Triomf

by Marlene van Niekerk

  Pop turns away from the mirror. If the mirror’s here, then the door must be there. He takes a few steps across the floor. Behind him the window slips off its catch and blows open. He turns around. The curtain flaps up high and a wave of warm smoke-wind catches him full in the face. He loses his breath, stumbling backwards into a doorframe. Now he’s in the passage. There, far away in front of him, he sees a light. It must be the front door. But the back door’s closer. He hears sounds like shots. Things are exploding out there in the backyard. He feels hot and cold in his shirt. The smoke swirls more and more densely round his head.

  Pop feels like he’s in the belly of something that’s been set on fire and stoked up, something you can’t stop until it all burns up. Like a furnace. Or an oven where bricks are being fired.

  He stands in the back door. Through the waves of smoke he sees Lambert swinging a big metal plate over the fire. Flames shoot up from under the plate. Lambert roars. It looks like his feet are in the coals. He’s taking high steps and his legs look like they’re burnt black, all the way up to his knees.

  Slowly, Pop registers what he’s seeing. Flossie’s not on her blocks any more. She’s not even on her chassis. She’s right off her undercarriage, like something fleeing its own skin. What’s more, it looks like someone’s taken a sledgehammer and smashed the dislocated Flossie even further into her glory. Bits of her lie scattered all over the place. All that remains on her chassis are the seats, the engine and the steering wheel. It’s almost like a king-sized dog with jaws of iron decided to tear her to bits. And her shell, standing to one side with its doors thrown open, looks like something that wants to fly, a thing with broken wings and no face, ’cause the front window’s been smashed in as well. The doors have been pushed almost right out of their hinges, and the nose of the bonnet’s been twisted upwards, out of shape. The engine cover too. God in heaven, how could he have slept through all this? Maybe he’s still sleeping. Maybe he’ll wake up in a minute or two and find it’s just an ordinary day.

  Slowly, Pop moves his sore hip down the kitchen steps. Still in his shirt and socks, he takes a few steps through the wreckage. A blowtorch lies in the grass. He sees the big monkey-wrench and the electric saw for cutting iron. Pieces of iron piping and bricks lie scattered everywhere. He wants to get to Lambert, over there, standing in the flames. He must stop Lambert. He must try to stop him before he goes too far. He must say something, before Lambert takes to the streets and breaks down the whole of Triomf. But the smoke and the heat stop Pop in his tracks. He can’t go any further, the wind’s blowing everything into his face. There’s soot in his eyes and he can smell rubber.

  Suddenly he sees Treppie and Mol running towards him, through the smoke. Mol’s coughing. Her hair stands up wildly. Treppie’s waving his arms.

  ‘Back! Back!’ he shouts.

  ‘Around the front!’ Mol shouts.

  ‘Here!’ Treppie rips the steering wheel out of its rod and pushes it into Pop’s hands.

  ‘Take this!’ he shouts at Mol. He rips something loose. It’s a piece of the back seat.

  Treppie grabs one more time. He tears off one of Flossie’s loose mudguards at the back. ‘Come!’ he shouts.

  Pop finds himself in the middle of a procession. Back through the kitchen door, down the passage, up towards the front door. With Treppie in the lead.

  ‘He’s gone berserk!’ shouts Mol.

  ‘He’s flipped,’ shouts Treppie.

  ‘Everything must burn!’ shouts Mol.

  ‘We must go round the front!’ shouts Treppie. ‘The wind’s too strong, we must throw the stuff into the fire from the front.’ The wind blows the warm smoke full into their faces. From the back, they can’t even get close to the fire.

  ‘He wants to see fire,’ shouts Mol.

  ‘Quick,’ shouts Treppie.

  Pop wants to say ‘police’, he wants to say ‘fire brigade’, he wants to say ‘neighbours’, he wants to say ‘Lord God, please help’, but he can’t get a word out. He slips on the floor as he shuffles down the passage with the procession, steering wheel in hand. Then they’re out through the front door. Ahead of him, Pop sees Treppie starting to run. Flossie’s mudguard scrapes a long, white mark against the front door. From behind, Mol pushes Flossie’s seat into his back. ‘Hurry, Pop. Run!’

  Toby squeezes past their legs. He barks in a high voice and tries to jump up against them. They’re out in front now, running around the corner. Vaguely, Pop sees a bunch of people watching them from the street, but he can’t make out who it is. Mol’s hurrying him up all the time.

