Treppie says it’s a Roman church. He says it’s foreign to our nation’s interest to greet different nations like that, and then he laughs like the devil himself. He says there’s a world of difference separating the two nations in that sentence. But in Triomf they know it’s actually just Ontdekkers that separates them. ’Cause across the road it’s Bosmont, and in Bosmont it crawls with nations.
Not that they have much trouble with them, here in Triomf. It’s only at the Spar in Thornton that the Hotnot children stand around and beg. Pop gives them sweeties sometimes when he takes Toby and Gerty to the little veld behind the Spar. But when the piccanins play with the dogs, Toby and Gerty don’t want to. All they want is to chase those big kaffirs who play soccer there. Young, wild kaffirs with strong, shiny legs and angry faces. And they play rough. Toby got his wind kicked right out one day when he tried to bite one of them on the leg. Pop says it’s ’cause Toby’s a white dog — although kaffirs are quite fond of dogs in general. Then Treppie says that may be the case, but it really depends how hungry the kaffir is. And then he starts telling that old story about Sophiatown’s dogs again.
When everything was flattened — it took almost three years — the dogs who’d been left behind started crying. They sat on heaps of rubble with their noses up in the air and they howled so loud you could hear them all the way to Mayfair.
Treppie says he saw some of the kaffirs come back one night with pangas, and then they killed those dogs of theirs. After a while, he says, you couldn’t tell any more who was crying, the kaffirs or their dogs. And then they took the dead dogs away in sacks.
Treppie says he’s sure they went and made stew with those dogs, with curry and tomato and onions to smother the taste. For eating with their pap. A little dog goes a long way, he says, and those kaffirs must’ve been pretty hungry there in their new place.
Some of the dogs died on their own, from hunger. Or maybe from longing for their kaffirs. And then their bodies just lay there, puffing up and going soft again, until the flesh rotted and fell right off the bones. Then, later, even the bones got scattered.
Even now Lambert finds loose dog bones when he digs.
Treppie says the ghosts of those dogs are all over Triomf.
Sometimes he wakes up at night from all their barking. It starts at the one end of Triomf and then it goes right through to the other end before coming back again. Like waves, breaking and splashing out, going back in and then breaking again. It sounds like the end of all time. Then she, Mol, waits for the earth to open up and the skeletons’ bones to grow back together again, so they can be covered with flesh and rise up under the trumpets.
That’s why she says to Lambert he must rather leave those bones there where he finds them. Lambert says he doesn’t believe in the resurrection. He takes the bones and tins and things, even faded old marbles and knobkieries with carved heads, and then he hangs them up around the paintings on his walls. He says it’s his museum, and one day future generations will be grateful someone preserved it. Even if it is just kaffir rubbish. He says Treppie says old kaffir rubbish has suddenly become quite valuable these days.
If Lambert takes after anyone, then it’s Treppie. That’s what she always says. They play the fool like their lives depend on it, and they’ve both got a talent for the horries. It’s just that Treppie’s a cleverer fool than Lambert and Lambert’s horries are worse than Treppie’s. Then Pop says she shouldn’t talk like that about her own flesh and blood. All they have is each other and the roof over their heads. If there’s one thing she must never forget, he says, it’s that.
Well, maybe, but she’s still got Gerty.
Mol bends over and scratches Gerty between the ears. Gerty stares back at her with big eyes.
Gerty knows what she knows. And she’s had the dog’s luck of landing up with them. A long history of dog’s luck.
Gerty is Old Gerty’s granddaughter. All the Gertys — Old Gerty and Old Gerty’s only child, Small Gerty, and now Gerty — have seen their share of luck. It’s in this dog-family’s blood, she always says. Luck.
The dog business started one day when she and Pop and Treppie went walking around Sophiatown. They wanted to see where they’d come to live, ’cause Treppie had applied to the municipality for a house, one of those they said Community Development was going to build here. And of course Treppie had lots to say about it all.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘this is now what you call white man’s luck. Just as we’re about to go kaffir there in Vrededorp, the Red Sea opens before us.’
They were walking up and down the streets, Miller, Tucker, Good, Martha, through Southlink and then into Gerty, when they heard a cry coming from under a rusted old piece of zinc.
That little priest was there too, in his black dress, walking through the piles of smoking rubbish, the burst pipes and the pools of dirty water. All the dogs were traipsing after him, as usual. Every now and again he’d stop, and then he’d write down something in a little notebook.
‘I bet he’s making notes so he can go complain to the Queen of England,’ Treppie said. ’Cause if he understood correctly, the Queen was in charge of all the churches. But he couldn’t understand what was bothering that priest, ’cause there his church still stood. No one had even touched it.
Treppie tried to stop her and Pop from looking under the rubbish to see what was crying like that. The priest would think they were stealing kaffir rubbish, he said.
But she kept on at him, and in the end they found a little dog there. It was still a tiny puppy with the cutest little looking-up eyes. Ag shame.
‘You better just leave that kaffirdog alone, Mol,’ Treppie said. ‘All she’s good for is stew. I don’t want that worm-guts in our house.’
‘It’s for Lambert,’ she said.
Pop’s heart was soft. He said, yes, it was true, a boy needed a dog. Maybe it would calm Lambert down a bit.
Then Treppie said it would take more than a dog to make that piece of shit pipe down, and the next thing she had to jump between Pop and Treppie to stop them from smashing each other up right there in the middle of Sophiatown’s rubbish. And all the time that priest just stood there, watching them.
Then she wrapped the little dog up in her jersey and carried her all the way back home. When they got to Vrededorp, she decided to call her Gerty, after the name of the street where they found her. Two years later, when they eventually moved to their new house in Triomf, Old Gerty came with them, and that same street was still there.
‘So now you’re back in your old hometown again, hey, Gerty,’ she still said. The Benades had come to live here in Martha Street, just one behind Gerty. She could have sworn that little dog, with her heartsore eyes, knew very well where she was, even though all the houses were brand new and the old ones were gone, ’cause she walked around sniffing everything for days on end. Old Gerty was always a strange, nervous little dog. Lambert never had any time for her. She was Mol’s dog. And when Old Gerty got pregnant, she feared for her. Not for nothing, ’cause three of her puppies were stillborn, and only the smallest one survived. Dead or alive, it was just too much for Old Gerty — she gave up the ghost right there, just as the last puppy was coming out.
That was a terrible day. Treppie wanted to throw away all the puppies, the living one too, but she wouldn’t let him. Pop also stood between him and the dogs, and that’s how they came to raise Small Gerty with a play-play bottle from a lucky packet.