Triomf

by Marlene van Niekerk

  ‘Shuffle, Ma, shuffle!’ Lambert shouts.

  Pop’s holding his head in his hands.

  Toby barks.

  Treppie sings his song.

  ‘Just you shuddup!’ Lambert shouts at Treppie. He’ll sing his own song, he says, and she must keep her feet together, she must keep them flat on the ground so he can demonstrate, Lambert shouts. From the one side of the room all the way to the other side. All you hear are feet. Now Lambert starts singing.

  ‘Rock me gently

  Rock me slow’

  he sings, but his voice is low and tuneless. She can feel his voice trembling against her body.

  ‘Yippeee!’ shouts Treppie. He claps his hands and whistles. ‘Just check, Pop, just check how our old sis here can still soft-guava with this boy-child of ours. A person would swear they’re sweethearts. Our own sleep-in Cleopatra, queen of the hive. We needn’t have spent so much money at all ’cause what more does a person want now, hey?

  ‘Take it easy, don’t you know

  That I have never been

  Loved like this before.’

  She squirms but Lambert’s holding her so tight she can’t even breathe. He shuffles her right up to her chair and then shoves her so hard she sits down with a ‘hic’.

  ‘Ai, ai, ai,’ says Pop. His eyes are wet.

  ‘So, are you lot satisfied now?’ Lambert asks. ‘I shuffled that darky until she couldn’t any more, ’cause that’s what she wanted. After a while she didn’t even know where she was.’

  Darky? Why’s he calling her a darky now? Does Pop know?

  ‘Ja, Ma,’ says Lambert. ‘He knows, him and Treppie. They think they can bring me a Coloured floozy for my birthday.’

  ‘And then he kissed her!’ Treppie sings.

  ‘Fuck you, you motherfucking bastard!’ says Lambert to Treppie.

  She’d better make herself scarce here.

  ‘There’s your mother, son, fuck her!’ Treppie points to her.

  ‘What do you say, brother?’ he asks Pop. ‘There’s a mother and there’s a son, even if the fathers were poorly shuffled.’

  Treppie shakes Pop by the shoulder. Pop sits with his head hanging down.

  So, has this been Treppie’s plan all along? Does he want to go and bugger up the whole perspective now? After all that practising? He’s still not ‘immune’. All for nothing!

  Suddenly Treppie looks like he’s a video on fast-forward. He ducks to one side and quickly picks up something from the floor. It’s the little packet with the cowboy on top. He shakes it under Lambert’s nose.

  They must just check, he says. Lambert took her with his bare hands. ‘Boom, boom,’ he shouts, pretending to shoot into the air.

  ‘As long as Lambertussie can shoot his load, hooray for the scent of a kill!’

  Treppie quickly bends over again and picks up something on the other side. What’s that, now? Christ! A gun! It goes ‘pof!’ as Treppie throws it down on to the bed. It’s pitch black, with a curved handle. Where did that come from?

  ‘Oh, trusted steed, don’t fail me in my greatest need!’

  Please, Pop, help! But Pop’s already seen it. Where’s the head that belongs to the hair? There’s a corpse here in the den! Lambert stuffed a corpse! No, God help us, was there really a murder here last night? While they were sitting so blissfully there on the koppie?

  ‘Grandpa rode a porker!’ shouts Treppie. ‘And then he went and pumped his floozy into her triumph and glory!’

  Ja, Treppie, now all hell is loose, just like you wanted. She looks at him standing there and rubbing his hands, like he’s making a fire with sticks. The fire’s nice and wild now. Now things are going to start flying.

  Just as she thought. Lambert grabs a long piece of iron from under his bed and swings it like a golf club, but he doesn’t hit a ball, he hits an empty GTX tin.

  ‘Hole in one!’ shouts Treppie as he catches the tin in mid-air. Softly, softly Treppie puts the tin back on the ground. He gives it a little tap on the lid, as if to tell it to sit there nicely now, ’cause there’s a lot of hustling going on and they must all sit dead still. That’s also the way she’s sitting, here in her corner. Dead still.

  Doesn’t Lambert want a cigarette? Treppie asks.

  Lambert doesn’t hear.

  ‘She brought her own fucken FL’s!’ he roars.

  No, that’s fine, says Treppie, he was just teasing. You’re forty only once in your life, and it’s fine to have the night of your life with someone, just once in a lifetime.