  ‘Fetch!’ Lambert shouts from behind the fire. Pop can’t make Lambert out. All he hears is Lambert’s voice, which sounds different. Like it’s coming through a loudspeaker, or the mouth of a bugle.

  ‘Hurry up, you fucken dung-beetles … rotten bastards! I haven’t got the whole fucken day!’

  Then they’re at the fire.

  ‘Throw it in! Throw it in! In the middle, so it burns. I want nothing to do with rubbish. Rubbish must burn! Time is short!’

  Lambert stands behind the fire. With his long arms he throws boxes, papers and rags into the fire. The smoke’s so thick, all you can see is his outline. The old Kneff’s also in the fire, Pop sees. It looks like a big, burning white ship. How the hell did Lambert get that heavy thing outside?

  Treppie takes Flossie’s seat from Mol and throws it on to the heap. It gives off a cloud of thick, black smoke. It stinks. Then the insides of the seat catch fire.

  ‘Hooooo-haaa!’ Lambert shouts.

  The fire shoots up high.

  ‘Hooooo-haaa!’ he shouts. ‘More! More! Come, come, come! What you all standing there for? Never seen a fire before, hey? Never seen how rubbish burns? Fucken rubbish must fucken burn. It must burn!’

  They scuttle back round the corner of the house. Treppie gets to the remains of Flossie first. He rips and pulls at her shell.

  Treppie gives Pop a door. Pop looks through the broken window and sees heads from next door looking over the prefab wall. Mol gets the wipers and a piece of floor mat and some plastic from Flossie’s insides. Treppie rips a chunk out of the back seat. Fluffy stuff, brown woolly bits and coir bulge out of it. They go back in through the kitchen door. Toby barks. All the way along the passage he pulls things out of Mol’s hands. She tries to pick the stuff up, but when she does, Toby bites her.

  ‘Voetsek!’ Mol shouts, but she’s almost lost her voice. Pop’s behind her. He tries to kick Toby with his socked foot, but all he manages to do is kick Toby’s tail as it waves around in the air. Toby’s wild. He thinks it’s a party. He runs round them in circles with his ears flat against his head. He dances on his hind legs and the blocks on the floor dance up and down with him. Then they’re out again, through the front door. They go round the corner, towards the back, until they get to the fire. They throw their things on the fire. Then back through the smoke to Flossie and back in through the kitchen with more pieces. Round and round they go. Pop’s short of breath. He can’t any more. He falls over his own two feet. He stays down, lying there with Flossie’s dashboard in his hands, still quite a way short of the fire. He’s looking at the world from underneath, from an angle. Toby’s face is in front of him. His tongue hangs out. Pop pushes Toby away. Here come Treppie’s shoes. The heels have been worn down at one side at the back. Now he sees Mol’s legs. She’s full of bruises and grazes and her brown socks have sagged down to her ankles. Pop looks up Mol’s legs. The hollows of her knees are full of knobbly, purple veins. Above the hollows, the skin puffs up in bulges and, further up, it hangs in folds. Pop’s looking up into Mol’s depths. He lets his head drop again.

  ‘Up! Up!’ he hears Lambert screaming. ‘Don’t go lie down now, there’s still lots more that must burn!’

  Toby gets hold of Pop’s shirt-sleeve. He pulls at it. Pop gets halfway up. He’s on his knees, looking round him on all fours. Toby stands next to him, at the same height, looking into his face with pricked ears. T
oby’s waiting to see Pop’s next move. But Pop doesn’t move. He watches as Lambert drags Flossie’s entire shell on to the fire, swinging and plucking wildly. Isn’t Lambert also burning? The flames shoot up all around him. Now Lambert’s doing funny things with his head. It’s pulled down deeply into his shoulders. He looks like he’s biting at something in the air. Pop crawls nearer on his hands and knees, alongside Toby, who still thinks it’s a game. Then he kneels on his shirt; a piece rips loose from the collar.

  As Pop and Toby reach Treppie’s and Mol’s legs, they stop to look at Lambert. It looks like the warm, smoky wind is about to blow Lambert away. Mol’s legs give way slightly, as if she wants to sit down, but she stays up. Treppie bends over and puts his hands on his knees. He hangs his head. It looks like Treppie’s crying. His face is all screwed up. Treppie turns his upside-down face towards Pop and Toby. Upside down, it looks even more like he’s crying.

