Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

He explained nice and gently about the paint prize and how she must just keep calm. Just now she could go and see if there was any Oros inside. It was hot and the painters would be thirsty. Then she’d have something to do, he thought, something to occupy her mind.

About Treppie’s salvation he really can’t do anything. Treppie was busy embroidering again, about things that had nothing at all to do with painting. ‘Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,’ he began singing loudly in their faces. And he kept bugging Lambert, telling him to listen. If he, Treppie, didn’t get out of the car right away and go to the toilet, he was going to shit his pants full. It was a whole week now that his guts had been as solid as a rock. But, he said, now that Lambert’s lubrication service was behind them, and now that he’d voted for that mad woman from the Keep it Straight and Simple Party, the one who says she can kick a hole in any government’s drum, and with their house on the point of being painted white, he at last felt something was giving way in his insides.

Yes, he said, Lambert should take note, this was what he’d meant all along about the shit flying after the election, and Lambert should get ready for a shitstorm, or, as it was written, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.

He must say, the way those paint people were carrying on it really did look like they were getting ready for a storm. They covered the windows with heavy, shining screens of aluminium. Flossie got a thick plastic sheet and they draped the fig tree with something that Treppie said looked like a thermal blanket, red on the inside and silver on the outside, which they pinned to the ground with tent pegs. They even pulled a white bag around the overflow and a little red sail over the TV aerial on the roof.

With all those bags and sails and sheets and flags and stuff stirring and rustling in the breeze, the house began to look exactly like a ship lying ready to sail. He said as much to Mol, but Treppie overheard him and then of course he had to make his own little contribution. That ship, he said, was on its way to a country where the citrons were still blossoming. Mol said he was talking bull, and she said it with such conviction that it sounded like she wanted to shut Treppie’s mouth once and for all. A vain hope, of course. Treppie said, okay, if that wasn’t good enough, then the ship was sailing to the shore where love did last eternally, and would that make her feel better?

Shame, then the poor thing broke into a big smile, sitting there without her tooth and all. Pop’s heart wanted to break he felt so sorry for her. She sometimes reads to him from her library books about people who’re in love. Under the circumstances, he thinks, he’s done the best he could. It will just have to be enough. And with good faith they might yet reach those eternal shores, in their own kind of way. It’s just a matter of time.

He would have been happy to remain sitting outside in the car, but the foreman came over and asked them to unlock the door. It was hardly open before lots of workers in white overalls started getting the house ready for painting inside. They worked fast. It must be something they do every day, and maybe they were in a hurry to get finished so they could still have some of the holiday for themselves. Not that it feels like a holiday. It feels more like a war or something, with all those army lorries and little bursts of gunfire every now and again. Celebration shots, Treppie says, but he can’t say he’s seen any ribbons or balloons.

They started at the back, pushing each room’s things into a heap in the middle and covering everything with those white sheets from the trolley. Hell, all their old stuff looked so little, covered like that in the middle of each room. But he must say, the Wonder Wall people showed respect for their belongings. They took the brick out from under the sideboard and clamped a length of iron there before moving it away from the wall. And they first re-glued the loose joints before moving his chair, tapping the little pegs back into the arm-rests with a silver hammer. Now his chair’s sitting nicely again. Now it’ll be good for a while again.

Maybe this is a good time to take a nap. The workers are taking everything off the wall. They’re even wearing gloves to do the job — the calendar picture of Jo’burg, the answers to Treppie’s multiple choice, the advert for Cochrane’s security fencing, Treppie’s poem about peace and the portrait of the three of them with roses. The works. The wall looks bare. White squares where the stuff used to be. As it comes down, gloved hands place the items one by one into a big, white, double-carton, as if they’re fragile antiques or crumbling old masterpieces.

And here comes a soft, white bag made of felt. He hears a dull rustle as the china cat from Shoprite is carefully lowered into the bag. The distributor cap with the old and the new NP flag goes in too, plus a few of Flossie’s ball-bearings in a saucer. What else? The moon and the stars and the sun that must shine on everyone who remain behind. Three more panfuls of loose floor-blocks from the dark passage. Everything into the bag to make sure that nothing will be lost. Not him either. Now they’re throwing sheets over everything. All is white. White for the crossing over.

High above the roofs of Triomf, the roads and the towers and the flat, yellow mine dumps. The chimneys that smoke and blow fire to one side, as if in a salute, beyond the earthly city’s limits. Higher and higher, a seed in a white husk. Cries and psalms from other windborne souls.

And then again, from far off, the ground approaching at long last, rocking to and fro, the horizons tilting from side to side. To one side, a small, white house, its doors and windows tightly shut, where he can finally come to rest against the clean, sun-warmed walls, nothing but the whisperings inside as if his ear were pressed to a shell, throughout the bright and endless winter.

FAMILY SECRETS

Lambert stands in the lounge, watching the painters. They’re busy on ladders all over the house, as if they’re not even aware of him standing there. They dip their big, fluffy rollers into wide, flat pans, painting the walls in brilliant white with quick strokes. Where they haven’t painted yet it looks dirty. Their mouths move as they talk but he can’t hear them. He can hardly hear himself thinking. It feels like a silent movie inside his head. The house shudders from the sandblasting. He can make out a fine hissing sound as wet paint-flecks splatter against the aluminium screens. Inbetween he hears the dull thuds of people working on the roof.

He’s alone. When those big machines began zooming and revving through their cycles, from warm-up to stand-by and ready to blast, his mother took Toby in her arms and shouted to Treppie she was going to wait outside in the car until it was all over. By then Treppie had been on the toilet for a long time already. He saw him go in there with a stack of newspapers, enough for a week’s reading. Even before the noise started, Treppie had begun swearing and growling. Now, he said, he was officially withdrawing from Operation Whitewash. And he wouldn’t mind if the bathroom didn’t get painted either, ’cause then at least there’d be one place left in the house he could still call home.

Fuck, the noise is so bad now it’s hurting his ears. And the paint fumes make him want to choke. But he has a very good reason for being here. When they were throwing sheets over the wardrobe in Treppie’s room just now, three little keys fell on to the floor. The workers brought the keys to him; he was the only one they could still find in the house. The key to the trunk, the key to the cupboard and the key to the sideboard, which his mother had wanted from Treppie just two days ago so she could take out the stag bowls. That key also opens the top drawer — forbidden territory for as long as he can remember. The only time he’s ever seen it slide open has been when Treppie decides that he wants to open the drawer. And Treppie hides that key in a different place every time, to make sure ‘curiosity won’t kill the cat’. The only thing he’s ever seen coming out of that drawer is Old Pop’s mouth organ. Each time, Treppie asks Pop to play a song ‘from days gone by’.