Treppie has a terrible time trying to shit. He spends hours on the toilet. Sometimes he sits there so long he reads a whole pile of newspapers, from top to bottom, all afternoon long. That must be what he does, ’cause he tells so many stories from newspapers, word for word, she can swear he learns them off by heart when he’s on the toilet. Treppie’s too clever for his own good.
Mind you, she also thinks he makes up some of the stories he says he reads in the papers. He thinks them up on days when he has to crap and there aren’t any papers to read. She knows. She wasn’t born yesterday.
Like the story about the mortuary assistant who screwed the dead woman. She’d been stone dead for three days, says Treppie. It was in Yugoslavia. She’d even begun to stink a little, ’cause they haven’t got fridges for corpses there in Yugoslavia. But she was unbelievably beautiful. Just a little blue around the lips. Treppie says that’s ’cause she died from blood that was too cold for one so young. Her heart stopped.
When that assistant sponged her down, there on the cold cement block, and he began drying her off, he suddenly got a big hard-on. From drying her long legs and her breasts that were lovely like marble, with dark, pink nipples. He got so horny he no longer smelt anything bad. But he held back and he held back, ’cause Yugoslavia’s a Catholic country and Catholics have to hold back until they meet the woman of their dreams. That mortuary assistant had already been married for thirty years. He’d fathered seven children. And then the poor man had to make her up for the funeral as well. When he put the red lipstick on to her lovely mouth, and the rouge on her pale cheeks, he just couldn’t take it any longer. So he ran off and locked the door of the mortuary, ’cause in Yugoslavia they cut your dick off right there and then, balls and all, if they catch you screwing a corpse. He climbed on to that corpse, there on the cold cement slab, and he rubbed some balm on, out of respect for the dead, and he made love to it, softly and carefully, with the fear of God so heavy in his heart that the tears were streaming down his face. Afterwards, he was so overcome he lay on top of her for a while, and then he kissed her mouth. ‘Smothered her with kisses,’ is how Treppie put it. ‘He smothered her fair countenance with kisses.’ Will you ever!
Treppie sometimes comes out with this kind of language. Then she knows he didn’t read it in any newspaper.
That man was still lying there, feeling his chest getting colder and colder from the corpse. Then it suddenly began to feel warmer, lower down. So he decided he’d better pull out now. He didn’t want to cause his soul any more damage. But when he pulled out, still on his knees there between her legs, she opened those made-up blue eyes of hers and she sat bolt upright. Right there on that block of cement. Like Sleeping Beauty, said Treppie, except he didn’t think it was the kisses that did the trick.
Then there was a major run-around, one thing upon the next. The doctor who wrote the death certificate in the first place came to examine the woman. When he found fresh blood on the mortuary slab, he immediately smelt a rat. He examined her carefully down there, and he saw that the young woman’s virgin had only just been broken.
Yes, said the woman’s mother, when she died she was still pure. Untouched. Let me just get my hands on the fucker who raped my daughter, the father said, laying a charge of rape against the assistant before he did anything else. By then, that poor tormented man had been with the priest for days already, crossing himself over and over out of sheer panic. It was the priest who eventually saw the point, ’cause for Catholics there’s always a point, Treppie says. The priest said the father and mother and daughter should actually praise the Lord for letting that God-fearing assistant get such a good hard-on. If he hadn’t broken the young woman’s virgin, then she’d still be a dead, cold corpse. Six feet under, where the worms would have violated her soft places anyway. Was life not more valuable, he asked, than a virginal membrane and a teaspoonful of blood?
So the father withdrew the case against the mortuary assistant. And that same man is still washing corpses, in that same mortuary, to this day.
Except that no one in Yugoslavia wants to marry the resurrected woman. Even though she’s not dead any more, she’s also not a virgin for the man of her dreams.
Can you believe it, Pop says when Treppie tells stories like this. Pray, can you believe it. Or: Who would’ve thought it possible.