  Are you crying? Pop wants to ask. It’s a long time since he last saw Treppie cry. It was that time when there was a similar fire in the yard, when all the fridges burnt up.

  Are you crying? Pop wants to ask, but all he does is open and close his mouth a few times. Are you crying, are you crying, are you crying? But he’s got no moisture or sound to talk with.

  Treppie’s upside-down mouth makes a strange shape. He’s saying something. Toby barks at Treppie. Pop can’t hear what Treppie’s saying, and he can’t read Treppie’s lips, ’cause they’re upside down. All he sees is a row of teeth wedged against Treppie’s lip. Then Treppie’s face is gone. From his position on all fours, Pop looks to Mol’s side. Toby also looks up. They see Treppie’s hand go down into Mol’s housecoat and come out again with nothing in it. Now Pop looks up, higher. Mol’s hand goes up and feels for her bun that’s come loose. Then Pop and Toby look in front of them again.

  Where’s Lambert now? They can’t see Lambert any more.

  Pop tries to get up. He steps on his shirt again and it tears further. Mol puts her hand under his arm to help him up. Pop’s back on his feet. He looks at Treppie. Now he can read Treppie’s lips. Treppie’s upper teeth are set tightly against his lower lip as he says: ‘Fit’.

  ‘Fit, he’s having a fucken fit, that’s what it is, another fit, from making fires,’ Treppie says. ‘Come!’

  Through the smoke, around the back corner, they struggle. The smoke blows into their faces. Pop coughs. Treppie’s the first one to get to Lambert.

  Lambert’s lying with his feet almost in the fire. They’re black and grey from the ash and his skin looks like it’s burnt all the way up to his knees.

  His back is hollow and his head’s thrown back. His arms look stiff, with the elbows twisted strangely outwards. His hands are open and his fingers look like they’re clutching something, but there’s nothing there to clutch on to.

  Toby pulls at Lambert’s T-shirt sleeve. Mol takes one of Lambert’s arms and Treppie the other. It looks like the arms have turned inside out in their sockets. They pull him away from the fire, but he’s heavy, and they struggle to drag him to a safe distance.

  Foam bubbles from Lambert’s mouth. As they drag him through the ashes, his shorts come off. His thing hangs across his thigh at an angle. It’s thick and purple. Pee spurts out of it.

  Pop puts his hand to his breast. It feels like there’s a small fit happening in his heart. His eyes burn. Then he realises he’s also crying. Just like the last time when he saw Lambert lying there in the long, green grass with blood on his lips. When Treppie also cried.

  ‘Matches!’ Mol says. ‘Treppie, pass your matches!’

  ‘What?’ Treppie says, but Mol’s already taken the box out of his shirt-pocket. She shakes the matches on to the grass and squeezes the box flat.

  ‘Pull open his mouth!’ she says to Pop. Pop looks at his hands. They’re filthy. He wants to wipe them off on his backside, but he’s not wearing pants. He wipes his hands on his chest. On his torn shirt and his vest.

  Treppie’s hands are also dirty, but he’s too busy to start thinking about his hands right now. He pulls Lambert’s lips apart. The teeth are clenched. No tongue sticking out, so at least he hasn’t bitten off his tongue. That’s the one possibility. The other is that he could swallow his tongue. That’s what the doctor said, epileptics have a problem with their tongues when they fit, they bite them off or they swallow them.

  Treppie sticks his two forefingers into one side of Lambert’s mouth, where he can find a gap, where Lambert’s wisdom and molar teeth were taken out. Slowly he prises the jaws away from each other. ‘Hold open his mouth!’ he shouts at Pop.

  Pop works his fingers between Lambert’s front teeth. He pulls up with one hand and down with the other. He can’t get a good grip. Lambert’s mouth is slippery from all the slime. As Pop gets the mouth open, Treppie takes his forefinger and hooks Lambert’s tongue out from the back of his throat. He pulls it into the mouth and straightens it out.

  ‘Almost swallowed it.’ Now Mol’s there with the flattened matchbox.

  ‘Double,’ says Treppie, ‘fold it double.’

  Mol folds, once, twice, three times over. Treppie holds the box between Lambert’s front teeth. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘let go.’

  Pop lets go. Treppie keeps his fingers in until the last moment, so he can keep the tongue nice and flat at the bottom of Lambert’s mouth.

