Two policemen get into their car and drive off. Two other pairs stand around for a while. They look as cool as cucumbers.
‘Just look at the house,’ says the one. Lambert sees how they look the house up and down, with their hands on their sides.
‘Looks like it’s falling to pieces,’ says the other one.
‘Just look at all the rubbish under that roof,’ says the first one.
‘Bad,’ says the white constable. ‘Bad to the bone.’
‘Ag, Jesus, shame,’ says the Coloured constable.
‘At least the lawn is nice and neat,’ says another Coloured constable.
The radios in the police cars crackle and make ‘peep-peep’ noises. The cars are full of voices. Pop has pulled Lambert almost all the way to the stoep, backwards, backwards, backwards. His mother holds the door open. Treppie walks round the house. He chucks the broken pieces of pipe and gutter on to a heap. ‘Sow the seed, oh sow the seed,’ he sings at the top of his voice. Then he goes inside.
The front door closes.
The stoep-light switches off.
Lambert’s mother pours him a drink. They all stand around looking at him. He’s sitting in Pop’s chair.
‘Your foot,’ says his mother.
His foot’s swollen blue and purple.
‘I kicked him slap-bang in the mouth,’ he says.
‘Black belt,’ says Treppie.
‘Your head,’ says his mother. The blood has dried in long strips down his forehead. Where’s the hole?
‘Let’s see,’ she says.
‘Don’t touch!’ he says, jerking his head away.
‘Tough,’ says Treppie. ‘Tough like Stallone.’
‘Bedtime,’ says Pop. ‘Come, let’s go to bed.’
They all leave. In the passage, his mother picks up the piece of plaster that fell off the wall. She looks at the wall.
‘Cracks,’ she says. ‘Just look at the cracks.’ She wipes her hand over the wall, once, as if she wants to wipe away the cracks.
He remains seated for a long time in Pop’s chair. He looks at the hole in the wall where the plaster fell off, at the cracks all around it. One by one he looks at the cracks, how they run up the wall, until he can’t see them any more, until they disappear into the high-gloss paint.
But he knows, under the paint they go on and on, invisible to the eye. Once it gets going, a crack in plaster is something that keeps running. Once it starts, you can never stop it.
7
RUNNING REPAIRS
It’s Monday morning. Treppie’s standing on the front lawn, checking out Saturday night’s damage.
Last night, Sunday night, he also came outside to look around. The only time he usually stands out here is when he gets home on the bus from the Chinese, ’cause Pop doesn’t always come and fetch him. Then, in the last red glow of the sunset, he screws up his eyes until he lines up the evening star with the top of the overflow pipe’s U-bend. He squints until he has the U-bend’s upright aligned with the foot of the aerial. Then it looks like a weird little tree or something.
It’s something he likes doing after the walk home from the bus stop in Thornton. It’s his own time, after work, before he goes back into the house again. It’s time that he uses to tune himself in, to organise the space in his head. He’s noticed that when he doesn’t first tune himself in, he’s off-centre for the rest of the night.
But last night wasn’t a work night and there was also nothing on the roof. Fuck-all he could use to get himself aligned with the evening star, and God knows, he needed it.
There goes my Christmas tree too, he said, speaking aloud to himself. But Mol had poked her head under the sun-filter curtains that he’d put up with nails, staring at him through the window. Then she came out and stood next to him, still holding the loose pelmet in her hands.
‘What Christmas tree you talking about?’ she asked.
Now how do you explain a thing like that to Mol? It would take a fucken year. So he just showed her the evening star.
Mol was quiet for a while and then she said: ‘Little star.’
Lambert came out to look as well. Pop too. It was the first time since Saturday night that all of them were outside again. They’d spent Sunday indoors after the fuck-around on Saturday night. The whole of Sunday, Fort Knox played its music full blast. Looking for trouble again. Everyone looks for fucken shit in this place. And that’s just about all you’ll ever get around here, too. He once told them Triomf’s name was all wrong, by a long shot. It should have been Shitfontein or Crapville. When he said that, Lambert asked him if he knew that there was a business called Triomf and that it made fertiliser. Lambert’s not stupid.
