Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

That’s also what he said to the dykes, and then the tall one told the short one she would put this story of his before Lawyers for Human Rights, and the short one started laughing so much she had to go sit down and hold her head in her hands. He couldn’t figure out what was so funny, but he kept quiet. It was then that he clicked why Treppie says they’re so dilly. Treppie says you get two kinds of dykes, diesel dykes and dilly dykes, and these two across the road are definitely the dilly kind, if you ask him.

Anyhow, then the police came. They stood there next to the wall and they listened, but they said they could hear sweet blow-all, and he, Lambert, mustn’t waste their time like this. They were the Flying Squad and all they really handled was serious crime.

By that time the pump, of course, was a long way past phase five. It was running softly on phase one and all you could hear was ‘plop-plop’ as the carp took bites out of their bubbles.

Meanwhile, Fish-Eye was standing there behind his aloes, smoking and listening to everything they said, acting like he knew nothing.

Lambert tried to explain what happened each time the pump got to phase five. And how many hours it took to go through the whole cycle. If the Flying Squad came back at about six in the morning, they’d see exactly what he meant.

Then the policemen said, with their hands on their hips, ‘Mr Benade, do you or don’t you want to lay a charge?’

So he said no, ’cause by then Pop and Treppie were outside, pointing angry fingers at him behind the policemen’s backs. He said no, he just wanted them to put some pressure on Fish-Eye about his pumps that were making such a noise.

Then those policemen told him they weren’t in the pressure business, they were in the shooting business. And if it’s pressure he wanted, he should go to the World Trade Centre, where they were also into phases and stuff like that. Those politicians knew all about pressure, they said, laughing themselves to death there on the Benades’ front lawn.

It wasn’t just the dykes who were dilly, he thought to himself.

And the next morning, when Pop took the key out of the postbox, he found a letter there, from Fish-Eye. Treppie grabbed the letter and made a whole performance out of it, so Lambert still doesn’t know if everything Treppie read was true or not. The long and the short of it was Fish-Eye saying his property was losing its value as a result of all their meddling, and he’d be much happier if a decent kaffir like Cyril Ramaphosa came to live next door to him one day. Ramaphosa might even plant something along the boundary wall, he said, ’cause he saw Ramaphosa was planting weeping boer-beans there at the World Trade Centre, in a suit too, which was more than he could say for the Benades, despite the fact that they were white. And then he made a long list of complaints about them disturbing the peace and using the Lord’s name in vain. And about Pop’s zips that always hung open, and his mother who walked around with no panties all day long. And that they must watch out before he mobilised the whole neighbourhood against them,’cause they were sticking out like a sore finger. And then, right at the end, the fucker actually wanted to know if they’d paid their dog taxes all these years, for their one departed and their one surviving dog. He was just asking, although he felt it was only fair to inform them that he himself was a police reservist, and that he had family who were high up in the municipality too. One word from him and the Benades would be in their glory, dogs and all. Thanking them in anticipation, J.J. Volschenk.

He swears Treppie sucked half that letter straight out of his thumb, but by then he had them all wound up anyway, which must have been what he wanted.

Treppie said the honourable Mister Jay Jay Volschenk doth protest too much. He schemed Jay Jay was himself so low down in the pecking order that he got a kick out of writing high-and-mighty letters to the untouchables.

Then Treppie had to explain to his mother what untouchables were.

Not that he, Lambert, knew so well what it meant himself.

Of course, Treppie went and said the worst thing he could think of, just to torment her. He said the untouchables wiped off their shit, er, er, pardon, he meant their excrement, with their hands, and then they used it to write messages on the walls, for aliens. ‘Mene Mene Tekel.’ Aliens were the only ones who were still interested in them. Hadn’t his mother noticed how people were taking a wide berth around them nowadays?

Then she asked him, but what about the Witnesses? They still came to visit, out of their own free will. But Treppie said the Witnesses were interested only in their souls, not their excrement; although, come to think of it, their souls were probably lodged in their excrement, otherwise he also couldn’t figure out what the Witnesses thought they were looking for here at the Benades. But, he said, one of these days the Witnesses would have to come visiting on stilts, ’cause they were already deeper than knee-deep, and they were sinking fast.

Pop asked Treppie if he didn’t have a drop of self-respect left in him. But Treppie just acted like he hadn’t heard. He pinched his nostrils and sang like the main coolie-singer on top of the mosque, the one they always hear from Bosmont when the wind blows in the right direction:

‘Lemon tree very pretty

And the lemon flower is sweet

But the fruit of the poor lemon

Is impossible to eat.’

So, that’s why Pop’s wearing blue shirt-buttons to close up his khaki-pants nowadays. His mother spent the whole day sewing them on, with pink cotton. It doesn’t look right, she says, but at least Pop looks decent again. She also tried to fix Pop’s zip-up pants, but he uses a safety pin to keep the fly closed. And Lambert thinks they must’ve bought his mother some panties too, ’cause every now and again he sees them hanging on the line.

He’s got his own plans for Fish-Eye. When he goes out on his rounds, late at night, he takes a crate to stand on and then he pisses into Fish-Eye’s postbox.

Fish-Eye thinks it’s the kaffirs. Lambert’s seen how he waits for them behind his wall on weekends, early in the evening. But Fish-Eye has to wait a long time. It’s mostly just kaffirgirls who walk up and down Martha Street, and they wouldn’t be able to piss into that postbox of his, even if they wanted to. Every now and again a few kaffirs come walking past and then Fish-Eye shits them out. He calls them hosepipe-dicks. And he asks them if they’d like to know what it feels like to get their king-sized dicks caught in a mouse trap. He’ll give them something to write home about, he says. They mustn’t think they’re the only ones with cultural weapons around here.

Then, one day, a long stick of a kaffir came walking past with his hair all tied up in strings. He was wearing sunglasses, with a red, green and yellow cap. Lambert’s mother thought he was a Zulu, so she hid behind the bathroom door. But Treppie said, no, Zulus had knobkieries. This was a Rasta-man, and they must check now how this Rasta-man was going to jive old Fish-Eye, who was shitting him out something terrible there in the street. That Rasta-man just stood there, cool as a cucumber, rolling a zol and checking Fish-Eye out as he screamed at him from behind his wall.

And then the Rasta-man actually had the guts to give Fish-Eye a talking to. ‘Cool it, my man. Smile, God loves you,’ he said. He even threw Fish-Eye a peace sign. Fish-Eye went completely purple in the face. He ran around like a madman. It was so bad they thought he was going to jump into the Penguin Pool to be with his carp. But he didn’t. He went and set the little mousetrap in his postbox, and then it snapped on to his finger.