Triomf Read online

  When he starts off like this, she always prays he’ll stuff himself up completely before he gets to her, otherwise she gets what’s left of him.

  And God knows, the last bit of stuffing is always the bitterest.

  What’s more, the shit flies ’cause his thing is so hard these days, ’cause he’s almost forty and he still hasn’t got a woman. Never had one either. But what’s she supposed to do about it? He is what he is. And he’s no good for marriage, ’cause of the fits and everything. There’s a reason for it, of course. That’s something they all know. Except him. God help them the day he finds out.

  She and Pop just try to stay on his good side. They do what they can. She does even more than she can. She feels she owes it to him.

  Treppie’s the one who looks for shit with Lambert all the time. Treppie’s a devil. He digs up shit and then, when he finds it, he sees how much more he can dig up. Treppie says he doesn’t want people here. She and Pop feel the same. Not the Jehovahs, not the NPs, not the police. Nobody. It’s better like that. They’re better off on their own. They are what they are. That’s what she said to the welfare, and now they’ve stopped coming too, thank God.

  But there’s still Lambert. He wants company. He says how can he just stare into their faces all day long. He needs people to talk to. So he invites them in.

  He actually stands out there on the pavement in the stinking heat and whistles to the Jehovahs to come inside.

  She remembers when he started doing it. It was just before he left school. He was sixteen. That was when the Jehovahs came in for the first time. And once they’re in, they’re in for good. If one of them dies, they send new girls with pink dresses to come and sit here in their chairs on Sunday mornings, smelling of lavender.

  The pile of Watchtowers in Lambert’s den is now almost as high as the ceiling. That’s in one corner. The NP’s new pamphlets are in the other corner, on top of the box of pamphlets from the last time they voted. That was when the NP came to fetch them in a grey van and they voted ‘Yes’. In their own backyard they do as they like, but to the outside world they always say ‘Yes’. United they stand. Treppie too. It’s best that way.

  And then there’s the heap of Western Telegraphs. And Scopes. And Sees. Lambert reads the lot. Short stuff that you can read quickly – he says it’s to keep his brain awake. Just not books. He says books put him to sleep. But that’s what he gets from Treppie. Lambert repeats everything Treppie says. Treppie used to read lots of books when he was still young. But then one day he stopped, just like that, and even today he’ll tell you the same story. He says he figures that if you’ve read ten Afrikaans books you’ve read them all, and in any case, the best stories are in the papers. He’d rather watch videos with Lambert, but then he sits and sleeps. Lambert too, sometimes.

  She wishes Lambert would always sleep, like he’s doing now. He’s far too wide awake inside his head, and everywhere else, too. What he doesn’t paint on those walls of his. Dicks. And moles, with things stuck up you know where. Roads for Africa. Cars and the insides of fridges. The insides of people, all on top of each other. And he keeps painting more, on top of everything else. Most of the time she can’t make out what it is. Him neither, ’cause he writes names next to the drawings: star, cloud, bee, exhaust pipe, crack, fuck, cunt, pump, heart, rust, rose, evaporator.

  He’s always been too wide awake. That’s what she said to Pop when he told her the child was backward. There was nothing backward about him, she said. He gets fits ’cause he’s too clever, ’cause his brain’s too busy.

  And once he starts working himself up, it’s a struggle to calm him down again. God knows, it’s hard. There’s only one thing that helps. She found this out when he was still very small. Just three years old. One day in the old house in Vrededorp, when he was squealing like a pig, she rubbed his little thingy for him. Then he suddenly became all meek and mild, smiling at her with his big blue eyes.

  In later years, when Lambert began to swear and get wild, breaking all their stuff so that Treppie would drag Pop out from behind the bathroom door where he was hiding and say to him, come, let’s pack our stuff so we can get out of this bladdy madhouse for once and for all, then she would say to Lambert he must come and lie down with her in the back room so he could find some peace for his soul.

