Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

‘Ag no man!’ Sonnyboy protests. ‘What do you take me for? This stuff here’s worth a few thousand!’ He reaches out for Lambert’s fifty.

‘Tough!’ Lambert says, pushing the note back into his pocket.

‘But a hungry man is a hungry man,’ says Sonnyboy.

‘You said it,’ says Lambert, ‘and beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘Don’t come and look for shit with me!’ says Sonnyboy.

‘I’m not looking for anything,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something. Six free meals, fifty bucks each.’

‘That’s nothing!’ says Sonnyboy.

‘No, ’strue’s Bob. For the Spur, six tickets. I was lucky. The Spur had a birthday. I won them.’

‘Spur, hey,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘birthday, hey?’

‘Yes, man, the eatplace, Spur. Spur Comanche, Spur Blazing Saddles, any Spur. You can go too. In town. Blacks and Coloureds can go too, now. This is the New South Africa, remember. In Melville too, I swear.’

‘Hmmm,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘How many did you say?’

Lambert feels in his back pocket. He feels past the fifty-rand note until he finds the tickets. Then he unfolds them. Pop’s luck is still rolling here today.

‘Tear on the dotted line,’ he says to Sonnyboy, counting them out. ‘Six, there’s six here. Here, take a look, man. Fifty rands’ food on each ticket. You can eat for a week, every day a T-bone.’

T-bone, Lambert thinks. And what will Pop say when he hears about this deal of his? ’Cause it was Pop’s luck that day with the pudding at Spur, not his. He never has any luck with this kind of thing. But today he’s getting some luck. He must just play his cards right here. He folds the tickets up and puts them back into his pocket.

‘I give you four tickets. Fifty rands and four tickets,’ he says. ‘And I’ll keep two tickets for myself. I also fancy a T-bone some time. My girl too. I’ll take her for a T-bone, if she wants to stay. ’Cause the first night we’ll just eat snacks in my room. I thought of everything. I’ve got a list. Cheese dips, fish dips, crinkle cuts, salt and vinegar chips, the works.’

Sonnnyboy laughs.

‘What are you laughing at, hey? Hey?’ He also laughs a little.

Then they both sit and stare out at the world in front of them. Lambert thinks about his deal. The shadows are getting long. Almost all the loose kaffirs at the gate have gone home for the day. The fixed kaffirs inside the gate are taking off their gloves. Any minute now they’ll close the gates. A wind starts up, blowing plastic bags and loose dirt across the dumps. The bags blow up against the wire fence. Some of them get stuck under the fence. Others snag on the razor-wire on top of the fence. The lateafternoon sun shines gold on the rusted containers inside the dumps.

‘Do they work proper, those things you’ve got there?’ he asks after a while.

‘Sure, man, sure!’ says Sonnyboy. ‘I’ll give you a demo.’ He unzips his bag.

Then he pushes out the revolver’s round magazine. ‘Click,’ and he clicks it back into the middle. He spins it, ‘rrrrt’, with his finger. ‘Click-click-click’ he shoots, inside the pink bag.

‘Satisfied?’ asks Sonnyboy.

‘Now the binoculars,’ he says.

Sonnyboy takes out the binoculars and sets them. He looks through them for a long time. Then he passes them to Lambert, laughing a funny little laugh. He points to the dumps.

‘You see that container there, hey? The one, two, three, four, fifth one from this side. Now look there, on its side, number five, what can you make out there?’

Lambert lifts the binoculars to his eyes. The wire and the plastic bags rise up into his vision. Then he finds his bearings. He sees the light of the sun shining on things. It looks gold. Then the first container, the second, the third, the fourth. Through the binoculars, their sides look like aerial photos of the land taken from very high up. Lines and cracks and bare patches. Plains and dams and bushes, other countries, all spray-painted in gold. Then he gets to the fifth one. It looks like mine dumps and koppies, with thick rows of shapes and blocks, some in crowded rows on top of each other, and others in loose, mixed-up strands. It looks like the aerial photo of Jo’burg on the Chinese calendar in their lounge.

