Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

‘I’ll take a pull now, thank you,’ he says. Why not? He’s sitting here on his backside, anyway, at the entrance to the rubbish dumps.

‘Sure, man, sure,’ the kaffir says. He passes him the stub.

Lambert takes a pull. He just hopes this kaffir hasn’t got germs. But so what, anyway. He, Lambert, is not always so clean himself. The joint makes him cough.

‘Easy,’ the kaffir says to him. ‘Easy now, my bra,’ he says, and Lambert feels how he smiles, right through the dagga smoke, back at the kaffir, as they sit there, across the road, in front of the gates of the rubbish dump. And he sees how the kaffir smiles back at him. And he, Lambert, smiles even more. And the kaffir too, all you see are teeth. Then the kaffir starts laughing. He takes the joint that Lambert’s handing back to him and he laughs and coughs and he smacks Lambert on the back so hard that he starts hiccuping. And then Lambert laughs and pushes the kaffir who’s laughing at him with his shoulder, and the kaffir loses his balance. He falls over on to the grass, on his elbow.

‘Hey, man!’ says the kaffir as he props himself up again.

‘I say, man!’ he says. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!’

‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ he and the kaffir laugh, there under the trees, next to the rocks, in front of the gates of the rubbish dump. They laugh so much they start crying. And when they’ve almost finished laughing, he says: ‘So now, what’s your name, hey?’

‘Ooooh!’ says the kaffir. ‘I’ve got many, many names. One for every occasion. But to you, my friend, I’m Sonnyboy, just Sonnyboy, plain and simple. And what’s your name?’

‘Lambert,’ he says, ‘Lambertus Benade.’

And then he feels himself offering the kaffir his hand. Ja, can you believe it? And the kaffir smiles at him from behind his reflectors, and Lambert sees in the reflectors how he smiles back at the kaffir. And then the kaffir takes his hand. He shakes Lambert’s big, knobbly hand. He half lets go of Lambert’s hand and then he swivels his own hand, grabbing hold of Lambert’s thick thumb. Lambert gropes to get hold of the kaffir’s thumb, and when he does get a grip on it, a thin little thumb, the kaffir suddenly lets go and turns his hand straight again. Lambert gropes for the kaffir’s hand until he gets hold of it again. And then he gives it a good shake.

Now they really start laughing. They sit there and clutch their stomachs, they’re laughing so much. They smack their legs to help them get all the laughter out. They make grabbing movements in the air to show how they missed each other’s hands, and then they laugh so much they fall to the ground. There by the rocks, under the trees, across the road from the Martindale rubbish dumps.

‘So now, where do you live, man?’ the kaffir asks when the laughing dies down a bit.

‘Just there, the other side, in Triomf,’ he shows with his hand.

‘Triomf,’ says the kaffir.

‘Yes, Triumph,’ he translates for the kaffir.

‘Triumph, I see,’ says the kaffir, and he gives a little laugh.

‘And you,’ he says, ‘where do you live?’

‘Me? Ho, ho, here, there, everywhere. Sonnyboy pola everywhere,’ says the kaffir.

‘I see,’ he says. And then, after a while: ‘A rambling rose.’

Then they laugh some more.

‘I mean, where do you come from?’ he asks next.

‘What do you reckon, my mate?’ says the kaffir, smiling.

‘Well, um, it’s hard to say,’ he says.

‘How come, hey?’ says the kaffir. ‘You’re supposed to be able to tell just by looking at me, hey, boss?’

‘Um, it’s not so easy,’ he says.

‘No, now you must please explain, my man, ’cause I’m just a damn kaffir.’

He knows he’s being teased. But he doesn’t mind. This kaffir’s his pal. He likes him.

‘Well, you’re too yellow,’ he says, ‘and you don’t talk like a kaffir. Maybe you’re just a Hotnot.’

‘Hear, hear!’ says Sonnyboy. ‘This whitey can’t classify me!’ He leans over to Lambert as if he wants to tell him a secret.

‘Look, that’s how the dice fell for me here in Jo’burg. I’m a Xhosa, I come from the Transkei, and some of us are yellow.’ He touches his face. ‘That’s why the bladdy Bushmen thought I was one of them, so I got a room in Bosmont right in among them. And they began talking real Coloured Afrikaans to me. So I got the hang of it on the sly, and I didn’t say nothing, ’cause the less a Bushman knows about you, the better. It’s a bad scene, the Bushman scene. They drink themselves stupid and then they rob and stab you and leave you for dead …’ Suddenly Sonnyboy sounds different. He shifts even closer to Lambert.

‘Now listen to me, brother.’ From behind the rocks he pulls out a pink bag with a zip and handles. ‘Don’t you want to buy something from a rambling rose? I need the money, man. I haven’t got a job. I live by my wits, you could say. I’m hungry, man. I haven’t eaten fucken nothing for three days, man.’

‘Shame,’ Lambert says. ‘That’s bad.’

‘Bad, man, big bad,’ says Sonnyboy.

He looks round to see if anyone’s coming. Then he unzips the bag and feels around among papers and rags. He holds open the bag for Lambert to look.

‘Fuck!’ Lambert says.

In the bag, on top of dirty rags and newspaper, lie a revolver and a pair of binoculars.

‘Jesus fuck!’ he says. ‘Where you get that kind of stuff, man?’ He puts his hand into the bag, but Sonnyboy grabs his wrist hard and takes out the hand again. He zips the bag closed.

‘Right,’ Sonnyboy says. ‘You think about it. Think, man, it wasn’t easy, I tell you.’

‘That’s too expensive for me, man. Just look at me!’ And he points to his clothes, his perished boxer shorts. He lifts up his arms so the kaffir can see the holes in his green T-shirt. ‘I’m also poor, you know!’ he says.

‘But you’re not hungry, man. You are not hungry like I am,’ says Sonnyboy, rubbing his stomach.

‘Well,’ Lambert says, and he doesn’t know what gets into him, but he says to Sonnyboy, right there under those scrappy trees, among the rocks, across the road from the dumps: ‘I’m hungry for love, man; now that’s a really bad thing, man.’

Sonnyboy looks at him. ‘Hey?’ he says, and he looks away. Then he looks back at him. ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘That’s bad, man.’

‘But I’m getting a girl, you know.’

‘Yes?’ says Sonnyboy, looking like he doesn’t believe him.

‘Yes, my father’s getting a girl for me on my birthday, for a whole night. I want to make everything nice, so maybe she stays with us forever.’

‘’Strue?’ Sonnyboy smiles a little smile, but Lambert can’t work out what that smile means. ’Cause of the shades. This yellow kaffir from the Transkei mustn’t come and laugh at him now. He must know his place, yellow or not. He must know what he is and who he is. To hell with Hotnot tricks.

‘Where you got those things in any case?’ he asks, putting a bit of attitude into his voice.

‘Oooh,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘here, there, everywhere, boss!’

‘I see.’ He nods slowly at Sonnyboy.

Sonnyboy nods slowly back.

‘How much?’ he asks.

‘Hundred,’ says Sonnyboy.

‘Too much,’ he says.

‘Eighty,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Have a heart, man.’

‘I haven’t got eighty,’ he says.

‘What have you got then, man?’ Sonnyboy sounds impatient. ‘Take it out, let’s see,’ he says. Suddenly it looks like he wants to get up and walk off.

He knows he must play his cards carefully now. He wants that gun, that’s for sure. He’s not so sure about the binoculars, but he knows they’ll come in handy, sooner or later.

‘I’ve got fifty,’ he says, feeling in his back pocket for the NPs’ fifty-rand note.