And eventually, there she went. ‘Oo-eee! God help me!’ she shouted. Slowly, she lurched over the molehills in first gear. Pop was treading like mad with his feet, letting the clutch go and trying to find the brakes. It looked like he was in a paddle-boat or something.
The next exercise was to go from first to second and to work the pedals. It looked like a paddle-boat for two. Mol lost her bearings and almost went right through the gate. Then she just wanted out of that car, clutching on to Pop like she was about to drown or something. Well, he supposes the past few days must have been a bit too much for the old thing, ’cause she suddenly started blubbering, and he saw Pop’s hanky come out to wipe her tears. First her tears and then his own. And then he put his arm around Mol’s shoulder. She, again, put her hand on his leg. Not exactly driving off into the sunset, but there they sat, on the lawn in Flossie, with its bumper against the pole holding up the postbox. They sat there, staring at that backside-front postbox, and the postbox looked back at them through its receiving end, twisting its head.
What Pop told Mol to make her feel better, he doesn’t know. All he could see was Pop pointing his arm this way, that way, and then up into the air. Maybe he was pointing out all the places they were still going to visit. Heaven help them. And Toby too, he kept following Pop’s hand. This way, that way, up into the air. Man’s best friend.
It was then that he began to hear the sound of old pianos. At first all he heard in that bit of late-evening silence was the nervous traffic of cars beginning to drive faster and faster around Triomf as the election approached. But then, coming right out of his centre, he heard those old pianos, handfuls of old chords. It was so bad he felt like his heart wanted to combust. So he took a little turn past the fig tree at the back of the house. The autumn sun was shining so brightly through those leaves he could see every vein. And the light shone through the holes in the rust spots. The late figs looked as though they’d been preserved in golden syrup as they hung there, so sweet, so sweet. His gills contracted with tears.
Not enough sleep over the last few days. That must be his problem. So he came back to the front and drowned those terribly sad pianos with a few neat shots of Klipdrift. Then all that remained of the combustion were a few hissing and spitting coals in his insides, and a shoulder jerking like it wanted to shoot right off its socket, arm and all, so it could bugger off somewhere on five fingers. But he can’t fuck off from here, neither he nor any of his parts. He’s just going to have to see this one through to the bitter end.
He told Pop he should rather leave third and fourth for another day, ’cause he doesn’t have the time tonight to cure damaged Mol-skin. But all Pop wanted was to fuck off into the street with that Triomf-turbo of theirs after they’d finished their crying and comforting.
So now it’s dark and Flossie’s ready for the last round. Not for spare parts, but for geriatric training in parallel parking. The candles are burning on the Dogmor tins, one car’s length apart from each other. That’s how Pop set them out. Christ, if you didn’t know them, you wouldn’t believe your eyes tonight. It looks like a church. Half-holy, kind of beautiful, the dogs on the tins smiling with their mouths open through patches of rust in the candlelight.
He sees Pop flick on his lighter to show Mol where reverse is. She can’t find it. There goes her lighter too. The light from the little flames shine through their hair as they bend forward to look at the gear lever: through Pop’s white tufts and Mol’s loose strings next to her face. From her bun that’s been unravelling for the past two days. Woe is me!
There she starts now. Into reverse. Pop gets out. She must go slowly, backwards, he calls out to her, he’ll show her. Pop has to shout hard ’cause Mol’s revving Flossie to hell and back. Pop’s holding a lighter in each hand. With large circles he motions to her, now she must turn the steering wheel, now she must let go of the clutch, slowly, now she must give petrol, just a little.
Mol’s sitting with her neck twisted around. Here she comes. Well, he must say, for someone who can’t even open a Tic-Tac box she’s learnt very quickly. Here she comes now, here she comes, steady does it. She reverses slowly, towards her goal, with neither a roof nor a mirror.