‘Read,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Read to me what you see there.’

Lambert looks on the side of the container. He reads out aloud. ‘CTR 517. Municipality of Johannesburg TPA.’ The letters are stencilled on to the container in white.

‘Right,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Now go down to the right. Just a bit. Now what do you see there? It’s small. Do you see it? Then read, brother, read that line for me.’

‘One settler, one bullet,’ Lambert reads. The letters have been scratched with a nail on to the rusted side of the container. He lowers the binoculars. This yellow kaffir’s jiving him in a big way now. That’s what he’s doing. He’s a cheeky mixed-up fucken kaffir, and now he’s screwing me in the ears, Lambert thinks.

‘I’ll knock the shit out of you, kaffir,’ he says to Sonnyboy.

‘Sorry, boss, but why?’ Sonnyboy laughs. ‘I didn’t write that shit there, man! Just relax, my bra! Sonnyboy’s not into politics, man, I do the dumps, in my own way. That crap’s all over the place, man. Kill this, kill that, one this, one that, viva this, viva that, long live this, that and the other. I love the NP, I love Mandela, I love Biko, I love Amy. So much love in this place, it sounds like fucken paradise! I love all that stuff. I can’t be bothered with all that shit, my man. I just want to show you. This thing here works.’

Sonnyboy takes back his binoculars. He puts them in the bag and zips it closed.

Both of them stay quiet for a long time.

‘I don’t know,’ Lambert says. ‘What can I do with them, the binoculars? I’m not a spy!’

‘Well,’ says Sonnnyboy, ‘you can show your girl the city. From high places.’

‘Hmmm,’ he says, ‘and what do I do with the gun? I haven’t got a licence.’

‘What you need a licence for, man? Protect your girl with it. Jo’burg’s a dangerous place, right? She’ll feel safe and sound with you, man.’

Lambert sees the sun’s already down. Around the closed gates of the dumps the light’s looking grey, and here under the trees it’s already dark. He and Sonnyboy go round in circles, with long quiet periods inbetween, as they work out their deal. Then they’ve got it. Lambert pays the price: fifty rand, plus all six Spur tickets. He puts the gun into the binoculars’ plastic bag. He also gets a plastic bag full of cartridges. Sixty of them, says Sonnyboy. For the hot shot of Triumph Town.

What’s Sonnyboy feeling for now in his pink bag? He takes out something.

‘Free bonus,’ he says, and he ping-pings on the thing’s iron teeth.

‘What’s that?’ Lambert asks, taking the short piece of wood with its strips of iron from Sonnyboy.

‘You make music on it,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘You Boers call it a kaffir-harp. It’s like a Jew’s harp a little bit. You know?’ And Sonnyboy demonstrates with his mouth.

‘I see,’ Lambert says.

‘We call it a mbira,’ says Sonnyboy.

‘Umbiera,’ he says, ‘I’ll remember.’

‘You remember,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘If you practise you’ll get a tune out of it some day.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll practise.’

‘Okay,’ says Sonnyboy.

They both hold out their hands, and this time they shake all three grips smoothly, in time with each other.

‘Now we’re tuned,’ he says.

‘Greased and oiled!’ says Sonnyboy.

‘So long,’ he says, ‘and thanks again for saving my life, hey!’

‘Thanks for saving mine!’ says Sonnyboy.

What does he mean? Lambert thinks. But he’s already turned to go home. Sonnyboy too. He goes right, and this sharp, yellow kaffir goes left. There in front of the closed gates at the Martindale dumps. It’s almost completely dark now. Lambert turns round one last time to look. He sees from behind how Sonnyboy takes off the glasses. He won’t know him without those sunglasses, he thinks. But that’s okay, it’s against the law to buy stolen stuff and anyway it’s not good for a person to know a kaffir-thief too well.