Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Treppie couldn’t get any further, so she thought she’d help him along a bit. His face was looking funnier and funnier. Then, without knowing how she got on to it, she mentioned Frieda Personal Tragedy who had to sell her outsize wedding dress in the classifieds.

‘That’s a woman, Ma, not a man,’ said Lambert.

But Treppie said Lambert should listen to his mother, ’cause for a change she was right. ’Strue’s God, that’s what he said. She, Mol, was right. Women could also have sorrows. Naturally.

She said, yes, Lambert should catch up. Sorrows were sorrows, whether it was man, woman or child, and in her opinion, everyone — the mortuary assistant in Yugoslavia, not to mention that poor stuffed corpse, and those women who struggled so with the tyres, the one who got burnt and the one who made the fire — all of them were made out of sorrows. The one no less than the other.

Now there’s a life-jacket for you, said Treppie.

‘What life-jacket you talking about now?’ she asked, and Treppie said it was one that would keep her on the go all the way to the North Pole, without food or clothes.

She told him she didn’t want to go to the North Pole, it was too cold there. She was very happy where she was, thank you, right here in Triomf. And then of course Treppie almost killed himself laughing.

FRUIT SALAD

They hear the front gate creak outside. Here comes Lambert. Treppie looks at his watch.

‘Half past ten,’ he says. ‘Fasten your seatbelts.’

Mol shakes Pop by the shoulder. He must wake up now, so he’s awake when Lambert comes in, otherwise he gets such a fright. Lambert usually comes home earlier on Mondays, after leaving early in the evening to look for rubbish.

The door opens. He stands there with a big smile on his face.

‘Christ,’ says Treppie, ‘are you the cat who got the cream or the dog with a bone?’

‘Cream,’ says Lambert. ‘Cream and sex and strawberries, I say.’

‘Come again?’ says Treppie.

‘I say, take your pick, Uncle, it’s all in the mind.’

‘Where’re your silver bags?’ she says. ‘I thought you went to look for wine boxes.’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but you don’t always find what you look for, right?’

‘OK,’ says Treppie. ‘Obviously you found something else. Tell us now and get it over with so we can see the movie. It’s late.’

‘That movie,’ says Lambert, ‘is fuck-all. It’s fuck-all compared to what I just saw. Truly fuck-all, I say.’

‘On the big screen between your ears, you mean,’ says Treppie.

‘No, in a bedroom, through the gaps in the blinds.’

‘Must’ve been wallpaper,’ says Treppie.

‘Lambert, you mustn’t peep at people,’ says Pop.

‘Yes,’ says Mol, ‘just now there’s trouble again. Just now you fall on to someone’s carport or their car or something, and then they break our whole roof down in front of us.’

‘Were they braaiing?’ asks Treppie, winking at Lambert.

‘No, they must be vegetarians. They were eating fancy cheese from a little box and biscuits. On a breadboard. And lots of nice fruit salad in black bowl, with a leaf in the middle.’ Lambert laughs a naughty laugh.

‘Who you talking about?’ asks Pop.

‘Across the road,’ Lambert shows, pointing his thumb behind his back. He sits down, smiling his smile.

‘Yes?’ says Pop. She can see Pop doesn’t believe him. Neither does she. There’s nothing but flowers to peep at across the road. Every winter the little round one sows pretty flowers in front of the wooden fence. Sweetpeas, says Treppie. And then she sows dark, pink ones, for summer. Treppie says it’s cosmos. He says he’s never seen such healthy sweetpeas or such colourful cosmos anywhere in Triomf. Those two look like the type with money to spend on fertiliser. He wonders what they think they’re doing here in Triomf, and why they’ve got so much time for gardening. If you ask him, they don’t exactly look unfit for employment.

She and Pop have told Lambert to leave them alone, there across the road. They’re not his class of people. But every time trouble breaks out he goes there and phones. Until the last time, when they told him their lives were private and they didn’t want him to use their phone any more. There was a pay-phone at the Westhoven Post Office, they said.

Lambert says the one’s Afrikaans and the other’s English. The Afrikaans one plants the sweetpeas. The English one drives the blue Cortina with those flat shocks. The one that never wants to start. Lambert always wants to go and help them, but Pop says no. A Ford isn’t a Volkswagen, and a Volkswagen mechanic like Lambert must stick to his own line. He mustn’t mess with other cars. That’s how Pop tries to console Lambert so they can keep the peace, at least with the people across the road, ’cause with the people next door, on both sides, it’s just one big crisis after the other.

But now the problem is the Afrikaans one drives a Volksie and Lambert’s dying to grind her points. Even she, Mol, can hear the Volksie across the road sounds rough. When Lambert goes and offers his help they always say no thanks, they’ve got their own mechanic. Can’t be a very good one, he says, but what can you do?

He always comes back with some story or another. He says they give their garden-kaffir a knife and fork to eat his bread and wors with. Then they all sit together on chairs around a plastic table in the back garden. He says after a while that poor kaffir doesn’t know where to look any more, what to stick his fork into, or what to cut with his knife. Yes, Treppie says, it comes from not being properly connected with the world. They think they can make their own connections, but all they’ve got is a silly mixed-up business. He says he thinks they must be Communists or something. Then she gets a fright, and she tells Lambert he mustn’t get mixed up with Communists. They’ve got enough trouble as it is. She bumps Pop. He must tell him.

‘Lambert,’ says Pop, ‘you must leave them alone there across the road. They’re Communists.’

‘Well, maybe they’re Communists, but that’s not all they are.’

‘Hey, Lambert,’ says Treppie, ‘have you got a story or haven’t you got a story? If you have, let’s hear it, ’cause you’re extremely boring with that knowing smile on your face.’

Ja, well, she’s tired now. She wants to go bath. She takes a clean lid from her pocket. It’s from the dog food.

‘No, wait, Ma, this one’s for you,’ says Lambert.

‘Well, then, tell and get it over with!’

‘Those two across the road. They fuck each other!’ Lambert says.

‘So what’s new?’ says Treppie.

Pop shakes his head at her. God knows what Lambert will come up with next.

‘How?’ asks Treppie.

‘With candles and things!’

‘And what if they see you,’ says Pop.

‘I was hiding behind the bushes. Those two have planted bushes all over the place, Pop.’

‘Ja,’ says Pop, ‘bushes and sweetpeas!’

‘They play classics and then they fuck each other. Check this tune, Pop!’ Lambert puts on his classical music face and then he whistles the Trust Bank tune. ‘And it’s just candles, candles, all over the place!’

‘Can you believe it,’ says Pop.

Treppie smiles. ‘And then?’

‘Squirrel.’ It’s her, Mol, who says that.

‘Mol,’ says Treppie, ‘that’s just the point. They don’t have one of those, neither of them. That’s why I want to know. How?’

‘How what?’ She presses her thumbs into the tin plate. It’s not completely flat. When they get like that, they don’t keep the water in.