Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Lambert’s sitting with his head down. He’s twirling his thumbs around each other. His whole body heaves as he breathes.

‘Now, Lambert, I don’t know how things are on your side of the Speedo, but that postbox, er, saw its arse. And notwithstanding that …’

Why’s he stopped talking now? He looks at her, then he shuts his eyes tight as if she’s about to throw something at him.

‘Notwithstanding,’ she says.

Treppie jerks his head as if something just hit him.

‘Right!’ he says. ‘Now we can carry on. Thank you, Little Miss Echo! And notwithstanding that, the postbox now has a whole new look about it. It’s back on the gate, I put it back, but it’s taken quite a blow. Now it’s a postbox with an attitude. And I’d say it’s rather an artistic attitude, an attitude that holds promise and one that, er, radiates expectation. Now it looks like it’s stretching its neck to look up Martha Street. To see which way Mary’s coming. Oh, dear little Mary with her one shoe!’

Treppie’s got that little shoe in his hands again. He throws it into her lap.

‘Try it on quickly, dear sister, maybe the two of you wear the same size. Wonders never cease!’

Now Treppie’s on fast-forward again. He’s at the Tedelex. Open goes the door. Out comes the little white box.

‘So, my old hotshot,’ he says to Lambert, ‘do you also feel like a piece of birthday cake, old boy? People who swing from pelmets like Tarzan the apeman also need something sweet in their lives, don’t they? Me Tarzan, you Mary, low white, high brown!’

‘Chomp!’ goes Treppie as he bites into the side of the Swiss roll. He passes it on to Lambert in the same way he passed Lambert the gun — with the thick side to the front.

‘Hmmm, hmmm,’ he goes, his cheeks full. Now he’s a monkey, scratching the underside of his armpit with his loose hand.

Lambert’s white in the face. Out, she signals to Pop. When Lambert looks like this, there’s a fit coming. She feels in her housecoat’s pocket. No peg.

Lambert takes the Swiss roll, but he doesn’t eat. He just puts it down on the bed without taking his eyes off Treppie. Jam drips from the one side of the Swiss roll. Toby’s wondering who the Swiss roll belongs to. He puts his front paws on to the bed and takes a bite.

Stupid dog. Sis! Off!

‘Yes, off!’ says Treppie. ‘That’s not your cake.’

Treppie waves at them, as if he’s enjoyed his visit and he’ll come and see them again some time.

‘Well, then, cheers, I’m going now. All’s well that ends well, as they say in the classics, or, further west down the road of suffering, as ye sow, so shall ye reap, even when the harvest is in Martha Street.’

‘Biff!’ he hits Lambert on the back. Thanks for that nice piece of cake. Lambert must eat it now before it gets stale. Lambert says nothing. He’s looking straight in front of him.

But Treppie’s forgotten something. Oh yes, Lambert must please let him know when he’s finished with the sheets. No rush, mind you, Lambert must take his time, ’cause life only begins at forty.

At the door, Treppie turns around one last time. He looks at her and Pop, and then he shows them they must smile. What the hell, it’s all over now.

Toby goes with Treppie.

‘Whoof! Whoof!’ says Toby as Treppie kicks blocks for him all the way down the passage.

Let her also go now. She looks at Pop. Then she looks at the Swiss roll. Two bites. A human bite and a dog bite. On any other day she would’ve taken a bite too, from the clean side, but today she feels sick to her stomach. Any moment the ants will be there too. She points, but Lambert’s not looking. He’s just sits there on his bed. She really hopes he won’t have a fit now, too.

Pop gets up. He looks like he wants to say something. He looks like he wants to say Lambert mustn’t worry, everything will be okay and next year they can try again. But he can’t say it out aloud. She takes him by his sleeve so he can come. He doesn’t want to. Come now, Pop. As they shuffle out, Pop wants to touch Lambert’s shoulder, but Lambert sees Pop’s hand coming. He turns away. She really hopes he’s not going to have a fit now. ’Cause his lips are trembling.

Lambert takes the gun and shoots his list right off the wall.

Items one to ten are hard to shoot, but the further down he goes the easier it gets, ’cause the plaster’s soft from a damp spot in the wall. After every shot big pieces fall out of the wall.

He counts his bullets. He works it out. He’s got three for each of his gallery paintings, and then there’s still one left.

First the wings. One bullet on this side and one bullet on the other side of SUPERBEE. Sorry, SUPERBEE, but I’m going to have to shoot you from close up. He puts on his welding helmet in case the bullets bounce back. Right, straight into the wall and out the other side again. Small holes. Cheap bricks!

Now for the welding torch. He burns SUPERBEE’S wings with the flame till you can’t see any more of him, and also nothing around him, neither his heaven nor his earth.

He keeps the last bullet for his mermaid, but as he points the gun, first at her silver fin, where the paint’s peeling off, and then at her yellow hair, which is too long and too much, he starts shaking so much that he shoots himself instead. A direct shot, right in the head. There’s just a black hole between the two ears in front of Molletjie’s steering wheel.

His head’s zinging from all the shooting. And his tail-end’s jerking hard. Let him put this gun away nicely now. In the steel cabinet. Let him go lie on his bed. Let him sleep.

PARALLEL PARKING

That was morning and now it is evening. Treppie stands on the little front stoep with a glass in his hand. With his other hand he clutches his shoulder. It’s jerking like mad, as if someone’s throwing a switch on and off inside his body, somewhere near his navel. But the current has nowhere to go, so it slams into his skull and shoots back down into his shoulder. He feels wired, from head to toe. Vibrating, all the way down to his guts. It must be that bite he took from Lambert’s cold Swiss roll this morning. Fucken cardboard roll from Spar. Smeared full of slimy jam, although that might also help a bit. Unfathomable are the ways of digestion. If the Holy Spirit ever descends upon him, he reckons, it will be in the form of gippo guts. Then he’ll be truly blessed. He should actually try going to the toilet now, try to tune it in for a symphony, but this business here in the yard is something he wouldn’t miss for all the money in the world — not even for a turd in the toilet.

It all started this afternoon, when Pop woke up in his chair after sleeping like a dead thing right through all that shooting in the back. He’d hardly opened his eyes when he said, right, now Mol must come, he’d had a ‘visitation’. If there was one last task awaiting him before he was taken up into the house of the Father, it was to teach Mol to drive. Lambert wasn’t allowed to drive, and what would happen if there was suddenly a crisis and Treppie was ‘incapacitated’? he asked. Then Mol would be stranded. Believe it or not, that’s what he said, as if they were all quite happily on their way to paradise in the Drommedaris . And yes, he said, no matter how exhausted he was, the final driving lesson would have to start immediately. He just wanted to check, first, how things were going with Lambert there at the back. They said nothing about the shooting. He and Mol just sat there rolling their eyes at each other as Pop shuffled down the passage towards the den.