait. Then he screws up his eyes, peering through the white fog that fills up the whole lounge. What is it that looks so familiar about this picture? He looks closer. But this here is Pop! In his Voortrekker clothes, like that story he always tells when he rode with Johanna on the wagon. Johanna with her twenty-one stab wounds! When he smeared grease on his scarf, for luck!
He turns the portrait around. The paper at the back’s old and brown. There’s writing on the paper from a pen with real ink. The writing’s badly faded. He traces the letters with his fingers as he reads.
Sweat breaks out on his face. Suddenly he hears that song in his ears, right through the noise of the painting, the song that Treppie always sings when he wants people to open their eyes and pay attention:
It was written on an old sow’s ear
It was a little grey
But to everyone the news was clear
It was the monkey’s wedding day
Over and over he reads what it is he must understand now, but his head just doesn’t want to get it straight.
Vrededorp 1938, it says. And in brackets after that: (The year of the ox wagons). And then: Mum and Dad and Treppie – 10, Little Mol – 14, Lambertus Jnr, in front of our little house.
Further down, the writing gets smaller and more crammed, as if there wasn’t enough space left to fit in the whole story:
With love from Pop to you all, my flesh and blood, in memory of a big moment in the history of our volk. Given for safekeeping to Treppie (Martinus), the apple of my eye, so he’ll never forget from whence he comes.
Lambert feels dizzy. He fumbles behind him for somewhere to sit down. He’s trying to sit, but he’s already sitting. It feels like he’s sitting on a bag full of sharp things. God, no! It can’t be true. Then Pop, not Treppie, is the biggest liar of them all. Then it was Pop who used the truth to lie when he asked Community Development for a house. It was the truth, all along! He’s no fucken distant Benade. He’s fucken dirt-close! They’re all the fucken same, the whole lot of them! Treppie and Pop and his mother!
Lambert rubs his eyes. It feels like he can’t get enough air. He wants to get up, out of the chair. Christ, no. He feels like something that’s already dead, here among all these sheets. He gropes in the air in front of him as he tries to get up. His feet keep catching on Pop’s shoes under the chair, like he’s tripping over them. He feels like he’s fucking out from the inside. Things that have been said, pieces of stories, falling inwards inside his head.
Treppie! That’s him standing there with the pinched mouth! One Old Pop, two sons!
Suddenly light streams into the lounge. It’s dead quiet. The workers are taking the screens off the windows.
Lambert gets up. He stands in front of the sideboard. His eyes feel rigid. Jesus, now some sense must come into all this crap.
He supports himself with his knuckles on the sideboard. He feels like he wants to burst out of his seams as the truth plunges down into him. About his people, their house, their dog, in their street, here in Triomf.
He shakes his head. It feels like there’s loose stuff inside his head.
When he’s in a bad mood his mother sometimes looks at him in a funny way, and then she says, God help her, she wonders whose child he really is.
And he always thought it was just her way of talking. Like when she says he’s full of the devil or something. He always knew he was Pop’s child and that the story of his being illegitimate was a lie for Community Development. But if he is his mother’s child, and if his mother says her one brother’s a devil, and the other’s an angel, and he, Lambert, takes after the devil, then Treppie could be … Then his mother doesn’t know which one … then … then …
He turns around. His ears are zinging from the sudden silence. The sun shines sharply through the window. All the curtains are down. All he sees is white, white, white. Outside on the lawn they’re folding up the covers.
His birth certificate, that’s what he must find! He turns back to the sideboard. Now he’s going to scratch till he finds the thing.
If Pop’s his mother’s brother and he can sleep with her, and if Treppie’s also his mother’s brother, then … who the fuck’s his father, then? Whose fucken child is he?
He shuts his eyes. There’s too much white in the room. It makes him see black spots. He digs through the black spots in the drawer. Too many papers here and not enough time. He hears them taking down the sheets in the back room and shifting things back up against the walls.
He finds a piece of paper that’s brown around the edges and worn from being handled a lot. His eyes catch at the words:
… can’t carry on any longer … make an end … failed you and the children … Dear God … forgive …
Then his eyes stick on Treppie’s real name:
The business about Martinus not wanting to talk to me any more is breaking my heart. Make peace with him for my sake, I beg you, Mol. I did it because I love him more than I could ever say and because I want him to grow up decently.
