Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

SECOND OF SEPTEMBER

She must say, the Benades have their moments. Like the other day, just a few months ago. It was still spring, and then they walked smack-bang into peace.

Treppie saw an advert in the smalls for an office furniture sale in Braamfontein, so they decided to go. Treppie said you sometimes found a handy piece of plank or something at the most unlikely places, for next to nothing. The trip was actually for Lambert. He was struggling to get his work bench nice and smooth for his girl, and he was starting to look dangerous again. He said he wanted to mix the cocktails on his work bench. And he needed it to put out the peanuts and the dips and the chips. The bench had to be nice and neat and smooth. That rough old railway sleeper standing on prefab slabs wasn’t good enough, he said.

Well, in the end they didn’t get anywhere near that furniture sale, ’cause when they turned into Jorissen Street it was suddenly just kaffirs wherever you looked. White people too, but mostly kaffirs. They filled the whole street, holding hands and singing and dancing, and they pushed Molletjie all over the place, until she jammed against the kerb. And there they sat. All the other cars also sat like that, stuck in the crowds of people with their lights on.

‘Here comes big shit!’ said Treppie. They couldn’t see what was going on. At first they thought Mandela was there, or Mandela was dead, or maybe FW. Another huge bladdy funeral party.

The kaffirs kept pointing to Molletjie’s front and back number-plates. They slammed their hands on the roof, looking at their watches and telling the Benades that they must get out of the car now.

‘MDM!’ they shouted.

‘MDM!’ they carried on shouting, pointing and shouting with open mouths.

‘Right, people,’ Treppie said, ‘what’s happening here is what I predicted a long time ago with these number-plates of ours. It was a big mistake. Now all of you better just act like you’re the Mass Democratic Movement!’

She remembers, they waited a terribly long time to get those numberplates after Pop lost the papers. And when they went to fetch them, Treppie said it was a chance in a million. Of all the cars in Jo’burg, theirs had to be the one with MDM on its number-plate. Treppie said he foresaw a problem of mistaken identity, ’cause MDM stood for Maximum Democratic Merrymakers. That was a nice little mistake, she said. She wouldn’t complain about an identity like that. Treppie thought it was very funny, but he told her she shouldn’t push her luck too far. Well, she didn’t have to push anything, ’cause in the end that day turned out very nicely, even if it did feel like touch and go at the time.

Pop sat dead still. He pulled the keys very slowly out of the ignition and put them into his pocket. The next thing, people were pulling them right out of their seats.

Lambert’s eyes went wild from not knowing what was going on, and he shouted: ‘Stay together! Just stay together!’ She remembers feeling in her housecoat pocket for a peg.

But they quickly got mixed up in the crowd. Treppie on this side, Pop on that side, Lambert on the far side, and her right on the other side. So many strange people around her. Then a black girl with a Chicken Licken cap on her head came over and said: ‘Peace be with you, Ma,’ and she smiled at Mol and pinned a light blue ribbon, with two doves on a bright blue pin, one white and the other light blue, on to her housecoat. Only then did she see what was going on — everyone was wearing ribbons and doves and holding hands. So that was the story! And all this time the young girl kept squeezing her hand and smiling at her with shining eyes. She smelt like Chicken Licken and her hand was a bit greasy, but then Mol squeezed the hand back, even though she’d never touched a black hand before, clean or dirty. On her other side was an old man with only one leg, leaning on crutches. He stuck one of his crutches under his arm and then he shook her hand. That hand was cold and the skin was loose. And the bones felt like they had come apart. But he held her hand nice and tight.

She saw the old man had no blue on, so she worked her hands loose to give him her own ribbon. He motioned to her: here, she must please put it on for him. And so she stuck it on for him, right there on his lapel where he showed her. That old man’s jacket was completely worn through, but the blue pin made it look nice and new again. And then she smiled at him, and she saw the young girl smile as well, and then all three of them were smiling much better, and they all took each other’s hands again.

She looked around and caught sight of Pop and Treppie and Lambert, all of them with ribbons on their shirts. All of them holding strangers’ hands. But they weren’t smiling. Only Pop had a slight smile on his face. He looked a bit panicky.

Suddenly everything went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. All around her people began to cry. The old man dropped his chin on to his chest and closed his eyes and then tears started rolling down his cheeks. Next to her, the black girl was sniffing. The next thing, that girl picked up her hand, with Mol’s hand still in it, and she used it to wipe her nose. Mol thought, ja, it’s hard to believe, but if that girl had rubbed her snot off on the back of Mol’s own hand, she would really not have minded. There was such a nice feeling in the air that she almost started crying herself. But then the silence was over and all of a sudden it was just hooters and bells and singing and people in taxis throwing peace signs. A young man in a striped tie grabbed her and they did a little two-step like she last saw in the days of Fordsburg’s garment workers’ dances. Eventually, she pushed her way through to Pop and said to him, with a smile on her face, ‘Peace to you, Pop,’ but she saw Pop was crying, too. Ai, Pop, he’s got such a soft heart, truly.

When it was all over and they got back into the car, Pop turned around and asked her if she’d ever in her life heard of a coincidence like this, but that old man with only one leg whose hand she was holding was the very same man he gave money to in his tin, the one who said to him: God bless you, sir. It just shows you.

Lambert was over his shock by then, thank God, and he said he didn’t know what it showed, but he also felt it showed you something.

Treppie was completely speechless.

But completely.

It was like someone had cut out his tongue.

When they drove past the Spar in Thornton — no one was in the mood for office furniture any more — Treppie suddenly popped up with the strangest idea. She could hardly believe her ears; it’s the kind of thing she’d expect Pop to say, but Treppie said it was such a nice spring day and it was almost one o’clock, and weren’t they also hungry? Why didn’t they go buy something tasty and have it for lunch at the Westdene Dam?

Oh yes, the Benades have their moments. Even if they first have to stumble into peace, in the full light of day. In streets full of pealing bells.

That day just got better. They bought fresh bread and Springbok viennas and oranges and a litre of Coke and a coconut macaroon for each of them. Treppie paid for the lot from his back pocket. Just like that. They went and parked at the gate in Seymour Street, but she felt something was missing. It was Gerty, of course. Gerty was still alive then. Old and sick, but still alive. Shame, she’s been dead almost a month to this day. She misses Gerty all the time.

But on that spring day Pop drove patiently back to the house to fetch Gerty and Toby. He knew they didn’t always get a chance to play at the dam. When they got back to the dam they parked at the same spot and the dogs began wagging their tails and it was all very jolly. They took their lunch and found a place to sit in the slight shade of the willow trees that had just begun sprouting, opposite the island, where there were some more willows and a hadida.