But Treppie’s forgotten something. Oh yes, Lambert must please let him know when he’s finished with the sheets. No rush, mind you, Lambert must take his time, ’cause life only begins at forty.
At the door, Treppie turns around one last time. He looks at her and Pop, and then he shows them they must smile. What the hell, it’s all over now.
Toby goes with Treppie.
‘Whoof! Whoof!’ says Toby as Treppie kicks blocks for him all the way down the passage.
Let her also go now. She looks at Pop. Then she looks at the Swiss roll. Two bites. A human bite and a dog bite. On any other day she would’ve taken a bite too, from the clean side, but today she feels sick to her stomach. Any moment the ants will be there too. She points, but Lambert’s not looking. He’s just sits there on his bed. She really hopes he won’t have a fit now, too.
Pop gets up. He looks like he wants to say something. He looks like he wants to say Lambert mustn’t worry, everything will be okay and next year they can try again. But he can’t say it out aloud. She takes him by his sleeve so he can come. He doesn’t want to. Come now, Pop. As they shuffle out, Pop wants to touch Lambert’s shoulder, but Lambert sees Pop’s hand coming. He turns away. She really hopes he’s not going to have a fit now. ’Cause his lips are trembling.
Lambert takes the gun and shoots his list right off the wall.
Items one to ten are hard to shoot, but the further down he goes the easier it gets, ’cause the plaster’s soft from a damp spot in the wall. After every shot big pieces fall out of the wall.
He counts his bullets. He works it out. He’s got three for each of his gallery paintings, and then there’s still one left.
First the wings. One bullet on this side and one bullet on the other side of SUPERBEE. Sorry, SUPERBEE, but I’m going to have to shoot you from close up. He puts on his welding helmet in case the bullets bounce back. Right, straight into the wall and out the other side again. Small holes. Cheap bricks!
Now for the welding torch. He burns SUPERBEE’S wings with the flame till you can’t see any more of him, and also nothing around him, neither his heaven nor his earth.
He keeps the last bullet for his mermaid, but as he points the gun, first at her silver fin, where the paint’s peeling off, and then at her yellow hair, which is too long and too much, he starts shaking so much that he shoots himself instead. A direct shot, right in the head. There’s just a black hole between the two ears in front of Molletjie’s steering wheel.
His head’s zinging from all the shooting. And his tail-end’s jerking hard. Let him put this gun away nicely now. In the steel cabinet. Let him go lie on his bed. Let him sleep.
21. NORTH NO MORE
PARALLEL PARKING 
That was morning and now it is evening. Treppie stands on the little front stoep with a glass in his hand. With his other hand he clutches his shoulder. It’s jerking like mad, as if someone’s throwing a switch on and off inside his body, somewhere near his navel. But the current has nowhere to go, so it slams into his skull and shoots back down into his shoulder. He feels wired, from head to toe. Vibrating, all the way down to his guts. It must be that bite he took from Lambert’s cold Swiss roll this morning. Fucken cardboard roll from Spar. Smeared full of slimy jam, although that might also help a bit. Unfathomable are the ways of digestion. If the Holy Spirit ever descends upon him, he reckons, it will be in the form of gippo guts. Then he’ll be truly blessed. He should actually try going to the toilet now, try to tune it in for a symphony, but this business here in the yard is something he wouldn’t miss for all the money in the world — not even for a turd in the toilet.
It all started this afternoon, when Pop woke up in his chair after sleeping like a dead thing right through all that shooting in the back. He’d hardly opened his eyes when he said, right, now Mol must come, he’d had a ‘visitation’. If there was one last task awaiting him before he was taken up into the house of the Father, it was to teach Mol to drive. Lambert wasn’t allowed to drive, and what would happen if there was suddenly a crisis and Treppie was ‘incapacitated’? he asked. Then Mol would be stranded. Believe it or not, that’s what he said, as if they were all quite happily on their way to paradise in the Drommedaris. And yes, he said, no matter how exhausted he was, the final driving lesson would have to start immediately. He just wanted to check, first, how things were going with Lambert there at the back. They said nothing about the shooting. He and Mol just sat there rolling their eyes at each other as Pop shuffled down the passage towards the den.
