Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Here’s Pop with the newspapers, but he won’t give them to her. He throws them down on top of the vomit himself. Looks like he’s throwing big, thin leaves into a hole. So carefully, like he’s at a funeral or something.

‘Did he fit?’ Pop asks.

Treppie bends over Lambert. He pinches his nose closed, holding his pinky up in the air.

‘His tongue’s still here!’

Treppie takes Lambert by the shoulders and shakes him hard. He must be careful, or he’ll set off more than a spark in there.

‘Fuck off!’ is all Lambert says.

They must get him awake and moving again. That’s what she thinks.

‘Bring some water,’ says Pop.

Treppie bows. ‘Allow me,’ he says. He winks at them and goes out the door. He’s capable of bringing in the hosepipe. She looks at Pop. What does he think? But no, it’s Toby’s red bowl full of water that Treppie carries back with him into the den. He holds it up solemnly over Lambert’s body.

‘Let oh Lord thy countless blessings rain down upon thy servant here,’ he says, his head tilted up. Treppie pours the water from high up in a thin little trickle, first on to Lambert’s crotch, then over his stomach and chest, and then, suddenly, he chucks the rest straight into his face.

‘I told you to fuck off!’

This is what she’s been afraid of. More than just a spark. Let her just get out of the way here, quickly. The outside door is open, thank God.

Lambert sits up straight. His eyes are wild. She can see he’s looking this way and that, but he can’t find his focus. Water drips from his face.

Pop stands in the one corner, Treppie in the other. She’s in the outside doorway.

Now it’s very quiet. Something goes ‘tick-tick-tick’, but it’s not her. It’s coming from the Fuchs, burnt black on the sides. Brown stuff runs out of it.

Lambert sits on the bed with his legs spread out wide in front of him. His shirt’s too tight. He tries to use his arms to stop himself from falling over.

He wants to know what they’re all looking at. What’s so funny and who do they think they’re looking at? She uses her hands to cover her ears. He roars like a lion, this Lambert. Now his arms give backwards and he falls over. His thing is hanging out from his underpants.

‘Pit bull terrier!’

Oh heavens! What’s she gone and said now? Pop looks at her. She covers her mouth with her hand.

But here comes a thing now flying towards her through the air. ‘Whirrr!’ Lambert’s thrown something right into her face. What is it? Oh God, no, it’s all hair and it smells like a person and now it’s stuck on her face like a thing with claws and it won’t come off!

What’s Treppie singing there now? A ‘disjointed’ piece of what? No, he’s singing about a ‘Creole tarantula’. What can that be? She can’t see anything. She throws the thing down. Oh God, it’s a head full of hair. But where’s the head, then?

Pop takes her hand. She mustn’t worry, it’s okay. ‘Wig,’ he shows with his mouth. It’s just a wig.

‘Get out, get out of here!’ Lambert shouts, but he can’t pull himself up.

He must rest, Pop says, they’ve just come to see how things are going with him.

‘My boy.’ That’s what Pop says to him.

‘Ja, old boy,’ Treppie says. Lambert must just calm down, they only came to say happy birthday and good morning and viva Lambert and he must look, there’s some coffee on the table for him, he can’t say his uncle doesn’t have his best interests at heart.

Pop picks up Lambert’s boxer shorts in front of the cabinet. Here, he says, put on some decent clothes. Pop picks up things lying around and then lets go of them again. He picks up the fallen-over chairs. Their chairs. Hers still looks okay, but Pop’s chair looks like someone broke its back. Its one arm is loose. Pop pushes the little peg under the arm-rest back into its hole. Poor old chair!

Now Lambert’s got his shorts on, but he can’t get his balance. Her too, she also feels paralysed.

She must come and sit, says Treppie. He pulls up her chair. He even makes as if he’s dusting off the cushions, just for her. Full of tricks. Never before has Treppie pulled up a chair for her. She’ll only sit when and if she herself decides to. She’ll first stand here for a bit, although that tarantula made her legs feel like jelly. Now Lambert’s drinking his coffee. He goes ‘shlurrrp!’ as he drinks. Now she’ll sit. But just on the edge.

