‘Ja,’ says Lambert. ‘That’s why stars pass out sometimes, pfft! Not enough gravity there where they are. A star,’ he says, ‘dissolves in time. In light years. In space, like an Aspro in a glass of water.’
And as he says this, he looks like someone with a sledgehammer who wants to beat something to a pulp.
8. PEST CONTROL
Dear Lord, just look at her from all the stings. But now Pop’s rubbing Prep on her sore places, and that’s nice and cool. Mol’s sitting in her chair with her legs spread out in front of her. She’s holding Gerty on her lap. Gerty breathes heavily. The poor thing had the whole swarm on top of her and now her eyes have closed up from all the swelling. Mol can’t bear even to look at Gerty. Instead, she looks down at her legs where Pop’s busy rubbing on the Prep. Her legs got the worst of it. Her arms too, plus a few stings on her neck and two on her head, right on top. Right through her hair. Pop’s already done her head and her neck. He started on top, working his way down, but now she stinks of the stuff. Pop said he would first rub Lambert, ’cause Lambert got the worst of it, then her, and then Treppie last of all. But Lambert didn’t want any of it. And Treppie said no ointment in the world could make the Benades look or feel any better.
Treppie’s acting nasty ’cause Pop’s the only one who didn’t get stung. Pop was inside, and Treppie sprained his foot. That’s why he’s feeling so sorry for himself.
Pop must get a move on with his rubbing. Any minute now the pest-control people will be here. It’s Wednesday already, which means those two from the NP will also be coming. She’s really not in the mood for them today.
Even before Pop took them all to the hospital for injections, on Monday, he phoned the municipality. Since then, they’ve all just been sitting around in the house, looking at the bees outside.
It was a hellishly hot day, and Treppie spent too long working on the roof. That’s why it happened. Monday he decides today’s the day he’s going to fix everything Fort Knox broke on the roof. Just like Treppie to choose the hottest day for something like that. Then she had to run up and down fetching tools for him. And each time she walked to the den at the back, she saw the bees swarming around the vent, there near the foundation. But she didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to keep her head straight so she could remember what Treppie was asking her to bring.
It took hours. First Treppie cut the broken overflow pipe straight with a hacksaw and then he fixed it on to another pipe with glue, taping the whole thing up as well. He splinted the TV-aerial with a piece of iron and knocked it back into the roof. And all this time she had to pass all kinds of things to him up there on the roof. She had to climb halfway up the ladder each time. Up and down, up and down. After a while it felt like she was going to pass out, she was so tired. Lambert didn’t even lift a finger. He just stood there on the stoep, screwing up his eyes. He felt dizzy, he said. But he wasn’t too dizzy to chip in all the time.
Those joints Treppie was making, he shouted from the stoep, wouldn’t stand the first strong wind. In that case, Treppie shouted back, Lambert would have to fix them, ’cause there was practically nothing those two hands of his couldn’t do, or was he imagining things again? And then he winked at Lambert.
Treppie drives Lambert mad just by the way he says things. All Monday morning, up there on the roof, Treppie peppered him. Lambert, he said, was standing there on the stoep just like a shift boss. So now, he said, what did the Inspector of Works think about this or that? And if Lambert wanted to peep at the people next door, he shouted, then he should get on to the roof right from the start. With his welding helmet on so he could look through the sparks, ’cause from where Treppie was standing he could see right into Fort Knox’s main bedroom. No one was there now, but he could see more than enough evidence of ‘burning passion’. That was when Treppie began to play the fool, hugging himself up there in the hot sun. He was grabbing and touching himself something terrible. All you saw were those claws of his, groping himself around the shoulders. He began to sing ‘Oh oh oh what a night!’ Loudly, up into the sky. For all the world to see.
At first, Lambert didn’t catch on it was Treppie who was working on his nerves so much. He thought the bees must be making him feel so mad. By then the bees had come out of their hole. They were flying round the house like bomber planes. Must’ve been worked up from all the commotion and the welding’s white light.
Fucken bee, Lambert kept saying. He picked up the steel Treppie was clearing off the roof, and then he chucked it down again. Lambert was still slapping at the bees when he suddenly dropped everything. He grabbed the yellow bucket she was using to clean scrap iron for Treppie, and then he took it with him to the tap. ‘Fucken bastards! Now I’m going to drown the whole fucken lot of you. Buzzing round my blarry head all the time!’
He limped off with his sore foot to go fill the bucket with water.
‘Ag, don’t be so spiteful, man,’ Treppie shouted. ‘They must think you’re God’s own double sunflower, with those crooked saucer-eyes of yours.’
But Lambert was already on the other side of the house. He was making for the air-vent in the foundation. The next thing she and Treppie saw him sprinting round the side of the house, with Gerty on his heels, his mouth opening and closing. The bees were clogged in a black swarm around his head. His face was white and he was running hell for leather with that big lumbering body of his, sore foot and all.
Treppie, meanwhile, was running in circles on the roof, trying to keep track of Lambert as he ran around the house. Then she also took off after him. As she ran, she pulled off her pink housecoat and dragged it under the tap, which Lambert had left running, so she could throw it over Lambert’s head. But Lambert was shouting and swinging his arms like a windmill. And each time she and Gerty passed a window on their way round the house, she saw Pop’s face trying to keep up with the goings-on outside.
‘Stay inside, Pop!’ she shouted. ‘Keep Toby in!’
‘Don’t come out, Pop!’ Treppie shouted, but he was laughing so much he could hardly talk. ‘It looks like Kyalami out here. Old Lambert’s doing laps! Bzzz! Bzzz!’
The more she shouted that Treppie must get off the roof to come and help her, the less he seemed to hear.
All she could see in front of her was Lambert’s back, twisting and turning as he ran with the bees, who were bunched in swarms around his shoulders. Every now and again he managed to get a sound out, a kind of low growl she’d never heard coming out of his mouth before.
‘Ow-whoo, ow-whoo!’ Gerty cried as the bees stung her.
‘Oo-ooo! Hee-hee-hee-hee,’ Treppie laughed from the roof. ‘Lambert, it’s not a merry-go-round, man, change direction. Other side! Hee-hee! I’m going to piss myself here!’
Treppie was still laughing like that when his foot slipped and he began to slide down the roof on his backside. He turned on to his stomach as he tried to find something to grab on to. He wanted to break the fall by wedging his foot in the gutter, but the gutter wasn’t there any more, and he fell, ‘boof!’ right on to the ground. He landed in the molehills, thumping red dust up into the air.
And there he sat, clutching his foot, unable to get up again. ‘My fucken foot’s broken!’ he said.
It was actually his ankle. Sprained.
At that moment, Lambert came running another lap around the corner. He knocked himself silly over Treppie, who was still sitting there. Then she came up behind Lambert and fell over the two of them. And there they lay in a heap. And the bees came straight for the heap.
She was wiping bunches of those bees off Lambert’s back with her bare hands. She took him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him up. Then she grabbed Treppie and pulled him closer too. And she dragged Gerty by her neck into the middle of the heap. She waved the wet housecoat around in the air to open it up, throwing it over the lot of them with one swoop. As they sat there, they could feel the bees walking over their heads on top of her housecoat. Every now and again a bee would sting right through the material. Lambert was moaning and groaning. Treppie kept saying: ‘My foot, my poor fucken foot!’