Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

His mother said one minute she was standing in the front waiting for Toby to pee, and the next something suddenly began to bubble up from behind the house. She still thought, oh boy, here’s another big fuck-up, so she called Treppie to come and look. Treppie told her he reckoned that he, Lambert, had finally exploded, and what she saw there was his soul bubbling up to the heavens.

The next thing, Pop and his mother came running in from outside, smacking the bubbles left, right and centre. And then Toby came, almost running them right off their feet. His jaws went ‘clack-clack’ as he tried to bite the bubbles. Treppie waltzed in through the inside door, singing: ‘Tiny bubbles, in the air.’

Meanwhile, he was crawling around that Fuchs on all fours, with his pencil, quickly marking with circles the places where he saw bubbles popping out. There were so many of them that he couldn’t keep up. After a while everyone began smearing bubble juice on to the Fuchs. And the next thing Pop was smearing Mol and Treppie was smearing Pop and everyone was smearing everyone else full of Fabulous Paradise. And so they ended up having a whale of a bubble party there in his den.

Treppie said it just showed you what fun you could have with crocked stuff. Come to think of it, he said, where was the fun in a fridge that worked? Just ice and cold polony.

THE SECOND MIRACLE: SHOCK TREATMENT

It took them three full days, testing with bubbles, pumping out the gas, cutting tubes, making new joints and filling up with gas again. Then they’d test with bubbles again and close up little pin-prick holes before filling up and testing the pressure yet again. Over and over until they had that Fuchs sort of sealed up.

But that was child’s play compared with the Tedelex. The Tedelex was a burnt-out case that had stood for years here in his den, stinking through its open valves.

He filed open that compressor all along its join to see what was going on inside. He took one look at the suction and liquid line pipes, the ones that go in and out of the shell, and he ripped them out with his bare hands, the oil line too. That was when he burnt his skin so bad with acidbreakdown oil.

‘Jeez!’ said Treppie when he saw the inside of that compressor.

Treppie made him put on gloves, and he put gloves on too, plastic ones that they hurriedly went and bought at the Spar, ’cause Treppie said he didn’t feel like being buried skinless one day. He didn’t see why he should have to be a take-away for the worms.

The pump inside was completely eaten away by acid. The insulation was perished right through, the windings were in their glory and the coils were burnt pitch black. When they opened it up some more, they saw that the gaskets on the cylinder head and the valve seats were totally non-existent.

Treppie said he wasn’t the god of fridges, so he couldn’t fix this kind of fuck-up, but then he saw Treppie’s eyes sparkle and he schemed that maybe he could push his luck a bit here.

He got Treppie to go as far as to order some of the most important parts for the Tedelex along with the orders he wrote out for the Chinese’s fridges. He even bummed some spares from the workshops around Triomf, West End Electrics and Century Appliances.

They spent weeks reassembling that compressor. The whole den was full of cut-up Dogmor tins filled up with parts and oil.

Every now and again Pop looked in, and he’d whistle between his teeth and say, goodness, it looked to him like Triomf Appliances was back in business.

But the day they welded up the compressor shell, reconnected the wires and tubes and tried to start the Tedelex, that compressor just sat there, jammed. Completely seized up.

‘Ag no, man,’ Treppie said after they’d cleaned it up for the umpteenth time and gone over everything again and checked the volts. ‘It’s like trying to get blood from a stone.’

‘What about a capacitor?’ he asked. ‘Then we can reverse the thing.’ That’s what the fridge book said you do with compressors when they get stuck. In Modern Refrigeration and Airconditioning , on page 355, middle of the page.

‘Christ, no, I won’t touch one of those things,’ Treppie said. ‘Once I saw a Chinese trying to reverse a compressor. He blew himself up, together with the compressor and the capacitor and everything else too. All that was left of him was a hole in the wall and a wet spot!’

‘Yes, but that must have been a big pump, a commercial systems pump, for one of those helluva big walk-in coolers full of sweet and sour.’

He kept on nagging Treppie about the capacitor. He knew he’d give in eventually, even though Treppie stood there and looked at him in that funny way.

‘Come now, Treppie, man, we can reverse it just a touch, and then a bit more. You must just organise a capacitor for us.’

He’d think about it, Treppie said, wiping off his hands with a ball of cotton waste and walking out of the den’s back door.

But Treppie spent too much time thinking about it for his liking. And then, that same afternoon, he had a second brainwave. One that made his hair stand on end.

He pulled Flossie right up to the den with its battery side next to the outside door, and then he pushed the Tedelex close to the door as well.

At the very last minute he figured out that he’d better pull the Tedelex’s plug out of the wall, otherwise he’d shock the whole of Triomf into a different blood group.

He took out the jumper cables and connected them to the runningwinding and the starting-winding wires on top of the compressor shell. He tied the other ends of the cable to Flossie’s battery.

And then he climbed into Flossie and started her up, putting his foot down.

That was how he jump-started the Tedelex, there and then, Model 104, burnt out for almost twenty years and reconditioned under doubtful circumstances, as Treppie said. Just like that. One shot, first try!

It was a miracle. Neither Treppie nor Pop nor Eddie at West End Electrics had ever in their lives heard of a thing like that. Lambert had to explain over and over how he did it, and Treppie just stood there, shaking his head. ’Cause a car battery gave a straight current, not one with waves like a fridge needed, he said. Treppie asked him again what he’d done before jump-starting the Tedelex, and he said he’d kicked the fridge five times up its backside until it shat itself, and then Treppie said, aha! Now a light went on in his head, but he never said what kind of light he meant.

Light or no light, just hear how they run, both of them, like the terrible twins there next to each other on the den’s cement floor. He puts out his cigarette. Then he swings his legs off the bed and walks carefully through the dark, in bare feet, to his fridges. He opens both doors at the same time. Just check how bright those inside lights burn! He feels the ice-trays in the ice-boxes. Ice for Africa! He puts his head against the sides of the fridges, first one, then the other. Running as smoothly as a healthy heart, without a hitch. He feels behind for the condensers. Both are warm.

‘My ma bakes roly-poly’

he sings as he climbs back into bed

‘My daddy combs the goat

My brother rows the leaky boat

And I fix Frigidaires.’

He sings the last line of the song a few times until he gets it to fit nicely with the tune and the beat of ‘Sow the Watermelon’. No one must ever come and tell him not to expect miracles. There it is, against all odds! ‘Click’ goes the Fuchs as he settles into bed. ‘Clack’ goes the Tedelex as he rolls on to his side.

FINISHING TOUCHES