Then those policemen told him they weren’t in the pressure business, they were in the shooting business. And if it’s pressure he wanted, he should go to the World Trade Centre, where they were also into phases and stuff like that. Those politicians knew all about pressure, they said, laughing themselves to death there on the Benades’ front lawn.
It wasn’t just the dykes who were dilly, he thought to himself.
And the next morning, when Pop took the key out of the postbox, he found a letter there, from Fish-Eye. Treppie grabbed the letter and made a whole performance out of it, so Lambert still doesn’t know if everything Treppie read was true or not. The long and the short of it was Fish-Eye saying his property was losing its value as a result of all their meddling, and he’d be much happier if a decent kaffir like Cyril Ramaphosa came to live next door to him one day. Ramaphosa might even plant something along the boundary wall, he said, ’cause he saw Ramaphosa was planting weeping boer-beans there at the World Trade Centre, in a suit too, which was more than he could say for the Benades, despite the fact that they were white. And then he made a long list of complaints about them disturbing the peace and using the Lord’s name in vain. And about Pop’s zips that always hung open, and his mother who walked around with no panties all day long. And that they must watch out before he mobilised the whole neighbourhood against them,’cause they were sticking out like a sore finger. And then, right at the end, the fucker actually wanted to know if they’d paid their dog taxes all these years, for their one departed and their one surviving dog. He was just asking, although he felt it was only fair to inform them that he himself was a police reservist, and that he had family who were high up in the municipality too. One word from him and the Benades would be in their glory, dogs and all. Thanking them in anticipation, J.J. Volschenk.
He swears Treppie sucked half that letter straight out of his thumb, but by then he had them all wound up anyway, which must have been what he wanted.
Treppie said the honourable Mister Jay Jay Volschenk doth protest too much. He schemed Jay Jay was himself so low down in the pecking order that he got a kick out of writing high-and-mighty letters to the untouchables.
Then Treppie had to explain to his mother what untouchables were.
Not that he, Lambert, knew so well what it meant himself.
Of course, Treppie went and said the worst thing he could think of, just to torment her. He said the untouchables wiped off their shit, er, er, pardon, he meant their excrement, with their hands, and then they used it to write messages on the walls, for aliens. ‘Mene Mene Tekel.’ Aliens were the only ones who were still interested in them. Hadn’t his mother noticed how people were taking a wide berth around them nowadays?
Then she asked him, but what about the Witnesses? They still came to visit, out of their own free will. But Treppie said the Witnesses were interested only in their souls, not their excrement; although, come to think of it, their souls were probably lodged in their excrement, otherwise he also couldn’t figure out what the Witnesses thought they were looking for here at the Benades. But, he said, one of these days the Witnesses would have to come visiting on stilts, ’cause they were already deeper than knee-deep, and they were sinking fast.
Pop asked Treppie if he didn’t have a drop of self-respect left in him. But Treppie just acted like he hadn’t heard. He pinched his nostrils and sang like the main coolie-singer on top of the mosque, the one they always hear from Bosmont when the wind blows in the right direction:
‘Lemon tree very pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon
Is impossible to eat.’
So, that’s why Pop’s wearing blue shirt-buttons to close up his khaki-pants nowadays. His mother spent the whole day sewing them on, with pink cotton. It doesn’t look right, she says, but at least Pop looks decent again. She also tried to fix Pop’s zip-up pants, but he uses a safety pin to keep the fly closed. And Lambert thinks they must’ve bought his mother some panties too, ’cause every now and again he sees them hanging on the line.
He’s got his own plans for Fish-Eye. When he goes out on his rounds, late at night, he takes a crate to stand on and then he pisses into Fish-Eye’s postbox.
Fish-Eye thinks it’s the kaffirs. Lambert’s seen how he waits for them behind his wall on weekends, early in the evening. But Fish-Eye has to wait a long time. It’s mostly just kaffirgirls who walk up and down Martha Street, and they wouldn’t be able to piss into that postbox of his, even if they wanted to. Every now and again a few kaffirs come walking past and then Fish-Eye shits them out. He calls them hosepipe-dicks. And he asks them if they’d like to know what it feels like to get their king-sized dicks caught in a mouse trap. He’ll give them something to write home about, he says. They mustn’t think they’re the only ones with cultural weapons around here.
