So he squeezed his way between the sideboard and the crates, his knees knocking against the sharp edges of things. Now he’s sitting here and letting it all wash over him. In the end, everything passes anyway, then it’s over and it turns out to be totally meaningless. Even if it felt bad when it was happening.
They got back from voting at about half past eleven this morning. At the Westdene Recreation Centre. In the end it wasn’t at RAU after all, where they’d gone to vote Yes the last time. He was glad it was just around the corner ’cause he really wasn’t in the mood for a whole to-do all over again. As it was, they had to stand in a long queue while the police and officials and other people walked up and down, shouting that the boxes were full and the stickers were running out. By the time they’d all got their right hands sprayed with ink and put them into that purple gadget for the umpteenth time, they weren’t even sure any more whether they’d voted or not.
And those ballot papers, like entrails with such a lot of stuff written there, he couldn’t read further than the first four. So he made a wild cross just anywhere. Everyone in the long queue outside the hall was confused and in a hurry.
Anyway, when they got back home, they saw a white lorry plus another two trucks standing in front of their house. And their whole yard was full of workers in white overalls. On the other side of the road, a different lorry was loading up those two women’s stuff.
What now, he thought, stopping in the street outside to see what was going on. Who was this coming to fetch them?
‘Whiter than snow,’ Treppie began singing before they even lit up cigarettes, and only then did he realise, but of course, this was the painting team here at their house. It was the big paint prize they’d won, the one Lambert made him sign for. The one Treppie also signed for, afterwards. At the time he’d wondered if they weren’t signing themselves into a fix, but he’d let it go ’cause Lambert was in such a bad way.
And then, when they didn’t want to paint on election day, Treppie went and said he’d take them to court, so they said in that case, okay, it was the owners’ risk and they reserved the right to paint any time of the day, even if the owners were out. It was going to be a day full of unpredictability, they said.
The painters were busy unpacking their equipment. He must look, said Mol, there on the front lawn. That white flag hanging on a long, thin pole, with the painting company’s name written on it in red letters. Red and white spells what? he thought, but Treppie had already read between the folds: WONDER WALL. If you ask him, Treppie said, it looked more like rescue workers at a disaster site than jasper workers from the New Jerusalem.
Treppie’s trying to be terribly nice again, telling jokes and things after his doings on the koppie, not to mention his terrible tormenting of Lambert. And on his birthday, too.
This morning, as they stood in the queue, he had no choice but to cut Treppie short again. Treppie was standing there in the middle of the queue, talking at the top of his voice about how it was a disgrace that the officials had to do all this dirty work. It was the NP’s duty to put those stickers on. That would be poetic justice, he said. After all, they were the ones who wanted to offer Mangosuthu for sale, first under one label and then another. You could actually call him a many-branded Buthelezi, Treppie stood there saying, standard on the one rump and prime on the other. Ja, that Treppie. He’ll just have to learn in his own time to control his mouth. People with his kind of talent face terrible temptations. It’s a great struggle for them to choose the straight and narrow path. Treppie has the character. He just lacks the will.
Anyway, Treppie was right, as usual. It looked more like hell than heaven around the house. Big blood-red rectangular machines stood all over the place, with fat, red muzzles stretching out as if they wanted to pump the house full of air. With shiny ladders against the walls, stretching up high above the roof like fire-engine ladders trying to reach a fire in the sky somewhere. At the front door, a silver trolley full of folded sheets.
Shame. And all Mol could say was: ‘Sinkhole!’ She was terribly disturbed by all the broken stuff in the house and Treppie’s stories in the den, and then this voting business on top of everything else — soldiers and low-flying helicopters and waiting ambulances. And, believe it or not, a friendly little piccanin came up to them at the voting station to ask if they didn’t want to help swell the peace fund, taking a handful of blue paper flowers from a big basket, each flower on its own stem with a ribbon and two little plastic doves. Then Mol just wanted to go home. But with all the painting going on there was no peace and quiet to be found here either. And Mol’s always been so scared of machines and things, too. She was in a complete state.
He explained nice and gently about the paint prize and how she must just keep calm. Just now she could go and see if there was any Oros inside. It was hot and the painters would be thirsty. Then she’d have something to do, he thought, something to occupy her mind.
About Treppie’s salvation he really can’t do anything. Treppie was busy embroidering again, about things that had nothing at all to do with painting. ‘Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,’ he began singing loudly in their faces. And he kept bugging Lambert, telling him to listen. If he, Treppie, didn’t get out of the car right away and go to the toilet, he was going to shit his pants full. It was a whole week now that his guts had been as solid as a rock. But, he said, now that Lambert’s lubrication service was behind them, and now that he’d voted for that mad woman from the Keep it Straight and Simple Party, the one who says she can kick a hole in any government’s drum, and with their house on the point of being painted white, he at last felt something was giving way in his insides.
Yes, he said, Lambert should take note, this was what he’d meant all along about the shit flying after the election, and Lambert should get ready for a shitstorm, or, as it was written, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.
He must say, the way those paint people were carrying on it really did look like they were getting ready for a storm. They covered the windows with heavy, shining screens of aluminium. Flossie got a thick plastic sheet and they draped the fig tree with something that Treppie said looked like a thermal blanket, red on the inside and silver on the outside, which they pinned to the ground with tent pegs. They even pulled a white bag around the overflow and a little red sail over the TV aerial on the roof.
With all those bags and sails and sheets and flags and stuff stirring and rustling in the breeze, the house began to look exactly like a ship lying ready to sail. He said as much to Mol, but Treppie overheard him and then of course he had to make his own little contribution. That ship, he said, was on its way to a country where the citrons were still blossoming. Mol said he was talking bull, and she said it with such conviction that it sounded like she wanted to shut Treppie’s mouth once and for all. A vain hope, of course. Treppie said, okay, if that wasn’t good enough, then the ship was sailing to the shore where love did last eternally, and would that make her feel better?
Shame, then the poor thing broke into a big smile, sitting there without her tooth and all. Pop’s heart wanted to break he felt so sorry for her. She sometimes reads to him from her library books about people who’re in love. Under the circumstances, he thinks, he’s done the best he could. It will just have to be enough. And with good faith they might yet reach those eternal shores, in their own kind of way. It’s just a matter of time.
He would have been happy to remain sitting outside in the car, but the foreman came over and asked them to unlock the door. It was hardly open before lots of workers in white overalls started getting the house ready for painting inside. They worked fast. It must be something they do every day, and maybe they were in a hurry to get finished so they could still have some of the holiday for themselves. Not that it feels like a holiday. It feels more like a war or something, with all those army lorries and little bursts of gunfire every now and again. Celebration shots, Treppie says, but he can’t say he’s seen any ribbons or balloons.