But Pop has also learnt by now that you don’t talk about believing things in front of Treppie. Or about praying, for that matter. So when Treppie reads something from the papers, like the Inkatha woman who put a tyre round an ANC woman’s neck and set her alight, and then put another tyre around her waist because she didn’t want to burn so nicely, then Pop just says: Really. And when Treppie says it looks like the necklace is out, but the hula-hoop’s coming back in, then Pop just says: Really, hey!
One Sunday, Treppie gave the Jehovahs such a ticking off she thought they’d never come back again.
It was worse than Lambert’s fits. When the Jehovahs took out their Bibles that day, he went and fetched a pile of old newspapers from his room. He threw the papers down in the middle of the lounge and said that was where the afflictions of suffering mankind were reported. They mustn’t come and talk shit here about walls of jasper and streets of gold. He stood there, telling the Jehovahs he believed what he read in the papers and he hoped it would all come to an end as soon as possible. He said he didn’t pray for God’s intervention, he prayed for the End itself, without any mediation. And when they came and told him the End had hair like wool and a voice like many waters, then all he could say was, no, the End had eyes that were white with fright and it was running down a dirt road with a panga through its back, or it was jumping into the air with a bullet in its head, and pots of ferns and palms in its hands. ’Cause it was a gardener.
And then his voice went all strange and sharp, and he said he’d learnt to know the End when he was still young. It was hanging in a stoker’s overall from a belt in a Railways truck, with a tongue sticking through its teeth. Completely humiliated in the struggle with death. Then he said he just wished he could understand how it all began. How, and why.
‘Why? Why? Why?’ he shouted, and the dogs began to bark. He shook the two Witnesses by the shoulders, first the one and then the other, so hard that their heads bounced on their necks. And then he let them go, suddenly quite calm again. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s all in the mind. Just go and find yourselves a better story. I’m going to buy myself a paper now.’ And then he winked at them and drove off to the café in Molletjie.
TETHER
Pop says Treppie’s come to the end of his tether. In that case, Lambert must be close to his breaking point too, ’cause he also shakes her by the shoulders like that when he doesn’t like the stories she tells. He shakes her till her head bounces on her neck.
She does her best. She starts at the beginning. About the cowboy-girl standing on the stoep with her frills, waiting for the cowboy to arrive out of the distance. Hat over his eyes. She tells it all, just like in the cowboy movies. And if Lambert wants to hear them, she embroiders the parts she doesn’t see in the movies. In English, too. ‘Honey’ this and ‘darling’ that, so he can just get on with it and be done. So she doesn’t have to take too much punishment.
But she should never have let Lambert start saying things inbetween, ’cause now he’s really full of nonsense. Now he keeps telling her what to say in the middle of everything, and then she loses her thread.
After a while, the cowboy who kept coming over the veld wasn’t good enough any more. Then it was the Indian who had to come from behind. Through the kitchen window.
Lambert thought it up and then she had to play along. She simply had to learn the story and tell it like he wanted, otherwise he wants to tell it all on his own. What does she know about Indians, anyway? She told him it was against the Immorality Act in any case, but he said no, it wasn’t. Indians were yellow, not black. Then she said she thought they were red, but Lambert said it cuts no ice, red wasn’t
black, so it was okay for the Indian to fuck the cowboy-girl. In any case, Indians did it from behind. Like dogs.
Like Treppie, she thought, but didn’t say, ’cause that would’ve been like a red rag to a bull. Lambert wants to do everything Treppie does.
And she wouldn’t be able to take that. It’s bad enough as it is. Treppie says it’s ’cause she closes up like a clam. He says stupid people clam up like that for fear of clever people. Then she asked him if he thought his intelligence was lodged in his thing, and hers in her backside. He laughed and said he was glad to see she wasn’t really as stupid as he’d thought she was. He says he loses his bearings when he thinks too much with his head. So he rather keeps it under the belt. Those kind of thoughts are ‘easily digestible’. Everyone can understand them, it’s the ‘basics’. Everything else is ‘fancy footwork’. Well, Treppie must be using his head a lot nowadays, ’cause he’s been losing his bearings in a big way recently. And he’s been trying it less and less with her. Since Peace Day, not at all. He says she’s worn out on all sides. But those are just excuses. He can’t get it up any more. That’s why he winds up Lambert against her. It’s about all he can get up these days.
