Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

‘Well then, cheers,’ he says, clinking his glass against hers, just above Lambert’s chest. He does it very carefully.

She points. At least he’s not blue in the face any more. She takes a sip.

‘Strong as a horse,’ says Pop. ‘He’s sleeping nicely now.’

She remembers that Lambert’s shorts are still on the line. Pop waves it away, she mustn’t worry, that’s the least of their problems.

‘Tomorrow’s another day,’ he says.

‘Should we wake him up?’ She looks at Lambert’s fat cheeks going in and out as he snores.

‘What for?’ Pop looks scared.

‘For a sip of Coke.’

‘The game’s not worth the candle. It’s best to leave him.’

Mol suddenly feels silly. ‘Not the candle, the Coke. And not the game, the watermelon! The watermelon’s not worth the Coke.’

‘Don’t play games, Mol, God can hear you.’

Pop points a finger at her, but he can’t help it, he also smiles a bit.

‘Shsssh!’

Lambert stirs. His arm pushes off the blanket. Now his big fat forearm lies across his chest. It’s full of scorch-marks. His mouth opens and closes. He’s mumbling something. She signals to Pop he must come closer so he can also listen. They bend over to hear what he’s saying.

‘Light blue, my beloved, for ever and ever,’ he says in his sleep. Back and forth he turns his head. His lips are pouting and his cheeks tremble. There’s a deep hollow between his eyes. It looks like his face was assembled from many different pieces, as if it’s not one face but many faces. Mol looks at Pop, as if to ask, will he ever be okay again? Pop looks like he wants to run away, like he wants to scream. He looks the way he looked that time when Lambert put on the video of Frankenstein’s monster, when that terrible creature got up from its bed with its pasty face and then walked right through the door, killing live electric wires with its big paws. That was a horror. Pop doesn’t like horrors.

Lambert’s talking again.

‘Orion washes my feet,’ he says. Now it’s his legs that tremble. His blanket slides off on one side. His stomach looks blown up. His thing moves a little. Then he lets out a big sigh.

‘He’s dreaming,’ says Pop.

She motions to Pop, he must straighten the blanket.

‘No, you,’ says Pop.

Carefully, she pulls the blanket over him. She imagines he grabs her right now and strangles her to death, in his sleep. She’s getting the creeps here!

She sits back. Lambert’s quiet again. Pop pours another drink.

‘Light blue, my beloved.’ Does Pop know what it means? Yes? No?

‘Orion washes my feet’? Pop shakes his head.

‘Who’s Orion again?’

‘I’ve shown you before, Molletjie, it’s the man in the stars, the one with three shining jewels in his belt.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the sky at night. I’ll show you. He’s easy to make out among the others. You can recognise him by his belt.’

‘I thought the stars were burnt out.’

Pop reaches out to her over Lambert’s belly.

‘Don’t worry, Molletjie, if the light from their fires reaches us, you can be sure they’re still full of life. Even though Orion is worlds away from us, his light will always reach Triomf. For ever and ever.’ Pop squeezes her hand.

Poor Triomf. Endlessly far beneath the stars. A very sad business, if you ask her.

‘You could say it’s heaven’s fireworks, Mol. Our Father in heaven’s Guy Fawkes. And it carries on and on, across the generations.’

When Pop starts like this, then it’s the Klipdrift talking. Then he tells her far-fetched stories about heaven. And it always makes her sad. She fights back her tears. Enough crying for one day. They must go sleep now.

Should they take their blanket? she wonders.

No, he says, he’s got a plan. He finds the old greycoat in the trunk on top of their cupboard. The one Old Mol used to wrap the dough in after the first kneading, so it would rise in the night. They can sleep under it, says Pop. It’s not so cold tonight, anyway.

TO SLEEP

When she blows out the candle, it’s very dark in the room. She lies on her back with her eyes open, like Pop, lying here next to her. Now that her eyes are used to it, she can see a bit.

The wind starts blowing outside. She feels funny in her stomach. It must be hunger. They didn’t eat a thing all day long.

‘That’s rain coming,’ says Pop.

The loose panel in the dressing table suddenly shakes, ‘cheeree-cheeree’. There’s a rumbling noise somewhere deep under the ground. The house shudders.

What was that? She puts her hand on Pop, under the coat.

‘Just a little mine tremor,’ he says.

A sinkhole, more like it.

Then they lie and listen to the wind and the first thunder, rumbling in a different way now. They watch the flickering against the wall as the lightning gets closer and closer.

‘Kabam!’ it strikes, right above them, so hard that the windows rattle in their frames.

‘Good God!’ says Mol, almost jumping out of her skin.

‘Never mind,’ says Pop, ‘we’re lying on rubber. And the house is earthed.’ He puts her hand back where it was.

Now the first loose drops of rain start falling, ‘plop! plop! plop!’, here and there on the corrugated-iron roof. The room is white from all the lightning. The sounds of the storm begin to fill up the whole world.

‘There it is, now,’ Pop says when the rain finally comes down.

‘Shorrr’ it runs off the gutterless roof.

‘It’s from all the trouble today,’ Mol says, ‘this rain.’

Pop gives the hand lying on top of him a little squeeze. Mol gives him one back. Then Pop’s breath starts to come more evenly. He’s almost asleep now. She hears the first drips all over the house. She forgot to put out bowls. Too bad.

Just before Mol falls asleep, she feels Pop’s little thing moving slightly under her hand.

She smiles in the dark.

He rises in his sleep, she thinks, just like Old Mol’s bread. The rain on the roof makes her sleepy. It feels like her eyes close all by themselves.

Lambert looks up at the helicopter. His mother and Pop and Treppie stand next to him. He went out early this evening, and when he got back from doing his rounds, the helicopter was there. Then he went inside and told his people they must come out on to the front lawn. So the neighbours and the people in the helicopter could see the Benades had nothing to hide.

Now the helicopter dips and turns, flying low over the houses of Triomf, block by block. Its blue searchlight shines into everyone’s backyards. The whole street’s full of people who want to know what’s going on. They stretch their necks this way and that to see if they can catch a glimpse of someone running away or climbing over a prefab wall. Everyone leaves their front doors open. Some of the houses have little Christmas trees with lights that switch on and off all the time. It’s two weeks into December already. He’s told them he wouldn’t mind a tree like that in their own lounge, with little lights and things. For putting on the sideboard. Treppie says it’s kitsch, but then he says it actually depends on your class. What’s kitsch in Houghton is art in Triomf, he says, but his heart bleeds for anyone, never mind his social standing, who spends so much money on material things. Whether it’s kitsch or art, a tree like that costs a shithouse full of money. And the fuckers who get rich from selling those trees know all too well it’s not an electrical trick their customers are looking for. What they want is Jesus on an automatic time switch. Jesus on, Jesus off. And it’s been a bit rough on that poor Son of Man, Treppie says, inbetween all the onning and offing. For years on end. But no one seems to want to know anything about it. That’s why angels are so blessed, he says. They’re permanently switched on to ‘Hosannah in the highest’. But not with electricity. With holy current. That must be quite something, he says, but he doesn’t look like he believes what he’s saying.