Lambert quickly reads further: … dog’s life, he reads, kaffirwork … and about the Railways that will look after them. Widows’ fund and not much of an estate. He glosses over the next few lines until he comes to the last paragraph:
I know you’re sick in your lungs, Mol. Look after yourself. Don’t let the kaffirs take over your job. Be careful, the Jew Communists will undermine you. They’re heathens, the whole lot of them. A person has only one life and one soul but mine is finished.
He reads about the hope of a reunion with them all one day between the walls of jasper, in the streets of gold.
Underneath is written: Your loving husband, Johannes Lambertus Benade. (Pop.)
The postscript is underlined:
Give Treppie my mouth organ. Lambertus plays better but Treppie needs it more. Try to keep them off each other’s bodies, Mol, in God’s name send them away to different places if you can. So an end can come to you know what. Only a monster will be born from this sort of thing. I’ve heard from the others, more and more such cases are happening among us Railways people.
Slowly he folds up the letter again. He looks at his hands. Skew, full of knobs. He looks down at his legs and his feet. He wishes he’d kept on his white pants that he wore to the voting this morning, if only for this one moment. He wishes he hadn’t felt so hot and got back into his shorts so soon. Now he sees his large knees, his hollow shins, his knobbly, swollen, monster-ankles, his skew, monster-feet, and his monster-toes. Ten of them! All different shapes and sizes. Dog-toenails! He feels his face. A monster. A devil-monster. No wonder! No fucken wonder he’s such a fuck-up. No wonder he can’t even fuck a Hotnot bitch! No wonder only his mother’s good enough for him! It’s all in the family! The plague!
With one rip he pulls the drawer right out of its casing.
‘Family secrets!’ he roars.
His eyes feel like they’re spinning wildly in their sockets. He feels himself breaking the drawer with a cracking shot over the chair’s covered back-rest. He sees a man in white overalls looking at him with big eyes. Then he hears himself shouting at the man to fuck off. The man runs out the front door with a bundle of sheets in his arms. He hears the man shout at another worker trying to come inside: ‘Take cover, the nutcase has lost it!’
He storms down the passage.
‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ he roars at a white overall here in front of him. ‘Take cover!’ He rams the man out of his way. With one kick, he knocks the bathroom door off its hinges. Then he grabs the door and throws it into the bath.
In front of him, Treppie sits with his pants around his ankles. He’s holding an open newspaper in his hands. Treppie’s smiling at him. The shit!
‘You!’ That’s all that comes out of him.
‘Tut-tut. Showing me the door, are you?’
As if it was all just a fucken little accident.
Mol stands on the little stoep in front. She’s listening to the crackers as they go off, one here, one there, close by and then far away again. Not so many before, in other years.
Shame, last year she and Pop still shot off some crackers together, right here, in their hands. It was quite jolly. And then they bathed together. Shame, Pop was so gentle with her that night.
She feels Toby rubbing against her leg.
‘Yes, old Toby, so it goes, hey?’
She bends over and scratches him between the ears.
Ever since Pop went, they’ve never really managed to be jolly again.
It was all ’cause the house was supposed to be painted white. Inside and outside. Everything covered with sheets. That’s where the trouble started. She said all along it was going to cost them dearly. Dearly, and how!
The account wasn’t even the worst of it. They found the account in the postbox when they got back from the hospital, that night after the painting. It was for twenty-five thousand rand less the discount of three thousand rand, so it came to twenty-two thousand rand. That ‘prize’ was never a prize, after all. It was a discount.
From then on they got a letter every month with a red sticker saying they must pay, otherwise lawyers would sue them. Treppie tore up the letters every time. Then one day the sheriff came to see which of their things he could take away to sell, but he left almost immediately when he saw none of their stuff was worth anything. He still said something about people like them thinking the New South Africa meant they didn’t have to pay their debts to the Old South Africa. Next, they got a letter from Wonder Wall saying they could pay the account off. Thirty rand a month plus a terrible amount of interest. Now Lambert and Treppie are paying it off, half and half, every month. Treppie says this is now what you call Triomf-debt – by the time they finish paying it off, their matt-white will have cost them ninety thousand rand.
But the account wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst was that no one kept an eye on Lambert that day. So he took his chance and scratched around in the sideboard drawer. Lambert doesn’t know what’s good for him. But it was bound to happen some time or another. Then he went and broke the drawer in half over poor old Pop’s head, right there where Pop was sitting under the sheet. Dead quiet, without bothering anyone. Where she said they must leave him so he could sleep where he always slept.
