‘Come, Pop, it’s time for fireworks!’ Treppie laughs. Mol can’t work out if he’s serious or not. She tries to wriggle herself loose.
‘Let her go!’ Pop says.
But Treppie won’t let go. He pushes her down the passage, holding the knife to her throat. She hears Pop coming after them. Is there no end to this day’s evil?
Once in the den, Treppie pushes her backwards, against Pop. She and Pop almost fall over. But Pop holds steady. Mol pulls Pop so he’s standing next to her. Treppie looks at Lambert. First look, then kick. One, two, three kicks. There goes the blanket. Lambert doesn’t come to, he just groans. He looks like a sea-creature, floating belly-up. A white belly.
Treppie shifts the Tedelex. They must look, he says, he’s going to show them MOLE II’S younger sister. And then he shows them, piece by piece, what those scratches on the wall are. Terrible. Pop looks the other way. Treppie sings:
‘Head in the ice-box
Cracker in the twat
Belly all pink
Mole I can smell the rot …’
Sis.
‘Enough!’ says Pop. He pushes her towards the door. He wants her out of here. He looks like he wants to talk to Treppie, alone. But she stays right there, in the doorway. She watches Pop as he tries to get his sentences lined up, but his mouth just opens and closes. Treppie’s one up on him again.
‘Shut your mouth, Pop, or you’ll start catching flies,’ says Treppie.
Pop shuts his mouth.
‘There’s nothing you can say to me, brother,’ Treppie shouts, ‘’cause I’m fully educated in suffering, so to speak. Let me tell you my latest insight. The worst two feelings you can have at the same time are to be hopping mad and to be bored out of your skull.’ Treppie’s shouting so hard into Pop’s face that Pop takes a step backwards. He stumbles over the rubbish on the floor and almost falls over again. Mol pushes him up, from behind.
Has Pop heard of the word implode? Treppie asks. That’s the way big buildings explode, from the inside, when they’ve got dynamite in their seams. And has Pop seen how those buildings collapse neatly in a heap. In a heap, ready for taking away. Without even disturbing the traffic.
Pop shakes his head. He can’t say he’s seen that.
No, he doesn’t expect Pop will understand. So, instead he’ll talk a language they both understand. As for her, she must stop hiding away there, behind Pop. She must come out from behind that door and open her eyes. It’s meant for her too, this insight of his. ’Cause it’s connected to a wish, and after all she’s an expert in wishful thinking.
Pop holds her hand. Treppie’s shoulders are twitching. ‘I wish I could cut my own fucken neck off, but for that a person needs a chainsaw. One that cuts on its own. Then all you have to do is get the angle right. Hold it nice and tight until it gets a good grip on the meat of your throat.’
Treppie shows them how. He pretends he’s got the saw in his hands. His whole body shudders, and when the shuddering stops, his shoulders twitch.
‘Aaaah!’ he screams. It’s too terrible. Suddenly he stops. First he lifts up his head, then he lowers it again. He looks at them.
‘But of course if you do that you leave a big mess for other people to clean up. And you might disturb more than just the traffic.’
They say nothing.
Treppie makes as though he’s brushing away dust and ashes from his face. He pushes past them, going for the door. Pop follows him. They leave her standing there.
She pulls Lambert’s blanket straight where Treppie kicked it off. Let her also go to the front, then. She’s too tired tonight to get worked up over Treppie’s horries. She walks back up the passage, with a new idea in her head.
She stops at the kitchen door. She can’t remember why she came here. Maybe if she opens the door she’ll remember. There’s so much stuff lying around on the floor, the door won’t open properly. She puts her hand round the doorframe and switches on the light. Then she steps over all the stuff, into the kitchen. Now she remembers. She goes to the dresser and fishes out a full box of matches from the top drawer. Very softly, she closes the door behind her, leaving the light on. That rubbish looks like it wants to multiply there in the dark. Mol rubs her eyes. Treppie switches his horries on and off like a TV set. But the horries that she sometimes gets are different, they buzz in her head like horseflies on a windowpane. A window with no handle so you can’t open and close it. All she can do is hush the buzzing in her head. Knitting helps. But she hasn’t got wool. And she also hasn’t got a dog any more.
