But Lambert was so happy about his temperature that he just laughed and forgot about Treppie.
The practice fire also worked out well in the end, and the next day’s T-bones were almost okay – they had to be cooked one at a time on a loose piece of bathroom burglar-bar. When Lambert looked for the old Austin’s grid to use for the braai, he remembered it was one of the things he’d burnt up in his Guy Fawkes fire.
They had some potatoes and baked beans to go with the meat. Treppie bought a two-litre box of wine for the occasion. Drostdy Hof Stein. They polished it off in two ticks. It made them all so mellow that in the end they didn’t cut the watermelon. They went and lay down in the shadow of the fig tree instead, with those five silver balls glittering and twirling among the dark green leaves.
Now Mol finds herself standing in the kitchen. She can’t remember why she went there. Oh yes, to throw away the Christmas cards. Ja-nee, things are on the move here in Triomf. She reads on the back of Aribal Catalao’s season’s greetings:
It’s true! A new force has erupted in the West. For an instant market evaluation or free advice on the sale of your property, phone 477-3029 (home) 837-9669 (bus).
The FOR SALE signs are going up all around them. But the sellers are struggling. The only people who’ve sold are those two across the road. Their sweetpeas are so pretty. Fort Knox’s been on sale for months now. They painted their black iron gates and their other stuff light blue, with everything else in white. Treppie says they look like Triomf’s Peace Secretariat now. But blue or not, they’re not triumphing, not a damn, he says.
Treppie says if the prices go up after the election they can maybe think of selling, but they must first paint. Then she asked him: sell and go where? He said he felt like going to Ten-Elephants-in-a-Row-Ville. Where was that? she asked, and he said it was in the heart of the country, but she mustn’t come and ask him exactly where, ’cause he didn’t think he could find a place where elephants were so well behaved.
She said she’d rather stay right here where she was. The rest of them could go if they wanted.
But wait, she’d better go back now. It must be time for the Queen of England.
ALSO JUST HUMAN
It’s a grey day and the Queen has to pose for a portrait. She’s dressed up in tassels and fur and she’s wearing her crown. She sits dead still. At first, the artist paints only her head. The Queen’s favourite little doggy sits at her feet, his eyes shining and his ears pricked. He’s looking to see what his lady’s doing.
The camera shows the lobes of her ear, the pearls and the soft flesh on her neck, and then, one by one, the precious gems in her crown.
Mol sees her cheeks and her nose and the wrinkles under her eyes. The Queen is powdered and painted for her sitting, but Mol is not fooled by her tight little smile.
Now they’re showing how much of her the artist has already painted. Her face and a trimming of white fur around her neck. The likeness is good and the fur also looks genuine.
But the Queen keeps turning the tassels around and around in her lap. And she’s rubbing her thumb over the thick, bushy ends. They say she’s sad about Windsor burning down. The damage was huge and now the treasures are fewer. They show a picture of the fire.
The Queen looks out of the window. It’s raining outside. Further down, far away, the Royal Guard marches around the fountains. The soldiers are small and red, like ants, with stripes down their trousers. They stamp their feet and then they put down their guns. Each one’s got a cord on his sleeve and a high, black cap, as if he’s in mourning.
‘It looks like a rainy day,’ says the Queen, and: ‘How did this session go?’
But the camera shows she’s thinking about something else. About how she went and looked at Windsor, walking in the rain through the rubble. In a yellow plastic hat, black rubber boots and a thin old overcoat. A fireman with a helmet helped her step over the beams. Shame, she’s also just human.
‘Oh, what a shame. My, what a pity. Alas, history reduced to mere ashes.’
‘And now, Molletjie, why you crying?’
It’s Pop. He’s just woken up.
‘I’m crying about the Queen of England and her palace that burnt down.’
‘Never mind,’ says Pop, ‘she’s only a queen, and she’s got many more.’