  She would rub his thing until he was finished and then everything would be fine again. But after a while that wasn’t good enough any more. He wanted to put it in. He wanted to do it himself. What could she do? She lay down for him. She went and lay herself down. Housecoat and all.

  This was the way she’d kept them all together, Pop and Treppie and Lambert and herself.

  ’Cause they can’t do without each other. What would happen if something made them split up and they lost each other? They’d fall to pieces, the whole lot of them, like kaffirdogs on rubbish heaps.

  So she’d lain herself down for them. For Pop, but he was good to her. He was gentle. Always has been.

  And for Treppie, the devil, who’s been stuffing her all his life. From the front, and later, God help her, from the back too. He says it’s ’cause she’s stretched beyond repair.

  It’s a little more than a month since he last wanted it. That business of Peace Day must be working on his conscience. If he has such a thing. She just hopes it lasts. He can write his little verses, anything. But he must just cut her out.

  Mol looks up at Treppie’s poem on the wall where she pasted it, along with all the other things.

  ‘“And, not least, at last there is peace”,’ she reads. It’s the last part of the poem.

  Hmph, she’s never believed Treppie would change his ways.

  ‘But never say never, hey, old Gerty,’ she says to the dog at her feet. ‘That’s what Treppie always says.’

  And then there’s Lambert. Lambert, who’ll still be the end of her. The bloody end.

  Lambert doesn’t know when to stop. No, nowadays he wants stories too. Stories she doesn’t know, about spy women with guns in their suspenders, in trains, in tunnels, under mountains in other countries, overseas. And stories about cowboy women.

  At least she knows these stories a bit better. Poor cowboy women with long dresses who live alone on farms and shoot Indians with long rifles through the kitchen window. Lambert watches too many videos. And now she has to watch, too, so she knows what stories to tell.

  ’Cause otherwise, if it doesn’t work, it’s all her fault. Bitter, bitter is her lot in this house.

  So, when the time for drinking comes, she joins them for a shot. Klipdrift and Coke. And then they say, ‘Hey, old Molletjie, you jolly old thing!’ and they smack her on the bum. ‘Tell us a story, girl!’

  Then it’s different. Then it’s the really old stories they want to hear.

  She tells them about the roses. They know the story but she tells it anyway, it’s her best story. It was the best time of their lives. Just after they moved into this house, and out of Old Pop’s house in Fietas. Triomf was full of new people. They didn’t know anyone and no one knew them, but that was okay. Everyone was young and they all wanted to make a fresh start in this new place. It was nice and jolly. The location was bulldozed and the kaffirs were gone. In those days kaffirs still knew their place. The National Party used to do the things they said they were doing. Not like now, when they say one thing but do another thing and she doesn’t know what’s what any more. But she couldn’t really be bothered. The National Party has never been able to stop three men from getting the better of her in one morning. If they really want to help, the National Party must provide some prostitutes. Well-paid, plump, fancy broads to save women like her from their lot in life. If they have enough money to pay state murderers, as Treppie says, then why can’t they also pay state whores? At least it won’t kill anyone. It will just stop women like her from getting stabbed with knives and shut up in fridges with Peking Ducks. Maybe if she’s had enough Klipdrift to drink one day, she’ll say it to those two chickens from the NP who
come here to do their canvassing. Those two are asking for it anyway. Maybe then she can have some fun too. It’s not just Treppie and Lambert who can bugger around with people. Or make speeches. Maybe they need to see her in action for a change. Maybe then they’ll have some respect for her. She’ll stand up and make a speech, and she’ll say: ‘If you want to win the election for the New South Africa, then you must build a brothel here in Triomf. Painted on the outside and tiled on the inside, like a bathroom. With a nice garden in front, and pot plants in the reception with big shiny leaves. The HF Verwoerd Whorehouse. A brothel that does its business in the clear light of day, where no one will need to feel ashamed. Then all the buggering around in South Africa will come to a stop.’ Ik heb gezegd, as Old Mol always used to say.

