Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

There she starts now. Into reverse. Pop gets out. She must go slowly, backwards, he calls out to her, he’ll show her. Pop has to shout hard ’cause Mol’s revving Flossie to hell and back. Pop’s holding a lighter in each hand. With large circles he motions to her, now she must turn the steering wheel, now she must let go of the clutch, slowly, now she must give petrol, just a little.

Mol’s sitting with her neck twisted around. Here she comes. Well, he must say, for someone who can’t even open a Tic-Tac box she’s learnt very quickly. Here she comes now, here she comes, steady does it. She reverses slowly, towards her goal, with neither a roof nor a mirror.

‘You’ve got the angle, Mol!’ Pop shouts. ‘Just perfect, old girl, just carry on like that! Now swing her nose in! Turn the wheel the other way! No, the other way. Slowly, look in front of you, Mol, there’s a tin in front.’

Mol looks. She bumps the Dogmor tin, just a little. The candle doesn’t even fall over. Just the flame nods up and down and the Dog laughs once, a flash of red tongue showing. Just a little more, a little more, Pop shows her, with a lighter in each hand. Like he’s conducting a big Jumbo on to a landing strip in the middle of the night.

‘Hold it now, hold it just there!’ he shouts with his hands up in the air. The glow from the lighters falls over his face and over the back of Mol’s head. Happy landings! She stops. Hic, off! goes the car — she forgot to step on the clutch and put the car back in neutral. But she’s done it. Parallel parking! Bull’s eye, first shot! Who’d ever have believed it! Just look how she’s smiling as she gets out of that driver’s seat, between two of those tins with candles on top.

Chord upon chord, there’s the piano again. Take another swig.

‘Put out, put out the ancient psalm

lest the holy notes combust

in the smoking fire of the heart’

Why’s Pop telling him to shuddup now? He must stop singing and go to sleep, Pop says. He must let this day come to an end now. He mustn’t stand here and make himself sick for nothing. It’s all over. They’re still alive and Mol has just parked Flossie. Does Treppie want to borrow his hanky? Not a hanky, thanks, he says to Pop. What he needs is a fucken sheet.

‘Come, Mol, it’s bedtime!’ Pop calls out.

‘I’m coming now,’ Mol shouts back. ‘I just want to sit here a little. Rest a bit. Pass my lighter.’

‘Blow out the candles,’ Pop says as he goes inside.

‘Yes, put them out, put them out

before the Milky Way goes to sleep.

What you sow you also have to reap.’

Treppie stays on the stoep for a long time, watching Mol light a cigarette and smoke it all up from beginning to end, there in her victory chariot. And all the while her other hand plays the giddy goat with the gear in neutral.

WONDER WALL

Pop’s sitting in his chair in the lounge. He came and sat here ’cause it was the only place he could still find in all the commotion. He was so tired and everything suddenly looked so strange and far away, as if he was in a different country. It was all he could still do for himself and his chair. They were both out of their depth. The chair had hardly found its way back from the den when it was shifted again, this time on to a heap along with everything else in the lounge; and he himself felt like his flesh was about to start falling off his bones.

So he squeezed his way between the sideboard and the crates, his knees knocking against the sharp edges of things. Now he’s sitting here and letting it all wash over him. In the end, everything passes anyway, then it’s over and it turns out to be totally meaningless. Even if it felt bad when it was happening.

They got back from voting at about half past eleven this morning. At the Westdene Recreation Centre. In the end it wasn’t at RAU after all, where they’d gone to vote Yes the last time. He was glad it was just around the corner ’cause he really wasn’t in the mood for a whole to-do all over again. As it was, they had to stand in a long queue while the police and officials and other people walked up and down, shouting that the boxes were full and the stickers were running out. By the time they’d all got their right hands sprayed with ink and put them into that purple gadget for the umpteenth time, they weren’t even sure any more whether they’d voted or not.

And those ballot papers, like entrails with such a lot of stuff written there, he couldn’t read further than the first four. So he made a wild cross just anywhere. Everyone in the long queue outside the hall was confused and in a hurry.

Anyway, when they got back home, they saw a white lorry plus another two trucks standing in front of their house. And their whole yard was full of workers in white overalls. On the other side of the road, a different lorry was loading up those two women’s stuff.

What now, he thought, stopping in the street outside to see what was going on. Who was this coming to fetch them?

‘Whiter than snow,’ Treppie began singing before they even lit up cigarettes, and only then did he realise, but of course, this was the painting team here at their house. It was the big paint prize they’d won, the one Lambert made him sign for. The one Treppie also signed for, afterwards. At the time he’d wondered if they weren’t signing themselves into a fix, but he’d let it go ’cause Lambert was in such a bad way.

And then, when they didn’t want to paint on election day, Treppie went and said he’d take them to court, so they said in that case, okay, it was the owners’ risk and they reserved the right to paint any time of the day, even if the owners were out. It was going to be a day full of unpredictability, they said.

The painters were busy unpacking their equipment. He must look, said Mol, there on the front lawn. That white flag hanging on a long, thin pole, with the painting company’s name written on it in red letters. Red and white spells what? he thought, but Treppie had already read between the folds: WONDER WALL. If you ask him, Treppie said, it looked more like rescue workers at a disaster site than jasper workers from the New Jerusalem.

Treppie’s trying to be terribly nice again, telling jokes and things after his doings on the koppie, not to mention his terrible tormenting of Lambert. And on his birthday, too.

This morning, as they stood in the queue, he had no choice but to cut Treppie short again. Treppie was standing there in the middle of the queue, talking at the top of his voice about how it was a disgrace that the officials had to do all this dirty work. It was the NP’s duty to put those stickers on. That would be poetic justice, he said. After all, they were the ones who wanted to offer Mangosuthu for sale, first under one label and then another. You could actually call him a many-branded Buthelezi, Treppie stood there saying, standard on the one rump and prime on the other. Ja, that Treppie. He’ll just have to learn in his own time to control his mouth. People with his kind of talent face terrible temptations. It’s a great struggle for them to choose the straight and narrow path. Treppie has the character. He just lacks the will.

Anyway, Treppie was right, as usual. It looked more like hell than heaven around the house. Big blood-red rectangular machines stood all over the place, with fat, red muzzles stretching out as if they wanted to pump the house full of air. With shiny ladders against the walls, stretching up high above the roof like fire-engine ladders trying to reach a fire in the sky somewhere. At the front door, a silver trolley full of folded sheets.

Shame. And all Mol could say was: ‘Sinkhole!’ She was terribly disturbed by all the broken stuff in the house and Treppie’s stories in the den, and then this voting business on top of everything else — soldiers and low-flying helicopters and waiting ambulances. And, believe it or not, a friendly little piccanin came up to them at the voting station to ask if they didn’t want to help swell the peace fund, taking a handful of blue paper flowers from a big basket, each flower on its own stem with a ribbon and two little plastic doves. Then Mol just wanted to go home. But with all the painting going on there was no peace and quiet to be found here either. And Mol’s always been so scared of machines and things, too. She was in a complete state.