  Pop stands back. He wipes his hands off on his shirt again.

  Treppie wipes his hands on the back of his pants. Mol’s still bent over. She holds the folded matchbox ready. Toby’s standing on the other side of Pop’s head.

  Toby takes a step closer and then back again. ‘Ee-ee,’ he says.

  ‘Dear me,’ says Pop. At least, that’s what he tries to say. But there’s still no sound in his throat.

  ‘Fuck,’ says Treppie. ‘Jesus, no, fuck it.’ He wipes his forehead with his arm.

  Slowly, Lambert’s jaws sag back into place again. His teeth fit back on top of one another, over the folded matchbox.

  Mol pulls Lambert’s lips back over his teeth. Then she also moves back.

  Just the folded back end of the red lion sticks out of Lambert’s mouth.

  Toby sniffs Lambert.

  ‘Voetsek!’ Mol shouts.

  Pop rips the half-torn side of his shirt right off. Right off the collar and out of the sleeve. He spreads it over Lambert’s lower half. Mol pulls down Lambert’s wet shorts, over his feet. As she pulls, little pieces of black skin come off here and there. It looks pink under the skin.

  ‘He got burnt,’ she says. ‘Some of his skin burnt right off.’

  ‘You people must get an ambulance,’ they hear someone say. They look up. It’s someone from next door, one of the Fort Knox women, looking over the wall. Then a man’s head also pops up. ‘That fucker looks like he wants to cop it.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Treppie tells the man.

  The man laughs. He lights a cigarette. ‘Anyone for a smoke?’ He holds his packet out, over the wall. ‘After action, satisfaction.’

  Treppie motions to the man he wants nothing to do with him.

  But Mol’s looking at the man, who’s walking closer to them, along the wall.

  ‘Mol,’ Pop says, without a voice. Why does Mol want to go and bugger around with next door now?

  But Mol wants a cigarette, one of those the man’s offering over the wall. She wants to see another person’s face. She wants to touch another person’s hand. If someone wants to give her a cigarette, who’s she to say no? Some people still care when they see you’re suffering. That’s what Mol’s thinking. Pop knows. Shame. Poor Mol.

  Pop watches Mol take a cigarette. He sees the man from Fort Knox lean over and light it up for her. The man cups his hands round the lighter and holds them close to Mol’s face. He sees how the Fort Knox women look over the wall at Mol from both sides of the Fort Knox man. They’re looking at how she lights her cigarette, but they’re also looking her up and down. Her body, and her legs. Their faces look like
they want to say: Sis. But they’re also curious. Like the faces of people looking at an old tortoise or reptile or something eating its food in the zoo. Eating food or shitting. Or shitting off. ’Cause now the Benades have taken another big blow and everyone’s staring at them, as if they’re the only people who have setbacks like this. Pop feels something like anger rising in his breast, but it’s weak. Behind him something sizzles. Then, suddenly, there’s white steam all around his head. He turns round. More people appear through the smoke. They’re from next door, on the other side. The fish-breeder’s people. They’re using hosepipes to put out the fire. Big clouds of steam and smoke rise up into the air.

  Mol comes back from the wall. They stand and look at the clouds of smoke.

  The man from next door shouts at them. ‘We’re going to put the municipality on to you! Do you think you’re the only people in this street, hey? Just look at the mess here again. Everything full of soot and smoke! My carp can’t breathe in this air. They’re still going to come and take you away from here, the whole lot of you and all your fucken rubbish. You’re worse than kaffirs, you lot! Blarry filth. A plague. Sis! Sis! Don’t you have any shame?’

  Pop pulls Treppie by the sleeve. He takes Mol by the shoulder. Come, let’s go inside, he wants to say, but now his voice is even further away than it was earlier.

  He bends over and takes one of Lambert’s arms. Treppie takes the other. Mol takes the head. She holds it straight so the tongue won’t move. They drag Lambert back inside through the back door of his den. As she walks backwards, Mol kicks rubbish out of her way. They want to get Lambert on to his bed, but there’s no more bed. The mattress has disappeared. And the bed’s legs have folded inwards. Bits of spring stick out from under the frame.

  ‘He burnt it,’ says Mol.

  ‘Now he can fuckenwell sleep on the floor,’ says Treppie. ‘He’s the one who wants to go and burn his bed.’