‘You’ve got the angle, Mol!’ Pop shouts. ‘Just perfect, old girl, just carry on like that! Now swing her nose in! Turn the wheel the other way! No, the other way. Slowly, look in front of you, Mol, there’s a tin in front.’
Mol looks. She bumps the Dogmor tin, just a little. The candle doesn’t even fall over. Just the flame nods up and down and the Dog laughs once, a flash of red tongue showing. Just a little more, a little more, Pop shows her, with a lighter in each hand. Like he’s conducting a big Jumbo on to a landing strip in the middle of the night.
‘Hold it now, hold it just there!’ he shouts with his hands up in the air. The glow from the lighters falls over his face and over the back of Mol’s head. Happy landings! She stops. Hic, off! goes the car – she forgot to step on the clutch and put the car back in neutral. But she’s done it. Parallel parking! Bull’s eye, first shot! Who’d ever have believed it! Just look how she’s smiling as she gets out of that driver’s seat, between two of those tins with candles on top.
Chord upon chord, there’s the piano again. Take another swig.
‘Put out, put out the ancient psalm
lest the holy notes combust
in the smoking fire of the heart’
Why’s Pop telling him to shuddup now? He must stop singing and go to sleep, Pop says. He must let this day come to an end now. He mustn’t stand here and make himself sick for nothing. It’s all over. They’re still alive and Mol has just parked Flossie. Does Treppie want to borrow his hanky? Not a hanky, thanks, he says to Pop. What he needs is a fucken sheet.
‘Come, Mol, it’s bedtime!’ Pop calls out.
‘I’m coming now,’ Mol shouts back. ‘I just want to sit here a little. Rest a bit. Pass my lighter.’
‘Blow out the candles,’ Pop says as he goes inside.
‘Yes, put them out, put them out
before the Milky Way goes to sleep.
What you sow you also have to reap.’
Treppie stays on the stoep for a long time, watching Mol light a cigarette and smoke it all up from beginning to end, there in her victory chariot. And all the while her other hand plays the giddy goat with the gear in neutral.
WONDER WALL
Pop’s sitting in his chair in the lounge. He came and sat here ’cause it was the only place he could still find in all the commotion. He was so tired and everything suddenly looked so strange and far away, as if he was in a different country. It was all he could still do for himself and his chair. They were both out of their depth. The chair had hardly found its way back from the den when it was shifted again, this time on to a heap along with everything else in the lounge; and he himself felt like his flesh was about to start falling off his bones.
So he squeezed his way between the sideboard and the crates, his knees knocking against the sharp edges of things. Now he’s sitting here and letting it all wash over him. In the end, everything passes anyway, then it’s over and it turns out to be totally meaningless. Even if it felt bad when it was happening.
They got back from voting at about half past eleven this morning. At the Westdene Recreation Centre. In the end it wasn’t at RAU after all, where they’d gone to vote Yes the last time. He was glad it was just around the corner ’cause he really wasn’t in the mood for a whole to-do all over again. As it was, they had to stand in a long queue while the police and officials and other people walked up and down, shouting that the boxes were full and the stickers were running out. By the time they’d all got their right hands sprayed with ink and put them into that purple gadget for the umpteenth time, they weren’t even sure any more whether they’d voted or not.
And those ballot papers, like entrails with such a lot of stuff written there, he couldn’t read further than the first four. So he made a wild cross just anywhere. Everyone in the
long queue outside the hall was confused and in a hurry.
Anyway, when they got back home, they saw a white lorry plus another two trucks standing in front of their house. And their whole yard was full of workers in white overalls. On the other side of the road, a different lorry was loading up those two women’s stuff.
What now, he thought, stopping in the street outside to see what was going on. Who was this coming to fetch them?
‘Whiter than snow,’ Treppie began singing before they even lit up cigarettes, and only then did he realise, but of course, this was the painting team here at their house. It was the big paint prize they’d won, the one Lambert made him sign for. The one Treppie also signed for, afterwards. At the time he’d wondered if they weren’t signing themselves into a fix, but he’d let it go ’cause Lambert was in such a bad way.
