Triomf Read online

  ‘Ag, don’t worry,’ she says.

  ‘You sure?’ Pop asks.

  ‘Mmm.’ She wants out. There’s a woman looking at them as if the cat dragged them in. Must be a policeman’s wife. Her arms are full of videos.

  Pop thinks she can’t see him, but she sees – he’s buying her a Snickers, after all. It’s a new kind. He knows she likes trying out new kinds.

  When they get back into the car, she asks, ‘Did you get two packets of Wilsons?’

  ‘Oh shucks!’ Pop says. ‘Just as well you reminded me.’

  ‘You’d better,’ she says.

  She eats the Snickers while Pop buys the Wilsons. Good old Pop. Gerty gets little bites from her Snickers. Toby also gets a piece.

  ‘So, how was your drive, then?’ Treppie asks as soon as they walk back into the house.

  He’s sitting on his crate in the lounge with an old Star in his hands. Every other Monday, when those two across the road put out their old papers for recycling, he goes and takes them. Treppie says they think they’re big news there across the road. Those two girlies act like larnies, he says, like they’re making a big statement or something, putting out their newspapers for the green lorry. All it shows is how out of touch they are with Triomf. ’Cause in Triomf everything gets recycled, from kitchen cupboards to exhaust pipes, for ages already. And nobody makes a show out of it. He’s one to talk, this Treppie. He makes a show out of everything, recycled or not. Mind you, Lambert always phones from across the road, and he also says those two are up to something. He says it’s just books wherever you look in that house, and they play funny music with women who bleat like goats. One of their cars is also a Volkswagen. Lambert says it’s in even worse condition than their own two.

  Treppie holds out his hand for the Wilsons.

  ‘Ka-thwack!’ go the packets as Mol slaps them into his open hand.

  Treppie snaps his hand shut very quickly, almost catching her fingers in his hard, bony grip.

  ‘Watch it, man!’ she says, pulling her hand away.

  Treppie says it’s not fresh news he’s after in the papers. The same things just keep happening over and over again, he says. You must be able to spot the ‘similarities’.

  Well, Treppie sees more ‘similarities’ than she does. Mind you, he sees more of everything.

  And he also remembers everything. If he doesn’t remember something, he makes it up. Just like that.

  Pop says Treppie’s got a ‘photographic memory’. Ever since he was a boy. But she has her doubts. He remembers what he wants to, and for the rest he makes up things to torment them with. It’s just Lambert who’s impressed with Treppie’s nonsense. But Lambert’s not right in his top storey.

  ‘Don’t you even say thank you, hey, Treppie?’ she asks.

  ‘Just check this out,’ he says, pretending not to hear. ‘“Pit bull terriers in Triomf. Policeman’s cruel game. Illegal backyard betting. Shocked vets keep sewing up mangled dogs”,’ he reads. ‘So, that’s what we keep hearing at night, Mol! It’s got nothing to do with Sophiatown’s ghosts. It’s blood and money – and those two together make a terrible racket. Trapped between walls, with bared teeth and ghost eyes, blood spewing from their veins.’

  Treppie opens his one hand and closes it, open, close, open, close, to show how the blood spews out of the dogs’ veins.

  ‘It’s worse than ghosts,’ he says. ‘Much worse. If I understand correctly, you could say the whole of Jo’burg is one big pit bull terrier fight.’

  Treppie closes his paper and folds it up, as if what he’s just read is no surprise, ’cause he knew it all along.

  He opens one of his Wilsons packets and puts a big white peppermint into his mouth. His shoulder twitches.

  ‘So then,’ he says. ‘I said, how was your drive? Don’t you even answer a person?’

  He makes a loud sucking noise with his tongue on the peppermint.

  Pop sits down quietly in his chair and lights up. Mol too. That’s the best. Sit nice and quietly.

  ‘Hey, Toby, so how was your drive, hey? See lots of other dogs?’ Treppie asks.

  ‘And you, Gerty old girl, how does Triomf look to you today, hmmm?’

  Suddenly Treppie slips off his crate and slides down on to his heels. He pretends he’s walking on his back paws, like a trained poodle. Toby and Gerty run around him, jumping up and down.

  Then he goes down on his knees, stretching his arms out in front of him with his knuckles on the floor. And then he lifts his nose up into the air, letting out a long dog-wail.