She found him still sitting there. She took the sheet off to tell him he must please come and do something, Lambert had kicked Treppie right out of the house and now Treppie had no pants on and the NPs had arrived to see if they’d voted right.
Yes, when she looked again, there was Treppie lying starkers on the lawn with Lambert stomping on his fingers. He broke them all, one by one. ‘Crack! Crack! Crack!’ she heard as those little bones in Treppie’s hands broke. Such bony little birdy-hands, too.
And those two from across the road stood there with their mouths open, staring at them. That was their day for moving out. Going to live somewhere else. The same day. No wonder.
It never rains but it pours, Treppie still said when they got back from the voting. They saw, across the road there, a few crock lorries and some lazy, slackarse-movers with red noses trying to move the dykes’ stuff. She must say, she looked at them and thought the lorries in front of their own house looked a damn sight better, just for a change. And their painters looked like angels from heaven compared with those wash-outs on the opposite side.
Anyhow, then Treppie said he hoped they knew what they were doing. Those movers looked like a bunch of cheapskate rehabs to him. Must have been all the dykes could find on voting day, as if they really had to go and move on a day like that.
All they seemed to be loading on to the trucks were plants.
One table, two chairs, one bed, and for the rest, just plants, plants and more plants. After a while it looked like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on wheels.
That’s what Treppie said.
He said some people painted their walls white and others moved to greener pastures, but in the end everyone, without exception, just looked north and fucked forth, as if their lives depended on it. Delicious monsters.
Well, yes.
Sometimes there’s truth in Treppie’s jokes.
But that wasn’t even the beginning, that day of the 27th. Lambert was so wild after he’d finished with Treppie, he came for her next. She was walking around, shouting, ‘Pop’s dead! Pop’s dead!’, when he came and stabbed her in the side with Treppie’s pocket-knife. Just like that. In front of all those people. That’s when the painters dropped their sheets and ran for their lives.
Toby thought it was fun and games again. He tried to bite Lambert’s backside as Lambert ran amok there on the grass. With the knife still open, like he wanted to slaughter a pig or something.
Lambert turned around to give Toby a kick under the arse, but Toby wasn’t there any more and Lambert kicked the prefab wall instead. Broke his leg. A bad break, right at the ankle. And there he lay, roaring on the green, green grass of home, as Treppie said later. She stood around, holding on to her side where the blood was pouring out. And Treppie just lay there, crying from laughing so much. Broken fingers and all.
‘One dead, three injured!’ he shouted. ‘One down, three to go!
‘Aid us, aid us, afflictions abrade us!’ he shouted for all to hear.
Abrade.
On the very day Treppie appears before the heavenly gates he’ll still think of an impossible word to say. He’s always called himself an occasional speaker. Shame, and Pop used to say he shouldn’t waste his talents so, he was capable of doing so much more. And then Treppie would say he couldn’t help it, that’s what the people, meaning them, wanted from him. A story for every occasion, and who was he to say they must listen, he could also tell classic stories. In any case, that would be casting pearls before swine.
Classic.
Treppie says a piece that’s classic, whether it’s a piece of music or a piece of furniture or just a piece of house, is something that lasts forever, something everyone will like. The rest are just May-flies.
Well, if you ask her they’re not even May-flies, let alone classics. May-flies are complete in themselves and they fill the whole world, even if it’s just for one day. But the Benades were crocks from the moment they first saw the light of day. Pieced together and panelbeaten, not to mention screwed together, from scrap. Throw-away pieces, left-over rags, waste wool, old wives’ tales, hearsay, a passing likeness from the front and a glimpse from behind. That’s how they found themselves here on this earth. Things that get thrown away. Good for nothing. Write-offs.
She’s getting morbid now out here on the stoep. It’s not really so very bad, after all. She just thinks like this so she won’t have to think about Pop, but actually she does want to think about Pop. She wants to remember Pop. That’s what she wants to do. She wants to honour his memory on this Guy Fawkes night.
Shame, and there they stood at the JG Strydom hospital, at midnight of the same day. Treppie said come hell or high water, he wanted a post-mortem. A family like theirs couldn’t brave the future with a dubious cause of death in their midst. That’s now after she said Pop was blue and his nose was white and she thought it was from lack of breath that he died, sitting there and sleeping under the sheet and everything.