Then Pop said they should count their blessings. They mustn’t start looking for shit now.
Pop’s fuses are blown. ‘What blessings?’ he asked him.
‘Well,’ Pop said, ‘at least we still have each other, and a roof over our heads.’
That’s what Old Pop always used to say, too, way back in the thirties when they kept fucking up so badly in Vrededorp. Time and time again.
So when Pop came out last night and asked, ‘What you all looking at?’, he took the gap and said to him, very nicely: ‘We’re looking at each other, Pop, and the roof over our heads, ’cause that’s all we’ve still got left to look at.’
Then Mol said: ‘We’re looking at the little star on the Christmas tree!’
Suddenly Mol looked like she wanted to cry.
‘What shit you talking now again, hey, Ma?’ Lambert shouted.
Lambert always shouts when Mol looks like she wants to start crying.
In the end they all stood there like fucken zombies looking at the evening star, ’cause the overflow pipe and the TV aerial were lying on a heap next to the house where Treppie had chucked them, together with pieces of broken gutter.
After a while, Pop said: ‘Stars are very old.’
Lambert said Pop was talking rubbish, stars were fucken dead.
‘Dead from what?’ Mol asked.
Lambert told her they were dead from time. Can you believe it, he actually said that.
When they go to the Newlands library to get books for Mol, Lambert reads all kinds of things in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Then he repeats everything he’s read to Mol, but he adds his own little bits to the stories he tells. It’s easy to carry on like that with Mol. She swallows just about anything you say. Lambert learnt it by watching him, Treppie. He does it a lot with Mol, although he’s really doing it for himself. But his own stories never come from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They come from newspapers, about things that happen to people. Lambert’s stories are about insects and engines and stars and things, about how everything works. His stories are about things that don’t work. Not because they’re broken, but because they are the way they are. Lambert tells Mol things ’cause he thinks it impresses him, Treppie. Lambert wants to show him he can also talk a hole into Mol’s head. But he’s not impressed. There’s just a hole where Mol’s head is supposed to be anyway.
When he, Treppie, tells Mol things, it’s not to see if she can still think, but to see if she can still feel. He finds it hard to believe Mol can still feel anything. So he tries her out, every day. It’s a fucken miracle. He can’t figure out if he wants her to feel things or not to feel anything at all. That’s ’cause what’s better for Mol will be worse for him. Basically, he has to make sure Mol and Pop and Lambert still feel things, otherwise he, Treppie, will go to glory. It’s just that he has to dig deeper and deeper nowadays to find Mol’s feelings. First you get blood and shit and gore. Then only feelings. But it’s Lambert’s job, that. He doesn’t even have to open his mouth. All he does is wind Lambert up a bit and give him the tools. Then he runs on automatic. Lambert digs, and when the arteries are open nice and wide, then he, Treppie, can go and do some inspection, to see if there’s any gold-dust left in the dead mines. Pearls before swine. Who else can see them for what they are?
Sometimes
Lambert says things that make Treppie think he’s got a clue. Last night he went and said stars die from time. Mol just stood there and gaped at him. Lambert said yes, the stars died a long time ago. What you saw now was their light, still travelling after so many years.
‘How far is it from here to there?’ asked Mol.
‘Light years, Ma. Light years,’ said Lambert.
‘What’s a light year?’ she asked.
Mol always asks more and more questions, until Lambert doesn’t know what to say any more. That’s what he, Treppie, likes, ’cause then he can spice up the story with lots of bullshit. That’s the real surprise package. Lambert thinks he’s fucken cute when he talks shit into Mol’s head. But this time, just when he wanted to start improvising, those two wankers from Fort Knox stuck their heads over the wall.
‘Just look how hard they’re looking,’ said the one.
‘They’re looking at their roof,’ said the other.
‘I suppose they’re going to fix it now,’ said the one.
‘They must think they can see in the dark like vampires.’
Then they all quickly went inside again.
It’s Monday today. A bright day, with no stars in the sky, dead or alive. The scum from Fort Knox left early to go and put up their take-away stands on street corners.
