No wonder he’s now fast asleep at the back here with his mouth wide open. ‘Gaaarrrgh-gaaarrrgh’, he goes. She can smell it from where she’s sitting. Lambert says Treppie’s breath is enough to fire off a rocket. Lambert. How will he know what to do with that woman he doesn’t know from a bar of soap? Maybe she should wake them up now so they can go and look. But then again, maybe not. Pop needs his rest. Let him sleep. And maybe Lambert’s still awake. Maybe he’s waiting up for them. In that case, she’d rather sit here until sunrise.
Pop also asked Treppie, because of what? It wasn’t their fault they were in the furnace pit, because of what? Not that he knew, Pop said, what that had to do with knowing you were dying and what you should do in the circumstances. Can you believe it, there Pop went and said should again. She thought something must have come over Pop. Once was enough, and she could see Treppie wasn’t even finished with the first should, not by a long shot. And here Pop came with another one. And it wasn’t as if you could duck out of Treppie’s way.
‘Everything!’ he shouted into their faces. It had everything to do with it, ’cause if their mother and father hadn’t been so backward, and if they had been raised better, and Old Pop hadn’t shouted at him, Treppie, so terribly before he even knew what went for what, and if Old Pop hadn’t beaten him to a pulp when he did know what went for what, then everything would’ve been different.
Then what would have been different? Pop asked, and she thought to herself, now Pop was really asking for trouble, he should know he can’t square up with Treppie. But she was wrong, ’cause Pop just pushed on. Then what would have been different? he asked again.
What would’ve been different, Treppie said, was that he might’ve had a choice. He might’ve been able to choose how to die and what to do if he knew he was dying. And with that he sat back, boomps, against his seat and said it may be that Pop had begun to die only recently but he, Treppie, had been dying ever since his eighth year, and it was the kind of dying you do twice over — in body and in soul. The ruination of his soul, and the blood of his limbs, he said, was on Old Pop’s hands. May Old Pop hear him wherever he was and may Old Pop gnash his teeth in the outermost darkness for ever and ever.
At that point she wished she was a Catholic so she could’ve crossed herself against Treppie’s terrible Satan words, ’cause Treppie began swearing hellishly terrible words inbetween every other word he said, above and below and on each side, so much so that she and Pop were wiping his spit from their necks after a while.
All Pop said then was, honour thy father and thy mother, and she recited the rest, ’cause that was all that came into her head: ‘“That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”’
That was the last straw.
‘Honour, for what should I honour him — all that’s left of me is a drop of blood, a wet spot with some skin around it struggling for breath. A lump of scar-tissue with a heart in the middle.’
Suddenly Treppie told them they must switch on the inside light. He plucked up his shirt and pushed his pants down over his hips so they could see his scar-tissue.
‘Krrrt-krrrt!’ she heard as Treppie scratched around here above her head to get the little light on, but it didn’t want to work.
So they had to use their lighters to look. Toby jumped right over the back seat — he also wanted to look — but Treppie let fly and smacked him so hard he didn’t even make a sound. His head just went ‘doof’ against the door. Shame, the poor dog.
‘Hold closer!’ Treppie yelled, and she and Pop turned around completely in their seats, lighting up his stomach.
Then she saw how terribly those blows had set into Treppie’s skin. She hadn’t known. She’d thought people outgrew things like that. Treppie’s stomach and hips were covered with nicks and grooves, as if he’d been tied up with ropes and beaten over and over again.
Treppie must have seen on her face she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. So he said she mustn’t come and act holier-than-thou all of a sudden. Didn’t she remember what he looked like that night when they dragged him out of the train? ‘Marked for life!’ he said, prodding his finger into the nicks and scars on his skin.
What could she say? So she lit up a cigarette — her lighter was burning anyway — and said: ‘Shame.’
That was also not the right thing to say.
Fuck shame, Treppie said. That’s all that she and her mother could ever say, shame this, shame that, and shame everything else. But they never stood up for him, not once, when Old Pop screamed at him so terribly and hit him for no reason at all. Not once did they take his side.
It was then that Pop said he could explain to Treppie why Old Pop used to beat him up so badly. It was something she and Pop had known when they were still small.
Treppie was a chip off the old block, Pop said. Of all of them, it was Treppie who took after Old Pop the most. Yes, he said, it was ’cause he had the same light blue eyes as Pop and the same stuff-you look in his eyes, too.
Then she felt Pop take her hand and let it go again and she knew they were both thinking of Old Pop. There they sat, looking at Treppie in the glow of their lighters, and it looked almost like Old Pop sitting there in front of them, just smaller.
The same short fuse, the same moods, the same delicate constitution, Pop said.
And then she remembered how Old Pop also used to struggle to shit, but she decided not to mention that ’cause Pop had already mentioned more than enough similarities. ‘Chip or no chip off the old block,’ Treppie shouted, ‘it’s no excuse for smashing up your own flesh and blood.’
He was one to talk, she thought, but she kept quiet. Treppie knew what she was thinking. He thumped her seat from behind.
‘Tsk-tsk-tsk!’ Pop said.
Then Treppie suddenly wanted out of the car. So bad that he didn’t even wait for her to get out. He just shoved her forward in her seat, almost climbing right over her.
She and Pop also got out, and she suddenly felt a chill, not from the cold air but from the height. That tower reaches up very high into the sky and its little head on top looks like it wants to bend down and fall over. Toby also wanted out, but they made him stay in the car. They could hear him going ‘ee-ee’ from behind the window. Then it was quiet again for a long time. They just stood there, looking at the lights and passing around the Klipdrift.
And then Pop started again. She’d thought he was finished, but he actually went and started all over again. About the forgiveness that Treppie had to find in his heart and that he’d thought Treppie had already softened when he gave Lambert all his stuff and helped him so nicely with the fridges. That, Pop said, had looked to him like a kind of forgiveness, and forgiveness was infectious. If you forgave the small things the big ones followed. Or the other way around, forgive the big ones and then the little things would begin to look like small fry.
Pop tried so nicely to get through to Treppie there on the koppie. She took his hand again and said, yes, if Treppie could make a circus and play the fool like that, then he couldn’t really still be so angry with Old Pop, then deep down everything was surely okay.
Treppie didn’t have to chastise himself so, Pop said. She didn’t have much time to wonder what chastise meant ’cause Treppie suddenly exploded. His eyes went white with anger, lighting up from the inside. He was so angry he got the shakes. Up and down he paced, poking the air with those little bird claws of his, as if he wanted to grab on to something and pull himself up into the air, right out of his skin.