Then, one day, a long stick of a kaffir came walking past with his hair all tied up in strings. He was wearing sunglasses, with a red, green and yellow cap. Lambert’s mother thought he was a Zulu, so she hid behind the bathroom door. But Treppie said, no, Zulus had knobkieries. This was a Rasta-man, and they must check now how this Rasta-man was going to jive old Fish-Eye, who was shitting him out something terrible there in the street. That Rasta-man just stood there, cool as a cucumber, rolling a zol and checking Fish-Eye out as he screamed at him from behind his wall.
And then the Rasta-man actually had the guts to give Fish-Eye a talking to. ‘Cool it, my man. Smile, God loves you,’ he said. He even threw Fish-Eye a peace sign. Fish-Eye went completely purple in the face. He ran around like a madman. It was so bad they thought he was going to jump into the Penguin Pool to be with his carp. But he didn’t. He went and set the little mousetrap in his postbox, and then it snapped on to his finger.
Lambert’s clever. He first takes out the mousetrap. Then he pisses into the postbox. When he’s finished pissing, he puts the trap back again. He doesn’t let people fuck with him. Now Mister Reservist can read piss-letters until the day he dies. And he gets a lot of letters, too. From Absa and Sanlam and the Bible Society and the AA and Readers Digest. Serves him right. And the police must also watch out, discretion and all. Treppie read him a story the other day about two policemen from Triomf who raped a woman at Johan Coetzee police station. De Bruin and Visagie. Lambert still wants to find out where in Triomf De Bruin and Visagie live. And that clever-arse traffic cop at number 101, who races up and down Martha Street on his motorbike must watch out too. A person’s life is in danger around here. The place is full of dogs and things. He can just see an accident happening.
When the police themselves become a danger to society, then you know something’s wrong.
So he patrols. Somebody has to do it.
When he walks up and down the streets of Triomf at night, with his stick and his gun safely in his belt, he feels like he was born to patrol. He feels sharp. The kind of person other people can rely on. And he checks out everything, even the stuff that looks okay. It’s when things don’t look different that you drop your guard. So he checks, not only inside all the windows, to make sure that every mother and father, grandma and grandpa, child and grandchild, brother-in-law and step-sister, what have you, is sitting nicely at the TV and watching the news; and not only that all the front gates and the driveways and the car windows are closed, and that the number plates are still on. He also checks the things no one else ever looks at, the things that tell you straight away when something’s wrong. Like the stop signs. He checks to see if they’re the right colour and the right height, and if they’re standing on the right side of the road; and he checks the streets’ name-plates, to make sure they’re the same as the names on the kerb, and that they point in the right direction; and the streetlights, to make sure they’re all switched on; the telephone wires, to see that they’re still nicely connected; and the manholes, whether their lids fit the holes nicely. Nowadays the kaffirs even steal manhole covers and sell them for scrap iron. Te
n rand apiece. Treppie says it’s to keep the balance in the New South Africa, ’cause for a long time now the antiquarians have been stealing pressed metal ceilings from old houses, to sell on the black market.
So he also tries to check if all the houses still have their ceilings, although Triomf’s houses have only pressed cardboard. And he looks inside the rubbish bins, to make sure they’ve got the kind of rubbish they’re supposed to have: old bread and newspapers and rotten vegetables and stuff, not heads or cats or babies. People throw away the funniest things nowadays.
He checks the green fuse boxes on the pavements to see if their little doors are closed, and to make sure no loose wires stick out or lie around. Treppie says people siphon off electricity illegally, but no one ever gets caught. Triomf’s a closed shop, a law unto itself, he says. Not if he, Lambert, can help it. He’s going to check out this closed shop very carefully to see what openings he can find.