He knows he’ll have to lead the way here today. Repair the damage. Pop’s as good as dead and Lambert’s half-dead from all his stuffing around. God alone knows how much more trouble he’ll make if the television isn’t working by tonight. Next thing he’ll smash the TV to pieces as well. And then the whole lot of them will go to glory, ’cause TV’s the one thing that keeps Lambert quiet. He sits and watches everything. He watches so hard he even forgets his Klipdrift. He watches Thought for the Day and the flag blowing as they sing the anthem, right to the very end. And then, when the test pattern comes back on, he watches the rubbish that he hires from Ponta do Sol. Lambert should get a TV implanted in his brain. Then he’ll be fine. Then he can go lie down with a permanent car chase between his ears.
He told Mol and Pop, all those years ago: poke that child out with knitting needles, and then rinse yourself inside with Sunlight soap and Epsom salts. Before it got too big. But of course they didn’t want to listen. He told Mol there’s a fucken dinosaur coming out of her. At four months her stomach was already stretched to hell and gone. But they were nice and soft in their heads. Pop said: ‘Ag, Treppie, it’s someone who can look after us one day when we’re old.’
Stupid fucken fools! And look what they’ve got now! A fucken freak show. And who has to do the looking after? Them! And it’s not just a question of care, it’s cares. Worries.
He’s already warned them, one day the TV people are going to come and make a movie about them. He’s not sure what kind of a movie, a horror or a sitcom or a documentary. He thinks they’re too soft for horror and too sad for a sitcom, so maybe they’re just right for a documentary. Documentaries are about weird things like force-feeding parrots for export. He told Lambert he’d better behave himself, otherwise they’d come and ask him to make a special appearance on Wildlife Today. Lambert said only threatened species got shown on that programme. The poor fucker kids himself.
Now the front door opens. It’s Mol. Gone with the wind.
‘What you looking at now?’ she asks.
‘I’m looking at the damage.’
‘Damage,’ she says. ‘Terrible damage.’
‘So, are you going to help me this morning, Mol?’
‘Who, me?’
‘Yes, Mol, me and you. We’re going to play Helpmekaar and Reddingsdaadbond.’
‘Huh?’
‘Never mind, Mol, just help a little here, ’cause you’re the only who’s up and about this morning. Or would you like me to go wake King Kong and Rip van Winkle?’
‘Who? No, leave them,’ Mol says quickly. ‘I’ll help you. Leave them so they can get some rest.’
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘It’s nice that you want to help; just a pity it’s a bit late.’
‘Late?’
‘Yes, Mol, late, like a dead star. You should’ve helped when it could still have made a difference.’
‘Difference?’
‘Yes, it would have made a big difference if you’d brought him down.’
‘Who?’
‘Lambert, when he was still inside you. He’s caused us nothing but misery, right from the start. Look at the roof. Look at you. We’re all in our glory just ’cause you and Pop wanted to play housy-housy. Man and wife. Big happy family, I say. Next time Fort Knox will rip the whole roof down. And after that the walls. It’s just a matter of time.’
Mol looks at the heap on the grass. Gutters, the overflow, the TV aerial.
‘The poor bastard belongs in a madhouse,’ he says, shoving the gutters around with his foot. Most of the pieces are rusted through. ‘He should be strapped into a fucken jacket and put on to a steel trolley. Then the nurses can hose porridge down his throat with an enema pump.’
‘Sis, man, Treppie!’ says Mol. ‘Sis!’
‘Don’t come and sis me,’ he says. He can feel he’s got her going now.
‘You’re a devil, Treppie,’ says Mol, drawing in more breath for the next sentence. ‘And he takes after you, Treppie, that’s what! It’s the truth. Look at Pop. He’s soft. Look at me, I’m also soft. You’re the one with the attitude. Stubborn! Devil’s blood!’
‘He’s not my fucken child,’ Treppie shouts. ‘I always pulled out. Aimed high, to the side, ’cause I know what comes from that kind of thing! So don’t come and talk shit here on a Monday morning!’
‘Evil seed can fly,’ says Mol.
‘What? What you say there?’