Now Treppie’s door is shut tight. She puts her ear to the door and listens. ‘Grrrt-grrrt,’ she hears. She knows that sound. Treppie’s tearing things out of the paper. He finds other horries in there, so he can cover up his own.
Pop’s sitting in his chair in front. His eyes are glued to the TV. It’s on so loud he doesn’t even hear when she comes in. She looks to see what Pop’s watching.
It’s a game with a big wheel full of colourful lights around the edges. The wheel turns, then stops, then turns, then stops again. Screaming people try to guess the numbers. A man with rolled-up jacket sleeves tells everyone who’s right and who’s wrong, who wins fridges and washing machines, who gets nothing and who loses everything they’ve already won. There’s a wild monster’s head in the middle of the wheel. Some of the numbers make its mouth open up, and then a big, flat, red tongue comes out. Then the audience screams like it’s going mad. And the man in the jacket pushes up his sleeves again and takes the microphone in the other hand and flicks back his hair.
She must come and sit next to him, Pop signals, so they can watch together what happens with the numbers and the monster and the turning wheel. But she doesn’t want to. She wants out. Out! It’s Guy Fawkes out there and now the TV’s playing so loud she can’t even hear the crackers any more. She wants to see and she wants to hear. She doesn’t want to miss it.
It’s just once a year that all the people in Martha Street come out of their houses and spend some time together. They watch the fireworks and they talk. It’s the only time they’re friendly with each other, the only time they’re interested in each other’s fireworks and things. Just once a year. People say hello, even if they don’t know you. It’s like a party. Not that she feels in the mood for a party tonight. She feels empty and tired. Her heart’s beating too fast. What’s more, there’s another one of those flies buzzing up and down the little window at the back of her head. It’s after eight now, and they’ve been there since this morning. It’s useless trying to sleep in a state like this. She’s all worked up from the goings on, and from Lambert lying at the back there under the worn old blanket. Lambert, who doesn’t want to wake up.
She signals back to Pop that she’s going out. What for? he asks with his hands.
It’s Guy Fawkes outside, she says, but he can’t hear. He points to his ears. She points to her head. Pop nods. Yes, it’s okay, he knows. He motions to her she must turn down the TV, he wants to sleep now. That’s okay. That’s fine. It’s the only thing that works for him.
Once outside, she walks up to the wire fence and looks up and down the street. Just children wherever you look. And grown-ups, standing together in groups.
‘Careful! Watch out!’ they say to the children. ‘Don’t let the crackers go off in your eyes!’
The fireworks shoot and whistle and bang in greens and reds and blues. Rainbows and stars with tails. This will fix you, get lost, you damn bug!
She feels Toby’s wet nose against her leg. Ag shame, last year Gerty was here too, but Gerty was always so scared of the crackers. You had to pick her up, otherwise she’d run inside and hide under a chair in the lounge until it was all over. But not Toby. He thinks it’s a game. Then again, he thinks everything’s a game.
Mol walks back to the little stoep. She hasn’t got the guts to go into the street alone, or to say hello to the people and look at their fireworks. In earlier years they’d all go outside together, with Lambert in front
. He likes talking to people. Not that he has much of a story. He starts with a ‘ja, well’, a bit of story, and then another ‘ja, well’ at the end. Or you know, followed by you never know, without adding much of a story at all. People listen to him ’cause he looks the way he looks. They think he’s funny. But then again, people think everything’s funny.
Mol feels for the matches and the Tom Thumbs in her pocket. She’s never set off a cracker on her own before. No, dear Jesus, she’s scared she’ll shoot out her eyes. She looks back into the street. Everyone’s jolly. She stands on her toes to see what they’re doing at Fort Knox. Maybe that man from this morning will give her another cigarette. But they’re very busy next door. They stand in a bunch and then they shout: Sputnik! Hellfire! And then they all run for cover and a big, wild thing shoots up into the sky, making red arrows all over the place and a noise like an ambulance.