And then, when they didn’t want to paint on election day, Treppie went and said he’d take them to court, so they said in that case, okay, it was the owners’ risk and they reserved the right to paint any time of the day, even if the owners were out. It was going to be a day full of unpredictability, they said.
The painters were busy unpacking their equipment. He must look, said Mol, there on the front lawn. That white flag hanging on a long, thin pole, with the painting company’s name written on it in red letters. Red and white spells what? he thought, but Treppie had already read between the folds: WONDER WALL. If you ask him, Treppie said, it looked more like rescue workers at a disaster site than jasper workers from the New Jerusalem.
Treppie’s trying to be terribly nice again, telling jokes and things after his doings on the koppie, not to mention his terrible tormenting of Lambert. And on his birthday, too.
This morning, as they stood in the queue, he had no choice but to cut Treppie short again. Treppie was standing there in the middle of the queue, talking at the top of his voice about how it was a disgrace that the officials had to do all this dirty work. It was the NP’s duty to put those stickers on. That would be poetic justice, he said. After all, they were the ones who wanted to offer Mangosuthu for sale, first under one label and then another. You could actually call him a many-branded Buthelezi, Treppie stood there saying, standard on the one rump and prime on the other. Ja, that Treppie. He’ll just have to learn in his own time to control his mouth. People with his kind of talent face terrible temptations. It’s a great struggle for them to choose the straight and narrow path. Treppie has the character. He just lacks the will.
Anyway, Treppie was right, as usual. It looked more like hell than heaven around the house. Big blood-red rectangular machines stood all over the place, with fat, red muzzles stretching out as if they wanted to pump the house full of air. With shiny ladders against the walls, stretching up high above the roof like fire-engine ladders trying to reach a fire in the sky somewhere. At the front door, a silver trolley full of folded sheets.
Shame. And all Mol could say was: ‘Sinkhole!’ She was terribly disturbed by all the broken stuff in the house and Treppie’s stories in the den, and then this voting business on top of everything else – soldiers and low-flying helicopters and waiting ambulances. And, believe it or not, a friendly little piccanin came up to them at the voting station to ask if they didn’t want to help swell the peace fund, taking a handful of blue paper flowers from a big basket, each flower on its own stem with a ribbon and two little plastic doves. Then Mol just wanted to go home. But with all the painting going on there was no peace and quiet to be found here either. And Mol’s always been so scared of machines and things, too. She was in a complete state.
He explained nice and gently about the paint prize and how she must just keep calm. Just now she could go and see if there was any Oros inside. It was hot and the painters would be thirsty. Then she’d have something to do, he thought, something to occupy her mind.
About Treppie’s salvation he really can’t do anything. Treppie was busy embroidering again, about things that had nothing at all to do with painting. ‘Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,’ he began singing loudly in their faces. And he kept bugging Lambert, telling him to listen. If he, Treppie, didn’t get out of the car right away and go to the toilet, he was going to shit his pants full. It was a whole week now that his guts had been as solid as a rock. But, he said, now that Lambert’s lubrication service was behind them, and now that he’d voted for that mad woman from the Keep it Straight and Simple Party, the one who says she can kick a hole in any government’s drum, and with their house on the point of being painted white, he at last felt something was giving way in his insides.
Yes, he said, Lambert should take note, this was what he’d meant all along about the shit flying after the election, and Lambert should get ready for a shitstorm, or, as it was written, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.
He must say, the way those paint people were carrying on it really did look like they were getting ready for a storm. They covered the windows with heavy, shining screens of aluminium. Flossie got a thick plastic sheet and they draped the fig tree with something that Treppie said looked like a thermal blanket, red on the inside and silver on the outside, which they pinned to the ground with tent pegs. They even pulled a white bag around the overflow and a little red sail over the TV aerial on the roof.
