‘What does the old dog say about her missus, hey? Also lost her voice, huh? Bad fucken company on a Saturday night, or what am I saying?’
Mol lets her knitting fall on to her lap. She looks at Lambert.
‘So?’ he asks. She says nothing. She picks up her knitting and carries on.
He takes a step closer. She shifts away some more. He squats next to the bed and pats Gerty on the head. Gerty looks up at Mol, making a little crying noise.
‘What does your old cunt of a missus say tonight, hey? What does she say, the cuntface with no teeth, hey?’ He’s whispering very softly to Gerty and scratching her between the ears.
Mol suddenly gets up. She walks across the mattress and out of the door. Gerty follows. He stays right there, hunched on his heels. He hears her go into the lounge. He hears Pop wake up and say: ‘What now? What’s it, Mol?’ His voice is thin. It’s all that slime in his throat.
She stays quiet, and then she says: ‘Lambert.’ Just ‘Lambert’. That’s all. Her fucken arse too.
He scratches his head with both hands and then he scratches his arse. His arse itches. Everything about him fucken itches. He gets up. He’s more than just ‘Lambert’, that’s for fucken sure. He walks out, into the passage and through the doorway to his den. There’s his bed. The thing’s legs are standing skew. The mattress lies at an angle on the bed. Its stuffing sticks out on the one side. Slept to death. He, Lambert, doesn’t even have a decent bed to sleep in. Fuck that. He grabs the mattress and throws it, with the Scope and pillows and blankets all still on it, against the open Tedelex. The empty Coke bottle on top of the Tedelex falls and smashes all over the floor. Fuck that too. He smacks the cabinet a shot with his flat hand. He can also make a fucken noise if he wants to! All night he’s been listening to other people’s noise. ‘Oh it’s a Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody’ over and fucken over in his ears. No, shit! He kicks an empty Coke crate with his bare foot. It flies into the scrap iron behind the door. A long piece of pipe comes loose, falling slowly across the room. It scrapes his painting on the wall before falling on to the floor. Silver paint comes off his mermaid’s tail. This Saturday night doesn’t want to work. This Saturday night is a fuck-up.
He walks out through the den’s back door. He wants to see what those fuckheads next door are doing. He stands in the long grass and peeps over the prefab wall, into next door’s backyard. The moon’s sitting higher now. It shines light blue all around him. Wherever you look next door it’s just yellow and red party lights, hanging from a wire between the gutter and the loquat tree. They’re fucken braaiing again. Them and their fucken meat.
It’s chops. No, it’s not chops, it’s T-bones. He counts eight of them. They cover the whole grill. The grill rests on a half-drum with four legs. There’s another grill as well, also a half-drum with legs. This one’s full of rolled-up boerewors. The wors sizzles and drips fat over the coals. Every now and again the flames flare up. Then someone has to douse them again.
He can’t see who’s killing the flames. All he can see is a hairy paunch and a hand going up and down. He can’t see so well ’cause he has to look over the prefab wall, and then over next door’s fast-food stands. That’s what they are, fast-food sellers. All of them. They sell hot dogs and hamburgers from their stands. He’s peeping underneath the flap of a plastic canvas sail and the stands below. All he can see is a strip of yellow light, some braaivleis and people’s bellies. Every now and again a hand with a can of beer goes up, and then drops down again to a hanging position next to a body. He can see seven bodies: men’s bodies and women’s bodies, thin ones and fat ones. Two women are wearing bikinis, a pink one and a blue one. They’re not so bad, even though they don’t look as smooth and as tanned as the Tuxedo Tyres girls. These ones have lots of dimples on the backs of their thighs. Pink Bikini stands with her arm around a man in blue jeans. The jeans are tight and there’s a bulge in front. Blue Bikini stands with her arm around Speedo. It’s a black Speedo with an even bigger bulge. His bulge stands at an angle, pointing to one side. Speedo’s got a big pair of thighs and a body-builder’s stomach. Hairy Paunch’s doing the meat. Lambert can see grey hair on his stomach. He’s wearing a towel that keeps slipping down. Then there’s another paunch, this one a little smaller, in khaki shorts. And there’s a thin little thing with knobbly shins in a cotton dress full of little flowers. She’s sitting on a plastic chair. Here comes another one, with big flowers on her dress. She comes and stands next to the fire.
‘Johnny, don’t burn those steaks now, you hear me, don’t burn them like you did last time.’
‘No ways,’ says Hairy Paunch, ‘these coals are just right now, just right.’ He takes a long sip from his beer. All Lambert can see is his elbow lifting up, but it doesn’t come down again. Big Flowers walks away.
‘Mom, go see if Ansie’s remembered the potato salad,’ Hairy Paunch says to Little Flowers.
‘Ai, Johnny, and I was just settling down nicely here,’ Little Flowers says, but she gets up anyway. She grips the arm of the plastic chair to push herself up.
Nice and pissed too, he sees. He knows it’s the old lady from Fort Knox. She’s the one who said they should take him, Lambert, and put him into a reformatory, that time he stabbed his mother in the cheek with a knife. In a reformatory or a madhouse, she said. Fucken old cunt.
It’s Treppie who came up with the name Fort Knox. He says it looks like they’re living on a heap of gold, like it’s America or something, the way they put up burglar bars and gates in front, and Spanish burglar-proofing over all the windows, and spikes everywhere. There’s a safe full of gold under the ground at the real Fort Knox. Fucken joke, that. As far as he can see, all they’ve got here is three fast-food stands and eight T-bones. And wallpaper.
‘This meat’s ready now,’ Johnny Hairy Paunch shouts at the women in the kitchen. ‘Bring the dishes. Where’s the pap and stuff?’
Here comes Big Flowers now. She’s got two bellies. One above the middle, then a deep fold, then another under the middle. Her dress creases into the fold. She’s carrying a big black pot full of pap. On top of the pap she balances a bowl of tomato and onion sauce.
‘Kiepie,’ she says to Khaki Shorts, ‘go fetch the dishes for Johnny. They’re on the table in the kitchen. The shallow one for the meat and the deep one for the wors.’
Kiepie Khaki Shorts puts down his beer, walks off and returns with the dishes, the shallow one and the deep one.
Blue Bikini and Speedo come over to the food. Speedo’s hand drops to her bum. They’re standing next to Johnny, who’s busy taking the T-bones off the fire. Kiepie’s holding the shallow dish for Johnny.
‘This here’s a proper piece of meat,’ Speedo says, bunching Blue Bikini’s bum into his hand and squeezing it.
‘Oh yes,’ says Johnny, feeling the meat with his fork. ‘Bought it at Roodt Brothers this afternoon. They know their meat there.’
‘Forty Years Meat Tradition,’ says Kiepie, ‘the best in Triomf.’
‘The best,’ says Johnny. ‘These were on special.’
‘Special, hey?’ says Speedo, moving his hand over to the other side of Blue Bikini’s bum. Lambert watches as he gathers the soft meat of her bum into his large hand.
‘Very special,’ says Speedo, slipping his hand under the bikini’s elastic, moving it lower and lower until he’s right in there, between the split, right down at the bottom.
‘Well,’ says Blue Bikini, trying to move the hand away, ‘if you ask me, it’s that wors that looks nice.’