Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Foam bubbles from Lambert’s mouth. As they drag him through the ashes, his shorts come off. His thing hangs across his thigh at an angle. It’s thick and purple. Pee spurts out of it.

Pop puts his hand to his breast. It feels like there’s a small fit happening in his heart. His eyes burn. Then he realises he’s also crying. Just like the last time when he saw Lambert lying there in the long, green grass with blood on his lips. When Treppie also cried.

‘Matches!’ Mol says. ‘Treppie, pass your matches!’

‘What?’ Treppie says, but Mol’s already taken the box out of his shirt-pocket. She shakes the matches on to the grass and squeezes the box flat.

‘Pull open his mouth!’ she says to Pop. Pop looks at his hands. They’re filthy. He wants to wipe them off on his backside, but he’s not wearing pants. He wipes his hands on his chest. On his torn shirt and his vest.

Treppie’s hands are also dirty, but he’s too busy to start thinking about his hands right now. He pulls Lambert’s lips apart. The teeth are clenched. No tongue sticking out, so at least he hasn’t bitten off his tongue. That’s the one possibility. The other is that he could swallow his tongue. That’s what the doctor said, epileptics have a problem with their tongues when they fit, they bite them off or they swallow them.

Treppie sticks his two forefingers into one side of Lambert’s mouth, where he can find a gap, where Lambert’s wisdom and molar teeth were taken out. Slowly he prises the jaws away from each other. ‘Hold open his mouth!’ he shouts at Pop.

Pop works his fingers between Lambert’s front teeth. He pulls up with one hand and down with the other. He can’t get a good grip. Lambert’s mouth is slippery from all the slime. As Pop gets the mouth open, Treppie takes his forefinger and hooks Lambert’s tongue out from the back of his throat. He pulls it into the mouth and straightens it out.

‘Almost swallowed it.’ Now Mol’s there with the flattened matchbox.

‘Double,’ says Treppie, ‘fold it double.’

Mol folds, once, twice, three times over. Treppie holds the box between Lambert’s front teeth. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘let go.’

Pop lets go. Treppie keeps his fingers in until the last moment, so he can keep the tongue nice and flat at the bottom of Lambert’s mouth.

Pop stands back. He wipes his hands off on his shirt again.

Treppie wipes his hands on the back of his pants. Mol’s still bent over. She holds the folded matchbox ready. Toby’s standing on the other side of Pop’s head.

Toby takes a step closer and then back again. ‘Ee-ee,’ he says.

‘Dear me,’ says Pop. At least, that’s what he tries to say. But there’s still no sound in his throat.

‘Fuck,’ says Treppie. ‘Jesus, no, fuck it.’ He wipes his forehead with his arm.

Slowly, Lambert’s jaws sag back into place again. His teeth fit back on top of one another, over the folded matchbox.

Mol pulls Lambert’s lips back over his teeth. Then she also moves back.

Just the folded back end of the red lion sticks out of Lambert’s mouth.

Toby sniffs Lambert.

‘ Voetsek! ’ Mol shouts.

Pop rips the half-torn side of his shirt right off. Right off the collar and out of the sleeve. He spreads it over Lambert’s lower half. Mol pulls down Lambert’s wet shorts, over his feet. As she pulls, little pieces of black skin come off here and there. It looks pink under the skin.

‘He got burnt,’ she says. ‘Some of his skin burnt right off.’

‘You people must get an ambulance,’ they hear someone say. They look up. It’s someone from next door, one of the Fort Knox women, looking over the wall. Then a man’s head also pops up. ‘That fucker looks like he wants to cop it.’

‘Mind your own business,’ Treppie tells the man.

The man laughs. He lights a cigarette. ‘Anyone for a smoke?’ He holds his packet out, over the wall. ‘After action, satisfaction.’

Treppie motions to the man he wants nothing to do with him.

But Mol’s looking at the man, who’s walking closer to them, along the wall.

‘Mol,’ Pop says, without a voice. Why does Mol want to go and bugger around with next door now?

But Mol wants a cigarette, one of those the man’s offering over the wall. She wants to see another person’s face. She wants to touch another person’s hand. If someone wants to give her a cigarette, who’s she to say no? Some people still care when they see you’re suffering. That’s what Mol’s thinking. Pop knows. Shame. Poor Mol.

Pop watches Mol take a cigarette. He sees the man from Fort Knox lean over and light it up for her. The man cups his hands round the lighter and holds them close to Mol’s face. He sees how the Fort Knox women look over the wall at Mol from both sides of the Fort Knox man. They’re looking at how she lights her cigarette, but they’re also looking her up and down. Her body, and her legs. Their faces look like they want to say: Sis. But they’re also curious. Like the faces of people looking at an old tortoise or reptile or something eating its food in the zoo. Eating food or shitting. Or shitting off. ’Cause now the Benades have taken another big blow and everyone’s staring at them, as if they’re the only people who have setbacks like this. Pop feels something like anger rising in his breast, but it’s weak. Behind him something sizzles. Then, suddenly, there’s white steam all around his head. He turns round. More people appear through the smoke. They’re from next door, on the other side. The fish-breeder’s people. They’re using hosepipes to put out the fire. Big clouds of steam and smoke rise up into the air.

Mol comes back from the wall. They stand and look at the clouds of smoke.

The man from next door shouts at them. ‘We’re going to put the municipality on to you! Do you think you’re the only people in this street, hey? Just look at the mess here again. Everything full of soot and smoke! My carp can’t breathe in this air. They’re still going to come and take you away from here, the whole lot of you and all your fucken rubbish. You’re worse than kaffirs, you lot! Blarry filth. A plague. Sis! Sis! Don’t you have any shame?’

Pop pulls Treppie by the sleeve. He takes Mol by the shoulder. Come, let’s go inside, he wants to say, but now his voice is even further away than it was earlier.

He bends over and takes one of Lambert’s arms. Treppie takes the other. Mol takes the head. She holds it straight so the tongue won’t move. They drag Lambert back inside through the back door of his den. As she walks backwards, Mol kicks rubbish out of her way. They want to get Lambert on to his bed, but there’s no more bed. The mattress has disappeared. And the bed’s legs have folded inwards. Bits of spring stick out from under the frame.

‘He burnt it,’ says Mol.

‘Now he can fuckenwell sleep on the floor,’ says Treppie. ‘He’s the one who wants to go and burn his bed.’

‘He’ll catch a cold in his kidneys,’ says Mol.

‘So what,’ says Treppie. ‘I wish he’d catch something else in his kidneys. He’s busy wiping us out here.’

‘Wiping,’ Pop wants to say, but just ‘ing’ comes out. He wants to clean his hand on his shirt. Lambert’s arm was full of slime when Pop dragged him. But Pop’s shirt isn’t there any more. All he rubs are his ribs. It feels like he’s got too many ribs. Can it be that he’s gotten more ribs from all the misery?

Treppie mops his forehead with his arm. He looks spent. Utterly spent. ‘I must get to the Chinese,’ he says. ‘I’m late.’

‘Late,’ Pop hears himself saying. His voice is back. But it doesn’t sound like his own voice any more.

‘Go,’ says Mol. ‘We’ll manage.’