With all those bags and sails and sheets and flags and stuff stirring and rustling in the breeze, the house began to look exactly like a ship lying ready to sail. He said as much to Mol, but Treppie overheard him and then of course he had to make his own little contribution. That ship, he said, was on its way to a country where the citrons were still blossoming. Mol said he was talking bull, and she said it with such conviction that it sounded like she wanted to shut Treppie’s mouth once and for all. A vain hope, of course. Treppie said, okay, if that wasn’t good enough, then the ship was sailing to the shore where love did last eternally, and would that make her feel better?
Shame, then the poor thing broke into a big smile, sitting there without her tooth and all. Pop’s heart wanted to break he felt so sorry for her. She sometimes reads to him from her library books about people who’re in love. Under the circumstances, he thinks, he’s done the best he could. It will just have to be enough. And with good faith they might yet reach those eternal shores, in their own kind of way. It’s just a matter of time.
He would have been happy to remain sitting outside in the car, but the foreman came over and asked them to unlock the door. It was hardly open before lots of workers in white overalls started getting the house ready for painting inside. They worked fast. It must be something they do every day, and maybe they were in a hurry to get finished so they could still have some of the holiday for themselves. Not that it feels like a holiday. It feels more like a war or something, with all those army lorries and little bursts of gunfire every now and again. Celebration shots, Treppie says, but he can’t say he’s seen any ribbons or balloons.
They started at the back, pushing each room’s things into a heap in the middle and covering everything with those white sheets from the trolley. Hell, all their old stuff looked so little, covered like that in the middle of each room. But he must say, the Wonder Wall people showed respect for their belongings. They took the brick out from under the sideboard and clamped a length of iron there before moving it away from the wall. And they first re-glued the loose joints before moving his chair, tapping the little pegs back into the arm-rests with a silver hammer. Now his chair’s sitting nicely again. Now it’ll be good for a while again.
Maybe this is a good time to take a nap. The workers are taking everything off the wall. They’re even wearing gloves to do the job – the calendar picture of Jo’burg, the answers to Treppie’s multiple choice, the advert for Cochrane’s security fencing, Treppie’s poem about peace and the portrait of the three of them with roses. The works. The wall looks bare. White squares where the stuff used to be. As it comes down, gloved hands place the items one by one into a big, white, double-carton, as if they’re fragile antiques or crum
bling old masterpieces.
And here comes a soft, white bag made of felt. He hears a dull rustle as the china cat from Shoprite is carefully lowered into the bag. The distributor cap with the old and the new NP flag goes in too, plus a few of Flossie’s ball-bearings in a saucer. What else? The moon and the stars and the sun that must shine on everyone who remain behind. Three more panfuls of loose floor-blocks from the dark passage. Everything into the bag to make sure that nothing will be lost. Not him either. Now they’re throwing sheets over everything. All is white. White for the crossing over.
High above the roofs of Triomf, the roads and the towers and the flat, yellow mine dumps. The chimneys that smoke and blow fire to one side, as if in a salute, beyond the earthly city’s limits. Higher and higher, a seed in a white husk. Cries and psalms from other windborne souls.
And then again, from far off, the ground approaching at long last, rocking to and fro, the horizons tilting from side to side. To one side, a small, white house, its doors and windows tightly shut, where he can finally come to rest against the clean, sun-warmed walls, nothing but the whisperings inside as if his ear were pressed to a shell, throughout the bright and endless winter.
FAMILY SECRETS
Lambert stands in the lounge, watching the painters. They’re busy on ladders all over the house, as if they’re not even aware of him standing there. They dip their big, fluffy rollers into wide, flat pans, painting the walls in brilliant white with quick strokes. Where they haven’t painted yet it looks dirty. Their mouths move as they talk but he can’t hear them. He can hardly hear himself thinking. It feels like a silent movie inside his head. The house shudders from the sandblasting. He can make out a fine hissing sound as wet paint-flecks splatter against the aluminium screens. Inbetween he hears the dull thuds of people working on the roof.
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