‘What Christmas tree you talking about?’ she asked.
Now how do you explain a thing like that to Mol? It would take a fucken year. So he just showed her the evening star.
Mol was quiet for a while and then she said: ‘Little star.’
Lambert came out to look as well. Pop too. It was the first time since Saturday night that all of them were outside again. They’d spent Sunday indoors after the fuck-around on Saturday night. The whole of Sunday, Fort Knox played its music full blast. Looking for trouble again. Everyone looks for fucken shit in this place. And that’s just about all you’ll ever get around here, too. He once told them Triomf’s name was all wrong, by a long shot. It should have been Shitfontein or Crapville. When he said that, Lambert asked him if he knew that there was a business called Triomf and that it made fertiliser. Lambert’s not stupid.
Then Pop said they should count their blessings. They mustn’t start looking for shit now.
Pop’s fuses are blown. ‘What blessings?’ he asked him.
‘Well,’ Pop said, ‘at least we still have each other, and a roof over our heads.’
That’s what Old Pop always used to say, too, way back in the thirties when they kept fucking up so badly in Vrededorp. Time and time again.
So when Pop came out last night and asked, ‘What you all looking at?’, he took the gap and said to him, very nicely: ‘We’re looking at each other, Pop, and the roof over our heads, ’cause that’s all we’ve still got left to look at.’
Then Mol said: ‘We’re looking at the little star on the Christmas tree!’
Suddenly Mol looked like she wanted to cry.
‘What shit you talking now again, hey, Ma?’ Lambert shouted.
Lambert always shouts when Mol looks like she wants to start crying.
In the end they all stood there like fucken zombies looking at the evening star, ’cause the overflow pipe and the TV aerial were lying on a heap next to the house where Treppie had chucked them, together with pieces of broken gutter.
After a while, Pop said: ‘Stars are very old.’
Lambert said Pop was talking rubbish, stars were fucken dead.
‘Dead from what?’ Mol asked.
Lambert told her they were dead from time. Can you believe it, he actually said that.
When they go to the Newlands library to get books for Mol, Lambert reads all kinds of things in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Then he repeats everything he’s read to Mol, but he adds his own little bits to the stories he tells. It’s easy to carry on like that with Mol. She swallows just about anything you say. Lambert learnt it by watching him, Treppie. He does it a lot with Mol, although he’s really doing it for himself. But his own stories never come from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They come from newspapers, about things that happen to people. Lambert’s stories are about insects and engines and stars and things, about how everything works. His stories are about things that don’t work. Not because they’re broken, but because they are the way they are. Lambert tells Mol things ’cause he thinks it impresses him, Treppie. Lambert wants to show him he can also talk a hole into Mol’s head. But he’s not impressed. There’s just a hole where Mol’s head is supposed to be anyway.
When he, Treppie, tells Mol things, it’s not to see if she can still think, but to see if she can still feel. He finds it hard to believe Mol can still feel anything. So he tries her out, every day. It’s a fucken miracle. He can’t figure out if he wants her to feel things or not to feel anything at all. That’s ’cause what’s better for Mol will be worse for him. Basically, he has to make sure Mol and Pop and Lambert still feel things, otherwise he, Treppie, will go to glory. It’s just that he has to dig deeper and deeper nowadays to find Mol’s feelings. First you get blood and shit and gore. Then only feelings. But it’s Lambert’s job, that. He doesn’t even have to open his mouth. All he does is wind Lambert up a bit and give him the tools. Then he runs on automatic. Lambert digs, and when the arteries are open nice and wide, then he, Treppie, can go and do some inspection, to see if there’s any gold-dust left in the dead mines. Pearls before swine. Who else can see them for what they are?
Sometimes Lambert says things that make Treppie think he’s got a clue. Last night he went and said stars die from time. Mol just stood there and gaped at him. Lambert said yes, the stars died a long time ago. What you saw now was their light, still travelling after so many years.
‘How far is it from here to there?’ asked Mol.
‘Light years, Ma. Light years,’ said Lambert.
‘What’s a light year?’ she asked.
Mol always asks more and more questions, until Lambert doesn’t know what to say any more. That’s what he, Treppie, likes, ’cause then he can spice up the story with lots of bullshit. That’s the real surprise package. Lambert thinks he’s fucken cute when he talks shit into Mol’s head. But this time, just when he wanted to start improvising, those two wankers from Fort Knox stuck their heads over the wall.
‘Just look how hard they’re looking,’ said the one.
‘They’re looking at their roof,’ said the other.
‘I suppose they’re going to fix it now,’ said the one.
‘They must think they can see in the dark like vampires.’
Then they all quickly went inside again.
It’s Monday today. A bright day, with no stars in the sky, dead or alive. The scum from Fort Knox left early to go and put up their take-away stands on street corners.
He knows he’ll have to lead the way here today. Repair the damage. Pop’s as good as dead and Lambert’s half-dead from all his stuffing around. God alone knows how much more trouble he’ll make if the television isn’t working by tonight. Next thing he’ll smash the TV to pieces as well. And then the whole lot of them will go to glory, ’cause TV’s the one thing that keeps Lambert quiet. He sits and watches everything. He watches so hard he even forgets his Klipdrift. He watches Thought for the Day and the flag blowing as they sing the anthem, right to the very end. And then, when the test pattern comes back on, he watches the rubbish that he hires from Ponta do Sol. Lambert should get a TV implanted in his brain. Then he’ll be fine. Then he can go lie down with a permanent car chase between his ears.
He told Mol and Pop, all those years ago: poke that child out with knitting needles, and then rinse yourself inside with Sunlight soap and Epsom salts. Before it got too big. But of course they didn’t want to listen. He told Mol there’s a fucken dinosaur coming out of her. At four months her stomach was already stretched to hell and gone. But they were nice and soft in their heads. Pop said: ‘Ag, Treppie, it’s someone who can look after us one day when we’re old.’
Stupid fucken fools! And look what they’ve got now! A fucken freak show. And who has to do the looking after? Them! And it’s not just a question of care, it’s cares. Worries.
He’s already warned them, one day the TV people are going to come and make a movie about them. He’s not sure what kind of a movie, a horror or a sitcom or a documentary. He thinks they’re too soft for horror and too sad for a sitcom, so maybe they’re just right for a documentary. Documentaries are about weird things like force-feeding parrots for export. He told Lambert he’d better behave himself, otherwise they’d come and ask him to make a special appearance on Wildlife Today. Lambert said only threatened species got shown on that programme. The poor fucker kids himself.
Now the front door opens. It’s Mol. Gone with the wind.
‘What you looking at now?’ she asks.
‘I’m looking at the damage.’
‘Damage,’ she says. ‘Terrible damage.’