  Shame, she can just see that little girly with the bare shoulders staring at her in shock. Knows nothing about life. As it is, her eyes look like saucers when she walks in here with her pamphlets. Then it’ll be her turn to laugh. Then everyone, including the NP, will see what a jolly old girl she really is.

  She’s always been jolly. She’s always been game for some fun. It was big fun to go with Pop to the market early on Wednesday mornings in the old Austin lorry. That was after she lost her job in Fordsburg, after they got the idea about roses. Those days it was still Hybrid Teas, Old Hybrid Teas, as she remembers it. Lady Sylvia, Madam Butterfly, Ophelia. And then there were the Prima Ballerinas and the Whisky Macs. Old-fashioned roses with a beautiful scent. She and Pop used to walk around for a long time, sniffing the different roses before they decided. Just for the joy of it. ‘Like peaches,’ Pop said about some. ‘Like vanilla,’ she’d say. They could spend hours like that, telling each other what the roses smelt like. A nice scent was important, and so was a long, sturdy stem, with a bud that was just beginning to open. The market was a lovely place. All those people, and the flowers, and all the mixed-up smells of vegetables and fruit and roses under that high roof. And so cheap. In those days you paid two shillings for a bunch of thirty Red Alecs. Red was everyone’s favourite. Not hers, she went for yellow, but her customers wanted the reds, the ones she sold for a sixpence each to people in restaurants, or on the steps of the city hall after concerts, or late at night when the bioscope came out.

  They’d buy three bunches, and sometimes Pop said, ‘Don’t tell Treppie, but aren’t you also a little thirsty?’ Then they’d go and sit in the café with the roses on their laps and order cream-soda floats.

  And then they’d go home. She’d take Lambert from Treppie and put him in his walking ring, and she’d sit on the little step outside the kitchen, making up the roses, each with its own Cellophane and a ribbon around the stalk. Pop and Treppie helped. Treppie used to cut the Cellophane into strips and Pop pulled the ribbons over the scissors so they curled up. As soon as there were enough ribbons curling like that, Pop would go fetch his mouth organ so he could play them ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’. He played it nice and fast so Lambert could jump up and down in his walking ring. And then he’d play sadly and slowly and sway from side to side, and Treppie would get fidgety and leave everything just like that, saying this was no job for a man, that he and Pop should go fetch fridges now.

  Treppie’s the one who started with the fridges. He brought them along, to Triomf. If she could carry on selling roses, he said, then he could go on fixing fridges. Forget the fact that Triomf was supposed to be a more decent place than Vrededorp. Those days he still thought he was going to get rich.

  And just look at him now. He sits and boozes with the Chinese all day long. She still doesn’t believe he does a stitch of work there, no matter what he says. Gambling, yes. Horses, yes. But why should he need the Chinese for that kind of thing? Other people are a mystery.

  She’s always said to Pop she doesn’t want to be rich. Pop says him neither, all his life he’s just wanted to help Treppie, and now her. He says as long as he can keep himself busy and have enough to eat, he couldn’t care about money. Not that he needed to care all that much. The fridge business was a helluva flop.

  The roses were also not such a great success. All in all, they just managed to break even, once you counted the little Austin’s petrol and the Cellophane and the ribbons and everything. But at least it was fun and it kept them jolly.

  She used to leave Lambert with Treppie at night and then Pop would drive her around. First they looked in the paper to see what was on that night and then she used to put on her smart yellow linen dress, the one with the black piping, which she used for selling roses. After she put on some rouge and stepped into her high-heels, she’d put on her housecoat over her nice clothes so they wouldn’t get wet when she and Pop loaded the buckets of flowers into the Austin. That housecoat only came off when they were right in front of the city hall.

  She’d put fifteen Red Alecs and five yellows and five pinks into the cane basket and she’d say to Pop: ‘How do I look, Pop?’ And he’d say: ‘Like the yellow rose of Texas, Molletjie.’ Then she was ready.

  Pop used to park the Austin around the corner so it wouldn’t chase away their business there in the middle of all the smart cars, and she’d go stand in front of the city hall’s great wooden doors, about five minutes before all the people came out, so she could first get herself ready.