Never mind what she really thought. That’s what she said. She knew Pop would’ve done the same, to preserve the peace. And now Pop wasn’t there to do it himself any more.
And Lambert said, yes, he agreed, Pop couldn’t get enough air, ’cause apart from that sheet over his head, there were all those fumes and the spray from the Wonder Wall paint, too.
But when Treppie saw the drawer broken in half like that, he began to smell a rat.
Ja, and then Toby stood there and went ‘ee-ee’ next to Pop’s shoes, the ones he was still wearing. Most of the time Pop used to kick them off before he fell asleep in his chair, but now they were shoved so strangely under the chair, you’d swear they didn’t have feet in them any more. Toby’s face also looked like he had an idea or two about that pose of Pop’s there in his chair, with his knees pointed together in front like a Parktown Prawn’s.
Anyway, she and Treppie and the painting foreman managed to get Pop into the car, and then Treppie drove them to the hospital, broken fingers and all. Lambert changed the gears for him. By now, Lambert’s foot was swollen the size of a rugby ball. She’d taken off her housecoat to wrap around her middle and she was holding on to her side where it was still bleeding so much. What else was she supposed to do?
If she hadn’t been stabbed, she said to them as they stood around outside trying to make a plan, she would have driven the car herself. But they didn’t even hear her. Neither of them took her driving lesson seriously. Lambert didn’t even know about it. He had been sleeping that afternoon, after his shooting practice. And Treppie had such drunken blues that night, he stood there playing piano in the air. First in the air and then on the edge of the stoep, as if their whole yard was a concert audience, and he was on a stage with an entire orchestra behind him.
Eventually they were all bandaged and plastered up and at last they stood there, next to the doctor, who had to write out the death certificate for Pop on the trolley.
‘Heart attack,’ the doctor said. ‘And multiple thrombosis.’ She saw Lambert take a deep breath through his mouth as he stood there on his crutch.
‘Lambert,’ Treppie said, ‘shut your mouth, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’
‘Multiple skull fracture,’ the doctor said next, prodding Pop’s head with his hand so they could see the pieces of his skull moving back and forth.
Lambert shut his mouth. And the doctor looked at each of them, one by one. Right into their faces.
‘We were painting,’ said Treppie. ‘The house, I mean, and I saw him clutching his chest.’
‘And then he took a dive off the ladder,’ said Lambert. ‘Boom! On his head.’
‘Took a dive?’ asked the doctor.
‘That’s right,’ said Treppie. ‘That’s what happened. We all saw it.’
Then she also rather said yes, Pop fell on his head.
‘Like a warhead,’ Treppie still said, ‘but no bang, just a puff.’
‘Of dust,’ said Lambert.
‘Of dust,’ she said.
Were there any other relatives? the doctor asked. They said no, and the doctor said well, in that case he thought a police statement was perhaps unnecessary.
‘Superfluous,’ he said, and that’s what they all three said, as if they’d practised it all their lives, just for this moment.
‘Superfluous!’ As if in one voice.
‘Shame,’ said Treppie, ‘but at least he still had time to exercise his vote.’
‘And to see the house painted white,’ said Lambert.
‘Exercise in white,’ she said, and then she felt, no, her head was giving just a little more. Almost the same feeling as a piece of tooth chipping off. First the chip washes around a little in your mouth, then it gnashes between your other teeth, and then you take it out to see what it is. Oh, it’s a tooth, you think, throwing it away. Wear and tear. But now there’s another chip gone. In her head.
They laughed at her about that ‘exercise in white’, all of them, not that she could see what was so funny, but she didn’t care. Everything had gone off well at that post-mortem.
She was still in bandages the day Pop was cremated. Treppie’s fingers were in plaster and Lambert was on his crutches.
She insisted: no coffin. And no hole in the ground, either.
Ash.
Ash is light.
First she said they must throw out the ashes next to the Brixton tower where they’d gone to eat their take-aways that time, when they watched the lightning. The day Pop got so lucky with his scratch-cards. When Gerty was still with them.
Treppie said fine, that was also where he remembered Pop the best after that sermon Pop gave him about the high current and the dead earth. But he couldn’t very well scatter ash with his fingers in plaster now, could he?