Mol turns back to the house. But she’s still not ready to go inside. The house is dark and closed. She can see the cracks on their outside walls in the light of the streetlamps. The house is just a shell. But, she knows, the stuff inside that shell is thick. Thick and quiet from all the things that have happened. All that escapes from the thick stuff inside is the flickering blue light of the TV, playing without sound behind the curtains.
Mol calls Toby, but she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t want to go inside. She pushes herself, yet her feet won’t move. Not into this house where things keep happening. Funny, you’d expect the house to be heavy from all the stuff that goes on. But the house is light. It looks like it wants to float up, like a little balloon. Maybe it’s just her head: tight and loose, thick and thin, light and heavy.
Mol feels her heart. She feels her breath.
She thinks: God, just watch me. Tonight, I, Mol Benade, will shoot off a cracker. For my heart and for my breath, so they can run smoothly, and for the little thing buzzing inside my head, so it can settle down, and for the house, and the walls, so they can get some strength, and for the quiet, thick insides, to give them a little light. And for us, to pep us up a little. And for next door, this side and that side and across the road. For them, a gentle reminder, as Treppie would say, that we’re still here. Before they start thinking we’ve all given up the ghost here behind the curtains. They’re likely to go and put the welfare on to us again, or something like that. All that’s needed is a bit of noise from our side. To show we’re still kicking and we’re not planning to throw in the towel yet. Not a damn. Come hell or high water.
Mol feels her strength returning. She feels her face twitch as she tries to smile. Right. Smile, cracker, matches. Ready, steady, go!
She strikes a match and feels in her pocket for a cracker, but their fuses are all knotted together. She pulls a whole bundle of them out at the same time. The match burns her hand. ‘Ouch!’ She throws down the match. Wait. First sit down. No, not sit, then she won’t be able to get out of the way fast enough when the thing goes off. Hell, what now?
It takes a while before she finds her bearings with the crackers. She pulls them apart and puts them down in a row on the edge of the stoep. She tries to make one of them stand up so she can light the fuse, but it keeps falling over. Then she puts it down on its side and lights the fuse, but the thing goes out before reaching the cracker. How’s she supposed to get this fuse working now? Mol looks at the crackers in her hand. Then she gets an idea. No, Jesus! Yes, what the hell! She’ll take the damn thing in her fingers and shoot it off. In her bare hand. That’s what she’ll do. If she wants to make a mark for them here tonight, that’s the only way to do it.
She smiles. To think she’d have so much courage here tonight! But she’s got nothing to lose. There’s very little in life that she hasn’t yet seen. So what’s a silly little cracker, then?
Pop wakes up. He feels something going on behind his head, here behind the window. What’s Mol up to now, out there on the stoep? What’s all that fiddling around? He gets out of his chair. He has to try three times before he manages to get up. The chair’s too deep without its cushions. He peeps through the curtains. Goodness gracious! Mol’s holding a flame to a cracker! She brings the flame to the fuse and holds it till it takes. Then she stretches her arm away from her body, turning to one side and looking away. On one leg. She’s standing on one leg. It looks like she’s trying to do a funny dance. Now she wriggles her fingertips, working the cracker further and further up till she’s holding it just by the tip.
‘Poof!’ it goes off.
‘Whoof!’ barks Toby.
‘Hoo-eee!’ shouts Mol, shaking her hands next to her sides. Now she runs round the corner, with Toby on her heels. Who would ever have thought it possible?
Here she comes again. Toby’s up on his hind legs, dancing in front of her.
Pop stands on his chair to look out the window. He pulls open the curtains a bit more. Mol’s truly in top form here tonight. She’s going from strength to strength. Pop feels his own strength coming back too. Little sparks in his insides, like a slow dynamo starting to run. On-off, on-off goes the light. Is it possible? This is a day that got him down so bad he thought he’d never be able to get up again. And now just look at Mol, the old diehard! She’s getting braver with each cracker. Now she’s holding three Tom Thumbs at the same time, right in front of her chest. She gets them lighted in no time at all.
‘Poof! Poof! Poof!’
‘Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!’
She throws them on to the grass. And then Toby goes looking for them, running up and down on the grass until she shoots some more.
‘Poof! Poof! Poof!’
‘Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!’
