‘Lambert,’ he says, ‘Lambertus Benade.’
And then he feels himself offering the kaffir his hand. Ja, can you believe it? And the kaffir smiles at him from behind his reflectors, and Lambert sees in the reflectors how he smiles back at the kaffir. And then the kaffir takes his hand. He shakes Lambert’s big, knobbly hand. He half lets go of Lambert’s hand and then he swivels his own hand, grabbing hold of Lambert’s thick thumb. Lambert gropes to get hold of the kaffir’s thumb, and when he does get a grip on it, a thin little thumb, the kaffir suddenly lets go and turns his hand straight again. Lambert gropes for the kaffir’s hand until he gets hold of it again. And then he gives it a good shake.
Now they really start laughing. They sit there and clutch their stomachs, they’re laughing so much. They smack their legs to help them get all the laughter out. They make grabbing movements in the air to show how they missed each other’s hands, and then they laugh so much they fall to the ground. There by the rocks, under the trees, across the road from the Martindale rubbish dumps.
‘So now, where do you live, man?’ the kaffir asks when the laughing dies down a bit.
‘Just there, the other side, in Triomf,’ he shows with his hand.
‘Triomf,’ says the kaffir.
‘Yes, Triumph,’ he translates for the kaffir.
‘Triumph, I see,’ says the kaffir, and he gives a little laugh.
‘And you,’ he says, ‘where do you live?’
‘Me? Ho, ho, here, there, everywhere. Sonnyboy pola everywhere,’ says the kaffir.
‘I see,’ he says. And then, after a while: ‘A rambling rose.’
Then they laugh some more.
‘I mean, where do you come from?’ he asks next.
‘What do you reckon, my mate?’ says the kaffir, smiling.
‘Well, um, it’s hard to say,’ he says.
‘How come, hey?’ says the kaffir. ‘You’re supposed to be able to tell just by looking at me, hey, boss?’
‘Um, it’s not so easy,’ he says.
‘No, now you must please explain, my man, ’cause I’m just a damn kaffir.’
He knows he’s being teased. But he doesn’t mind. This kaffir’s his pal. He likes him.
‘Well, you’re too yellow,’ he says, ‘and you don’t talk like a kaffir. Maybe you’re just a Hotnot.’
‘Hear, hear!’ says Sonnyboy. ‘This whitey can’t classify me!’ He leans over to Lambert as if he wants to tell him a secret.
‘Look, that’s how the dice fell for me here in Jo’burg. I’m a Xhosa, I come from the Transkei, and some of us are yellow.’ He touches his face. ‘That’s why the bladdy Bushmen thought I was one of them, so I got a room in Bosmont right in among them. And they began talking real Coloured Afrikaans to me. So I got the hang of it on the sly, and I didn’t say nothing, ’cause the less a Bushman knows about you, the better. It’s a bad scene, the Bushman scene. They drink themselves stupid and then they rob and stab you and leave you for dead …’ Suddenly Sonnyboy sounds different. He shifts even closer to Lambert.
‘Now listen to me, brother.’ From behind the rocks he pulls out a pink bag with a zip and handles. ‘Don’t you want to buy something from a rambling rose? I need the money, man. I haven’t got a job. I live by my wits, you could say. I’m hungry, man. I haven’t eaten fucken nothing for three days, man.’
‘Shame,’ Lambert says. ‘That’s bad.’
‘Bad, man, big bad,’ says Sonnyboy.
He looks round to see if anyone’s coming. Then he unzips the bag and feels around among papers and rags. He holds open the bag for Lambert to look.
‘Fuck!’ Lambert says.
In the bag, on top of dirty rags and newspaper, lie a revolver and a pair of binoculars.
‘Jesus fuck!’ he says. ‘Where you get that kind of stuff, man?’ He puts his hand into the bag, but Sonnyboy grabs his wrist hard and takes out the hand again. He zips the bag closed.
‘Right,’ Sonnyboy says. ‘You think about it. Think, man, it wasn’t easy, I tell you.’
‘That’s too expensive for me, man. Just look at me!’ And he points to his clothes, his perished boxer shorts. He lifts up his arms so the kaffir can see the holes in his green T-shirt. ‘I’m also poor, you know!’ he says.
‘But you’re not hungry, man. You are not hungry like I am,’ says Sonnyboy, rubbing his stomach.