  She used to sing ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, to clear her head. Clear out the yard with all its broken fridges and the child who was so difficult.

  She sang so she could forget how she closed her eyes and opened them and closed them again when she saw the deep, red burns on his little legs.

  She sang so she could forget Treppie’s high voice when he made all his excuses. ‘No man, I was busy welding in the back and the next thing he was holding a red-hot piece of metal here against his leg.’

  She sang so she could forget how Treppie began stuffing her the moment Pop turned his back, and how he fucked her while Lambert screamed his head off in his walking ring in the backyard.

  She sang two or three verses of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, until she began to feel better, until she herself began to feel like a rose, a yellow one, just beginning to open, so you could see it was almost orange on the inside. A beautifully scented rose on a long stem, wrapped up in shiny Cellophane, giving off little sparks in the stoep-lights of the city hall. Then she was ready. Then, when she offered someone a yellow rose – which didn’t happen a lot, ’cause most of the time they wanted the red ones – it was almost as if she was offering herself, her best self to the gentlemen in their white collars and the fancy women on their arms. The self she could look upon and say: It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s okay! So loud that she wouldn’t hear that other voice, the one she hears most of the time when things start getting so rough. The voice of Old Mol: Bad! Bad! You lot are bad! And you’re getting worse by the day!

  But she doesn’t tell the other three this part of the story. She just stops at the part where Pop drives the Austin round the block; where she stands, with her basket, in front of the great wooden doors. She just keeps quiet, swallowing down her Klipdrift and Coke.

  She picks up the story again where the people came pouring out of those doors, and she had to talk English, ’cause not many Afrikaners could afford roses in those days. Ja, she leaves out that part about her becoming a rose. Drink that part down, ’cause it would just start trouble again. For bladdy sure. She’s almost forgotten it in any case, that business about feeling like a rose and everything.

  ‘And so, what did you say to those people, Molletjie,’ Pop always asks, to get her going again.

  Then she says: ‘Good evening, sir, would you like to buy a rose for the charming lady at your side?’

  At that, Lambert almost falls off his chair from laughing, and then he repeats, ‘The charming lady at your side’, and Pop smiles, too.

  ‘We have here a Red Alec, a pink Prima Ballerina and a yellow Whisky Mac,’ she says next.

  ‘We,’ Treppie says. ‘We! What rubbish.’ And he storms off to go drink outside on the grass
.

  Treppie always says he’s got enough misery as it is. Why bother with yesterday’s misery? He says he wanted to get rich with the fridges, but how can anyone get rich on fucken anything in Vrededorp or Triomf when other people go spend your money on roses?

  That’s what he always used to say, in Vrededorp too. ‘Mol, you’re wasting our money. I work my fingers to the bone and what do you do? Spend it on rubbish. What do you actually bring in? Bugger all! Red Alec my foot! You’re just wasting time. We need food and clothes and a car that works. Not roses. And now you’ve got this child as well. Madam Butterfly! Why don’t you go char for the rich people in Parktown. Or let them teach you to sell stamps at the Post Office. Then at least you’ll be doing something useful. We’re working at home in any case. We’ll look after Lambert for you. At least the little bugger listens to me.’

  And Pop always says: ‘Ag, Treppie, leave Mol alone. It’s her only real pleasure in life.’

  That’s what Pop says still, to this day, when she tells her story.

  ‘Leave Mol alone, Treppie, leave her alone, man, it’s the only nice thing she’s got left to remember.’

  Then Treppie says: ‘All right, all right,’ and he looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. ‘All right, old Mol, tell us again about when we became a republic, old girl.’

  When we became a republic. That’s another story. Too difficult to tell, actually. But Treppie wants what he wants, so she tells the story.

  Pop said they should make a day out of it. 31 May 1961. It was just after they’d moved here, to Triomf. The grass hadn’t even been planted yet. There was just dust everywhere. But there was no stopping Pop. Poor old Pop, he’s always been a sucker for the big occasion.