17
PEACE ON EARTH
To shit is a fine skill, that’s for fucken sure. And, if anything, a turd is a work of art. So help him God. Some are water paintings of Sahara sunsets, and others are statues in the park. But a masterpiece of a crap is one that works its way down from your guts in one piece like a tapestry, evenly textured and solidly braided, not too light but also not too dark. With all the colours blending but not so much that it gets boring. Delicate, bright flowers shining against the grass and the white horse resting his horn meekly on the Madonna’s lap.
Treppie sits and pages through an old calendar he found among the dykes’ newspapers yesterday. There’s a broken guitar painted by one Braque, and a rough-looking oke with a bandage around his head. It’s a Van Gogh, by Van Gogh, who cut off his own ear, it says at the bottom.
Well bric-à-braque and all a-gogh. The stranger the name the stranger the dog.
He’ll take the holy virgin, any time, with her poor old horse and its single horn. All of it in invisible stitching. At least it looks like something. And he doesn’t mind the fact that they don’t know so nicely any more exactly who made it. If you asked him, a whole swarm of nuns must’ve sat working on those little flowers till their tongues started hanging out from tiredness and they got completely cross-eyed from concentrating on all the tiny stitches. So that after a while they began to see visions, and that was when they started stitching in the Mother of God in her blue dress, and her weird little horse, on top of the flowery lawn. Mystics can’t be choosers. And neither can the constipated. It’s a cross and it’s a calling. To look at what doesn’t exist, and to sit without results – both are ways of escaping the fine-grinder.
And it gives rise to shithouses full of art. God be his witness.
And the world is evidence thereof.
That’s why he buggered off from the lounge to come sit here with his newspapers. He doesn’t feel he’s got the slightest chance of producing a turd today, never mind art, but what the hell. To sit quietly on the toilet is a million times better than listening to those horny Jehovahs preaching to that fucked-up family of his, who sit there like obedient little dogs.
It’s not even March and the Jehovahs are into Exodus again. Every year they make the same mistake. They try to get through the whole Bible, piece by piece. But their timing’s way out. They start too quickly, and then at the end of the year they have to read Revelation twice in a row, verse for verse, ’cause they hit the end too soon. Many’s the time he’s told them, spare us the Revelation, dears, we’ve heard it all before. But before you can say Jack Robinson, the sun’s become black as sackcloth of hair and the moon’s become as blood, for the umpteenth time.
What they’re reading today he already knows off by heart. About how He led them from the land of the Egyptians and took them to a good, wide land, a country flowing with milk and honey, where the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites lived. Then Mol goes ‘ites-ites-ites’ with that flabby mouth of hers as she tries to say all those names. She thinks it’s funny, the old bitch.
The only thing that’s different about this year’s Exodus is the musical accompaniment. Lambert’s sitting there on his crate and playing ‘tingtong, ting-tong’ on that thumb-piano of his. As they get to the pests and the plagues, he plays it quicker and quicker. What works on Lambert’s tits the most are the frogs that jump from the rivers into everyone’s beds. And the tabernacle puts him clean on to a high, about Aaron’s robe, with its bells of pure gold and pomegranates on the hem so he’ll tinkle and stay alive when he goes before God. Lambert’s got a horse-high hard-on for that woman again. Ja, shame, the poor bugger, he must be playing on that thing to st
op himself from getting another fit. He looks quite worn out from all the fits he’s been having lately. Fits for fuck-all nowadays. Three, four times in January alone. And he won’t take his pills either; he says he needs to have all his wits about him so he can fix everything he’s still got to fix. He’s working himself into a bigger and bigger state as it gets closer to his birthday. But everything he touches, he breaks. This Benade is no Midas, that’s for sure.
