Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

He taps the underside of the portrait. Then he screws up his eyes, peering through the white fog that fills up the whole lounge. What is it that looks so familiar about this picture? He looks closer. But this here is Pop! In his Voortrekker clothes, like that story he always tells when he rode with Johanna on the wagon. Johanna with her twenty-one stab wounds! When he smeared grease on his scarf, for luck!

He turns the portrait around. The paper at the back’s old and brown. There’s writing on the paper from a pen with real ink. The writing’s badly faded. He traces the letters with his fingers as he reads.

Sweat breaks out on his face. Suddenly he hears that song in his ears, right through the noise of the painting, the song that Treppie always sings when he wants people to open their eyes and pay attention:

It was written on an old sow’s ear

It was a little grey

But to everyone the news was clear

It was the monkey’s wedding day

Over and over he reads what it is he must understand now, but his head just doesn’t want to get it straight.

Vrededorp 1938 , it says. And in brackets after that: (The year of the ox wagons) . And then: Mum and Dad and Treppie — 10, Little Mol — 14, Lambertus Jnr, in front of our little house .

Further down, the writing gets smaller and more crammed, as if there wasn’t enough space left to fit in the whole story:

With love from Pop to you all, my flesh and blood, in memory of a big moment in the history of our volk. Given for safekeeping to Treppie (Martinus), the apple of my eye, so he’ll never forget from whence he comes.

Lambert feels dizzy. He fumbles behind him for somewhere to sit down. He’s trying to sit, but he’s already sitting. It feels like he’s sitting on a bag full of sharp things. God, no! It can’t be true. Then Pop, not Treppie, is the biggest liar of them all. Then it was Pop who used the truth to lie when he asked Community Development for a house. It was the truth, all along! He’s no fucken distant Benade. He’s fucken dirt-close! They’re all the fucken same, the whole lot of them! Treppie and Pop and his mother!

Lambert rubs his eyes. It feels like he can’t get enough air. He wants to get up, out of the chair. Christ, no. He feels like something that’s already dead, here among all these sheets. He gropes in the air in front of him as he tries to get up. His feet keep catching on Pop’s shoes under the chair, like he’s tripping over them. He feels like he’s fucking out from the inside. Things that have been said, pieces of stories, falling inwards inside his head.

Treppie! That’s him standing there with the pinched mouth! One Old Pop, two sons!

Suddenly light streams into the lounge. It’s dead quiet. The workers are taking the screens off the windows.

Lambert gets up. He stands in front of the sideboard. His eyes feel rigid. Jesus, now some sense must come into all this crap.

He supports himself with his knuckles on the sideboard. He feels like he wants to burst out of his seams as the truth plunges down into him. About his people, their house, their dog, in their street, here in Triomf.

He shakes his head. It feels like there’s loose stuff inside his head.

When he’s in a bad mood his mother sometimes looks at him in a funny way, and then she says, God help her, she wonders whose child he really is.

And he always thought it was just her way of talking. Like when she says he’s full of the devil or something. He always knew he was Pop’s child and that the story of his being illegitimate was a lie for Community Development. But if he is his mother’s child, and if his mother says her one brother’s a devil, and the other’s an angel, and he, Lambert, takes after the devil, then Treppie could be … Then his mother doesn’t know which one … then … then …

He turns around. His ears are zinging from the sudden silence. The sun shines sharply through the window. All the curtains are down. All he sees is white, white, white. Outside on the lawn they’re folding up the covers.

His birth certificate, that’s what he must find! He turns back to the sideboard. Now he’s going to scratch till he finds the thing.

If Pop’s his mother’s brother and he can sleep with her, and if Treppie’s also his mother’s brother, then … who the fuck’s his father, then? Whose fucken child is he?

He shuts his eyes. There’s too much white in the room. It makes him see black spots. He digs through the black spots in the drawer. Too many papers here and not enough time. He hears them taking down the sheets in the back room and shifting things back up against the walls.

He finds a piece of paper that’s brown around the edges and worn from being handled a lot. His eyes catch at the words:

… can’t carry on any longer … make an end … failed you and the children … Dear God … forgive …

Then his eyes stick on Treppie’s real name:

The business about Martinus not wanting to talk to me any more is breaking my heart. Make peace with him for my sake, I beg you, Mol. I did it because I love him more than I could ever say and because I want him to grow up decently.

Lambert quickly reads further: … dog’s life , he reads, kaffirwork … and about the Railways that will look after them. Widows’ fund and not much of an estate . He glosses over the next few lines until he comes to the last paragraph:

I know you’re sick in your lungs, Mol. Look after yourself. Don’t let the kaffirs take over your job. Be careful, the Jew Communists will undermine you. They’re heathens, the whole lot of them. A person has only one life and one soul but mine is finished.

He reads about the hope of a reunion with them all one day between the walls of jasper, in the streets of gold.

Underneath is written: Your loving husband, Johannes Lambertus Benade. (Pop.)

The postscript is underlined:

Give Treppie my mouth organ. Lambertus plays better but Treppie needs it more. Try to keep them off each other’s bodies, Mol, in God’s name send them away to different places if you can. So an end can come to you know what. Only a monster will be born from this sort of thing. I’ve heard from the others, more and more such cases are happening among us Railways people.

Slowly he folds up the letter again. He looks at his hands. Skew, full of knobs. He looks down at his legs and his feet. He wishes he’d kept on his white pants that he wore to the voting this morning, if only for this one moment. He wishes he hadn’t felt so hot and got back into his shorts so soon. Now he sees his large knees, his hollow shins, his knobbly, swollen, monster-ankles, his skew, monster-feet, and his monster-toes. Ten of them! All different shapes and sizes. Dog-toenails! He feels his face. A monster. A devil-monster. No wonder! No fucken wonder he’s such a fuck-up. No wonder he can’t even fuck a Hotnot bitch! No wonder only his mother’s good enough for him! It’s all in the family! The plague!

With one rip he pulls the drawer right out of its casing.

‘Family secrets!’ he roars.

His eyes feel like they’re spinning wildly in their sockets. He feels himself breaking the drawer with a cracking shot over the chair’s covered back-rest. He sees a man in white overalls looking at him with big eyes. Then he hears himself shouting at the man to fuck off. The man runs out the front door with a bundle of sheets in his arms. He hears the man shout at another worker trying to come inside: ‘Take cover, the nutcase has lost it!’

He storms down the passage.

‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ he roars at a white overall here in front of him. ‘Take cover!’ He rams the man out of his way. With one kick, he knocks the bathroom door off its hinges. Then he grabs the door and throws it into the bath.