‘Christ, no, I won’t touch one of those things,’ Treppie said. ‘Once I saw a Chinese trying to reverse a compressor. He blew himself up, together with the compressor and the capacitor and everything else too. All that was left of him was a hole in the wall and a wet spot!’
‘Yes, but that must have been a big pump, a commercial systems pump, for one of those helluva big walk-in coolers full of sweet and sour.’
He kept on nagging Treppie about the capacitor. He knew he’d give in eventually, even though Treppie stood there and looked at him in that funny way.
‘Come now, Treppie, man, we can reverse it just a touch, and then a bit more. You must just organise a capacitor for us.’
He’d think about it, Treppie said, wiping off his hands with a ball of cotton waste and walking out of the den’s back door.
But Treppie spent too much time thinking about it for his liking. And then, that same afternoon, he had a second brainwave. One that made his hair stand on end.
He pulled Flossie right up to the den with its battery side next to the outside door, and then he pushed the Tedelex close to the door as well.
At the very last minute he figured out that he’d better pull the Tedelex’s plug out of the wall, otherwise he’d shock the whole of Triomf into a different blood group.
He took out the jumper cables and connected them to the runningwinding and the starting-winding wires on top of the compressor shell. He tied the other ends of the cable to Flossie’s battery.
And then he climbed into Flossie and started her up, putting his foot down.
That was how he jump-started the Tedelex, there and then, Model 104, burnt out for almost twenty years and reconditioned under doubtful circumstances, as Treppie said. Just like that. One shot, first try!
It was a miracle. Neither Treppie nor Pop nor Eddie at West End Electrics had ever in their lives heard of a thing like that. Lambert had to explain over and over how he did it, and Treppie just stood there, shaking his head. ’Cause a car battery gave a straight current, not one with waves like a fridge needed, he said. Treppie asked him again what he’d done before jump-starting the Tedelex, and he said he’d kicked the fridge five times up its backside until it shat itself, and then Treppie said, aha! Now a light went on in his head, but he never said what kind of light he meant.
Light or no light, just hear how they run, both of them, like the terrible twins there next to each other on the den’s cement floor. He puts out his cigarette. Then he swings his legs off the bed and walks carefully through the dark, in bare feet, to his fridges. He opens both doors at the same time. Just check how bright those inside lights burn! He feels the ice-trays in the ice-boxes. Ice for Africa! He puts his head against the sides of the fridges, first one, then the other. Running as smoothly as a healthy heart, without a hitch. He feels behind for the condensers. Both are warm.
‘My ma bakes roly-poly’
he sings as he climbs back into bed
‘My daddy combs the goat
My brother rows the leaky boat
And I fix Frigidaires.’
He sings the last line of the song a few times until he gets it to fit nicely with the tune and the beat of ‘Sow the Watermelon’. No one must ever come and tell him not to expect miracles. There it is, against all odds! ‘Click’ goes the Fuchs as he settles into bed. ‘Clack’ goes the Tedelex as he rolls on to his side.
20. SUNRISE, SUNSET
FINISHING TOUCHES 
Lambert looks at the watch that Treppie got for him at the Chinese. It was to correct his sense of time, as Treppie put it, so his biological clock would stop running ahead of itself so dangerously.
A cheap piece of Chinese rubbish, but at least it shows the time and date. Five o’clock in the afternoon. Twenty-fifth April.
He’s sitting on a Dogmor tin, surveying his handiwork.
Actually, he’s looking at his hands.
They’re full of cuts and bruises. There’s still a plaster on the palm of one hand. It’s one of the spots that wouldn’t heal after the acid burnt him. Now the plaster’s black and frayed around the edges. He must remember to put on a new one before tonight.
He turns his hands so his nails face upwards. His fingers are trembling and his back feels lame from all the running around. And God, how his feet ache. But he’d rather not start looking at his feet now.
It’s Treppie who hurried him up so much. He thought he’d be getting his girl on the night of his birthday, which is the 26th. But then, yesterday, Treppie came with a new story, in front of his mother too, the bastard.
Actually, Treppie said, he was born just after midnight and it was ‘therefore’ already the 26th, and it was then that his birthday should begin, and ‘therefore’ his birthday present should be handed over to him on the night of the 25th. Handed over, he said, making curves in the air with his hands like a woman’s body. Handed over in good time, he said, so Lambert would be ready for the hour of reckoning.
His mother said, hmph, what reckoning was this now, his birth was more like an hour of tribulation, God alone knew.
No, Treppie said, she had to be positive now. For Lambert it would be an hour of triumph, not despair. And, he said, when you have a birthday, you rejoice the loudest, all the days of your life, the exact minute when someone held you upside down and smacked you till you said: Eh!
And he, Lambert, had to be ready, and everything else had to be ready too, on that exact moment just after twelve, as the 26th got going, so he could perform at his very best.
It was nothing less, said Treppie, winking that devil’s wink of his, than the bounden duty, nay, the heavenly command of a person who finally, on his fortieth birthday, gets to fuck someone who isn’t his mother. Or, mind you, someone who isn’t his father either, ’cause that possibility should also not be excluded — just look how the world was swarming with misfits who couldn’t let go of the apron strings, or for that matter, the braces of their parents.
At that point, he, Lambert, decided he’d had enough of Treppie’s rubbish, standing there in the kitchen door with that holier-than-thou look on his face. He took a king-size swing to smash in that foul mouth of his, but Treppie ducked and he knocked his fist right through the door of the kitchen dresser instead. His mother cracked up when she saw him punch his fist through the dresser, so he gave her a couple of good smacks too to make her shuddup, but she just sat down on her backside on the lino floor and pissed in her pants from all the laughing.
And then it was almost another big fuck-up here in Martha Street. But Pop quickly came and gave them all a shot of neat brandy. He can bet Pop doctored those shots with fit pills, ’cause once he’d swallowed his tot he suddenly began to feel calm again, and his mother’s laughing came out slower and slower, like a wind-up toy running down, and Treppie brushed at his face weakly, as if he’d walked into a spider’s web, or a thick mist.
Pop said they must wipe up the mess on the floor. Everything was okay, they must just wait calmly. He was going to take Treppie to his room quickly, he said, ’cause it looked like Treppie wanted to fall over.
When Pop came back he helped the old girl to her feet and stood her up against the wall. All this time she’d just been sitting there with her legs in that pool of pee in front of her, and all she could do was light up a cigarette.
Then Pop said he, Lambert, must apologise to his mother, and why in heaven’s name was all that necessary? He told Pop how Treppie had talked a lot of rubbish into their heads and how he’d wanted to punch Treppie, but Treppie ducked. So it was the dresser that got punched instead and his mother started laughing when she saw him miss, as if it was a fucken joke or something.