  Treppie’s breathing fast. It looks like his sentences are coming too quickly.

  ‘And then you took her for a proper spin, didn’t you, old boy? I see you parked Flossie in front, so she’s ready for us when we take back your girl’s wig and her shoe, later tonight.’

  Lambert says nothing. He’s still holding on to his golf club. Treppie’s smoking hard.

  ‘And did Flossie at least behave herself, Lambert? She’s not really used to, er, joy-rides, you know!’

  Lambert throws down the piece of iron. He turns around. All you see is his fat back. His lifts up his head and looks at his paintings, like he wants to start praying or something.

  But here comes Treppie, the mosquito-man.

  ‘Er, tell us a little, old boy, was the joy-ride before or after?’

  He doesn’t say what came inbetween, but she can imagine.

  ‘I mean, did you take her home, old boy? Did you put her back nicely in her show-case, like the little doll that she is, end of story? Hey, Lambert? Tell us, man, or where did you go driving around?’

  Lambert’s in a corner now, she can see. They all know he’s not allowed to drive, ’cause of the fits, and he hasn’t got a licence. They’d catch him very quickly among the grand cars in that crock of his without its shell.

  Treppie acts like he knows what Lambert’s busy thinking, and that those thoughts are very impressive. Very quick on the ball. He does it with all of them. He gives them ‘perspectives’ and things so-called to save their backsides, but then he cancels them again, laughing at the lot of them for even falling for any of it in the first place.

  ‘Aha, you naughty boy!’ says Treppie. ‘So then you took your girl for a ride around the block for a smoke break, ’cause that barrel of yours was hot, hey! Martha, Toby, Gerty, and then, when you’d finished the holy trinity, you came back for more, right?’

  Wink, wink at Lambert, wink at her, wink at Pop.

  Lambert tries to wink back, but his eyes are too wide open. All he does is shut them.

  ‘Yes, first we went and patrolled around Triomf a bit, but then she wanted to see my paintings again. She said she’s seen lots of paintings in her life, but not, um, as you say, frescoes like these.’

  She must remember to go look inside that Frisco coffee tin in the kitchen. Doesn’t taste like paint to her, but then again her sense of taste isn’t so good any more. The other day she poured Vim scrubbing powder over the eggs and everyone except her tasted the difference. Treppie asked her if she was playing Daisy de Melker. He wouldn’t hold it against her, he said, but she’d have to increase the dosage. Then, luckily, she found the salt under the sink. No need to swing by the neck for nothing.

  ‘Where did you get that thing?’

  It’s Pop who’s suddenly talking now, here next to her. He sounds like he’s trying to scold Lambert, with his last breath.

  He points to the gun on the bed. Look how his hand’s shaking! Let her take his hand and put it back on his lap. It makes her feel eerie, hands shaking like that.

  ‘I bought it from a kaffir at the dumps for fifty rand. Pop. It’s for our protection, for when the shit hits the fan.’

  Pop looks at Treppie as if to say, look where all your talking’s got us now! But Treppie pretends he doesn’t see Pop.

  ‘Yes and no,’ says Treppie. ‘It’s for the shit when the shit hits the fan, but it’s actually for shooting the fan when the fan doesn’t work.’ He sticks his index finger in his mouth
and pretends he’s pulling a trigger. ‘Boom!’

  ‘Give it here!’ It’s Pop again, with that shaking hand of his.

  ‘Not a damn will I give it to you,’ says Lambert. ‘It’s my gun and only I can touch it!’

  ‘Give it to Pop, he just wants to look at it. It’s true, isn’t it, Pop, you just want to look, don’t you?’

  She wishes Pop would say ‘just want to look’, but he says nothing. He keeps that trembling hand of his held out. It’s shaking all the way up to where the arm connects with the body.

  ‘I said, give it here!’

  ‘Not a fuck am I going to give you my gun, Pop!’ says Lambert. ‘The AWB has already recruited me to help shoot when the, um, when the …’

  ‘When the what?’ asks Treppie. He looks like he’s conducting exams again.

  ‘When the fan breaks. Fuck!’ Lambert looks like he wants to cry. Treppie claps his hands. Now, he says, Lambert has demonstrated an insight into a particular mentality. And Pop must leave him alone, too. One thing at a time. Treppie says, he first wants to test that insight a little.

  Whoosh! Treppie grabs the gun out of Lambert’s hand.