And with his sharp eye he sometimes sees things he’s sure no one else ever sees. Things on the ground and things in the air. On the ground, it’s mostly bugs and funny little creatures that come out of their little holes. He once spent the whole night on the veld across the road from Shoprite, at that bus stop in front of the police flats, watching with his torch how termites come pouring out of their holes after the rain. They just kept coming, in a never-ending line, like someone was pulling them out from above on a string. Then they broke loose and swarmed up into the sky. Some of them fell down and died. Moles also do their pushing at night. Rats too. The rats are breeding like mad in the drains. That’s where they live. They go ‘trrrips!’ one after another through the gaps in the pavement, down into their holes. Like someone’s reeling them in by their noses, downwards.
He once saw a baboon-spider walking across the street. It was as big as his fist, with legs that moved on their own, as if they were tied to separate threads. That was at the end of Martha Street, on the koppie-side. You see some interesting things on that side. Rabbits with eyes like reflectors, who feed in the beds at the Centenary Old Age Resort. Once he even saw a little buck, and often he sees owls. That’s when he realised there was more to Jo’burg than met the eye. And he’s glad that he sees all these things. It feels like he’s got secrets that are his only. But when he sometimes tells his folks a little something, they just laugh at him. Then they say he’s having them on.
Treppie says if there were just one wild buck left in Jo’burg, it would be worth saving from fire and brimstone, but there obviously isn’t. He says all he can hear in Jo’burg are sirens and gunshots. All he can see are things that burn. And all he can smell is blood and iron. He says Jo’burg’s like a massive big iron dinosaur devouring itself, tail first, screws and brackets flying through the air.
Then his mother asks Treppie where he sees this ugly monster, and Treppie says if she’d just use her eyes like the good Lord Jesus intended her to, she wouldn’t be able to miss it. And then his mother spends the whole day waiting for the dinosaur to pop out somewhere. Behind the Hillbrow tower; on the open ground behind the Spar; or behind Northcliff hill. She says she can’t see any dinosaurs. All she sees are roads and cars and buildings and shops and people and things.
She’s looking in the wrong places. Treppie too. It’s just him, Lambert, who knows where to look. Only he sees everything there is to be seen.
’Cause he’s a patrolman. It’s in his blood. If you’re a born patrolman, you see everything, near and far, big and small, and you look at things carefully. You check to see how they work and what their movements are, inside and out.
And you pick up vibes.
He feels bright and breezy when he’s finished his patrolling for the day. He keeps on looking till he starts picking up vibes. Some nights there’s nothing. He knows there’re vibes, but he doesn’t always get hold of them so nicely. Then it’s just an ordinary night. Nothing special.
But other nights are different. Then he picks up the vibes on the ground and he follows them through the air. The vibes of things that fly, things that travel far. Stars with tails. He sees lots of stars falling. Stars dying. And he sees sputniks too. Bright side, dark side, bright side, dark side, as they dip through the night. That’s when you know the little monkey can’t settle down. Or the little dog.
Treppie says sputniks are full of over-excited monkeys and dogs. Sometimes the sputniks are empty, just cameras and things taking pictures of the earth and the moon and the stars. But others have astronauts inside. Space travellers. They patrol the heavens. Treppie says those astronauts are even more fidgety than the dogs and the apes. They’ve got ants in their pants. That’s why sputniks sometimes explode before they even take off, like the Challenger. Treppie says everyone’s a challenger, but sometimes people take things too far, or they do nothing. If they do nothing, they open their eyes one day and they’re knee-deep in something that someone else took too far. Then there’s shit to play.
Treppie’s a fine one to talk. He’s always challenging him, Lambert, and he always takes things too far. A pity, ’cause Treppie’s the only one among his family with anything between his ears.
Sometimes they have interesting conversations.
But as soon as it gets interesting, Treppie starts fucking around.
Lambert looks at Treppie next to him, here on the lawn. ‘Wakey-wakey!’ Treppie says. ‘All is quiet on the white side of Ontdekkers.’
The helicopter turns to the Bosmont side.
Martha Street’s residents go back into their houses. The moon’s sitting high.
‘They’re looking for a Hotnot,’ says Pop.