Like the other day, when he found out the bathroom mirror was too big. A ghost of a millimetre, but still too big. Then of course Lambert tried to cut the mirror himself. Broke the thing to pieces. He told Lambert those pieces were still quite okay for pasting on to the hardboard, but of course he went and lost it again. He took a hammer and smashed those pieces one by one until there was nothing left but grit. So now he sits there and plays a tune without end, for the sake of his fits, for the pillar of cloud and the Red Sea and the bitter waters of Marah. ‘Pe-ting, pe-teng, pe-tong.’
So he can’t bear the sight of Lambert either.
Not to mention Pop. He sits there with his fly gaping ’cause the buttons that Mol sewed on have all come off again and Pop keeps losing his safety pin. The trouble started early this morning when Pop was shoving his shirt and vest into his pants so he could cover his shame, as he puts it. Mol kept pointing there with her finger. Then he, Treppie, asked them if they thought they’d just been kicked out of paradise or something, and if they reckoned their shame sticking out all the time was likely to bother anyone.
He actually just said that to cheer them up a bit after last night. It was Saturday and the grass had to be cut in the middle of the night again, and there was almost another fuck-around with the people next door.
But then Pop suddenly decided to get difficult, and he let rip right there in the passageway.
Didn’t he, Treppie, know that death was the biggest shame of all, and that nothing whatsoever could cover it up? Just look, he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling of the passageway, just look at the state in which he would have to meet his maker – with empty hands and not a single button on his fly. And surely it wasn’t asking too much that your shirt at least cover your shame while you were still alive? That was the least a person could do, he said. And, he said, the ones who survived him had better make sure he got washed decently and laid out nicely for his final journey to the pearly gates.
Pop’s been making these heavy speeches lately, at the funniest times and in the strangest places. Like this one, in the middle of the passageway, on an empty stomach. Or in Shoprite. Like when he started giving the baked beans in tomato sauce a sermon the other day.
He was looking everywhere for Pop and he couldn’t understand where he’d got to – all they needed was dog food. He found him standing in front of the specials shelf. That day it was baked beans.
You beans, Pop said, you might fancy yourself in your tomato sauce. But I say unto you, let someone just add some pigfat and then you’ll be worth bugger-all. ’Cause it’s all just a matter of pigfat and pulses. Which means it’s all about nothing. Poof! The next thing you know, someone farts, and then someone else says sis, what’s that smell, and then that’s it, you’re finished. Nothing! Finished, out, gone! Pffft! No one, but no one can escape this trinity of beans, farts and death. Amen.
Not bad, not bad at all. He didn’t catch everything Pop said, just a word here and there, but from what he could make out it sounded nice and sharp.
What he didn’t like was Pop’s face and Pop’s voice. Pop didn’t laugh and he didn’t smile, and his voice sounded like something rattling in the wind. He sounded completely different from the way he, Treppie, would’ve sounded if he’d suddenly started giving the beans a talking to. And God knows, he preaches a lot, whether his audience is on special or not. But it’s always a game. This speech of Pop’s was different. It wasn’t a game. ’Cause the next thing Pop went and swept those beans right off the specials shelf. First he swept them off the top two racks, with his right arm to the one side and his left arm to the other. Then he put his foot to the tins on the bottom rack. They went crashing far and wide. It was so bad he had to drag Pop to the car kicking and screaming. You would’ve sworn it was Lambert carrying on like that, not Pop. Or even him, Treppie, ’cause he gets unhinged pretty bad himself sometimes. But Pop’s a softie, never allows an angry word to pass his lips. Yet here he was lecturing at the beans. Kicking tins around in Shoprite and swearing his head off. Not that he was completely sober, either. The two of them had thrown back a couple earlier that afternoon, but most of the time the Klipdrift just makes Pop sleepy. And wine makes him silly. He’d never seen Pop go off the rails like that before.
When they got home, he sat Pop down in his chair and switched on the TV full-blast, so Pop could fall asleep. Then he went and told Mol what happened.
It was Lambert, she said. Pop was worried about Lambert going backwards before he even started going forwards. And it broke his heart that things always seemed to go like this with the Benades. Generation upon generation. Lambert wouldn’t even have a generation to come after him. What would happen to him one day when the rest of them kicked the bucket?