  He walks up and down with his hand under his chin. He pretends he’s thinking so hard that he’s kicking little stones, but he’s actually kicking tins and newspapers and the insides of radios. Then, suddenly, he gets a brainwave. He goes ‘snap!’ with his fingers in the air.

  Jeez, he says, he hadn’t thought of it before, but maybe Lambert will land up on Robben Island. He mustn’t worry, though, they’ll send him polony so he won’t have to eat that watery porridge they give people there. And then, he says, Lambert can write a nice letter to Mandela, asking him if he can paint on the walls, but he’ll have to promise nothing but the New South Africa – just doves and AKs, doves and AKs, from the Cape right up to the North, on top.

  Should she go make some tea? she wonders, to bring some relief here.

  ‘Detention without trial!’ says Treppie. ‘Article Twenty-nine! Mind you, there’s a new rumour doing the rounds. Want to hear?’

  Yes, they want to hear, Pop nods.

  ‘They say Robben Island’s not going to be a prison any more in the New South Africa. It’s going to be a museum. But that makes no difference. They’ll still need Lambert there. He’ll be indispensable. Behind glass. Instead of Bushmen and Hottentots. Then he’ll be able to demonstrate nicely, hey?’

  ‘Give back my fucken gun!’

  ‘Aren’t you tired of your own voice yet, Treppie?’ asks Pop. ‘Don’t you think you’ve showed off enough for one day?’

  ‘Yes, ask the fucker, ask him!’ says Lambert. He lunges for his gun, but it’s not necessary. Treppie gives it to him nice and neatly, with the grip facing forward. Lambert puts the gun under his pillow. Then he sits down on top of the pillow, on top of the gun.

  No, Pop needn’t worry, says Treppie. Everything’s okay. He’s finished playing games. Now he’s coming to the serious business.

  What serious business? In that case, she’d rather play games.

  ‘You want to know what it is, hey, Mol?’ Treppie says.

  Treppie can see right into her head, that’s for sure. Never mind, he says, she must strap on her life-jacket, so long, and Pop must throw the goat overboard and then comb the horizon, ’cause this leaky boat of theirs is heading for the rocks, fast.

  She sees Pop looking at Treppie and wondering, what now? She also wonders, but Treppie’s on the move again.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ he asks Lambert.

  ‘Oh, yes, you came back from Triumph by night and you looked at all the paintings, from Genesis right through to Revelation. But wasn’t your time up by then, Lambert? Hell, man, we had to drive a hard bargain for that slut, my man. And in the end she wanted two hundred rand just for one hour. Look, you have to realise, she wasn’t exactly on a special offer, unless she was on top of you, old boy.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about time,’ Lambert mumbles. He doesn’t look Treppie in the eye. He’s looking at the wall.

  ‘She visited nicely here with me, and I’d watch out if I were you, ’cause she said she’s coming again next week. I told her she’s welcome, we’ve got plans for when the shit starts flying.’

  Treppie holds up his hand. What did Lambert say, there?

  ‘For when the shit starts flying, Treppie, and you can take that stupid joke of yours about the broken fan and shove it right up your arse!’

  ‘In it goes!’ says Treppie, pretending to stick something up.

  ‘I hope it does something for my constipation. Then at least there’ll be one thing left in working condition in Triomf after the election, even if it’s only a working stomach!’

  ‘Shuddup, you!’ Lambert shouts at Treppie. Now he’s talking to her and Pop. It sounds like he’s begging.

  ‘There’s no more apartheid, so she could easily come with us and everything. I told her we don’t mind smart Coloureds like her.’

  ‘Try for white, I see!’ says Treppie. ‘And then I suppose she went and powdered her nose?’

  Now he makes as if he’s in the bathroom, pretending to powder his nose.

  ‘Mary, Mary on the wall

  Who is the fairest of them all?’

  he asks a make-believe mirror here in front of him.

  ‘And then she saw, oh Lord, but I’m not a blonde mermaid on the roof-rack of a Volkswagen. And then that mirror cracked into little pieces, all over the bath!’

  Or can Lambert tell them how the mirror got into the bath? Did they do it on top of the mirror, inside the bath, under the water? Hell, that takes his mind very far back, he says. Can she, Mol, still remember those naughty days?

  No, Treppie. She shakes her head. He must really stop now.

