Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Nothing to be done about it. She’ll just have to wait for the Queen of England. At least it’s something to look forward to.

The house is peaceful tonight. Pop’s sleeping next to her, in his chair, and Toby’s lying with his head on Pop’s shoe. Treppie’s reading newspapers in his room. Lambert’s in his den. He says he’s painting. When he’s not painting, he’s digging his hole: his storage cellar, he calls it. He says it’s still not deep enough. Every day he picks something from his list to work on. Then, when he’s finished, he comes and stands here in the middle of the lounge with his hands on his hips, and he says: three down, twenty-six to go, or, five down, thirty-two to go.

Treppie says they must get ready, ’cause they’re well into the countdown now. Not to be launched, he says, but to implode.

As far as she can see, Lambert adds things to the bottom of his list faster than he ticks them off at the top. So, this is no count-down, it’s a count-up. And she wouldn’t be able to say what that means as far as blowing up or conking in or imploding’s concerned. They’ll just have to wait and see.

To top it all, Treppie’s gone and talked a new fencing story into Lambert’s head. Mister Cochrane’s Security Fencing, with spikes. ‘Neat and nasty security spikes from Stiletto’s.’ She has to listen to it almost every day now.

She’s seen a lot of houses with those spikes, but they always put them on top of high walls. Their house hasn’t got a high wall. But Treppie says it’s not a problem. All they need to do is hammer a few spikes into the roof — around the overflow pipe, where the corrugated iron is coming loose. And then they can put Mister Cochrane’s electrified razor-wire on top of their own wire fence in front, and on top of the prefab wall, too. That will make them the neatest and nastiest of them all, Treppie says. Then they’ll be ready.

Ready for what? she asks. And he says, ready for any eventuality.

Treppie says Mister Cochrane is a man after his own heart. He’s an oke who takes a gap when he sees it. And he doesn’t just take the gap, he looks for it too, all over the world. If he doesn’t find it, Treppie says, then he wouldn’t be surprised if Mister Cochrane goes and makes his gap with the help of the state.

When she asks him what gap, Treppie says: Oh, it’s like something that still hasn’t been given its right name. Mister Cochrane trekked right through Africa following the gap, until he arrived here at the southern tip. Things only began to go well for him in Nyassaland, which is now Kenya. It was there that Mister Cochrane saw the Mau-Mau, and that was one of the gap’s first names. So he made his fencing to close up the gap.

Mau-Mau.

Treppie says there’s just one thing about this kind of gap: once you’ve closed it up with security fencing, it starts getting bigger and bigger again and you can never keep up. You think you’re closing it but actually you’re opening it. He says that’s what you call a paradox, but security is full of paradoxes like that.

All she needs to do is use her own two eyes, he says, and then she’ll see all of Jo’burg sparkling with Mister Cochrane’s security fencing. Around the golf courses, the Vroue-Landbou-Unie’s home for unmarried mothers in Brixton, around schools and factories and the JG Strydom Hospital, Shoprite’s loading zone at the back, Triomf’s NG church, the coolie-church in Bosmont, everywhere. It’s been put up once around the botanical gardens and three times around John Vorster Square. Even the Chinese in Commissioner Street have fenced in their yards, except now they can’t chase the rats out any more. So they add them to the sweet and sour, for bulk.

Bulk.

You can even see the fencing on the walls of the Rand Afrikaans University, as if that wall isn’t bad enough as it is. Seven million rands’ worth of wall, says Treppie. You’d swear RAU was a raptor or something, trying to break loose.

Raptor.

He says it won’t be long before they surround the whole of Jo’burg with that fence. But Mister Cochrane still won’t be finished, ’cause then he can make fences inbetween and more fences around and inbetween and around and inbetween until he’s gone right around the world.

Security fencing has become South Africa’s biggest single export product, Treppie says. Everyone wants it, all the way from the Sudan to the Kruger National Park and to Chile. Treppie says Mister Cochrane has been invited by the United Nations to go to Bosnia and Hertzego-whatsitsname to come make his fences, so the Moslems and Christians will stop wiping each other out over there. And during the Gulf War, just a few years ago, there was lots of interest in Iran and Iraq for Mister Cochrane’s fencing. Which doesn’t surprise him at all, says Treppie, ’cause South Africa sold cannons to Iraq for that war, and war of any kind always opens up gaps that have to be fenced in again. When those two countries were at war, the government exported security fencing to both of them. The more fighting, the more fencing. The more fencing, the more fighting. That was like killing two birds with one stone. Boom! Snap! says Treppie. Boom! Snap! Boom! Snap! Very profitable.

Nowadays, he says, it’s not guns and roses any more. Now it’s guns, gaps and fences. And the one hand doesn’t wash the other, they’re both equally dirty now. Both know what the other’s doing. And they’re both in it right up to the elbows.

It sounds mixed up to her, but Lambert keeps nodding his head as if he understands exactly what Treppie’s saying. And now, on top of everything, Lambert says he wants to buy second-hand fencing from Mister Cochrane, so he can close up the gaps around their house. But the only second-hand security fencing you ever see is the kind that lies around in rusted heaps and spiked balls that can’t ever be undone again. Those terrible blades hook into each other, and then they catch bits of grass and plastic and stray cats and things. She’s seen those balls of wire, next to the roads and in the scrapyards.

Treppie says Lambert doesn’t understand the first thing about security fencing. He just pretends he does. Second-hand security fencing, he says, is a contradiction in terms. Mister Cochrane sells only new fencing.

That might be, but new or old, she doesn’t want to be the cat, not to mention the kaffir, who lands up inside that wire.

Treppie says ‘put up’ is the wrong way to describe what you do with a fence like that. What you actually do is roll it off and turn it out, ’cause it comes rolled up tightly on a big spool. Then you turn the spool with a handle so the wire can roll off, in stiff, stabbing circles. Treppie says it’s South Africa’s Olympic emblem. Never mind our flames.

If you try to cut that wire with pliers, then the two loose pieces shoot out around your hands and bite deep holes into your flesh. And the more you try to pull yourself out, the deeper it digs in.

They once saw a cat inside one of those balls of wire. It was second-hand fencing, which made it worse. The cat looked like someone had tried to make muti out of it. It was hacked into little squares, making it look twice its size, shame. Nowadays, apart from the blades that hook, the fence comes in a double layer, too, one outside and one inside. The inside layer shocks you. That’s after you’ve already been cut into chunks and you’re still trying to get in to wherever it is you want to get into. Then it shocks you as well.

Treppie cut out Mister Cochrane’s advert and pasted it up underneath the old calendar with the aerial photo of Jo’burg. He says it’s so we make no mistake about where it is we come from. He underlined the important words with a red ball-point:

Detect the Intruder

Stop the Intruder