Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

She must come and sit next to him, Pop signals, so they can watch together what happens with the numbers and the monster and the turning wheel. But she doesn’t want to. She wants out. Out! It’s Guy Fawkes out there and now the TV’s playing so loud she can’t even hear the crackers any more. She wants to see and she wants to hear. She doesn’t want to miss it.

It’s just once a year that all the people in Martha Street come out of their houses and spend some time together. They watch the fireworks and they talk. It’s the only time they’re friendly with each other, the only time they’re interested in each other’s fireworks and things. Just once a year. People say hello, even if they don’t know you. It’s like a party. Not that she feels in the mood for a party tonight. She feels empty and tired. Her heart’s beating too fast. What’s more, there’s another one of those flies buzzing up and down the little window at the back of her head. It’s after eight now, and they’ve been there since this morning. It’s useless trying to sleep in a state like this. She’s all worked up from the goings on, and from Lambert lying at the back there under the worn old blanket. Lambert, who doesn’t want to wake up.

She signals back to Pop that she’s going out. What for? he asks with his hands.

It’s Guy Fawkes outside, she says, but he can’t hear. He points to his ears. She points to her head. Pop nods. Yes, it’s okay, he knows. He motions to her she must turn down the TV, he wants to sleep now. That’s okay. That’s fine. It’s the only thing that works for him.

Once outside, she walks up to the wire fence and looks up and down the street. Just children wherever you look. And grown-ups, standing together in groups.

‘Careful! Watch out!’ they say to the children. ‘Don’t let the crackers go off in your eyes!’

The fireworks shoot and whistle and bang in greens and reds and blues. Rainbows and stars with tails. This will fix you, get lost, you damn bug!

She feels Toby’s wet nose against her leg. Ag shame, last year Gerty was here too, but Gerty was always so scared of the crackers. You had to pick her up, otherwise she’d run inside and hide under a chair in the lounge until it was all over. But not Toby. He thinks it’s a game. Then again, he thinks everything’s a game.

Mol walks back to the little stoep. She hasn’t got the guts to go into the street alone, or to say hello to the people and look at their fireworks. In earlier years they’d all go outside together, with Lambert in front. He likes talking to people. Not that he has much of a story. He starts with a ‘ja, well’, a bit of story, and then another ‘ja, well’ at the end. Or you know, followed by you never know, without adding much of a story at all. People listen to him ’cause he looks the way he looks. They think he’s funny. But then again, people think everything’s funny.

Mol feels for the matches and the Tom Thumbs in her pocket. She’s never set off a cracker on her own before. No, dear Jesus, she’s scared she’ll shoot out her eyes. She looks back into the street. Everyone’s jolly. She stands on her toes to see what they’re doing at Fort Knox. Maybe that man from this morning will give her another cigarette. But they’re very busy next door. They stand in a bunch and then they shout: Sputnik! Hellfire! And then they all run for cover and a big, wild thing shoots up into the sky, making red arrows all over the place and a noise like an ambulance.

Mol turns back to the house. But she’s still not ready to go inside. The house is dark and closed. She can see the cracks on their outside walls in the light of the streetlamps. The house is just a shell. But, she knows, the stuff inside that shell is thick. Thick and quiet from all the things that have happened. All that escapes from the thick stuff inside is the flickering blue light of the TV, playing without sound behind the curtains.

Mol calls Toby, but she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t want to go inside. She pushes herself, yet her feet won’t move. Not into this house where things keep happening. Funny, you’d expect the house to be heavy from all the stuff that goes on. But the house is light. It looks like it wants to float up, like a little balloon. Maybe it’s just her head: tight and loose, thick and thin, light and heavy.

Mol feels her heart. She feels her breath.

She thinks: God, just watch me. Tonight, I, Mol Benade, will shoot off a cracker. For my heart and for my breath, so they can run smoothly, and for the little thing buzzing inside my head, so it can settle down, and for the house, and the walls, so they can get some strength, and for the quiet, thick insides, to give them a little light. And for us, to pep us up a little. And for next door, this side and that side and across the road. For them, a gentle reminder, as Treppie would say, that we’re still here. Before they start thinking we’ve all given up the ghost here behind the curtains. They’re likely to go and put the welfare on to us again, or something like that. All that’s needed is a bit of noise from our side. To show we’re still kicking and we’re not planning to throw in the towel yet. Not a damn. Come hell or high water.

Mol feels her strength returning. She feels her face twitch as she tries to smile. Right. Smile, cracker, matches. Ready, steady, go!

She strikes a match and feels in her pocket for a cracker, but their fuses are all knotted together. She pulls a whole bundle of them out at the same time. The match burns her hand. ‘Ouch!’ She throws down the match. Wait. First sit down. No, not sit, then she won’t be able to get out of the way fast enough when the thing goes off. Hell, what now?

It takes a while before she finds her bearings with the crackers. She pulls them apart and puts them down in a row on the edge of the stoep. She tries to make one of them stand up so she can light the fuse, but it keeps falling over. Then she puts it down on its side and lights the fuse, but the thing goes out before reaching the cracker. How’s she supposed to get this fuse working now? Mol looks at the crackers in her hand. Then she gets an idea. No, Jesus! Yes, what the hell! She’ll take the damn thing in her fingers and shoot it off. In her bare hand. That’s what she’ll do. If she wants to make a mark for them here tonight, that’s the only way to do it.

She smiles. To think she’d have so much courage here tonight! But she’s got nothing to lose. There’s very little in life that she hasn’t yet seen. So what’s a silly little cracker, then?

Pop wakes up. He feels something going on behind his head, here behind the window. What’s Mol up to now, out there on the stoep? What’s all that fiddling around? He gets out of his chair. He has to try three times before he manages to get up. The chair’s too deep without its cushions. He peeps through the curtains. Goodness gracious! Mol’s holding a flame to a cracker! She brings the flame to the fuse and holds it till it takes. Then she stretches her arm away from her body, turning to one side and looking away. On one leg. She’s standing on one leg. It looks like she’s trying to do a funny dance. Now she wriggles her fingertips, working the cracker further and further up till she’s holding it just by the tip.

‘Poof!’ it goes off.

‘Whoof!’ barks Toby.

‘Hoo-eee!’ shouts Mol, shaking her hands next to her sides. Now she runs round the corner, with Toby on her heels. Who would ever have thought it possible?

Here she comes again. Toby’s up on his hind legs, dancing in front of her.

Pop stands on his chair to look out the window. He pulls open the curtains a bit more. Mol’s truly in top form here tonight. She’s going from strength to strength. Pop feels his own strength coming back too. Little sparks in his insides, like a slow dynamo starting to run. On-off, on-off goes the light. Is it possible? This is a day that got him down so bad he thought he’d never be able to get up again. And now just look at Mol, the old diehard! She’s getting braver with each cracker. Now she’s holding three Tom Thumbs at the same time, right in front of her chest. She gets them lighted in no time at all.