Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Pop’s always trying to keep the peace. But too much peace can also land you in trouble. Like the other day, when Treppie and Lambert stood there in the library, signing their names with red pens and asking the librarian to get them the most juicy books ‘just for adults’. The woman asked them what they meant by most juicy? Treppie said they meant the books with grubby pages from all the fingering. Those were the best, ’cause dirty was nice, he told her, winking. Then that woman raised her eyes and said, ai, a librarian also had a dog’s life in a place like Newlands, with this class of people. Well, Treppie lost it right there and then. But he didn’t swear. He began with those sharp little remarks of his. Yes, he said, he did come from Triomf, which used to be Sophiatown. He knew it was kaffirs who lived there, but in the early days Newlands was also full of kaffirs. That’s where the washerwomen came from. At least the kaffirs in Sophiatown used to play music on penny-whistles. Penny-whistles and trumpets. Altogether a better class of kaffir. And did she know, she, a librarian, who Satchmo was? No, said the woman, she didn’t. Oh, said Treppie, then she had a terrible hole in her education. Shame, said Treppie, and he made it sound like she had a terrible hole somewhere else. That poor woman didn’t know where to look any more. People who aren’t used to Treppie never know which side he’s going to come from next. Well, then he started singing a song at the top of his voice. ‘Hello Dolly’, in a gravelly voice. And he winked at her, playing trumpet with his fingers. Did she know whose song that was? No, said the woman, she didn’t. Good God, said Treppie, she must be analphabetic, and he raised his eyes the way she had earlier, the way she was still looking as he spoke. He told her a long story about Satchmo, whose real name was Louis Armstrong, a highly talented kaffir who came from America. One day, this kaffir came to visit Sophiatown, and he gave his golden trumpet to a boy called Hugh Masekela. Just like that, for keeps. Hugh Masekela was eight years old then. Did she know who Masekela was? No, said the woman. Treppie shook his head: ‘Tsk-tsk-tsk.’ She would have to get her house in order before the election, ’cause that same Hugh Masekela was now the best trumpet player in the country. And his sister, Treppie said, making big eyes at the librarian, Masekela’s sister was going to become the minister of libraries. Her name was Barbara, and Barbara didn’t take crap, not to mention ignorance, from librarians.

Treppie cornered that woman till she no longer knew whether she was coming or going. He asked her if she remembered how jolly it was in Sophiatown’s kaffir-shebeens. But no, she must’ve been too high class to go there. Which was a pity, ’cause the way she was looking now, it would’ve done her a lot of good to learn the foxtrot from a kaffir. That’s where he’d learnt ballroom, Treppie said. From the kaffirs in Sophiatown, and for someone of his class it was an education all on its own. To tell the truth, in those days he went there just to find a drink on weekends, when the bottle stores were all closed. And did she know that Triomf didn’t even have an off-licence any more, let alone a ballroom?

’Cause where the off-licence should be, in Sophiatown, there across the road from Shoprite, was exactly where the NG church stood now. And the NG’s church bazaars were so spiritless it was no wonder there were so many cracks in their edifice, and they had so few members. And what little devil was telling him now, the way she stood there in her floral print dress and her string of fresh-water pearls, that she, too, belonged to the NG church, and that she, too, thought dancing was a sin?

By now the woman was completely red in the face, all the way from the neck up. All she could manage to do was point to the sign saying QUIET PLEASE, with a cigarette and a red line running through it. But then Treppie took out his cigarettes and slapped them down, ‘ka-thwack!’ on to the counter. What was her problem? he asked. If she wanted a smoke all she had to do was ask, and now would she please just give him the most juicy book ‘just for adults’, like he asked. Then he winked at her.

Hell, she thought she was going to fall right through the floor that day, ’cause by then everyone in the library had gathered round Treppie to listen, and when he finally got his dirty books, he sang quietly to himself,

‘This is the way the boere ride

the boere ride, the boere ride

bold upright and legs astride

booted, spurred and hat-brim wide

this is way the boere ride, hooray!’

Everyone laughed. Why, she still doesn’t understand, ’cause she didn’t think it was funny, and neither did Pop. Lambert was so embarrassed he walked off to the Britannica cabinet on the other side, pretending he didn’t know them.

Oh yes, that was one day she was very happy to sign her books out and go home. Except they still had to listen to Treppie’s nonsense all the way back. He carried on like a pumped-up church organ, he was so worked up. About everything he’d read in that book ‘just for adults’. One of those books was full of ‘private parts’, he said, but only in Latin ’cause the book was about professors and students and so on. They didn’t say ‘arseholes’ in books like that, he said, it was ‘anuses’, and all the other parts were also named by their correct terms. Meanwhile, the ins and outs of those parts were described so well you’d swear the writer had looked from above and from below, through a magnifying glass, as the apostle says.

Pop said Treppie should go and read his Bible again. It said ‘through a glass darkly’. He shouldn’t twist the words of the apostle like that.

Ja, ja, said Treppie, maybe that was what the apostle said, but for him there wasn’t anything dark about private parts described from so close that you lost your perspective on the bigger picture. Maybe that learned oke who wrote the book should rather have taken pictures for Scope . In Scope there were at least bodies with faces, so a person could see what was what and who was who. Pop said the way Treppie was carrying on, you’d swear he was starved for sex or something.

Then suddenly everyone went quiet, and they rode like that almost the whole way home on Ontdekkers. She couldn’t find the courage to tell him her joke about all he could still get up, ’cause Treppie’s face suddenly began to look strange. It was only when they turned into Triomf again that Lambert said he’d read interesting stuff about clouds in the Britannica . Did they know clouds had names?

Yes, said Treppie, Cloud Nine was where he’d always wanted to spend his life, but he knows better now.

Knows what? she asked. Then he said he’d learnt it was all in the mind, the ins and outs of things. It just depended on what names you gave them.

No, said Lambert, he was talking science now, about the proper names for clouds. They came in classes, like people. High clouds and low clouds and middle clouds. The high ones made haloes around the sun and the low ones were thunderclouds, with heads like anvils.

Yes, said Treppie, and what was the academic term for that low kind of thundercloud?

Then Lambert said, um-um-er.

Treppie said it was okay if Lambert couldn’t remember the right name, he should just think up a name that wasn’t too academic. That would be better than nothing and he, Treppie, would certainly not hold it against Lambert.

So Lambert said in that case, the low clouds with heads like anvils were Columbus Pilatus. The right name sounded something like that, but next time he’d copy it down from the Britannica , if Treppie really wanted to know.

Treppie said, no, thanks, Lambert could save himself the trouble, that was enough for him. ’Cause if the low classes could discover new worlds and then wash their hands in innocence, he was quite satisfied. And he reckoned it was more than the high classes could say for themselves, sitting in universities and churches with haloes round their heads like the sun shone out of their backsides, just ’cause they’d given ordinary stuff grand names, like ‘anus’ for ‘arsehole’ and ‘culture’ for ‘fuck-all’ and ‘a man of sorrows’ for … for …