They stand and watch for a while as the helicopter searches, up and down, up and down, its red tail-light flashing. The searchlight cuts Bosmont’s dark streets like a thin, blue probe of glass. Sirens wail all over Jo’burg. Shots go off on Ontdekkers.
‘Who’s shooting?’ his mother asks.
‘Those are just the taxis that are missing, Ma.’
‘It’s Jo’burg that’s missing,’ Treppie says.
‘Her points are dirty. Her timing’s out. Who’ll give Jo’burg a service?’ he sings. Treppie started hitting the Klipdrift early tonight.
Lambert goes back to his den. There was nothing special on the go tonight. He went up and down Martha Street and then into Gerty and down Toby, to the bottom, where he always checks out the cars on the big advertising boards.
Those boards have long strips running downwards. First they turn one way, then the other, making a ‘ting!’ sound after each turn. And there’s a different picture each time.
Tonight it was a car driving through a veld fire.
Metallic blue. ‘Ting!’ It curves!
‘Ting!’ Opel Kadett 140.
And then it starts all over again. The blue car with its wheels in the fire. No one inside.
‘Ting! Ting! Ting!’
Over and over again.
Then the moon rose like a big, yellow ball above the advertising board.
And then he thought, no, now he’d better go home.
He goes round the back way to his den. Once inside, he feels for the key at the back of the Tedelex’s ice-box. He unlocks the steel cabinet and takes out his binoculars. Should he strip them? He once opened a kaleidoscope that Treppie brought home from the Chinese, just to see how it worked, how it made the little patterns that were all the same but also all different. But the pieces of glass fell out and he couldn’t get them to fit together again. Common piece of Chinese rubbish. Anyway, a Chinese is a sort of a Hotnot. The Japanese are the ones with real class, Treppie says. They’re honorary whites. They can make motorbikes. Suzuki, Kawasaki. Sounds more like Zulu to him.
He lies back on his mattress. The mattress he inherited from Pop and his mother. They actually went and took the new one for themselves. They say if he wants to burn his own bed he mustn’t complain about what they give him. Mind you, theirs is also not brand new, it’s a second-hand mattress from the pawnshop in Brixton, with an inner-spring. Not bad. A
nd they bought a base, too, a shaky one, but what the hell. Now at least there’s one decent bed in the house. When his girl comes he’ll swop the mattresses around. They mustn’t try to stop him. You can’t let a guest sleep on a fucked-up piece of old sponge on the floor.
He focuses his binoculars on SUPERBEE. He sees it from so close that all he can make out are some of its parts. It takes him a while before he realises he’s looking at SUPERBEE’S body. Then he clicks it’s the middle sting, the one curling round the cloud. He can see on the black line how his hand was shaking when he got to the narrow part at the end. He looks down, at the wings, where the world shines through, softly blurred with spit between the veins. Yellow grass and red aloes. This bee’s more than a Superbee. This bee’s heavenly! It should actually be called ANGELBEE. Maybe he can still change it. Same number of letters. He’ll first have to paint white over SUPER and then write on top of it again.
He looks at his painting. There’s still a helluva lot to do. Lots that he has to fill in. Here and there he’s drawn a piece of outline. Most of the squares only have names. He looks at the names. Actually, everything should get wings like Angelbee. Angelbee’s got a vibe. None of them must lie thick or heavy or flat on the earth. They must fly. Things that can fly up into the air have vibes from other worlds.
Termite angel. Angel wasp. Heavenly rats and moths. Angels for Africa. Then the whole ceiling can get stars, so it looks like heaven.
He sees yellow spots on the ceiling. Must be the geyser leaking, or the overflow. And black specks, from the damp. Or maybe it’s fly-shit.
In the one corner he suddenly sees an off-white clot of threads. Things that look like sticks.
What is it?
He sets the binoculars to see better, but it blurs on both sides. He turns and turns until he gets it into focus.
The ball-thing’s moving. No, what the hell. What’s this now?
Slowly the little ball begins to tear open on the one side. Something’s moving around. Then three little folded-up things pop out. For a while they just hang there. Then they slowly open up.
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