Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Mol stands in the lounge doorway. Pop’s sleeping in his chair. Mol’s just been to the back to look at Lambert again. For the third time tonight. At least he moved. He turned his head this way and then that way, shifting on to his side, with his fat, white bum facing her. Then she went and fetched the bottle of Coke in the kitchen and put it down next to his head. And she went to check the washing line to see if his shorts were dry yet. But they weren’t. What more can she do? She turns around and goes back to their room, where she fetches the faded old blanket, full of holes. Let her go put it over him, over his naked bum.

There’s so much rubbish and scrap iron on the den’s floor, she struggles to reach Lambert from the inside door. Enough for another three fires. She looks up, at MOLE II, there on the wall. Where would MOLE I be, then? She looks at Lambert’s list again. Number 12 reads: scrub linolium kitchen clean (Ma) .

Mol walks back to the kitchen. She sticks her head round the door and looks inside. The kitchen looks funny, but she can’t figure out why it looks so odd. Then she sees the bits and pieces of Flossie that they carried through here this morning — half-melted, half-burnt plastic. And rubber. Like monsters’ body parts, or something. Scales and tails. Let her just close this door, for now. If they get hungry, she can always fix their bread in the lounge. Later.

She finds herself standing in the lounge doorway again. The TV’s on but there’s no sound. A little while ago, when Pop fell asleep, she switched it on. The news. Shooting and talking. So she turned off the sound and watched the never-ending talking and shooting, and the corpses under blankets in the dust, and people pointing this way and then that way. It’s always the same. Now she walks up to the TV and switches it right off. She’s walking slowly. Her legs feel like they don’t belong to her any more.

She walks round the back of Pop’s chair to go look out the window. She doesn’t see anything. Every now and again she hears people shooting off their Guy Fawkes crackers, far away. Usually the Benades have crackers too. Lambert’s the one who shoots them off on the little stoep in front. Pink ones that whistle, or green ones that make a small fountain, or silver ones that go ‘whoosh!’ up into the sky, shooting sparks like rain. So pretty.

But tonight they’ve got nothing. Tonight they stay inside. Tired. It’s been a long day.

Mol walks around Pop’s chair, on the front side. She bends over to see if he’s still breathing. She can’t see anything, so she listens. She hears nothing, but his chest moves slightly, up and down, up and down. His eyelids look like two shells. He doesn’t move. He must be having a white dream again.

She goes and sits down in her chair. Without cushions the chair’s very hard. How can Pop just fall asleep? she wonders. And he’s so thin, too. But he hasn’t moved an inch since he came to sit here this afternoon, after they got back.

Before they took Treppie to the bus stop, they all helped to make Lambert a bed with cushions from the chair. It was a helluva struggle to get him on to those cushions. He was like a dead-weight. In the end Treppie said for a job like this you need leverage. So he and Pop used iron pipes to work Lambert on to the cushions. Then Pop put his torn piece of shirt neatly over Lambert’s bottom half again, and she took his shorts to rinse them under the outside tap, ’cause what she saw in there was more than just pee.

Did they think he’d come to again?

Give him a chance, Pop said.

‘Maybe he’ll become a vegetable,’ Treppie said. ‘A king-sized watermelon. Suits me fine if he dangles from a stem for the rest of his life. Under a leaf, nice and quiet, then all you have to do is water him every now and again.’

Sis, Treppie, she said to him. Treppie can be so cruel. But he can’t help himself. That’s what she wanted to say. Instead, she just kept quiet.

They put on some clean clothes and then they got into the car to take Treppie to the Melville bus stop. They all felt better after washing themselves.

All except Pop. Pop was white in the face. That’s why, after they dropped off Treppie, she said to him they must first go to Shoprite and then take a little drive up Ontdekkers.

Pop wanted to know why.

Just to get out a little, she said. She took Pop by the arm, but then she let go again. She could see he was far away. Too far. She could feel it on his skin.

So it wasn’t long before they were back home again.

At Shoprite they bought a tin of dog food for Toby. But not Butch, his usual. She said if Toby felt the way she did today, then he must also feel like he needs a holiday. And, as Treppie would say, a change is as good as a holiday, so they bought him some Husky instead.

When they got on to Ontdekkers, Pop remembered he still had the paper in his pocket with the measurements for the bathroom mirror. So they went to the Mirror Shop at the corner, ’cause they knew Lambert was dead serious about fixing that mirror. It was one of the things on his list.

They cut the mirror straight away. Sixteen by twenty-five. Ten rand fifty.

And then they just came back home again.

Poor Pop. She watched him from behind as he walked over the loose blocks to go pee, with the mirror in his arms. The house stank terribly of smoke. And there was soot all over the walls. It looked like there’d been a war. Pieces of burnt, black paper were flying about everywhere, inside and outside. Pop waved his arms, trying to catch the stuff. But when he did catch a piece, it was like catching nothing. When he opened his hand, there was no more than a black smear on his palm. He showed it to her, as if she knew the answer. But what could she say? All she could do was wipe his hand with her own, and then she got the soot on her hand too.

When he finished peeing, he pulled the last piece of mirror off the cabinet and began fitting the new one. But it was too big. A hair’s breadth too big. Not even. So Pop put the little mirror down in the bath. He’d in any case forgotten to buy glue. He’d make a plan later. Or Lambert would.

So then they came out and sat down here in front. She tried to talk to Pop, to keep his mind occupied. About mattresses, how they should get a new one for Lambert, or pass theirs on to him and buy themselves a new one, ’cause they were two to a bed. And they were old. But Pop didn’t want to talk. He looked like he didn’t even want to live any more. His chin just kept sagging lower and lower on his chest. She was still talking when she saw he was fast asleep.

Now she looks at Pop, here next to her. He’s kicked off his shoes in front of him. He’s still wearing the same socks he had on this morning, when they were sliding and slipping around in the passage. It’s his only pair. Worn right through at the heels. All his toes stick out in front. The toes look like fingers. Black from soot. Shame, poor Pop.

As he sits there, she stares at all the bits of his body. He looks like his joints are too thin, like all the places where his hands and feet and head should be fixed to his body are joined by nothing more than the power of mercy. Mercy. Suddenly she feels she dare not look away, ’cause if she does, the mercy won’t hold any longer. And then Pop will break apart, right here next to her, all along his joints. And she would’ve been the only one who could’ve kept him together, just by looking. So she looks and looks. Her eyes get heavy. She must just not fall asleep now. Everything depends on her. The joints in Pop’s body. And what would she amount to, without him?

Suddenly the front gate creaks. It’s Treppie. Thank God, he’s back from the Chinese. Now there’ll be some life in this place. She fingers her bun at the back and pins the loose pieces back into place.