Mol smiles at her little joke. She must remember it, so she has something to say when he starts niggling her again. Whether he likes it or not. But it’s not just with them that he’s so touchy. He also lets strangers have it when they rub him up the wrong way.
Like the other day when they went to the Newlands library. Most of the time she and Pop go there alone. Pop only goes ’cause she wants to take out books but she can’t drive. Nice books, like Roses for Alice and now, the last time, The Raven-Haired Girl from Hope Springs. Books about nice girls and their new boyfriends who’re better than their old boyfriends. Boyfriends who come visiting and look at the girls with ‘dark, brooding eyes’. Then they take them away to nice places, for picnics, with champagne in baskets. All just wallpaper, Treppie says when he sees her books. But sometimes when he’s got nothing to do he goes with them, and then of course Lambert also wants to go. She asks what for, people stare at her enough as it is when she goes there, and if Lambert comes they’ll stare even more. Then Treppie says, no, Lambert’s his ‘apprentice’. Where he goes Lambert must also go. Treppie does it just to make trouble. Him and Lambert stand around in the library and page through books, mostly the ones ‘just for adults’. You have to sign for them in a black book. The books go missing otherwise, ’cause they’re full of stuff about sex and naked people. They’re just randy, she tells them, there’s enough of that kind of thing in the café s. That’s if they really want to look. They don’t even have to read anything. It’s just pictures. But Treppie says he can’t concentrate in café s, there’s too much noise, and in any case there aren’t any Britannicas in the café s. He doesn’t just want to see pictures all the time, he also wants to learn. The same goes for Lambert. Lambert can’t live from bread alone, and doesn’t she, as his mother, also want him to broaden his horizons? Then she says Lambert’s broad enough as it is, and Treppie mustn’t start niggling her now. But Pop says it doesn’t matter, let them come along. What harm can it do, after all?
Pop’s always trying to keep the peace. But too much peace can also land you in trouble. Like the other day, when Treppie and Lambert stood there in the library, signing their names with red pens and asking the librarian to get them the most juicy books ‘just for adults’. The woman asked them what they meant by most juicy? Treppie said they meant the books with grubby pages from all the fingering. Those were the best, ’cause dirty was nice, he told her, winking. Then that woman raised her eyes and said, ai, a librarian also had a dog’s life in a place like Newlands, with this class of people. Well, Treppie lost it right there and then. But he didn’t swear. He began with those sharp little remarks of his. Yes, he said, he did come from Triomf, which used to be Sophiatown. He knew it was kaffirs who lived there, but in the early days Newlands was also full of kaffirs. That’s where the washerwomen came from. At least the kaffirs in Sophiatown used to play music on penny-whistles. Penny-whistles and trumpets. Altogether a better class of kaffir. And did she know, she, a librarian, who Satchmo was? No, said the woman, she didn’t. Oh, said Treppie, then she had a terrible hole in her education. Shame, said Treppie, and he made it sound like she had a terrible hole somewhere else. That poor woman didn’t know where to look any more. People who aren’t used to Treppie never know which side he’s going to come from next. Well, then he started singing a song at the top of his voice. ‘Hello Dolly’, in a gravelly voice. And he winked at her, playing trumpet with his fingers. Did she know whose song that was? No, said the woman, she didn’t. Good God, said Treppie, she must be analphabetic, and he raised his eyes the way she had earlier, the way she was still looking as he spoke. He told her a long story about Satchmo, whose real name was Louis Armstrong, a highly talented kaffir who came from America. One day, this kaffir came to visit Sophiatown, and he gave his golden trumpet to a boy called Hugh Masekela. Just like that, for keeps. Hugh Masekela was eight years old then. Did she know who Masekela was? No, said the woman. Treppie shook his head: ‘Tsk-tsk-tsk.’ She would have to get her house in order before the election, ’cause that same Hugh Masekela was now the best trumpet player in the country. And his sister, Treppie said, making big eyes at the librarian, Masekela’s sister was going to become the minister of libraries. Her name was Barbara, and Barbara didn’t take crap, not to mention ignorance, from librarians.
