Treppie doesn’t like visitors.
His mother even takes off her overall for them. Her housecoat. She’s got a blue one and a pink one, and it doesn’t matter which one it is, when the NPs come, she takes it off and hangs it up on the nail behind the kitchen door. And then she fidgets with her bun and all to make sure she still looks decent. He wishes the NPs would move in here with them, so his mother would never have to wear the overall again. She says she keeps it on so she won’t mess up her clothes. That’s what she said when he was little and she still says it now. ‘Mess up,’ she says, pulling a face. But he saw, long ago, when Pop still wanted to, how she used to take the housecoat off for him.
The only other time she takes it off is when she and Treppie go sit in the back room to talk about family matters. What family matters? he always wants to know, but Treppie just winks that devil’s wink of his. ‘Family secrets,’ he says. And then he smacks her on the bum as they go in through the door.
Not that there’s ever much discussion behind that door. But then family secrets aren’t things you go around announcing from the rooftops. Like the fact that his mother doesn’t wear panties. It’s that kind of secret. Treppie told him that. He says it comes from when they were children and there wasn’t enough money for women’s panties. They’ve got dresses after all, and no one needs to know.
Lambert doesn’t mind that either. It’s that housecoat of hers that gets him down. It smells sour, like the dishrags in the kitchen.
Lambert gets up. He pulls his shorts up over his bum and then switches on the fan standing on top of the sideboard. It makes a soft zooming sound, but it doesn’t budge. He looks back into the room first, and then he smacks the fan behind its head. The blade and the head immediately start turning, back and forth. Pop half wakes up, almost falling off his crate.
‘Lambert,’ he mumbles. Lambert shifts the fan so the Witness with the pink dress gets the most wind. Her hair begins to fly about and her dress blows against her body. She takes over the reading. Her voice is a little higher now and her shoulders lift as she breathes between sentences. She’s drawing on her spirit.
Lambert touches the front of his pants. Christ, if this dick of his would only stop playing up like this. He bends over double and walks back past the Witness. Then he sits down and tries to concentrate on what she’s reading, about the Son of Man in the midst of the seven candlesticks, clothed in a garment down to the foot, with a golden girdle around the chest. Funny place to wear a belt. Must be something like the president’s oranje-blanje-blou sash that he wears across his chest. He wonders how they’re going to get all the new flag’s colours on to the president’s sash. They’ll just have to make it broader, or the stripes thinner. Treppie will say it’s all in the mind. That’s just about the only thing he says nowadays, no matter what you talk about.
The fan’s another thing Treppie got from the Chinese. Its head was jammed with rust and the wires were burnt into each other. But he fixed it. Now all it needs is a little smack and then it works. He, Lambert, knows what he’s talking about when it comes to machines and gadgets and stuff. He knows how to make them work. A thing that won’t work gets his goat. A thing that won’t work is almost as bad as a thing that gets lost, something you can’t find no matter how hard you look.
It does him the hell in. He fixes things. Or he searches till he finds them, even if he has to turn the whole house upside down or break things. Pop says it’s the cross he has to bear in life, the fact that broken things get on his tits: fans, tape recorders, video machines, the lot. That’s why he makes sure the lawn-mower is always tuned, and the grass is kept short, and that Molletjie’s timing is set and her oil gets changed. That other Volla standing on blocks here in the back is his fucken end, but one day he’s still going to kick it until it’s fixed, kick it right into its glory. And he struggles like hell with the Fuchs and the Tedelex. The Kneff is completely seized up, but he’ll still get the whole lot of them fixed and working again. Before his birthday. Before the election. And even if the election gets postponed for ten years, like some people say, he won’t let it stop him. ’Cause his birthday can’t be postponed.
The same goes for his birthday present.
Pop and Treppie will park around the corner and then bring her in quietly around the back so his mother won’t see. His mother’s the one who says he wasn’t born to mess with women, he must ‘make peace with his lot in life’. Who the hell does she think she is? Raquel Welch or something? He’ll show her. He’ll fucken ‘make peace’ with nothing. And he’ll mess around as much as he likes.
Then they’ll knock softly on the back door of his den and say: ‘Lambert, she’s here.’ And when he opens the door, she’ll be standing right there. With blonde curls all the way down to her shoulders and a pink petticoat and make-up and high-heels and the works. It will be the end of April, so maybe she’ll be wearing a coat over her shoulders. Then he’ll stand aside. And as she walks past, he’ll say, ‘Allow me.’ He’ll take off her coat and hang it up behind the door. His red light will be on. And he’ll say: ‘Take a seat. Would you like something to drink?’
Just like that. He’ll take the ice out of the Tedelex’s ice-box, and the nice cold Coke out of the inside door of the Fuchs, and he’ll open and close the doors slowly so she can see. Yes, see. ’Cause even their inside lights will be working. She’ll see how those fridges are stacked full of Castles and polonies. And the Spar’s fancy dips, fish dip and cheese dip, and maybe even a box of wine. Enough for a week. He’ll have his Simba boerewors chips and his Willards cheese-and-onion crinkle cut ready. And lemons for the Coke. Right there on his work bench. And peanuts, too!
Later, when things are going dandy, he’ll switch on the Kneff for her, with nothing in it but water and washing powder, just for the hell of it. And then he’ll tell her about Hitler’s dirty Jews, and they’ll stand on a beer crate and look down at the foam it makes, that Industrial Kneff from the war. And they’ll put their hands on the Kneff and feel how nicely she runs, ‘wish-wash-wish-wash’, non-stop, without a hitch.
Lambert stares at the Witness in the pink dress. She’s also got curly hair. But her curls are brown, not blonde. Now if her hair was blonde, she’d be dead right. All she needs is a little more make-up. He feels himself getting hot and cold, but he holds on. He tries to look at something else. He looks down. A mouse runs across the floor.
Mouse, his mother points. Her mouth opens wide, but she doesn’t make a sound.
Just the Witness’s mouth makes sounds. ‘White like wool’, ‘as a flame of fire’, ‘unto fine brass’, ‘as the sound of many waters’, ‘the Son of Man’.
Elvis’s lips move as Pink Dress reads, but you can’t hear him. His eyes are on the mouth of the Witness who’s reading. He rubs his hands softly over his legs.