Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

‘It wasn’t exactly easy to choose. Me and Pop stood there, trying to pick one out. Then I saw a tall one, a blonde, and I thought, that’s her! That’s Lambert’s girl! But Pop said no, Lambert doesn’t like long and thin, he likes short and fat. Then Pop pointed, there, look at that nice round one, on that side. Not so, Pop? And then I said, don’t point, Pop, it’s bad manners.’

Treppie laughs, slapping Pop so hard he almost falls off his crate.

Pop says nothing.

Treppie clears his throat. ‘Well now, the one we chose for you in the end … should we tell him, Pop? Come on, Pop, be a sport, man …’

‘Pop?’ says Lambert.

‘Ag, you know him. He’s too old. He just wants to sleep. He’s too old for this kind of thing. Farmed out, dried up. A dead shoot. Forget him, man. Now where was I …’

Pop stands up. He shuffles towards the door. Then he stops and shuffles around in a half-circle facing them again. He looks at Treppie and Lambert sitting with their heads together. Lambert’s swung his legs off the mattress and he’s smoking one of Treppie’s cigarettes. He can see Pop wants to say something, but then he says nothing. He just turns around and shuffles out of the room. ‘Click-clack’ he goes over the loose blocks, down the passage.

‘So, how’ll you like it if she comes with us, hey, Lambert?’

‘Well, it depends if she wants to. If she’s game.’

‘I promise you, she’s game for any thing.’

‘But if she comes with us she won’t have a job any more.’

‘No, but then she’ll have you , don’t you see?’ says Treppie, laughing out of the back of his throat. Suddenly he stops laughing and looks dead serious again. His eyes are shining.

‘But, Lambert, old boy, I need to talk to you seriously now. You’ve got to do something about your fat stomach,’ he says, prodding at Lambert’s belly. ‘And your bum too,’ he says, reaching for Lambert’s backside.

Lambert pushes away his hand.

‘Oh my,’ says Treppie, looking at Lambert’s crotch. ‘Looks like you really want that floozy, my friend, like you really want her bad. Look at your dick standing to attention, just from a little talk. So, you want her to leave her job and come with us, right?’

Treppie gets up from the crate. Now he’s all businesslike.

‘Come, let’s look at your clothes, then, old boy. Look, you’ve got those boxer shorts and another pair, and three T-shirts. That’s all I ever see you wearing. A man can’t go to the North looking like that. Especially not with a woman at his side. You’re going to have to get back into your smart clothes. Your Man About Towns.’ Treppie sways his hips.

‘Look, you’re welcome to borrow a shirt from me, but you see how thin I am. Like a plank.’ He slaps his stomach. ‘And then there’s the mock leather jacket you got for your twenty-first. Come open here, man!’ Treppie pulls at the doors of the steel cabinet. ‘Come, come open up a bit here!’

‘Just leave me alone!’ says Lambert.

‘Well, Lambert, please yourself, but if you ask me what’s the most important issue in this election, then I’d say it’s the fact that your birthday is the day before we vote. And that you’re turning forty. And that we’ve been saving up out of Pop’s pension and my salary for a whole year to pay for a girl. Just for you, alone, for a whole night. So we can get some peace and quiet in this house. Especially your mother. She’s getting old. She’s taking strain. It’s your only chance, man. And now you want to go and fuck it up with white bread and polony. And Coke. It’s a bladdy shame, if you ask me. Come now, come open this cabinet for me.’

‘Just leave me alone!’ Lambert says. He swings his legs back on to the bed and gathers up his pamphlets. Treppie mustn’t start about his mother now. What does he know, in any case?

‘That stuff you’re reading there. Pure rubbish. You’re still going to see all that talk explode in your face.’

‘Yes, but we’ve still got a plan! We’re going to bugger off from here!’ Lambert says.

Treppie turns around slowly, away from the cabinet. He walks towards Lambert. Then he stands in front of him, hands at his sides, staring.

‘Stupid fucken fit-catcher,’ he says. ‘You really do believe all that shit, don’t you?’

Lambert looks up quickly. More because of the way Treppie says it than because of what he says.

‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Huh,’ and he feels his jaw dropping.

‘It’s a lot of shit, that,’ Treppie says. ‘It’s just a lot of shit that I told you. Do you really think a Volksie with a rusted chassis, with no shocks to speak of, a clutch as thin as tin-foil, gears that keep popping out when you ride from here to Ponta do Sol … do you really think she’ll take the four of us, let alone the tons of crap in your head about women, more than two blocks out of Triomf? You really think that? You’re fucken mad, man!’

‘But you said, you said so yourself …’ Lambert wants to kick himself. Treppie’s got him by the balls again.

‘Yes,’ says Treppie. His eyes are shooting sparks now. ‘I know I thought that plan up. You want to know why? You really want to know why? It was to get you out of the way. To get you out from under our feet, out of the house so we could get some peace and quiet in this place. That’s why. So you could bladdy shuddup and dig a hole, a nice hard hole full of pipes and bricks from the kaffirs. So you’d be so tired at night that you’d just fall on to your arse on your mattress and stay there, so you wouldn’t bother anyone. So you’d stop giving us a hard time. So you could spend your days on rubbish heaps and scratch around like a bladdy mad thing. So I can get some rest for my soul. Rest, I say. Mol and Pop too. If we ever vote for a party, it will be for one that locks up your sort in a madhouse, a party that chains you to a hard little bed with iron wheels and then plugs up your mouth.’

Treppie flicks his cigarette butt on to the floor and steps on it with a hard twist of his shoe. His shoulder twitches wildly, once.

‘And when they unstrap your hands, once a month, you’ll be allowed to colour in those pictures of peace doves, the ones Mol and Pop bring, tiptoeing into your room ’cause they’re scared you’ll murder them if you wake up.’

‘Treppie, that’s my mother and father you’re talking about. You just keep your mouth shut about them.’

‘Oh yes, right, your mother and father, naturally it’s your mother and father. It’s ’cause of them that we’re in our glory here with you. You think they’re better than me, hey? Well, let me tell you something, my boy. They also lie to you, just like me. They lie to you to give you a better opinion of yourself. They talk the biggest lot of fucken shit, the poor fuckers.’

‘Like what, Treppie? What do they lie about?’

‘You’d love to know, wouldn’t you? Okay, here goes.’

He looks at Treppie. There’s a whole floor full of broken Coke bottles between them. He sees Treppie looking at the bottles. Treppie’s got a disgusted look on his face. More than disgusted. He looks like he’s got a rotten smell up his nose. Now he smells it too. A smell like piss. And the smell of his come, which he always wipes off on an old T-shirt. Iron and oil, he smells iron and oil. He feels like he’s too much for himself. He swallows on something hot that’s starting to rise in his throat. Spots in front of his eyes. He can hear what Treppie’s saying, but it’s zinging inside his ears.

‘That story about when we became a republic, about the corsages and all that stuff your mother talks about when she’s pissed, it’s all a lot of lies, that. The part about making the corsages is true, we did that, but that was the night you went and threw your first fit. Just when things were starting to get going here. We were still having a big party and then your eyes did a somersault for real and you rolled right over into the trays of flowers and you shat and pissed and vomited all at the same time, right on top of the whole business. And then you lay there and took one fit after another till your back was as bent as a bucket-handle. Then me and Pop grabbed hold of you and strapped your arms and legs tight with our belts and took you to the hospital. They looked us up and down there and stuck up their noses and said you’d drunk too much brandy; epileptics shouldn’t drink alcohol, didn’t we know that? But if you fitted again, they said, with or without brandy, we must take an ice-cream stick and shove it into your mouth so you don’t bite off your tongue.’