  ‘Ag Christ no, Treppie,’ Mol says. ‘Don’t start that nonsense now. Just now we get into trouble with next door again.’

  But it’s too late.

  Treppie’s crying like the dogs.

  Toby and Gerty’s barking gets higher and thinner, until their voices break and they too give in to the crying. They sit next to Treppie with their front legs stretched out in front of them, their snouts lifted up into the air, just like him. The way they cry, all three of them, you’d swear they were in a little choir together.

  Lambert comes in from the back. He smiles when he sees what’s going on.

  Then Lambert joins in too, wailing like a dog. He knows this game of Treppie’s, and he likes it. It’s a long time since they last played like this. He thinks it’s big fun, this game. If they carry on long and hard enough, then all the dogs will eventually join them. Martha Street’s dogs and the other streets’ dogs, until the dogs are crying all the way to Ontdekkers and beyond.

  ‘Ag Jesus no, you two, stop this now, just now someone calls the police again and then all hell breaks loose.’ Mol motions to Pop. He must do something.

  Leave them, Pop shows with his hands, it’ll pass. That’s the quickest way, with the least pain and misery, is what he means. It’s like a clock’s alarm that you have to let run all the way to the end.

  ‘Oowhoooeee-oowhoooeee!’ wails Treppie.

  ‘Oowhoooeee-oowhoooeee!’ cries Lambert.

  ‘Ee-ee-ee-ee-eeee!’ wails Gerty.

  ‘Whoof-whoof-whoof-whoeee!’ shouts Toby.

  Treppie comes slowly to his feet. Now he pretends he’s holding a microphone, swaying his hips like Elvis. He got a frown on his face like he’s hot for something but he doesn’t know what. Mol thinks she can guess.

  He signals with his other hand to Lambert, he must join in. Lambert plays along. He’s also holding a microphone. Now they’re a duet. They’re singing the great sadness of dogs, to the tune of ‘Pass me not, Oh gentle Saviour’, stretching out the notes as far as they can.

  It’s like they’re on stage, Mol thinks. Now all they need are some lights.

  Treppie and Lambert signal to Mol and Pop to join in.

  But they just sit and watch.

  Treppie makes as if he’s pulling the microphone cord through his fingers, like he’s got the Elvis’ shakes. Then he pulls the cord out from under his feet, shuffling from one foot to the other.

  Up and down the lounge he walks, like that Rolling Stone on TV the other night. He points a long finger up into the air. Lambert stands to one side with his eyes closed. He sways his body as he cries for the gentle Saviour that’s passing him by. His face is turned upwards like he’s waiting for rain on his cheeks after a long drought.

  ‘Bow-ow-owww-oeee!’ cries Treppie.

  ‘Wha-owwww-ooeee!’ answers Lambert.

  Toby and Gerty provide the accompaniment.

  Mol just sits. These two are working themselves up nicely again. Where will it all end tonight? There’s Treppie’s bottle of Klipdrift on the sideboard. Must’ve been at it since late afternoon already. She looks at Pop. No, he doesn’t know either.

  But Pop looks like he wants to smile. He lifts his finger to one side, holding his head at an angle. She must listen, outside. She listens.

  Oh yes, there goes next door’s woolly-arsed dog. Treppie says it’s a husky who’s got too much pedigree for Triomf. That lot next door also think they’re high and migh
ty.

  Now Mol begins to smile too.

  Pop points with his finger to the other side. There go the fish-breeder’s five Malteses.

  Well, well. Here we go again.

  The Benades have got Triomf in the palm of their hands again.

  Treppie goes out the front door, wailing his Saviour song, with Lambert on his heels. Lambert winks at Mol and Pop, they must come too. They go and sit on the edge of the little stoep. It’s almost dark now.

  Lambert and Treppie stand on the lawn, with Toby and Gerty between them. They’ve all got their noses up in the air.

  Treppie and Lambert push up the revs.

  ‘Wild dogs!’ says Pop.

  ‘Jackals and wolves!’ says Mol.

  Now all the neighbourhood dogs are crying, big dogs and small dogs, all wailing together.

  Each time Treppie and Lambert let out a few nice wails of their own, they cock their heads to one side, and then they listen.

