And the screwdrivers with their many different bits for different screws, the Keystone, the Cabinet, the Philips, the Frearson, the Clutchhead, the Allen and the Bristol. Treppie took them out, one by one, showing them to Lambert. And Lambert said their names, with her repeating them afterwards. It was like catechism, just nicer.
Then there was the iron saw, with a thin little packet full of brand-new shining blades. The flaring tool, the tube-cutter and the tube-clamp, the different hammers with thick and thin heads, and, right at the end, the mechanic’s stethoscope, which you use to listen to the rattles and the hums of a fridge, as Treppie put it. What about the ‘cheeree-cheeree’ and the ‘click-click’? she asked him, but Treppie said those were noises you could hear with a naked ear. If you wanted to hear the music of the spheres, you needed a stethoscope.
Treppie put the stethoscope’s plugs in Lambert’s ears and said he should hold the probe to Pop’s chest so he could hear what music was playing in there.
Lambert listened and said: ‘Silence is golden,’ and he laughed ‘ha! ha!’ at his own joke. But there was nothing funny about that joke.
Pop said, no, maybe the little amplifier wasn’t working.
Treppie said everything in his trunk worked. He switched on the amplifier so Lambert could listen again.
‘Looba-doop-doop, looba-doop-doop, looba-doop-doop,’ Lambert mimicked Pop’s heart.
‘That’s a reggae beat you’ve got there, Pop!’ Lambert said.
She wanted to know what reggae was. All they could come up with was an argument about kaffir music. Treppie said it was music from the kaffir-paradise north of the equator, but Lambert said it was what Lucky Dube played in Soweto and, as far as he knew, that was on the western side.
North or west, that toolbox session didn’t pass before everyone listened to everyone else’s heart, and they all laughed about the strange beats and the blowings and suckings of valves in each other’s insides.
She was the only one who didn’t think it was so funny, even though she pretended to laugh along for the occasion. After a while she told them a person would swear they were a bunch of fridges standing in a circle. They shouldn’t make fun of sickness.
But who was so sick, then? Treppie wanted to know, and she said no one in particular, sickness was always looking for a place to slip in.
Treppie said she mustn’t be silly, sickness wasn’t something that floated around in the air, it was something that bred under people’s skin and in their marrow. Only lunatic germs survived in pure air and came in through people’s ears, like earwigs. Then Pop said everything was going so nicely this morning, Treppie shouldn’t start multiplying germs now, and she shouldn’t worry about what was in the air, or about his heart, and Lambert was hearing wrong, it wasn’t a reggae beat, most of the time his heart beat like a hesitation waltz, otherwise it went like a slow foxtrot.
That sounded like a hectic medley, Treppie said, but fortunately he stopped poking fun at sickness.
When he was finished with the things in the trunk, all the regular joints and fittings, the gaskets, rolls of soldering wire, flux, files, iron brushes, gum in bottles, the aluminium that you melt to fix ice-boxes, and right at the bottom, a heavy, black thing, the high-vacuum pump, Treppie opened up his army bag.
He began to take out long-necked things on stands, with heads that made the lounge look like it was full of spacemen. Cylinders for fridge-gas and service cylinders, and the multiple gauge with its black pipes rolled up like centipedes. The hand pump and the special cylinders for welding, one with oxygen and the other for welding-gas.
‘Oxy-a-ce-ty-lene,’ Lambert said slowly, blowing ‘tssss!’ through his teeth and making slow figure eights in the air as if he were welding. Treppie passed him the goggles so he could see if the rubber band fitted his head.
‘Watch out for that thing, hey,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Pop said, ‘when you were small, you took that hot flame and pressed it to your flesh.’
‘Never mind,’ said Treppie, ‘if he hadn’t started welding himself so early he wouldn’t have been Lambert the Iron Man today.’
The last thing Treppie took out of his bag was the volt-meter, which he showed Lambert how to work, as well as a set of thermometers with funny dials on curved stalks. That was for sticking into the places in a fridge where warm and cold need to be measured. Then Treppie wanted to stick one of those things into her, as if to take her temperature, and they all chased her around the house. Pop too, but she knew it was only a joke, and that all they meant by it was that she’s the only woman in the house. Who else can they chase around? They were glad she was such a sport. He wouldn’t try taking Lambert’s temperature, Treppie said, ’cause he remembered how that Passion Meter had boiled in two ticks and he didn’t have the money for new thermometers.
She and Pop helped to drag the trunk to the den, catching on loose blocks all the time. They felt it was enough of a business now. Things had to finish now.
Pop was very tired afterwards. He said the whole business of handing over the family treasures had exhausted him. But it was done now, and he felt light again, as if someone had taken a burden off his back. He said he felt reborn. Really. He even sings in the bathroom in the mornings. Not that she likes what he sings, ‘Nearer my God to Thee’, ’cause he actually feels further away from her than ever.
19. THE MIRACLE OF THE FRIDGES
THE FIRST MIRACLE: TINY BUBBLES 
It’s late. Lambert’s lying on his back in bed so he can listen with both ears to the hum of his fridges. They sound as if nothing’s ever been wrong with them. He smiles to himself in the dark.
They should start with the Fuchs, Treppie said, sniffing at the black shell of the Fuchs compressor on the workshop bench, ’cause if he remembered right, this wasn’t a burn-out, it was just a leak or two. Or a thousand and one, for that matter. After ’76 they sometimes took in fridges that leaked like they’d been in a riot. Birdshot, buckshot, that kind of thing. A fridge was a flimsy thing when it came to riots.
They put the compressor back into the engine and they bent the condenser tubes back into shape, the ones Lambert had ripped out. They welded the joints and cleaned everything up.
They also deep vacuumed the whole system, drained the oil and flushed the motor with R-11 before pumping new oil and gas back into the fridge.
When they started it up, Treppie showed him on the gauge how the pressure began falling to hell and was gone within an hour. The cycle ran all the time, without stopping inbetween, and the ice-box didn’t want to ice up properly.
‘This fridge is rotten with leaks. You must find them and mark them with a pencil on the joints and the tubing and the evaporator and everywhere else, the outside seals too. Then I’ll help you fix them. Then we simply fix them one by one till they’re all done.’
And he must remember, Treppie said, to open all the den’s windows, otherwise he’d get stoned from the gas. People who got stoned from fridge gas didn’t ever get liquid again. Their heads stayed solid until kingdom come.
He listened carefully to everything Treppie said, and he did everything Treppie said he must do. Working with Treppie was a big rave. They worked all February and March, and today’s the 17th April already. For more than two months they worked, morning, noon and night. The only time they stopped was when Pop brought them sandwiches. When Treppie had to go to the Chinese for a day there was always enough work to keep him busy in the meantime. He could see Treppie was also enjoying it. He’s been checking Treppie out. Ever since the fridges began working again he comes in here a lot, for this or that, he says, but he actually just wants to rest his hands on those two old fridges so he can feel how nice and steady they run.