  ‘Well,’ Treppie says to Lambert, ‘maybe I’m the only one, but I remember well, your mother was still very young, and she used to take her older brother in hand too, in the bath. Those days her little brother was still very small, smaller than her, but when his sister got tired, then kid brother just had to take over. And you wouldn’t say it today about your mother’s older brother, would you, but in his young days he just couldn’t get enough. There was no satisfying him!’

  She can feel Pop looking at her, but she’d rather not look back right now. She looks at Lambert. Thank God in heaven, it doesn’t look like he’s clicking. He just looks upset. Thank God he’s got other things eating him today – a broken shoe and a headful of hair. A hangover on top of a night that went soft on him. He won’t be making any missing connections today.

  ‘Ag, you’re just talking shit, Treppie. Just shuddup!’ he says.

  ‘Yes, Lambert, he’s just talking shit!’ Her voice comes out louder than she means it to.

  ‘Now listen to me carefully, both of you. It’s not a shit-story, it’s the story about how everything began. And if there’s one thing about a good story it’s that it has to have a beginning. The second thing that makes a story good is that it must be true. Now this story is a true story, as true as true can be. And the third thing about a good story is that no one must ever have heard it before. Okay, granted, the only one here who hasn’t heard it is Lambert, but where will you find a better audience than Lambert? Like a lamb to the slaughter. Innocent! Those who don’t know won’t be punished. So it is written. And I, for my part, don’t take punishment for other people. So Lambert must hear the story. He’s grown up now. He can hold his own. We know that. He can fix fridges, he can drive a car, he can shoot, he’s been recruited and he’s just been serviced, so why can’t he know where he comes from? It’s his right, isn’t it? Or what do you two say?’

  Treppie looks at them and then he looks at Lambert. Treppie’s face looks like he’s making ordinary conversation on an ordinary day. He takes out his pocket-knife and begins to clean his nails with long, fancy strokes. ‘Grrtt-grrtt!’ goes the knife under his nails. He holds them out for inspection. He’s not happy with them.

  He’s talking to Lambert
, glancing at him sideways as he scrapes.

  ‘You’re a person who knows your rights, hey. You must stand up for your rights. That’s what I say. And this right is a basic one. It’s your birthright, and that’s a human right. To know about your, er, origins.’

  Treppie stops talking. He holds both hands out in front of him. Now he’s satisfied. ‘Click’ goes the pocket-knife as he closes it again. He puts it back into his pocket.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he says, ‘everything in good time, right? Where were we now? Oh yes, the mirror in the bath. And what else? The postbox. Just imagine. After all this time, that postbox is still an invariable in this story of ours. You weld it, you paint it, but when you look again, it’s fucked up and it’s lying in a whole new place. But this time, Lambert, the angle of displacement is a little too wide. On the lounge floor! Via the window! A spot of wet peace in the heart of Jo’burg.’

  Via.

  ‘Ja, Mol, via, Via Dolorosa. But let me finish questioning Lambert here. Come, Lambert, explain a little now. When you and Mary came back from wherever, you were so, er, hard-up, that you rather went for the postbox instead, hey? But that hole in the front is too small, if you ask me. And its sides, wow man, they’re a bit on the sharp side, not exactly what I’d call, er, nesting material, er, for a pecker, er, I mean, even if it was a Sacred Ibis or, er, a pelican or something like that! But that’s the only way I can figure out how it came flying through the front window. Some or other monster of a pecker. Shot clean off its pole. Maybe it was a freedom dove!’

  Lambert’s sitting with his head down. He’s twirling his thumbs around each other. His whole body heaves as he breathes.

  ‘Now, Lambert, I don’t know how things are on your side of the Speedo, but that postbox, er, saw its arse. And notwithstanding that …’

  Why’s he stopped talking now? He looks at her, then he shuts his eyes tight as if she’s about to throw something at him.

  ‘Notwithstanding,’ she says.

  Treppie jerks his head as if something just hit him.

  ‘Right!’ he says. ‘Now we can carry on. Thank you, Little Miss Echo! And notwithstanding that, the postbox now has a whole new look about it. It’s back on the gate, I put it back, but it’s taken quite a blow. Now it’s a postbox with an attitude. And I’d say it’s rather an artistic attitude, an attitude that holds promise and one that, er, radiates expectation. Now it looks like it’s stretching its neck to look up Martha Street. To see which way Mary’s coming. Oh, dear little Mary with her one shoe!’