  They stand facing each other, and when they start up again, they both take a deep breath, bend their bodies slightly forward, sag down a bit and then, as they take in air for another wail, tilt their necks over backwards, with mouths pouting up into the sky. As if they’re sucking the sound up through their bodies, from deep under the ground, from the hollows of Triomf.

  Treppie learnt this game from Old Pop when they still lived in Vrededorp. Shame, Old Pop also just did his best.

  Mol remembers, there were just as many dogs on that side.

  That’s how Old Pop used to amuse them when he felt jolly. There wasn’t much entertainment in Vrededorp in those days, specially in their house. ‘You’re teaching the children bad things, Lambertus,’ Old Mol always said to their father, but even she couldn’t help smiling a bit.

  Of the three of them, only Treppie really caught on how to make the dogs cry.

  And now Treppie’s teaching Lambert. The way things are going, it looks like Lambert’s a natural.

  Mol gets a funny feeling in her stomach all of a sudden, listening to the dogs crying out there in the dusk, near and far.

  They’re in good form now. The dogs are almost at the point where they don’t need Treppie and Lambert any more. They’ve got their own front-criers leading them and giving them the notes, and the others pick them up and run with them, the high notes and the low notes and the ones in the middle.

  The sound of dogs crying echoes further and further through the streets. Then, suddenly, on the western side, there’s a barking noise that sounds louder and different.

  ‘Those must be the pit bulls,’ says Pop.

  ‘Do you remember when Old Pop used to do this?’ Mol asks.

  ‘Jaaa,’ says Pop. Pop must be able to hear from her voice what she’s thinking. He always knows what she’s thinking, old Pop.

  ‘Shame, Pop,’ Mol says. ‘Who will Lambert teach how to make the dogs cry, one day?’

  Pop has no answer. Mol picks up Gerty and presses her tightly to her chest.

  ‘Who, Gerty?’ she asks. ‘Who will Lambert have to teach?’

  2

  THE WITNESSES

  It’s ten o’clock in the morning. Lambert feels hot. It should rain but it won’t. The sun-filter curtains, which he ripped down last night, hang over the pelmet in tatters, where Treppie chucked them afterwards. The window’s open, but the curtains don’t move. Yesterday it wanted to rain but it didn’t. Dust and flies swim around in the broad strip of sun slanting into the room.

  Everyone’s in the lounge. It’s Sunday and they’re listening to the Witnesses of Triomf. A Boeing flies overhead and the house trembles. As the plane passes, the Witness who’s reading keeps moving her lips but they can’t hear a word she’s saying. Then the Boeing passes by and they can hear again. It drones further and further away. Must be heading for Jan Smuts.

  ‘“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand”.’

  Lambert tries not to look at the Witness as she reads. He looks at his hands, at the lines on his palms, his fingers and his three missing fingertips. They got caught in the escalator when he was six years old. He didn’t actually see Treppie doing it, but he’s always known it was Treppie who pushed him. On purpose. Now he lifts his head and looks past the Witness in the pink dress at Treppie. Treppie’s sitting on a beer crate, squinting at the big aerial photo of Jo’burg that hangs from the wall just above Mol’s head. It was on a calendar he brought home with him one day. Must’ve been another thing he got from the Chinese.

  ‘But it’s last year’s calendar,’ his mother still said. ‘What rubbish is this now?’

  ‘It’s for the picture,’ Treppie said, ‘so we make no mistake where we live.’ Then he took a hammer out of the toolbox and started banging a nail into the wall.

  ‘You’ll crack the plaster,’ Pop said.

  ‘Then let it crack,’ said Treppie, hanging up the calendar on its hard little plastic loop. His mother later cut off the part with the dates on. Now the bottom edges are curling up.

  Lambert narrows his eyes to slits so he can see the little crosses Treppie made on the picture. A cross for Triomf, where they live now, and one for Vrededorp, where they used to live. No, it was him who made the crosses, with a red ball-point. Treppie showed him where, pointing with the sharp end of his pocket-knife. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘There!’

  Vrededorp wasn’t there any more, not the part where they used to live. And he couldn’t, not for the life of him, make out from above, on such a small photo, where Vrededorp ended and Triomf began – it was somewhere in the area of Westdene and Pageview and Newlands and Bosmont. Everything just started swimming before his eyes.