Treppie cornered that woman till she no longer knew whether she was coming or going. He asked her if she remembered how jolly it was in Sophiatown’s kaffir-shebeens. But no, she must’ve been too high class to go there. Which was a pity, ’cause the way she was looking now, it would’ve done her a lot of good to learn the foxtrot from a kaffir. That’s where he’d learnt ballroom, Treppie said. From the kaffirs in Sophiatown, and for someone of his class it was an education all on its own. To tell the truth, in those days he went there just to find a drink on weekends, when the bottle stores were all closed. And did she know that Triomf didn’t even have an off-licence any more, let alone a ballroom?
’Cause where the off-licence should be, in Sophiatown, there across the road from Shoprite, was exactly where the NG church stood now. And the NG’s church bazaars were so spiritless it was no wonder there were so many cracks in their edifice, and they had so few members. And what little devil was telling him now, the way she stood there in her floral print dress and her string of fresh-water pearls, that she, too, belonged to the NG church, and that she, too, thought dancing was a sin?
By now the woman was completely red in the face, all the way from the neck up. All she could manage to do was point to the sign saying QUIET PLEASE, with a cigarette and a red line running through it. But then Treppie took out his cigarettes and slapped them down, ‘ka-thwack!’ on to the counter. What was her problem? he asked. If she wanted a smoke all she had to do was ask, and now would she please just give him the most juicy book ‘just for adults’, like he asked. Then he winked at her.
Hell, she thought she was going to fall right through the floor that day, ’cause by then everyone in the library had gathered round Treppie to listen, and when he finally got his dirty books, he sang quietly to himself,
‘This is the way the boere ride
the boere ride, the boere ride
bold upright and legs astride
booted, spurred and hat-brim wide
this is way the boere ride, hooray!’
Everyone laughed. Why, she still doesn’t understand, ’cause she didn’t think it was funny, and neither did Pop. Lambert was so embarrassed he walked off to the Britannica cabinet on the other side, pretending he didn’t know them.
Oh yes, that was one day she was very happy to sign her books out and go home. Except they still had to listen to Treppie’s nonsense all the way back. He carried on like a pumped-up church organ, he was so worked up. About everything he’d read in that book ‘just for adults’. One
of those books was full of ‘private parts’, he said, but only in Latin ’cause the book was about professors and students and so on. They didn’t say ‘arseholes’ in books like that, he said, it was ‘anuses’, and all the other parts were also named by their correct terms. Meanwhile, the ins and outs of those parts were described so well you’d swear the writer had looked from above and from below, through a magnifying glass, as the apostle says.
Pop said Treppie should go and read his Bible again. It said ‘through a glass darkly’. He shouldn’t twist the words of the apostle like that.
Ja, ja, said Treppie, maybe that was what the apostle said, but for him there wasn’t anything dark about private parts described from so close that you lost your perspective on the bigger picture. Maybe that learned oke who wrote the book should rather have taken pictures for Scope. In Scope there were at least bodies with faces, so a person could see what was what and who was who. Pop said the way Treppie was carrying on, you’d swear he was starved for sex or something.
Then suddenly everyone went quiet, and they rode like that almost the whole way home on Ontdekkers. She couldn’t find the courage to tell him her joke about all he could still get up, ’cause Treppie’s face suddenly began to look strange. It was only when they turned into Triomf again that Lambert said he’d read interesting stuff about clouds in the Britannica. Did they know clouds had names?
Yes, said Treppie, Cloud Nine was where he’d always wanted to spend his life, but he knows better now.
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