Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Lambert stands on the front stoep, looking at the moon. It’s a golden-yellow ball floating just above the houses. He can smell braaivleis everywhere. People laugh and talk in their backyards and the air’s thick with smoke. It’s hot. Children play outside in the streets. It’s almost dark but the children carry on playing with their balls. Some of them have skateboards. The only time they ever give way is when a hot rod comes past. It’s policemen who dice like that; they think they’re big shots around here. As they come past you can hear the thump-thump of disco music, and when they turn the corner they leave a smell of hot rubber behind them. He can swear the inside of those cars reek of aftershave. He knows, he sees them on weekends at Ponta do Sol, all washed clean and shaved for their night out.

Here comes another one. Lambert checks out the policeman. His shiny hair hangs down in thin, curly little points on his forehead. He drives fast but he’s not even looking at the road. He’s looking out from under his hair, checking out the houses, left-right-left-right, with a kind of a fuck-you-fuck-me look on his face. His elbow sticks out of the window and he works the gears with his other hand. Big shot!

Lambert knows what he’s looking at. He knows what you see through bedroom windows on Saturday nights. Girls. Putting on make-up in front of their three-panel dressing tables from Morkels. They pout their mouths to put on lipstick and then they bend over with their bums up in the air, resting their feet on little dressing table chairs so they can paint their toenails. That’s before they slip into their flimsy little white sandals. They’ve all got dates.

Sometimes Treppie comes and stands next to him, so he can also check things out here from the stoep. But Treppie doesn’t look at the girls in their rooms. He looks at the wallpaper. At least that’s what he says. Lambert doesn’t know how he can see so far, but Treppie says all he sees are trees and dams and bridges, bunnies jumping on green grass and ducks and things. And blue hills in the distance. That’s now supposed to be all on the wallpaper.

For fucking crying in a bucket, Treppie says, how can people lie to themselves like that, with walls full of mock paradise? But that’s what happens, he says, when you take a place like this, full of prefab wagonwheels and aloes, rotten with rubble, and then give it a name like Triomf. Then people think they’ve got a licence to bullshit. But that’s a lot of crap, Treppie says, ’cause the only licence that counts is poetic licence.

He’s already asked Treppie what poetic licence means. Treppie says it’s the liberties poets take with life to make some things rhyme with other things. But, he says, those same poets have to live with poetic justice, ’cause words can boomerang badly, especially when they rhyme. He says there’s fuckenwell nothing in the world or the stars that actually rhymes. So, you have to watch your step and tread carefully if you want to play around with rhymes.

So why rhyme, he asks Treppie, if it’s such a lot of trouble?

But Treppie doesn’t answer. Sometimes he just shrugs and says it keeps him on the go. Other times he winks that devil’s wink of his and says it’s a family secret.

Another hot rod comes past. A blue one with its arse up in the air and loud music blaring from the windows. Lambert feels the bass from the disco-beat vibrate low down in his back. All day he’s been walking around with a hard-on from looking at the Scope centrefold — a blonde girl with big cans that she pushes out. They don’t even put stars on the nipples any more. Funny, he actually used to like those stars. Nipple caps. He burps. His throat burns. Heartburn. From polony and white bread. He wishes his mother would cook something so he can eat properly for a change. Potatoes and meat and sweet pumpkin. But she’s gone bad. Doesn’t give a shit any more. Just look at her kitchen. The other day he stuck some pictures of pretty kitchens on to the fridge. He took them from the Homemaker magazine that he finds in his postbox. But Pop took them off before his mother could see them.

He looks at the moon. It’s light yellow and a bit higher in the sky now. That fucken moon works on his tits. And just listen to the flying squad and the ambulances. Sirens all over the place, in and out of the Saturday night traffic.

Next door they’re playing Cat Stevens. They’ve been playing it the whole night. ‘Oh, it’s a Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody.’ Loud. They think they’re the only ones in the street, as if Martha Street belongs to them.

When he walked through the house from the back just now, he looked at his people sitting there in the house. They act like nothing’s wrong. His mother’s in the back, knitting Gerty’s jersey. Treppie’s in his room reading the Saturday Star classifieds. What Treppie thinks he’ll find in the classifieds Lambert still doesn’t know. Pop’s fast asleep in his chair in front of the TV, in the lounge. The TV’s playing loud.

He feels pushed. Pushed from fucken underneath and from fucken above. He goes back in through the front. Then he looks around Treppie’s door.

‘So, what’s new,’ he says. He lights up. Maybe Treppie’s got a story to tell. Or a plan.

‘So, what does that Jew-newspaper say tonight?’ he tries again.

Treppie looks him straight in the face. Here comes shit.

‘Just look at you again. Sis, yuk, go pull your wire so you can get some rest!’

‘Your arse, man!’ he says. What else can he say? He wishes he had something else to say. Something that Treppie’s never heard in his whole fucken life. Something that’ll make him sit up and be cool on a Saturday night. Something that fucken rhymes. How’s he supposed to help it if he gets a hard-on? He burps. Fucken hell! What now?

He looks into the lounge and sees Pop sleeping in his chair. A drop of snot hangs from his nose and there’s slobber running down his chin. It drops from his chin on to his chest. Toby lies under the TV table. His eyebrows and ears twitch when he sees Lambert look at him. Pop shifts around in his sleep.

He’ll still be sitting like that when he kicks the bucket one day, Lambert thinks. No, he doesn’t want to think about that. Fuck that. ‘Click-click’ goes the floor as he walks with bare feet to the back, to his mother. That’s another place. He knows when it’s okay to go in there. Now’s not really the time. It’s his mother’s room. Hers and his father’s, but more hers. He sticks his head around the door.

‘Nearly finished?’ he asks. ‘Can I see?’

She ignores him. Like she’s been doing ever since the last time. That was bad. He could feel things breaking inside her. If she looks for trouble, she’ll get it. But now he’s looking for company.

‘Has she tried it on yet?’ he asks. She doesn’t look up. He takes a step into the room.

‘Gerty,’ he says to the dog, who’s sitting stiffly against his mother on the mattress, ‘Gerty, have you tried on your new jersey yet, hey, old dog?’

His mother shifts away slightly. That means he must just not start looking for trouble again. Tonight it’s peace and quiet. He draws deep on his cigarette. It’s more than just trouble he’s got in his body.

‘What does the old dog say about her missus, hey? Also lost her voice, huh? Bad fucken company on a Saturday night, or what am I saying?’

Mol lets her knitting fall on to her lap. She looks at Lambert.

‘So?’ he asks. She says nothing. She picks up her knitting and carries on.

He takes a step closer. She shifts away some more. He squats next to the bed and pats Gerty on the head. Gerty looks up at Mol, making a little crying noise.