Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

You are the sun

I am the moon

You are the words

I am the tune

Play me!

Forty years and a few seconds old! Fuck! She turns her face away. Red stuff on that Coloured cheek of hers.

‘Do you hear that, Mary? You must be nice to me now, hey. You’d better behave yourself now, hey! I don’t like spoilsports, that’s one thing I don’t, um, tolerate.’

Nice that he remembered that word.

‘Let go, you’re hurting me!’

She doesn’t sound very hurt to him. She sounds more like a coon-girl with designs in her head.

‘Don’t be a sissy, man. Your sort have seen it all. As long as you play nicely, you won’t get hurt. Got it?’

Another cigarette, that’s what he needs now. Matches. Where? In his shirt pocket, top pocket. He sees his shoes. They look too big. He sees them ’cause he’s not standing upright. He’s bent over forwards. His arms are hanging out. He must get back into his gentleman’s pose. He’s got half a hard-on after that bit of action, but it drops quickly again. This business must get back into swing. Christ, this is worse than fucken fridge repairs.

He tells her she must look on the crate, there next to the bed. In the Coke bottle.

‘Look, I even got you a rose, man, want to smell it? My mother is into roses, you know. Her whole life long. This one here is a Whisky Mac. But there are lots more. Prima Ballerina, Red Alec, Las Vegas Supreme. That last one is an orange one. Hell, I must tell you that story! You won’t believe it. We were in the HF Verwoerd Institute for the Mentally Retarded that day, me and my uncle, he put me up to it, when we became a republic, you know, at the Voortrekker monument.’

Must he go and take it out for her or what? There, let her take the fucken rose. Can’t she see he’s okay again?

‘Go on, smell it!’

Move it, slut! He waits for her to smell. Christ, no, he must get another drink. And this time he’ll stay right here in front of his counter. She mustn’t start getting scared of him now. That business a second ago was nothing.

‘So what’s your favourite colour, Mary? Come, sit down again, come, sit here by me, in my mother’s chair. Let’s make friends again, hey? Let’s talk nicely now, like civilised people, hey?’

‘Civilised! Hmph!!’

To hell with hmph! Now it looks like she doesn’t even want the rose. She’s singing something.

‘The night was heavy

And the air was alive

But she couldn’t push through.’

‘What was that, may I ask?’

Fucken full of shit, that’s what. And she mustn’t look up at the ceiling, she must look at him!

‘Just a song. You know Highveld Stereo, like all the songs they play, say just the things you want to say?’

Fucken chancer! What’s that she’s looking at now?

‘So tell me, Michelangelo, what’s all this here supposed to be?’

‘You can read, man, just read it.’

At least she wants him to tell her something. Stand up straight. Tummy in. Let him show her. Michelangelo. Who’s that?

‘It’s my gallery of foolproofs. Much better than that stupid Cindy Viljoen from Tuxedo Tyres. Blue bikini, pink bikini, they think they can fool me!’

‘Cindy Viljoen?’

‘Yes, man, old Cindy on the calendars, I had them all, from ’76, all round here, to keep track of the time, you know, but then I discovered it’s the same Cindy in the tyre, just with different hair and things. It was all the same. People are not stupid, you know. On last year’s calendar she had so much make-up on, even on her neck and all, past redemption, not even worth a retread. But these things here, they’ll last forever. I finished it yesterday, just for you. They can all fly now, you see? They don’t wear and tear like lawn-mowers, or cars or fridges. They work, like, like, um, like paradise!’

‘Huh?’

‘You still don’t get it? Look, they all got wings on. It’s like heaven. Everything can be an angel in heaven. Rats, cockroaches, everything. There’s even a mole, MOLE II. It’s my mother, you see, even she has wings there. Not in MOLE I, there she’s in a fridge, frozen mole, ready to be fired off, but that’s another story. I gassed all the moles this morning, Mary, so you don’t have to look at them pushing heaps with a mouthful of Swiss roll.’

He can hear his voice going quicker and quicker. It feels like when you try to weld leaks. You can’t keep up with yourself. She looks like she thinks he’s got the horries or something. Stupid fucken floozy, that’s what she is.

‘So on the ceiling I will go on with heaven, all the stars and things, some dead, some alive, the black holes and the time warps and the sundogs and the rim of the dark moon that one can see in the earthshine, ’cause the earth shines too, did you know that? And old Gerty, shame, she’ll also be there, we buried her, jersey and all, in the back here, with a poem on the prefab wall. My uncle is a poet, you know, but he doesn’t know it, not always. He rhymes like shit, I mean, he can make a poem out of nothing. And a speech, without thinking. He made an unforgettable speech at my mother’s wedding, master of ceremonies. He’s quite a devil, you see — just needs horns. Even he liked Gerty, but not as much as my mother, my mother liked Gerty more than soft-serve, but Gerty coughed so much, she died of TB in the bathroom, just like my grandmother.’

‘Allah preserve me!’ Mary puts her hand in front of her mouth.

‘It’s just a dog, man. Toby’s mother — he’s also a dog. Gerty’s son, like our streets here, Gerty Street, Toby Street. But he’s still alive.’

He can’t very well tell lies about the streets. Maybe he should take her for a walk so she can see with her own two eyes.

‘I dipped him this morning, that Toby, so that the fleas won’t bite you. Very much alive that dog. He pisses on carpets. It’s like the AWB. Do you know them? They also piss on carpets. Like at the World Trade Centre, that time. All the policemen took off their caps after the pissing and prayed with the pissboys, they pissed inside and prayed outside!’

‘Have mercy!’

She’s looking up at the ceiling again. Wait till she hears his next story.

‘You know, they even wanted to recruit me, the AWB, just up the road here, opposite the stewing meat, with Oros, ’strue’s Bob, for their task force, they wanted a mechanic.’

‘Not surprising.’

‘Not at all, hey? But they can forget it, there’s more to me than nuts and bolts, I say!’

‘More nuts.’ She laughs loudly.

See, it just takes a little time. Wait, let him get some peanuts for them. From his counter.

‘I’ve got a gun, you know.’

Nice, these peanuts. Now she must watch carefully. Let him just finish chewing this mouthful, then he’s going to get the gun out of his cabinet. Why’s the door jammed like this? Come, bastard! Boom! It’s open. The stuff starts falling on to his feet: scrap iron, pipes, spanners, tins.

‘Holy shit!’

‘Sorry about that, odds and ends, you know.’

No, Lambert! You knew you shouldn’t have opened the cabinet!

‘Sorry if I gave you a fright, man.’

Where’s that gun now? Here at the bottom, under the rags. Now he’s going to impress this Cleopatra big time.

‘Don’t come near me with that thing.’

‘Don’t worry, man, it’s not loaded. I’ve got bullets, but it’s not loaded. I load it only when I go on patrol. This thing was a real bargain, man, I tell you. You don’t know how lucky a person can get on a dump. I got binoculars too, but that’s for sightseeing — the moon and the stars and the belly of the Jumbo. Big sports. But this is serious business, this is for protection.’