And all Pop said about her was that she was a livewire on a street corner. Period.
So what was the truth about her, then?
Cinderella, says Treppie. A Cinderella who wanted to cross the Drakensberg mountains on bare feet, together with Prince Lambertus the Third. And does Lambert perhaps know where her other shoe is? Or maybe they can find this one’s heel and give it back to her tonight. Once she’s had a chance to catch her breath, that is.
See? How does Treppie know she’s out of breath? She can see that’s what Lambert’s thinking, too. He takes the towel away from his face to ask Treppie how, but Treppie’s looking up at the ceiling as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen it. He blows smoke rings and looks up through the rings.
‘Look, Pop, look, Mol, look, Toby, see how the stars shine in the firmament,’ Treppie says.
All she sees are blobs. Pale blobs. Some are pale green and others are pale red.
‘What do you see, Pop?’
‘I can’t see that far, Mol!’
‘Ja, old dog,’ says Treppie. ‘It’s a pity they sit so high, hey, all the Great Dippers, fish dip, avo dip, garlic dip!’
Toby licks his lips. He looks at Treppie and then at the blobs, up and down, up and down.
‘Also curious, hey, even if you’re just a dog,’ Treppie says. ‘You’d also like to know how the young master created that universe, hey? Maybe she said to him the sky’s the limit and started throwing the fish around. And then maybe he asked her whether she fancied a pie in that sky and threw up the garlic and avo on high!’
‘Hee-hee.’ Quite funny.
She can see Pop’s also got a smile on his face now.
Toby too. ‘Tiffa-tiffa-tiffa’ goes his tail against Treppie’s crate. His red tongue hangs from his open mouth.
‘Garlic yourself!’ is all Lambert says. He’s drinking down the Panados with rose-water. Sis, he just chucks that rose on to the floor and then he empties the whole bottle, ‘ghloob-ghloob-ghloob’.
‘Hell, but you’re thirsty, hey?’
Oh shit! Duck! Here it comes, but it’s not coming at her, it’s sailing towards Treppie, not straight but in a slow arc. Treppie’s got lots of time to duck. He ducks in slow motion and then watches the bottle as it falls. He whistles, ‘pheeeeeeww!’ like a slow-motion bomb. ‘Boof!’ it goes against against the wall. Treppie wipes off his shoulders with finicky little fingers, like he’s flicking off little flakes of dust.
‘This Mary, could she at least duck?’ he asks Lambert.
Pop points his finger at Treppie. He must go easy, now. No, Treppie signals back at Pop, it’s okay, he just wants to get Lambert going again, just like she, Mol, said he must.
Poor Lambert. He really looks like he’s had it. But she says nothing. If he has to suffer, then so be it. Just look at the house! And she’s the one who’ll have to do most of the cleaning up, as usual, even with three men in the house, or maybe one should say two, ’cause Pop can’t do anything any more. She’s got to cut the grass and she’s got to wash the car. And when Lambert goes wild, she has to pick up the pieces.
Like Treppie’s saying now, it looks like they were doing a bit of kickboxing here in the den, fridge-kicking and chair-kicking. He says it depends on your taste, but some people get turned on by the strangest things — Chippendales, crinkle cuts, fruit salad, fridges, frescoes, kick-boxing, you name it.
She pushes Pop. ‘Frisco, not fresco, Frisco. Tell him.’
‘No, Mol,’ Treppie says, ‘fresco, it’s not instant coffee, it’s paintings that they do on wet cement, on the walls of churches, about the so-called beginning and the so-called end.’
She catches Pop’s eye. Here we go again.
‘Pay attention, Mol, otherwise you won’t ever learn anything. You remember that story about the sixth day, when God felt a little lonely up there among his carp and his cactuses and things, and he made people so they could keep him company?’
No, she doesn’t remember God feeling like that. He’s God, after all. He always feels good.
‘Always is a very long time, Mol. And don’t forget, even God has a problem ’cause it’s the devil who finds work for the hands of the bored.’
‘The hands of the idle, Treppie, not boredom, idleness.’ It’s Pop. He must be so tired of correcting Treppie. He’s been doing it all his life.
‘Same thing,’ says Treppie. ‘Now watch nicely.’
What’s he doing now? He’s shaking and jerking Lambert’s mattress.
‘Hey, Lambert, you want to see some fireworks, my man? You can’t sleep now, life’s too short, too valuable!’
Treppie holds his two forefingers together, the one pointing and the other limp.
‘And so the Great Idler, sitting around during his Sunday rest, schemes up a little ploy to amuse himself. Suddenly he’s the Great Electrician in the sky. Bzzzt! He jump-starts little Adam right out of the earth!’
Open, closed, open, closed, the limp hand responds to the charging finger. Then suddenly he meshes the fingers of both hands so hard that the joints crack.
Hey! It looks sore.
Pop just shakes his head here next to her.
‘Founding the nation!’ says Treppie. ‘Refreshment station. Off you go, now you can paint him on your wall, your Adam. Fit for small talk till the end of his days, dust to dust, tall stories, world without end!’
No, hell, man, now she doesn’t understand so well here. Pop looks like he understands some of it but not everything. He tells Treppie God will punish him but he doesn’t say what for.
Treppie pretends he doesn’t hear a thing Pop says.
‘I wouldn’t like to guess what he’s feeling now,’ Treppie says.
Who’s feeling what now? Adam?
‘Never mind, Mol,’ says Treppie. ‘Feeling is feeling. Whether it’s the Creator or Adam’s sister’s wife or the painter or the poet’s distant hellbent family it cuts no ice, ’cause it all started at the same point and it all boils down to the same beginning in the end — the smoke that thunders!’
What’s Treppie on about now? Pop just sits and smokes here next to her. He’s dead-quiet.
‘Waterfall,’ says Pop.
‘That’s it! Ai, Pop, I’m so glad there’s at least one person who understands me here today. We are the waterfall, hey, and if a person looks carefully you’ll see it’s a never-ending story of evaporation and condensation. Liquids, gases and solids, an automatic cycle and a closed circuit. Perpetual motion!’
‘Well, I think I’m going now,’ says Pop. Yes, her too, if Treppie wants to sit here and tell stories to prolong the agony then he can do so on his own. Life must go on and you dare not slow down if you don’t want to be left on the shelf. That’s what Old Mol always used to say. Shame, Old Mol had such high hopes for her. She said men would be men and in the end it was the women who took most of the strain, no matter what the men said, and never mind if they did have the whiphand, pretending they were experts on everything. That’s what Old Mol always used to say when Old Pop started drinking and talking politics at night while she had to sit there and stitch the shirts, patch their clothes, cook the food and pack Old Pop’s lunch-tin, all at the same time. At nights, long after they went to bed, she would hear Old Mol say, from behind that sheet: ‘Oh hunted hart with trembling haunches who from the huntsman did escape.’
Shame, Old Mol would turn in her grave if she had to see how things were going with her now — not on the shelf but underneath it. And that’s where she’s remained, even though she kept on trying. As for the hunt, she’s never gotten away.
Just listen to Treppie now. No, he says, they mustn’t go, it’s still going to get jolly here in this den of iniquity today. Lambert’s going to tell them a story or two. They must just give him a chance. It will be a story, he says, to comfort and to edify them and to make them long for the days of their unprofaned youth.