After the first shot, Mol had started screaming. She wanted to go to the back to stop Lambert. But he sat her down on her chair and explained to her nicely that she’d just have to leave it now. History had to take its course and none of them could do anything more about it. By the thirteenth shot, when Mol began shivering and shaking, he told her it sounded like Lambert was shooting at a tin in preparation for tomorrow’s election. No need to worry, he said. But he didn’t tell her about the visions he’d been having of the whole of Fort Knox lying in a bloody heap in the backyard.
So, he and Mol were both relieved when Pop came back and said everything was okay. Lambert was still sleeping. He said he couldn’t figure it out, but Lambert’s paintings were full of holes and there were chunks of plaster all over the floor.
The bastard should fuckenwell have shot himself in the head, and the rest of them too, one after the other. Then all of their problems would’ve been solved for good. And then this whole blasted story could have ended in blood and guts and a smoking barrel. The perfect South African family murder. Then everyone would’ve been happy — common rubbish living their common lives, making the rest of the fucken scum feel good about themselves. He can just see the headlines: BLOODBATH IN TRIOMF, THE LAST OF THE POOR WHITES IN OLD SOPHIATOWN, MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. Take your pick. Better than any Western. Then, after their death, they’d maybe even become the flavour of the month with all the fools who think they’re bigger and better than everyone else. Well, no one’s going to get rid of them quite so easily. In any case, he’s far from ready. And what’s more, he won’t just lie down for any old trick. He has his pride, for fuck’s sake. And just let anyone — let alone that wretched Lambert — try to run them down like they’re the Big Five (the fifth being the Klipdrift bottle). For that arsehole he’ll set a booby trap in which the bastard will get stuck for the rest of his goddamn life, right here among them. Under their roof. Then the sod can run up against the walls, trying to escape, north-south-east-west, until kingdom come. Like an ant in a saucer.
And as a consolation prize he’ll see one hell of a performance every now and again. Like Pop in front here, for example. He’s busy putting up candles on a row of Dogmor tins, all along the prefab wall. He told Pop it looked more like a landing strip for a Dogmor-angel than a parking lot for Mol.
This is now going to be a lesson in the dark. ’Cause this afternoon it was party-time in the street again. He’d half hoped they’d forget about the driving lesson. It felt to him like they’d all been in a long nightmare for weeks now, with Lambert’s birthday and everything. Like they can’t wake up, no matter how hard they try, and it’s just night all the time. And now, on top of everything, there’s one bomb after another.
First, this afternoon, he felt the ground rumble under his feet and he thought, this had to be the bomb for Jo’burg-West. Then Mol called him from his room. He must please come, there was a roof-removing machine outside in the street. Poor Mol, all she can worry about is whether they’ll still have a roof over their heads. The fact that it’s been leaking like a fucken sieve for years doesn’t seem to worry her at all. She spent half the past summer walking up and down with pots and pans and things. When they get full, she empties them. Then she puts them down again, over and over, like she’s scared the house will sink if she doesn’t. As if the threat’s coming from below. Anyhow, the thing outside had nothing to do with the roof, it was a helluva show the NP was putting on here in Triomf for the election. That’s what he calls a last-ditch attempt — in a fucken crane, can you believe it! He feels like declaring tomorrow his own personal holiday and fuck the rest. He’s already told them, if only he had the money, he’d fuck off to the Lost City and spend a few days there, they’ve got bed and breakfast on election special over there. Then he could have settled himself comfortably in those artificial little waves and forgotten about everything else. The whole business is working badly on his tits. He has to drink himself almost paralytic every night just to get some sleep.