A week or two later, Treppie took off the plaster with a screwdriver, right here in the lounge. All you saw were plaster-chips flying everywhere. Lambert’s foot was another story. It didn’t want to get better in the plaster. Had to be amputated. And all the time that box of ashes just stood there on the sideboard. Then one day she thought to herself, no, now she was going to make a plan before that ash got cold and forgotten. So she dug a hole in the yard, next to Gerty, and threw the ashes into the hole. Not even three hands’ full. And half of it blew away, too.
She added to the writing that was already there on the wall, with a ball-point. They didn’t have any yellow left:
Here lies Gerty Benade (and now also the ash of Pop ditto)
Mother of Toby Benade
and sweetheart dog of Mol ditto (and beloved by Mol ditto).
(Both) dead from lack of breath.
they’re
Now in dog’s heaven
where the dogs are seven eleven.
There was some new space underneath, where Gerty’s grave had sunk down a bit, so she added:
Just the way Pop dreamt it.
Mol looks up into the sky. Now her tears mustn’t start running down her cheeks.
Last time there were even roses for fireworks.
‘What you looking at, Mol?’
It’s Treppie. He’s come out on to the stoep.
Here comes Lambert, too. In his wheelchair. His other ankle’s also giving in, the one that was always so weak.
Lambert’s much calmer ’cause of the stronger pills the doctor put him on. Patty-something.
He’s boss of the house now, he thinks. But that’s okay. He can’t corner her anymore like he used to. Now she’s faster than him. And she’s glad, ’cause when he doesn’t take his pills he’s especially full of shit.
Ever since Wonder Wall painted over his paintings, and since he’s been in the wheelchair, he doesn’t paint any more. And he doesn’t dig his hole either. Now he sits and watches TV all day. There’s just about nothing left of that big heap he dug out for his hole. Most of it got rained away and then things started growing on it. Last year, on Christmas Day, Treppie threw that watermelon on to the heap, the one they were too full to eat after Lambert’s braai. The watermelon went rotten, right there on top of that heap. Then, would you believe it, the other day she looked out of the back window and saw shoots growing all over the heap. And before long the heap was full of big, green leaves with watermelons sticking out like bums in the sun. Treppie says it’s a miracle. He says it wasn’t exactly seed that fell on fertile soil. But then again, he said, watermelons were like that. Very grateful plants. They grew from fuck-all, anywhere, any time. That’s why there was a song like ‘Sow the seed of the watermelon’. A folk song, said Treppie, was something that became popular ’cause everyone understood it, and in this case everyone ate it, too. He said he’d never heard of anyone who hadn’t enjoyed watermelon at some time or another. He hadn’t thought of it before, but that would really be a good idea for the NP’s flag, if they ever needed a new one, ’cause that little sun and those stripes hadn’t fooled anyone. That’s in the election, of course. Not that she can be bothered. The ANC party after the election looked a lot more jolly. At least they sang and danced, even old Mandela, though he took just one tiny sip of his champagne. And guess what, someone had taught that Niehaus how to dance. Treppie said it just showed you, you’d never think a dominee would be game for such high kicks. If FW wanted to get anywhere he’d have to take dancing lessons from the ANC. Marike too. It was good for frowns, Treppie said.
They spent whole days in front of the TV, watching all the parties after the election and listening to the speeches and things at the Union Buildings. If Pop had been here he would’ve wanted them all to go to Pretoria together, just for the occasion. That’s what she told them. But Treppie said they’d be able to see everything much better on TV. And, they should remember, there wouldn’t be any bullet-proof glass for the likes of them. But as far as she was concerned that wouldn’t have been necessary. Heathens, Jews and Mohammedans were gathered there together, and everyone was quite jolly, without bullet-proofing. Even the aeroplanes didn’t shoot. They flew over with rainbows of smoke coming out of their tails. The cannons were shot off, yes, but that was just into the sky for the new president. And, mind you, if she had a cannon she would also have shot off a cannonball here out of the heart of Triomf for old Mandela, ’cause he walks so upright and he took everyone’s hands and he said, what was past was past, everyone must roll up their sleeves and look to the future now.
Treppie said, ja, well, no fine, with or without rolled-up sleeves, but he wasn’t so sure about Marike. She looked even more like a missionary in Africa now with that bandaged hat of hers. If she didn’t watch out, they’d throw her into a three-legged pot and make pot luck out of her. But that wasn’t the most important thing, Treppie said. The most important thing was that they should never again say the word ‘kaffir’. Not in their own house and also not outside. What was past was past, he said, and it applied to them too. Lambert said he wasn’t so sure about that, but it was fine with her.
