Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

‘Yes,’ Pop said, ‘when you were small, you took that hot flame and pressed it to your flesh.’

‘Never mind,’ said Treppie, ‘if he hadn’t started welding himself so early he wouldn’t have been Lambert the Iron Man today.’

The last thing Treppie took out of his bag was the volt-meter, which he showed Lambert how to work, as well as a set of thermometers with funny dials on curved stalks. That was for sticking into the places in a fridge where warm and cold need to be measured. Then Treppie wanted to stick one of those things into her, as if to take her temperature, and they all chased her around the house. Pop too, but she knew it was only a joke, and that all they meant by it was that she’s the only woman in the house. Who else can they chase around? They were glad she was such a sport. He wouldn’t try taking Lambert’s temperature, Treppie said, ’cause he remembered how that Passion Meter had boiled in two ticks and he didn’t have the money for new thermometers.

She and Pop helped to drag the trunk to the den, catching on loose blocks all the time. They felt it was enough of a business now. Things had to finish now.

Pop was very tired afterwards. He said the whole business of handing over the family treasures had exhausted him. But it was done now, and he felt light again, as if someone had taken a burden off his back. He said he felt reborn. Really. He even sings in the bathroom in the mornings. Not that she likes what he sings, ‘Nearer my God to Thee’, ’cause he actually feels further away from her than ever.

THE FIRST MIRACLE: TINY BUBBLES

It’s late. Lambert’s lying on his back in bed so he can listen with both ears to the hum of his fridges. They sound as if nothing’s ever been wrong with them. He smiles to himself in the dark.

They should start with the Fuchs, Treppie said, sniffing at the black shell of the Fuchs compressor on the workshop bench, ’cause if he remembered right, this wasn’t a burn-out, it was just a leak or two. Or a thousand and one, for that matter. After ’76 they sometimes took in fridges that leaked like they’d been in a riot. Birdshot, buckshot, that kind of thing. A fridge was a flimsy thing when it came to riots.

They put the compressor back into the engine and they bent the condenser tubes back into shape, the ones Lambert had ripped out. They welded the joints and cleaned everything up.

They also deep vacuumed the whole system, drained the oil and flushed the motor with R-11 before pumping new oil and gas back into the fridge.

When they started it up, Treppie showed him on the gauge how the pressure began falling to hell and was gone within an hour. The cycle ran all the time, without stopping inbetween, and the ice-box didn’t want to ice up properly.

‘This fridge is rotten with leaks. You must find them and mark them with a pencil on the joints and the tubing and the evaporator and everywhere else, the outside seals too. Then I’ll help you fix them. Then we simply fix them one by one till they’re all done.’

And he must remember, Treppie said, to open all the den’s windows, otherwise he’d get stoned from the gas. People who got stoned from fridge gas didn’t ever get liquid again. Their heads stayed solid until kingdom come.

He listened carefully to everything Treppie said, and he did everything Treppie said he must do. Working with Treppie was a big rave. They worked all February and March, and today’s the 17th April already. For more than two months they worked, morning, noon and night. The only time they stopped was when Pop brought them sandwiches. When Treppie had to go to the Chinese for a day there was always enough work to keep him busy in the meantime. He could see Treppie was also enjoying it. He’s been checking Treppie out. Ever since the fridges began working again he comes in here a lot, for this or that, he says, but he actually just wants to rest his hands on those two old fridges so he can feel how nice and steady they run.

Lambert feels for his cigarettes. He lights up and smokes in the dark, on his back. As he inhales he watches the little red coal glow. It’s good to think about how those fridges got fixed again. It’s so nice he just can’t stop thinking about it.

The first thing he tried using on the Fuchs was Sunlight, but the leaks were too big and there were too many of them. The soapy liquid was so runny that he couldn’t see very well what was going on.

Then he had a brainwave. He thought, let me send Pop to the big CNA in Melville to buy seven bottles of bubbles.

Late that night, after Treppie came and helped him pump more gas in for the test, he switched on his red light and asked the Good Lord and all the fridge fairies to please help him now, and he smeared every inch of that Fuchs with a thick layer of Fabulous Paradise Bubbles. Then he switched on the Fuchs at the wall.

The next thing there was a bubble bonanza like he’s never seen in his life before. The whole den was full of them. Big ones and small ones blowing from the holes. And all the sides of the bubbles shone with square pictures that bulged out as they caught the den’s reflections.

He must say, his jaw dropped when he saw that bubble bonus. He felt quite lame in the back as he stood there watching them. They just kept coming, one on top of the other, popping out of that Fuchs’ thick white body, some of them stuck together in five-bubble bunches, and then they separated and floated out the door and through the open windows, into the night, suddenly accelerating as the wind caught them.

The mouth of the ice-box, in front, was one huge bubble. When it came loose it was as big as his head. It floated there, in front of his face, wobble-wobble, like a big, hollow ball of jelly.

’Strue’s Bob, he walked right around that bubble. It just hung there. And with every step he saw a different angle of his room reflected on the bubble’s surface.

Everything looked completely different.

His bed, with all its rubbish-blankets and dirty pillows, looked like a lovenest full of secrets. And the painting above his bed, which was also in the bubble, looked like a masterpiece on a flowerpot, something he could never have painted himself. The Fuchs blowing bubbles was also in the bubble, like a magic machine in a science-fiction movie. And all the pieces of scrap iron, the tools, his steel cabinet, the crates full of empties, his painting of things with wings, looked like Treasure Island. He was also in the bubble. He looked like something from outer space, with ears that faded away to the back. His mouth and nose, popping out in front, like a goldfish in a glass bowl.

After a while he couldn’t take it any longer, but he also couldn’t snap out of it. So he took a deep breath and blew hard into that bubble as it floated there in front of him, like something in a nice dream. Then everything fell apart. The bed split into two floppy pieces against the ceiling, the Fuchs floated upside down into his eyes, his nose disconnected from his face. And then he followed his nose out the back door, weightless like an astronaut, up and away into the dark sky among the stars.

The bubble burst with a soft, cool, wet ‘plop’ on his face, like he’d walked with open eyes into a wet spider’s web.

Then he went and sat down on his bed, quite dizzy, and wiped his hand over his face. But there was nothing.

Lambert draws deep on his cigarette. That was really a special moment. From that moment on his den started feeling like a completely different place.