‘We thought we’d leave straight away last night, so you could have some privacy,’ Pop says, trying to soft-soap Lambert, but Lambert just says ‘Uh!’ like an ape.

Let her look at this hair again. Lots of curls that jump back quickly when you pull them out and then let go again. What’s this sticky stuff here? Sis!

Now Toby’s on the bed too, lock, stock and barrel. He wants to say, hullo, Lambert, but all he gets is a kick. He’s sniffing in the wrong place. Come, Toby, come sit here with your missus.

Lambert holds his head. He wipes the drops off his face, then he holds his head again.

She must go look in the kitchen dresser, Pop says. There’s some Panado there. And while she’s in the house she can bring a towel so Lambert can dry himself off.

Maybe Pop wants to talk to Lambert on his own. He tells Treppie to take Molletjie and go and buy a Coke at Ponta do Sol. Lambert’s Cokes are finished. But Treppie doesn’t want to. He wants to be here so he can hear the father-to-son talk. Her too, she also wants to hear it. She stands behind the door and peeps through the chink. But Pop says nothing. He says if Treppie’s got something to say, then he must say it now. All he wants to say is that he’s here to support Lambert.

Lambert needs more than fucken support, Treppie says. All the Panados in the world won’t take Lambert’s headache away. And all the Cokes under the sun won’t change the facts. And he, Treppie, thinks that what Lambert needs after a night like last night is a beer. He’s sure he can find a beer in one of these two fridges.

Facts, yes, she also wants to hear about those facts, but all she hears is ‘eeny-meeny-miny-mo’. It’s Treppie. She stretches her neck. He’s standing in front of the fridges, pointing to each one in turn as he says his rhyme to determine which one to open. It’s the Fuchs, the one that’s been burnt black all down the sides.

‘Lambert,’ he says. ‘This thing’s leaking again, isn’t it?’

Treppie tries to open the fridge. She can’t see him, but she can hear him pushing and pulling the fridge. Then there’s a ‘boom!’ Treppie almost falls right on to his backside. He’s pulled the door clean out of the fridge. Its rubbers hang down from the sides, burnt to cinders. ‘Kaboof,’ goes the door as Treppie throws it on to the floor. Now he must be looking into the open fridge ’cause he’s brushing soot and stuff from his face.

‘Jesus,’ says Treppie. ‘I thought I knew what a burn-out looked like, but this looks more like the eye of Etna!’

Who’s poor old Etna now? And why’s her eye burnt out? It doesn’t sound like a fact, it sounds more like a fairytale to her.

Did he stick his immersion heater into the Fuchs or something, Treppie asks Lambert. Or his dipstick? In that case he must have been overheating something terrible — no decency, as usual.

‘Or,’ says Treppie, ‘maybe it couldn’t take a service. Probably too old for servicing. And to think of all those leaks we had to weld! But some things are simply beyond redemption. Those kind of things just fuck out, anyway. Boom! But, well, we did our best, didn’t we, Lambert? And this kind of mistake happens in the best of families. Or what am I saying, hey, Pop?’

Let her go fetch the Panado. All this talking is just a lot of rubbish. She wants it to be tomorrow so they can go vote and get it over and done with. And if the house has to get painted, then let it get painted and be finished. Maybe they’ll all feel better and a bit stronger then. Hope springs eternal, Treppie always says, and as far as she can see, she’s the only one with any hope left, although she’s not sure she wants to put much hope on a white house. It’s really just the roof that matters. The rest is the rest. She almost feels like this year should start all over again. It’s been one long struggle to get everything fixed and ready. First this, then that, then the other thing. And for what? Sweet blow all! And there was nearly another disaster to top it all ’cause right at the last minute they went and shifted the election date all over the place as though it was a Shoprite trolley. First to the one side, then the other, and then the far side as well. Now there are no fewer than three days for the voting. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. And all of a sudden tomorrow’s a holiday, too. Wonder Wall sent them a letter saying they don’t work on holidays, so Treppie phoned them up — she was with him, at the Westdene public phone — and told them they must understand, nicely now, that this was an ad-hoc holiday, and a contract was a contract. They must watch their step, otherwise he’d take them to the small claims court. So they said, no, fine, sorry, they’d come.