Black people are living across the road now, too. And they’re okay on the whole, except they grow mielies on the pavement. Treppie says it’s an excellent development. He says he wishes those two dilly dykes would come and see their old house so they could take a lesson or two from its new inhabitants. In times like these no one can afford to buy fertiliser for sweetpeas.
Ja, Treppie. He also just stays the same, except now he’s unfit for work, ’cause of his fingers. He doesn’t work at the Chinese any more. So, no more toilet seats or free crackers for them. And just one bottle of Klipdrift a month. Lambert’s in any case not allowed to drink so much any more. It doesn’t go well with his new pills.
Just look at all the stars. Big, wet, runny stars. Old stars. And now she’s also almost a whole year older.
After Pop’s ashes were put to rest she took the rose bush that Pop bought for her on her birthday last time, shame, and she planted it on top of his and Gerty’s grave. It was Treppie who said it would be a good place. Ash is supposed to be good for roses. She told them that’s where she also wanted to be buried one day. Scattered under the rose.
‘Hey, Ma, stop staring into the sky like that, or next thing you know a Martian pisses into your eye,’ says Lambert.
‘I’m looking at Orion. Look, a man of stars with three jewels in his belt.’
‘Where?’ asks Lambert.
‘There,’ Treppie points for Lambert to see.
‘Light blue, my beloved, for ever and ever. Orion washes my feet.’
‘What shit you talking now, Ma?’ says Lambert.
‘It’s not shit, it’s what you said last time, when you fitted out so badly and you were lying there in the den with a matchbox between your teeth. Pop also heard it. If he was here he would have told you.’
‘Lack of breath,’ says Lambert.
‘Multiple skull fractures,’ says Treppie.
Let them think what they want. He was her warhead, through thick and thin.
‘Pheeew-doof!’
She sees Lambert and Treppie look at each other. She knows what they’re thinking. They think she’s losing her marbles. But they can think what they like. And she thinks what she likes. And it’s okay that way.
‘In Orion,’ she says. That’s all she thinks about.
‘What?’ says Lambert.
‘I think Pop’s taking a rest up there, in Orion’s belt, in a hammock that hangs from the two outside stars.’
‘And look, Toby,’ she says to the dog, who’s come outside now to see what everyone else’s doing. ‘Look, Gerty’s resting between the two stars on the other side. All you can see is her tail sticking out.’
‘Ma, do you think you’re a whatsitsname or something who can see what’s going on in the stars?’
‘Astrologer,’ says Treppie. He’s smoking a cigarette with his crooked fingers. The bones grew back all crooked. Now he looks even more like the devil.
‘You think Pop checks his postbox every day?’ she asks. ‘I send my letters express, every night, in my dreams. Nice fat letters. Dear Pop, were you in the Spur today, and how was your T-bone? And did you and Gerty enjoy playing ball? The one that tastes like sherbet in your mouth? Now you’re out of the beast’s belly, hey, Pop, and you’re not looking from afar through a hole in his head any more. Now you’re nice and jolly, every day, hey! Not much longer, Pop, then I’ll be with you. Then I’ll feed you pieces of toast with honey. You and Gerty!’
She shows them with her thumb and index finger how big the pieces will be.
‘And you needn’t worry, Pop, I won’t forget my driving lesson. Flossie’s over the hill now, but I practise the gears every night in Molletjie, here under the carport while the others watch the news. First, second, third, fourth, reverse. So I won’t be stranded one day if there’s a crisis here. For my head, so it won’t go rusty. And for my eyes, so they’ll stay sharp, okay?’
All three of them look at the stars. They look at the big aeroplanes flying overhead, and the small ones too. Treppie points to a sputnik. It dips, on-off, on-off, through the sky. They talk about this and that. She talks along, with them, even if it is about other things. They’ve learnt by now to leave her alone.
They stay there for a long time as the crackers get fewer and fewer.
Until Orion tilts over to the west. He begins to dip, head first behind the roofs of Triomf. After a while you can’t see the jewels in his belt any more. All you can see are his heels sticking out above the overflow.
Treppie points.
‘No more North,’ he says.
Before heaven’s gates. As she predicted.
North no more.