‘Well,’ Lambert says, and he doesn’t know what gets into him, but he says to Sonnyboy, right there under those scrappy trees, among the rocks, across the road from the dumps: ‘I’m hungry for love, man; now that’s a really bad thing, man.’
Sonnyboy looks at him. ‘Hey?’ he says, and he looks away. Then he looks back at him. ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘That’s bad, man.’
‘But I’m getting a girl, you know.’
‘Yes?’ says Sonnyboy, looking like he doesn’t believe him.
‘Yes, my father’s getting a girl for me on my birthday, for a whole night. I want to make everything nice, so maybe she stays with us forever.’
‘’Strue?’ Sonnyboy smiles a little smile, but Lambert can’t work out what that smile means. ’Cause of the shades. This yellow kaffir from the Transkei mustn’t come and laugh at him now. He must know his place, yellow or not. He must know what he is and who he is. To hell with Hotnot tricks.
‘Where you got those things in any case?’ he asks, putting a bit of attitude into his voice.
‘Oooh,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘here, there, everywhere, boss!’
‘I see.’ He nods slowly at Sonnyboy.
Sonnyboy nods slowly back.
‘How much?’ he asks.
‘Hundred,’ says Sonnyboy.
‘Too much,’ he says.
‘Eighty,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Have a heart, man.’
‘I haven’t got eighty,’ he says.
‘What have you got then, man?’ Sonnyboy sounds impatient. ‘Take it out, let’s see,’ he says. Suddenly it looks like he wants to get up and walk off.
He knows he must play his cards carefully now. He wants that gun, that’s for sure. He’s not so sure about the binoculars, but he knows they’ll come in handy, sooner or later.
‘I’ve got fifty,’ he says, feeling in his back pocket for the NPs’ fifty-rand note.
‘Ag no man!’ Sonnyboy protests. ‘What do you take me for? This stuff here’s worth a few thousand!’ He reaches out for Lambert’s fifty.
‘Tough!’ Lambert says, pushing the note back into his pocket.
‘But a hungry man is a hungry man,’ says Sonnyboy.
‘You said it,’ says Lambert, ‘and beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Don’t come and look for shit with me!’ says Sonnyboy.
‘I’m not looking for anything,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something. Six free meals, fifty bucks each.’
‘That’s nothing!’ says Sonnyboy.
‘No, ’strue’s Bob. For the Spur, six tickets. I was lucky. The Spur had a birthday. I won them.’
‘Spur, hey,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘birthday, hey?’
‘Yes, man, the eatplace, Spur. Spur Comanche, Spur Blazing Saddles, any Spur. You can go too. In town. Blacks and Coloureds can go too, now. This is the New South Africa, remember. In Melville too, I swear.’
‘Hmmm,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘How many did you say?’
Lambert feels in his back pocket. He feels past the fifty-rand note until he finds the tickets. Then he unfolds them. Pop’s luck is still rolling here today.
‘Tear on the dotted line,’ he says to Sonnyboy, counting them out. ‘Six, there’s six here. Here, take a look, man. Fifty rands’ food on each ticket. You can eat for a week, every day a T-bone.’
T-bone, Lambert thinks. And what will Pop say when he hears about this deal of his? ’Cause it was Pop’s luck that day with the pudding at Spur, not his. He never has any luck with this kind of thing. But today he’s getting some luck. He must just play his cards right here. He folds the tickets up and puts them back into his pocket.
<
br /> ‘I give you four tickets. Fifty rands and four tickets,’ he says. ‘And I’ll keep two tickets for myself. I also fancy a T-bone some time. My girl too. I’ll take her for a T-bone, if she wants to stay. ’Cause the first night we’ll just eat snacks in my room. I thought of everything. I’ve got a list. Cheese dips, fish dips, crinkle cuts, salt and vinegar chips, the works.’
Sonnnyboy laughs.
‘What are you laughing at, hey? Hey?’ He also laughs a little.
Then they both sit and stare out at the world in front of them. Lambert thinks about his deal. The shadows are getting long. Almost all the loose kaffirs at the gate have gone home for the day. The fixed kaffirs inside the gate are taking off their gloves. Any minute now they’ll close the gates. A wind starts up, blowing plastic bags and loose dirt across the dumps. The bags blow up against the wire fence. Some of them get stuck under the fence. Others snag on the razor-wire on top of the fence. The lateafternoon sun shines gold on the rusted containers inside the dumps.
