Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

So the father withdrew the case against the mortuary assistant. And that same man is still washing corpses, in that same mortuary, to this day.

Except that no one in Yugoslavia wants to marry the resurrected woman. Even though she’s not dead any more, she’s also not a virgin for the man of her dreams.

Can you believe it, Pop says when Treppie tells stories like this. Pray, can you believe it. Or: Who would’ve thought it possible.

But Pop has also learnt by now that you don’t talk about believing things in front of Treppie. Or about praying, for that matter. So when Treppie reads something from the papers, like the Inkatha woman who put a tyre round an ANC woman’s neck and set her alight, and then put another tyre around her waist because she didn’t want to burn so nicely, then Pop just says: Really. And when Treppie says it looks like the necklace is out, but the hula-hoop’s coming back in, then Pop just says: Really, hey!

One Sunday, Treppie gave the Jehovahs such a ticking off she thought they’d never come back again.

It was worse than Lambert’s fits. When the Jehovahs took out their Bibles that day, he went and fetched a pile of old newspapers from his room. He threw the papers down in the middle of the lounge and said that was where the afflictions of suffering mankind were reported. They mustn’t come and talk shit here about walls of jasper and streets of gold. He stood there, telling the Jehovahs he believed what he read in the papers and he hoped it would all come to an end as soon as possible. He said he didn’t pray for God’s intervention, he prayed for the End itself, without any mediation. And when they came and told him the End had hair like wool and a voice like many waters, then all he could say was, no, the End had eyes that were white with fright and it was running down a dirt road with a panga through its back, or it was jumping into the air with a bullet in its head, and pots of ferns and palms in its hands. ’Cause it was a gardener.

And then his voice went all strange and sharp, and he said he’d learnt to know the End when he was still young. It was hanging in a stoker’s overall from a belt in a Railways truck, with a tongue sticking through its teeth. Completely humiliated in the struggle with death. Then he said he just wished he could understand how it all began . How, and why.

‘Why? Why? Why?’ he shouted, and the dogs began to bark. He shook the two Witnesses by the shoulders, first the one and then the other, so hard that their heads bounced on their necks. And then he let them go, suddenly quite calm again. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s all in the mind. Just go and find yourselves a better story. I’m going to buy myself a paper now.’ And then he winked at them and drove off to the café in Molletjie.

TETHER

Pop says Treppie’s come to the end of his tether. In that case, Lambert must be close to his breaking point too, ’cause he also shakes her by the shoulders like that when he doesn’t like the stories she tells. He shakes her till her head bounces on her neck.

She does her best. She starts at the beginning. About the cowboy-girl standing on the stoep with her frills, waiting for the cowboy to arrive out of the distance. Hat over his eyes. She tells it all, just like in the cowboy movies. And if Lambert wants to hear them, she embroiders the parts she doesn’t see in the movies. In English, too. ‘Honey’ this and ‘darling’ that, so he can just get on with it and be done. So she doesn’t have to take too much punishment.

But she should never have let Lambert start saying things inbetween, ’cause now he’s really full of nonsense. Now he keeps telling her what to say in the middle of everything, and then she loses her thread.

After a while, the cowboy who kept coming over the veld wasn’t good enough any more. Then it was the Indian who had to come from behind. Through the kitchen window.

Lambert thought it up and then she had to play along. She simply had to learn the story and tell it like he wanted, otherwise he wants to tell it all on his own. What does she know about Indians, anyway? She told him it was against the Immorality Act in any case, but he said no, it wasn’t. Indians were yellow, not black. Then she said she thought they were red, but Lambert said it cuts no ice, red wasn’t black, so it was okay for the Indian to fuck the cowboy-girl. In any case, Indians did it from behind. Like dogs.

Like Treppie, she thought, but didn’t say, ’cause that would’ve been like a red rag to a bull. Lambert wants to do everything Treppie does.

And she wouldn’t be able to take that. It’s bad enough as it is. Treppie says it’s ’cause she closes up like a clam. He says stupid people clam up like that for fear of clever people. Then she asked him if he thought his intelligence was lodged in his thing, and hers in her backside. He laughed and said he was glad to see she wasn’t really as stupid as he’d thought she was. He says he loses his bearings when he thinks too much with his head. So he rather keeps it under the belt. Those kind of thoughts are ‘easily digestible’. Everyone can understand them, it’s the ‘basics’. Everything else is ‘fancy footwork’. Well, Treppie must be using his head a lot nowadays, ’cause he’s been losing his bearings in a big way recently. And he’s been trying it less and less with her. Since Peace Day, not at all. He says she’s worn out on all sides. But those are just excuses. He can’t get it up any more. That’s why he winds up Lambert against her. It’s about all he can get up these days.

Mol smiles at her little joke. She must remember it, so she has something to say when he starts niggling her again. Whether he likes it or not. But it’s not just with them that he’s so touchy. He also lets strangers have it when they rub him up the wrong way.

Like the other day when they went to the Newlands library. Most of the time she and Pop go there alone. Pop only goes ’cause she wants to take out books but she can’t drive. Nice books, like Roses for Alice and now, the last time, The Raven-Haired Girl from Hope Springs . Books about nice girls and their new boyfriends who’re better than their old boyfriends. Boyfriends who come visiting and look at the girls with ‘dark, brooding eyes’. Then they take them away to nice places, for picnics, with champagne in baskets. All just wallpaper, Treppie says when he sees her books. But sometimes when he’s got nothing to do he goes with them, and then of course Lambert also wants to go. She asks what for, people stare at her enough as it is when she goes there, and if Lambert comes they’ll stare even more. Then Treppie says, no, Lambert’s his ‘apprentice’. Where he goes Lambert must also go. Treppie does it just to make trouble. Him and Lambert stand around in the library and page through books, mostly the ones ‘just for adults’. You have to sign for them in a black book. The books go missing otherwise, ’cause they’re full of stuff about sex and naked people. They’re just randy, she tells them, there’s enough of that kind of thing in the café s. That’s if they really want to look. They don’t even have to read anything. It’s just pictures. But Treppie says he can’t concentrate in café s, there’s too much noise, and in any case there aren’t any Britannica s in the café s. He doesn’t just want to see pictures all the time, he also wants to learn. The same goes for Lambert. Lambert can’t live from bread alone, and doesn’t she, as his mother, also want him to broaden his horizons? Then she says Lambert’s broad enough as it is, and Treppie mustn’t start niggling her now. But Pop says it doesn’t matter, let them come along. What harm can it do, after all?