Quicker and quicker.
Goodness, Mol, where do you get the strength from, old girl?
He knows how scared she is of crackers.
All Pop can make out is Mol’s outline against the dark night sky as she moves around. The stoep-light’s off and so are the lights in the lounge. But each time the fireworks light up behind her in the street, he sees her more clearly. Once or twice, as she turns sideways on the stoep, he catches a glimpse of her face as she strikes a match and cups it with her hands till it takes nicely.
Mol’s face flickers against the dark as the flame dances up and down. He sees the ruts and nicks and bags under her eyes. He sees how she sucks her lips as she concentrates. Mol looks different. It’s ’cause she’s not wearing her tooth. Nowadays she never keeps it in her mouth any more. She says the plate’s too big.
They’re shrinking, both of them. They’re shrinking right out of their teeth. God in heaven, that people should start shrinking like this, gums first.
Pop goes out the front door. He pulls back his shoulders and straightens himself up. He clears his throat.
‘And what have we here! Fireworks, hey?’
‘This is fun. Look how jolly everyone is.’ Mol points to the street. ‘Come, Pop, you must also let one off. I’ve got two left here, one for you and one for me. Let’s light them together. Here! Don’t be scared, it’s nothing. I’ll light them for you.’
Mol’s eyes are shining.
Toby stands in front of them with his ears pointing up and his forelegs spread out wide. He lowers his front and wags his tail.
‘He’s trying to catch them, like tennis balls,’ says Mol. ‘They go “poof! poof! poof!” and then they’re empty, then there’s nothing left. Poof! Finish! Just a shell, with nothing left inside.’
‘Out of our shells. We’re shooting out of our shells. Poof! Finished!’
But Mol doesn’t want to hear. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks.
Pop holds up his cracker. Mol lights it and then quickly lights her own.
‘Poof-oof!’ they shoot, almost at the same time.
‘Whoof-oof!’ says Toby, running in a wild circle on the grass.
Pop sniffs the shell in his hand.
‘Yuk, throw it away,’ says Mol.
‘A bit of powder, just one shot. A spark, and then we’ve had it.’ Mol here next to him is p
retending to be deaf. Shame.
‘Hoo-eee! Look! Look!’ she shouts. Suddenly, from behind the houses of Triomf, from Brixton’s side, a huge, red rose rises up into the sky on a long, thin stem of light. Slowly, without sound, it folds open and then falls away into the black air, layer upon layer. Like the folds of a dress. Or like someone turning slowly in a dance.
‘Red Alec!’ shouts Mol.
And then a yellow one.
‘Whisky Mac!’ Pop feels the name in his mouth. It almost tastes like something. Like what?
‘Beaautifull!’ says Mol, clasping her chest.
‘It must be at the showgrounds.’ Pop swallows. The taste is gone.
Together with all the people in Martha Street, they watch and cheer the showgrounds’ fireworks. It carries on for quite a while.
‘It’s a long time since we’ve had a Guy Fawkes like this, hey, Pop,’ Mol says when it looks like the show’s finally over.
‘Long time.’ He puts his arm around her and pulls her towards him. ‘I smell rain.’ He rubs her on the shoulder.
She looks up at him. He can see what she’s thinking. She’s thinking why’s he so lovey-dovey all of a sudden? Yes, why? He also doesn’t know why.
‘Come, come let’s go have a bath. It’s been a hard day.’ Let her think what she likes. He just needs to touch her.
OVERLOAD
Mol waits for Pop in the dark passage outside the bathroom door. When they came back into the house, he asked her not to put on the lights. They were too bright, he said. Now he’s gone to the kitchen to fetch a candle. He’s looking on top of the dresser where they always keep candles, with the little lids to stand them on. Why’s he taking so long now? She hears things falling over. Pop bumbles around so much lately. Let her light a cigarette here in the meantime. Pop’s got his reasons. Maybe he’s getting a feeling in his bones that the lights will cut out again tonight. The electricity’s always been bad here in Triomf. Ever since the day they moved in. An overload problem. That’s what the municipality’s workers say when they come and work on the boxes. Not that the working ever makes much of a difference.
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