Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

He, LAMBERT, sits in the VOLKSWAGEN under the CARPORT. He’s smiling out the window. The roof-rack’s full of silver bags, and there, on top of the silver bags, is his GIRL. A naked blonde. It looks like she’s sitting on a silver waterbed. He used the silver hubcap-paint for that. It doesn’t take so nicely on PVA, and every now and again he has to touch up the waterbed. He has to touch up his girl’s silver fin as well, ’cause she’s a mermaid with scales on her tail. She’s got silver stars on her nipples. NIPPLE CAPS. On top of her head you can see the Volksie’s aerial. There’s a flag hanging from the aerial with DIAMOND LADY written on it. That’s what he saw on Ponta do Sol’s pinball.

If she comes back of her own accord and for free after the first night, then he’ll drive her to Ponta do Sol for take-aways. They can play a quick game of pinball while they wait for their food. And when they come back they can eat here in his den. Then she can play pinball on him .

Lambert gets his angle right. He wants to paint a white, spouting fountain from the dick, but he’s too worked up. He drops his hand into the front of his pants. Stabs of pain shoot through his tail-end. He closes his eyes and sits on the bed, feeling behind the bed for the T-shirt with which he always wipes himself. When he opens his eyes again, he sees his feet. They’re dirty. He always walks around in bare feet ’cause he doesn’t go anywhere in any case. The nails on his big toes are long and dirty. One is growing in. His other toenails are thick and skew from all the knocks. Dog-toenails, Treppie says. Why are his feet so big and his ankles so thick and knobbly? The skin around his shins looks thin. He can see dents there. His throat feels tight. He sees big, fat tears falling on to his feet. He’s crying. What’s he crying for? Fuck that. But the crying won’t stop. He wipes off the tears with the T-shirt, first from his face and then from his feet. Then he wipes off the rest.

He gets up so it can pass. His back feels lame. He must just start painting now, then it’ll pass. Suddenly he sees Gerty. She’s sitting there without a jersey. He sprays on a yellow jersey for her. The green ribbing will just have to wait. He hasn’t got any green now. He’s got yellow and brown and black and white. He sprays Gerty’s yellow jersey over and over, until Gerty’s almost covered in it. Well, she’s almost over the hill in any case. When she dies, all he’ll have to do is blank out her head and her paws. She hasn’t got a tail in the painting.

What else is yellow? He touches up his mermaid’s yellow hair. Now it looks like she’s got too much hair. This mermaid of his just doesn’t want to work so nicely. Her tail’s chipping off badly and now there’s no more silver.

Lambert stands back to look at his painting. He thought he had a start with the yellow. But all he’s got are dead-ends. The painting doesn’t want to work today. He can’t get the thing going.

Clouds work, stars work, the sun works. You don’t have to make them work. They all just work on their own. Moles, bees, termites, ants. They all work. And mice and earwigs and cockroaches. They’re pests but they do what they’re supposed to do. They don’t sit staring at their feet.

They don’t get stuck. They don’t wear out. They don’t use oil like pumps and cars and lawn-mowers. They don’t jam. They don’t seize up and their timing doesn’t go out like the timing of washing machines and fridges. And when they die, they die softly. They don’t first start backfiring or missing. And they don’t hum and rattle and click on and off in the night. They’re cool. They don’t just fade without a good reason. They don’t need captions. And you don’t have to struggle to get them started, ’cause when you find them they’re on the go already.

Suddenly Lambert knows what to do. Where to begin. He smiles. He feels time slacken all around him. His dick hangs happily between his legs. He’s got a plan. He drags a chair closer and puts a Coke crate on top of it so he can get to the spot. He starts taking down the Tuxedo Tyres calendars. Pink Bikini. Yellow Bikini. Blue Bikini. Off with you! Halfway round the den, when he gets to 1980s calendars, he sees a little photograph of the manager of Tuxedo Tyres and his wife. It’s a round picture inside a tyre. Gavin and Cindy Viljoen , it says in small letters underneath. That’s why those damn pin-ups all look the same! It’s her, the manager’s wife, she’s just wearing a different colour bikini every time, and a different wig. Blarry rip-off! Think they can fool him! He steps from the crate on to the Kneff, pulling down four of the calendars in one swipe. And from there he steps on to the Fuchs and the Tedelex, and then on to the top of his cabinet. Off with the rubbish! Now for some things that work! Now for some bees and ants and moles!

He lets himself down from the steel cabinet. He pulls the chair and the crate back towards him so he can get to the last of the calendars, there in the corner. Funny how patient he gets when he knows he’s got a plan. Now he takes his time. He takes more than his time. He knows it’s a sure thing. It won’t go away now. He can linger longer. He can postpone it, it just gets better and better, ’cause it gets clearer by the minute. Or no, it’s not clear. It’s a plan without a plan. How can he say it — he knows it’ll work but he doesn’t altogether know how. It’s like coming in a dream, without those stabs of pain. And he smiles when he gets up. He doesn’t cry and his feet don’t bother him.

Now he starts getting his paints and things ready. The yellow spray-can. A few loose, wax crayons. And some half-finished kokis — a red, a blue and a purple. A tin of black high-gloss and two brushes, a wide one and a little thin one. And the white PVA that Treppie bought a year ago to paint the house. It didn’t get used in the end and now it’s half finished anyway. It takes nicely on the plaster. And then there’s the brown government paint. Treppie got that from the Chinese, who got it from the police at John Vorster Square. Treppie says the police there spend the whole day painting the walls brown ’cause they’re not allowed to manhandle the kaffirs any more. He says the police have become interior designers now. They have to sign three pieces of paper every time they want a baton. And ten pieces of paper for a gun. The batons and the guns have all been locked up in safes. He thinks Treppie tells stories the way he, Lambert, paints pictures. Most of the time it’s all mixed up and you can’t make head or tail out of it, but you can see a mile off when he’s got a good one. He likes it when Treppie gets like that. It’s just that Treppie never knows when to round off his stories. Most of the time he stops before the end and then he says it’s all in the mind anyway.

He thinks Treppie just says that when a story doesn’t work out so nicely. Nowadays Treppie ends before he even begins. He ends without an ending. He says it’s all in the mind and people must just figure out for themselves what happened in the meantime. Stories give you a headache sometimes. His mother’s stories never want to work so nicely, but he’s not going to think about her now. He’s putting her out of his mind. And the only way to get her out of his mind is to paint.

Lambert stands back and looks at the row of open squares where the calendars used to be. They’re much cleaner than the rest of the wall. Such neat, pale, white squares. He smiles at his luck. Now he’s got frames into the bargain as well. Now he can paint nicely inside the frames. And all the things that work will be the same size.

What first? No, where first? In the middle, the middle block in the back wall. Then he can paint backwards to the end on the one wall, and forwards on the other wall to the beginning. But the middle is actually the beginning. Maybe he should paint one block that way and one block this way, starting from the middle. Then everything will fill up evenly. Not like a line that you draw, but like a scale with arms that you load evenly so it balances out. Suddenly he’s got a huge thirst from all the excitement. He grabs the half-full bottle of Coke in the open fridge without even looking, swigging a few big sips. He doesn’t once take his eyes off the wall. He can fucken see it! A whole gallery full of things that work. Pests! Moles! Ants! Creepies!