‘Do they work proper, those things you’ve got there?’ he asks after a while.
‘Sure, man, sure!’ says Sonnyboy. ‘I’ll give you a demo.’ He unzips his bag.
Then he pushes out the revolver’s round magazine. ‘Click,’ and he clicks it back into the middle. He spins it, ‘rrrrt’, with his finger. ‘Click-click-click’ he shoots, inside the pink bag.
‘Satisfied?’ asks Sonnyboy.
‘Now the binoculars,’ he says.
Sonnyboy takes out the binoculars and sets them. He looks through them for a long time. Then he passes them to Lambert, laughing a funny little laugh. He points to the dumps.
‘You see that container there, hey? The one, two, three, four, fifth one from this side. Now look there, on its side, number five, what can you make out there?’
Lambert lifts the binoculars to his eyes. The wire and the plastic bags rise up into his vision. Then he finds his bearings. He sees the light of the sun shining on things. It looks gold. Then the first container, the second, the third, the fourth. Through the binoculars, their sides look like aerial photos of the land taken from very high up. Lines and cracks and bare patches. Plains and dams and bushes, other countries, all spray-painted in gold. Then he gets to the fifth one. It looks like mine dumps and koppies, with thick rows of shapes and blocks, some in crowded rows on top of each other, and others in loose, mixed-up strands. It looks like the aerial photo of Jo’burg on the Chinese calendar in their lounge.
‘Read,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Read to me what you see there.’
Lambert looks on the side of the container. He reads out aloud. ‘CTR 517. Municipality of Johannesburg TPA.’ The letters are stencilled on to the container in white.
‘Right,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Now go down to the right. Just a bit. Now what do you see there? It’s small. Do you see it? Then read, brother, read that line for me.’
‘One settler, one bullet,’ Lambert reads. The letters have been scratched with a nail on to the rusted side of the container. He lowers the binoculars. This yellow kaffir’s jiving him in a big way now. That’s what he’s doing. He’s a cheeky mixed-up fucken kaffir, and now he’s screwing me in the ears, Lambert thinks.
‘I’ll knock the shit out of you, kaffir,’ he says to Sonnyboy.
‘Sorry, boss, but why?’ Sonnyboy laughs. ‘I didn’t write that shit there, man! Just relax, my bra! Sonnyboy’s not into politics, man, I do the dumps, in my own way. That crap’s all over the place, man. Kill this, kill that, one this, one that, viva this, viva that, long live this, that and the other. I love the NP, I love Mandela, I love Biko, I love Amy. So much love in this place, it sounds like fucken paradise! I love all that stuff. I can’t be bothered with all that shit, my man. I just want to show you. This thing here works.’
Sonnyboy takes back his binoculars. He puts them in the bag and zips it closed.
Both of them stay quiet for a long time.
‘I don’t know,’ Lambert says. ‘What can I do with them, the binoculars? I’m not a spy!’
‘Well,’ says Sonnnyboy, ‘you can show your girl the city. From high places.’
‘Hmmm,’ he says, ‘and what do I do with the gun? I haven’t got a licence.’
‘What you need a licence for, man? Protect your girl with it. Jo’burg’s a dangerous place, right? She’ll feel safe and sound with you, man.’
Lambert sees the sun’s already down. Around the closed gates of the dumps the light’s looking grey, and here under the trees it’s already dark. He and Sonnyboy go round in circles, with long quiet periods inbetween, as they work out their deal. Then they’ve got it. Lambert pays the price: fifty rand, plus all six Spur tickets. He puts the gun into the binoculars’ plastic bag. He also gets a plastic bag full of cartridges. Sixty of them, says Sonnyboy. For the hot shot of Triumph Town.
What’s Sonnyboy feeling for now in his pink bag? He takes out something.
‘Free bonus,’ he says, and he ping-pings on the thing’s iron teeth.
‘What’s that?’ Lambert asks, taking the short piece of wood with its strips of iron from Sonnyboy.
‘You make music on it,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘You Boers call it a kaffir-harp. It’s like a Jew’s harp a little bit. You know?’ And Sonnyboy demonstrates with his mouth.
‘I see,’ Lambert says.
‘We call it a mbira,’ says Sonnyboy.
‘Umbiera,’ he says, ‘I’ll remember.’
