Marlene van Niekerk - Triomf

Thank you to Leon de Kock for accepting and persevering with the mammoth task of translating this book; and for the ingenuity, sensitivity and thoroughness with which he did it. Thank you to the editors, Sally Abbey, Sarah Shrubb and Andrew Gordon and the other members of the Little, Brown team who were involved in the production of Triomf in the UK; Hettie Scholtz and Dineke Volschenk; to Pippa Lange for making this possible.

Thank you to Wendy Matthews for her sustained empathy throughout; to Ena Jansen for advice and support; to John Miles and Gerrit Olivier; and especially to Cobus Nothnagel for firm backing during the writing process. And for his freshwater pearls! Without him and without Wendy — and without the Old South Africa — Triomf would not have been possible.

It’s late afternoon, end of September. Mol stands behind the house, in the backyard. As the sun drops, it reaches between the houses and draws a line across the middle button of her housecoat. Her bottom half is in shadow. Her top half feels warm.

Mol stares at all the stuff Lambert has dug out of the earth. It’s a helluva heap. Pieces of red brick, bits of smooth drainpipe, thick chunks of old cement and that blue gravel you see on graves. Small bits of glass and other stuff shine in the muck. Lambert has already taken out most of the shiny things — for his collection, he says. He collects the strangest things.

Gerty’s at Mol’s feet, sniffing at the heap. Must still smell of kaffir, she thinks. Gerty drags out something from between two bits of cement and drops it at Mol’s feet.

‘What is it, Gerty? Hey? What you got there? Show the missus!’

Mol picks it up. It’s a flat, rusted tin. Looks like a jam tin. Kaffir jam! Sis, yuk! She throws it back on to the heap.

She picks up Gerty and looks across the length of the bare yard. The yellow lawn stretches all the way up to the wire fence in front. Lambert says it’s just rubble wherever you dig, here where they live. Under the streets too, from Toby right through to Annandale on the other side. Rubble, just rubble.

The kaffirs must’ve gotten the hell out of here so fast, that time, they didn’t even take their dogs with them.

A lot of their stuff got left behind. Whole dressers of crockery. You could hear things breaking to pieces when the bulldozers moved in. Beds and enamel basins and sink baths and all kinds of stuff. All of it just smashed.

That was quite a sight.

The kaffirs screamed and shouted and ran up and down like mad things. They tried to grab as much as they could to take with when the lorries came.

And those kaffirdogs cried and yelped as they ran around, trying to get out of the way of all that stuff falling and breaking everywhere.

Mol remembers the day very well; when they took away the first bunch of kaffirs. It was raining. February ’55. She and Pop and Treppie stood at the top end of Ontdekkers, on the other side, watching the whole business, ’cause Treppie had heard the Department of Community Development wanted to build houses here for ‘less privileged whites’ — here where Sophiatown used to be.

Triomf, they were told, would be the new suburb’s name.

Just for whites. They said they’d start building in 1960.

‘From Fietas to Triomf!’ Treppie said — and he didn’t want to hear any of them complaining they weren’t going up in the world.

Fietas was also flattened in later years. Not long after they got out.

Ja, it was also a right royal mixed-up lot there in Vrededorp — that was now supposed to be Fietas’ proper name.

Gerty squirms in Mol’s arms. She puts her down. The little dog turns around and looks at the heap again. God alone knows how much deeper that hole in his den must still go. Lambert says it’s for petrol; he wants to store petrol in there. It’s for when the shit starts flying after the election, he says. That’s the kind of rubbish Treppie talks into his head.

Gerty wants attention. She digs with both her front paws in the rubble, poking her nose in the clods that are still red from all the old bricks. Then she pricks her ears and looks up at Mol — she wants to play. Ag shame, the poor little thing, not much chance to play around here.

Mol goes and sits heavily on the old Dogmor tin next to the house. She puts her hand into her housecoat pocket, takes out a cigarette and lights up.

The kaffirs weren’t very impressed with the whole business, that’s for sure.

She and Pop and Treppie stood on the side of the road, watching them stone the buses. The trams too.

In those days there was a tram that ran all the way to Roodepoort.

Treppie was very worked up about the bulldozing. Some days he used to go there after work, riding up and down in the trams so he could check things out for himself. And sometimes, when he worked the night shift, he’d first walk all the way to Sophiatown before going to work. Then, later, he’d come home and make them long speeches, for hours on end, about everything he’d seen there, ‘there where our future lies’, he’d say, ‘where we’re going to make a new start in life’, cackling through that crooked mouth of his. In those days, she never understood what that laugh of his meant, but she’s learnt in the meantime. As for their lives here in Triomf — there’s nothing funny about that. Here it just buggers on. And these days the buggering’s getting rough.

When they were bulldozing that time, there was a skinny priest in a long, black dress who used to run up and down behind the bulldozers, trying to help the kaffirs with all their things.

The kaffirdogs all knew him. They used to jump up at him as he ran around, and after a while that black dress of his started looking a real mess from all the dusty paw marks.

But he could do nothing for them. The dogs, that is. And their kaffirs.

He was an English priest. A real kaffirlover, by the name of Huddleston. Treppie used to call him Muddlemouth or old Meddlebones, ’cause he was one of those holier-than-thou big-mouths from overseas who came here to interfere with stuff.

His church still stands today, just behind them, but these days not much goes on there. It’s the PPC of Triomf now. The Pentecostal Protestant Church. Those Protestants look a poor bunch to her. There are not many more than there are of the Members in Christ. And the Members all fit into a single Kombi. She sees the pastor driving past sometimes, going up Martha Street to pick people up. MEMBERS IN CHRIST, it says in big, blue letters on one side. Here one, there one, he picks them up. Chicken feed.

Here in Triomf they’ve got the PPCs, the Members, the Apostolics and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There’s also an NG church across the road from Shoprite, but it’s always empty, except when they’ve got a bazaar going. Right next to the NG, in front of the police flats, she’s seen a white noticeboard with DAY SPRING CHRISTIAN CHURCH written in pink letters. And guess what, they actually go there, those policemen, with their little wives and all. Must be a nice church, that. But as for priests in dresses, you don’t see many of them around here any more. Except right down in Annandale at the tail-end of Triomf, on the Martindale side. They saw a priest there one day, but he was wearing a white dress, not a black one. That’s another mixed lot. One day she and Pop and Treppie — Lambert wasn’t with them — were coming back from the panelbeaters when they saw the mixed-up congregation coming out — it must have been a wedding or something — and there stood the priest at the door, greeting kaffirs and Hotnots and whites all together. All smiles. And all with the same hand.