  Treppie shifts on his crate. He takes out his pocket-knife and slowly opens it up. Lambert can see Treppie’s checking out the Witness. He, Lambert, also can’t help looking at her, even when he tries not to. She’s wearing a smooth, shiny, pink petticoat that shows right through her cotton print dress. The dress is full of red and purple roses. They also show through. In front, where her knees come together, he can see the petticoat. He can also see it along the side where the roses got scrunched up as she sat down in Pop’s chair, the petticoat pulling tightly around her thighs.

  He drops his eyes and looks past his knees, at the floor. Then he sees a lost ant. It runs first this way, then that. Lost. He looks for the others, but they’re on the far side of the room, in a line on the wall. When ants get lost like this, you know it’s going to rain. Lambert cups his hand in front of his crotch. Then he pulls his toes into an arch and slowly lifts up the balls of his feet. Loose wooden blocks from the parquet floor stick to the bottom of his feet. They go ‘click’ as he lifts them up. He could at least have washed his feet. Just look how dirty they are. But that doesn’t help either. Dirty feet or not. Lost ants or ants marching in a row. It cuts no ice, as Treppie always says, ’cause he’s already got a hard-on. When he looks up, he catches his mother looking at him.

  The Witness reads: ‘“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.”’

  Treppie says that the girl they’re going to get for him won’t be wearing a petticoat. Her kind don’t wear petticoats. Or rather, he says, petticoats are all they wear. He must remember to tell Treppie he doesn’t mind petticoats. Or dresses with petticoats. As long as it’s not overalls, or a ‘housecoat’, as his mother calls it. He hates the sight of housecoats.

  He sticks a match into his mouth and frowns, like the cowboys on videos do as they pull their horses around when they get up the hills, so they can check where the Indians are, far below on the plains.

  He looks at the lounge and everything in it.

  Pop’s sitting on a crate with his back against the wall. Toby lies between Pop’s feet. His eyebrows and ears twitch as he listens to the Witness. Pop’s braces hang over his knees. His white hair stands up
in little tufts on his head and his mouth hangs open. Any minute now he’ll fall asleep again. Pop’s almost eighty, and the closer he gets to his birthday, the more he sleeps. Treppie says Pop’s different to all the other old people he knows. They lie wide awake, he says, waiting for death.

  His mother says Pop’s tired. They must just leave him alone. Next to Pop is the sideboard with its bandy legs: three bandy legs and one brick. He can’t remember which night it happened, but there was a mega fuck-around here again. Last night’s glasses are still on the half-piece of tray on top of the sideboard. It’s been like that for a long time now. Ever since he broke the thing over Pop’s chair that time.

  It was Treppie who started the whole thing, over stuff in the sideboard’s top drawer that he, Lambert, isn’t supposed to see or know anything about. Then there’s his mother’s library books from the Newlands library. Next to them is the china cat without a head. When it broke, his mother went and fetched a plastic yellow rose from the bunch on her dressing table and stuck it into the cat’s hollow neck.

  ‘There, that’s a little better,’ she said. That was a year ago.

  His father might be old, but his mother’s over the hill. Completely. She sits with her legs wide apart under her housecoat. In-out, in-out, she moves her false tooth. She’s sitting there with Gerty on her lap. Gerty’s mouth hangs open. Above their heads he can see the coloured-in photo of her and Pop and Treppie. She’s holding a bunch of roses. Yellow, touched-up roses. All you see are teeth, the way they’re smiling. When she was in her prime, she used to sell roses. That’s after she stopped working at the factory. She sold them at bioscopes and restaurants.

  ‘Better days,’ she says every time she straightens the portrait following another earth tremor.

  These days she swallows all the time, and the skin around her throat is beginning to shrivel. Now she’s staring at the bits of curtain in front of the window.

  Treppie suddenly jerks forward on his crate and starts cleaning his nails with his pocket-knife. The knife goes ‘grr-grr’ as it scrapes under his nails. His face is blue from not shaving and he looks live, like an open electric wire. His shoulder twitches. Lambert’s not sure whether it’s him or Treppie giving off the Klipdrift fumes that he can smell all over the room. From last night, when the curtains came down. When Treppie started taunting him about his birthday again. They mustn’t taunt him. He gives as good as he gets.