‘You remember,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘If you practise you’ll get a tune out of it some day.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll practise.’
‘Okay,’ says Sonnyboy.
They both hold out their hands, and this time they shake all three grips smoothly, in time with each other.
‘Now we’re tuned,’ he says.
‘Greased and oiled!’ says Sonnyboy.
‘So long,’ he says, ‘and thanks again for saving my life, hey!’
‘Thanks for saving mine!’ says Sonnyboy.
What does he mean? Lambert thinks. But he’s already turned to go home. Sonnyboy too. He goes right, and this sharp, yellow kaffir goes left. There in front of the closed gates at the Martindale dumps. It’s almost completely dark now. Lambert turns round one last time to look. He sees from behind how Sonnyboy takes off the glasses. He won’t know him without those sunglasses, he thinks. But that’s okay, it’s against the law to buy stolen stuff and anyway it’s not good for a person to know a kaffir-thief too well.
When he walks past Triomf’s shopping centre on the way home, the AWBs and their red caravan are gone. He’s almost glad, ’cause he knows he would’ve been tempted to shove his new gun under their noses. Just to prove a point. But that would have caused big trouble again and now he’s in a hurry to get home.
At the house, he climbs softly over the fence so no one will hear the gate and come and ask where he’s been all day. He hasn’t worked out a story yet. He sneaks round the back to his den and puts on the light. Then he takes all the stuff out of his bag and arranges it on his bed. Before he sits down, he locks the inside door. Then he sits for a long time and looks at his lucky finds. Eventually, he leans backwards against his cushion, propped up against the wall. ‘Ping, ping, ping,’ he plays on the stiff teeth of his umbiera.
In front of him, he sees his list from this morning.
He smiles at his list and gets up. Underneath the last number he writes another three numbers: 25, 26 and 27. And next to them he writes: gun, binoculars, umbiera (Kaffir-harp). He makes little ticks next to each one. With a red ball-point.
14
FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
FROM DREAM TO DREAM
Pop half wakes up. He smells fire. He can’t work out if he’s awake or asleep. In his dream everything was also full of white smoke. Now he keeps his eyes closed. He stays where he is. He’s trying to work out what’s burning and where. His skin feels dry and there’s a rustling noise in his ears. It feels like he’s lying inside a dry pod. He feels light, as if he’s
tumbling about inside a shell as dry as the wind, a great big droning wind full of white smoke. He can’t tell what’s above and what’s below. His head spins. It’s as if many different hands are swinging him by his feet, letting him go and grabbing him again. As if each hand doesn’t know what the others are doing.
Pop struggles to get out of the dream, but just as he begins to get out, he lands up in another dream. His eyes burn when he tries to open them, and there’s a noise in his ears like the sound of crashing. He can hear voices shouting, louder and then softer, in a rush of sounds that blow over him in waves.
BLOW HIGH THE FLAME
Pop sits up on the mattress. The room’s full of smoke. He turns towards the window and pulls the curtains away so he can see outside. But he sees nothing outside, no grass and no wall. Just thick, white smoke. He hears big things falling, doors slamming, and the walls shaking.
It’s Lambert. Screaming. A terrible bellowing. The other voices are those of Mol and Treppie. Mol’s voice is low. It sounds like something simmering, like Jungle Oats cooking on a stove. Treppie’s voice is high. Pop also wants to scream, but he can’t get a sound out of his mouth. His throat has closed up from all the smoke.
Have they really forgotten about him here in the room as the world consumes itself outside? Did they think he should rather just fall asleep, finally, without his even realising he was crossing over? Maybe they thought it would be more merciful like this. And maybe they were right, too. But now he’s awake and he must get out of here, ’cause he can’t breathe. Pop gets up, still in his shirt. He feels for his pants, but his eyes burn when he opens them. He can’t find his pants. He’s looking for the door. He walks into the dressing table, catching sight of his face in the cracked, middle mirror. All he sees there are dark holes where his eyes should be, and the white point of his nose. His mouth and chin and cheeks are blotted out in the semi-dark of the room. He rubs his hand over the bottom half of his face. The stubble makes a scraping noise. So, at least his face is still there.
It feels to him like time’s dying, like the end of time itself is approaching. The last judgement, the judgement of fire, when the clock-faces melt in the towers and the seconds burn into the wrists one by one.
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