‘I said the devil’s seed can fly through the air. Devils can’t be put off. Once they’ve got their sights on you, it’s tickets!’
‘What rubbish you talking now?’
‘Lambert says it’s in the Britannica!’
‘Let me tell you something, Mol. It’s not in the Britannica, it’s in Lambert’s sick head. Together with all the other shit-stories he sells you.’
‘Well, if it’s shit, then he gets half of it from you, Treppie!’
He can see she thinks she’s got him in a corner now.
‘Ag really, Mol, like what?’
‘Like that you and Pop are going to get him a whore for his birthday.’
‘I see, and who told you that?’
‘Pop said—’
‘Trust him.’
‘I said to Pop he must tell you, you mustn’t do this kind of thing to Lambert. If you promised him, you’d better do it, otherwise …’
‘Otherwise what, Mol?’
‘You know bladdy well what, Treppie. In the end I’ll go lie down and die in a heap somewhere. I’m completely buggered down under. I can’t any more.’
‘Don’t come and moan at me, sister. I told you and that stupid fool of a Pop, long time ago, you must be careful. But the two of you thought you were playing leading roles in Genesis. Just like that first fucken batch – Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel – all in the same family, and Lot with his randy daughters, and Noah, whose own sons buggered him. No wonder the whole lot of them drowned in the end. They say inbreeding makes people’s bones so heavy they can’t even tread water.’
‘Really, Treppie? Where did you hear that?’
‘In the Britannica, Molletjie, in the Britannica,’ Treppie says, cackling.
Mol picks up one of the postbox’s broken struts and throws it at him.
‘Devil!’ she screams. ‘Satan’s child!’ The strut flies through the air in an arc. Treppie has plenty of time to duck.
He laughs at her. ‘You must aim for the middle wicket, old girl, the middle wicket.’
‘No manners,’ says Mol.
‘You’d better get your aim right if you want to help this morning, old girl! Go fetch the ladder behind the den’s wall so I can get up on the roof. Then drag the toolbox on to the stoep so
you can pass me things I need. And when you’ve done that, go look on the scrapheap for a piece of pipe, about two fingers thick. Ask Lambert where he keeps his glue. And while you’re there, you may as well bring out the welding box and the helmet as well.’
‘Huh?’
‘Ja, Mol. Running repairs.’
Treppie looks at her, standing there with dazed eyes. He first saw that look on her face when he found her sitting in the fridge after she lost Lambert’s spanner in the long grass. The day everything burnt down. Ever since then, she shuts up like a clam the moment anyone asks her about tools.
‘Huh?’ Treppie mimics her. ‘Huh? Huh? Huh?
‘Come,’ he says. ‘Shake your head a little first, Mol, like this,’ and he shakes his head.
Mol shakes her head. Then she stops. ‘Why?’
‘Just shake a little more,’ he says, and he bends his head closer to her, as if he wants to listen.
‘What?’ asks Mol.
‘Don’t you hear anything?’
‘What am I supposed to hear?’
‘The loose screws in your head, sister, a whole assortment of nuts and bolts, all of them odd pairs – pop rivets, fissure plugs, wing-nuts, you name it!’
‘Wing-nut,’ says Mol.
‘Nice and scrambled, hey,’ Treppie says. ‘It’s hereditary.’
‘Scrambled what?’
‘Scrambled eggs, Mol, scrambled stories, scrambled genes, scrambled rails, we’re one big pot of scrambled Benades.’
‘One big pot,’ says Mol.
‘Yes, Mol, and they can put us inside a centrifuge and spin us till we burst, but we won’t unscramble.’
‘Centrifuge,’ says Mol.
‘Ja, old sister, we’re twisted into each other like the innards of a fridge; remember, like those fucked-up fridges we sometimes used to get for repairs, when their motors seized up from the wrong voltage.’
‘Voltage,’ says Mol.
‘Ja, from too little voltage. The motor gets too hot, and then it seizes. It’s from too few volts that they do that.’
‘Volts,’ says Mol. ‘We’ve got too few volts.’
‘Now you’re talking, sister. Now you’re talking.’
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