Well, yes, that’s surely enough to make anyone want to preach to the beans.
He, for one, really doesn’t want to be around the day Lambert finds himself all alone in the world, without any children he can call his own. The day he has to make a polony sandwich on his own. Or mow the lawn.
In January alone, that postbox came off three times. And every time it happened, the whole lot of them had to jump to attention, or else. Then Lambert lifted all the loose blocks from the parquet floor, even the ones that were just half-way or quarter-way loose. Dug them out with a screwdriver. He said he wanted to sand the things underneath so they’d stick properly the next time, once and for all, but then he made another fire and burnt the lot of them. Now the passage is full of potholes and everyone’s feet keep catching. Now it’s not just Lambert who suffers from the falling sickness here in Martha Street.
Take Mol. She tries to get into the kitchen with her Shoprite bags, but she’s down before she can get past the kitchen door. Then it’s just plastic bags all over the passage. Or Pop. He tries to switch off the TV after the peace song, but he trips over his own two feet and knocks his head against the sideboard. Then the sideboard falls off its brick. And the cat off the sideboard. Now they’ve got a headless cat again. Some things never change.
Flossie stands out here in the back like a beetle without its shell. At least her wheels are on again. Now Lambert’s talking about using not one, but two cars when the shit starts flying. He reckons that he and his girl are going to ride in front, in Flossie, with no roof and no doors, hair blowing in the wind. He, Treppie, and Mol and Pop must follow, in Molletjie. Lambert says they’ve got more chance of getting to the border with two cars than with one. The one must be a travelling spare part for the other, in case of a breakdown. That’s what he says.
Which one for which one, he can’t say.
Sounds more like a travelling disaster, if you ask him. He’s already told Lambert, travelling under any circumstances is really looking for shit, let alone in times like these with loose bullets and things flying all over the place. All you do is expose yourself. As if you’re not exposed enough as it is, with your soft human skin and its holes for seeing and smelling and tasting and farting – that’s if you’re lucky enough still to do all those things. And with your two little legs and their forward-facing feet, and your hands each with their five little twigs. Always trying to grab on to things in the void here in front of you, never knowing what’s coming next. Or what’s likely to trip you up.
All the more reason for sitting quietly and waiting for the perfect shit. Reading helps. Not the world’s headlines, and not the main cats’ moves, either. That’s fucken boring. What he looks for are all those odd little fuck-ups in the lives of the underdogs. If it proves one thing, it’s that the Benades aren’t alone in the world. They’
re not the only ones who’ve turned out funny.
Like the story about the spinster and her goldfish. It was winter in England and it was so cold those fish were about to freeze. So she put the goldfish bowl on top of the heater to warm them up, but then she went out and clean forgot about the fish. When she came back they were all over the floor. The bowl had burst. The biggest one, whose name was Jonah, was still moving around on the carpet. She gave him the kiss of life, blowing into his mouth and gills, but nothing could bring him back to life again. So she swallowed him whole, so she could share in her little fish for life ever after.
The only conclusion he can draw from this story is that small fry always land up in the bellies of bigger things. Makes no difference if it’s people or fish.
Now that kind of story really gets his guts moving. Maybe something will still happen here today.
And what else? The story about two newly-weds who wanted to show some guests their engagement video. Made by the groom and his friend, the best man. That was in America. They were still standing there with their mouths full of wedding cake when the best man started screwing a pit bull terrier on the video. And the groom was holding the dog down by its head, ’cause a dog won’t just stand still for something like that. Oops! Wrong video. The bride flipped so bad she’s still in the loony-bin today. That accomplice and his best man are now smitten with remorse. They go to the loony-bin every day with a bunch of white roses for the flipped-out bride.
He doesn’t even want to start drawing conclusions about that Dog-Day Wedding. Too many of them.
Triomf Page 39