She walks to the kitchen. As she enters, cockroaches scuttle under the fridge. She opens the fridge door. It smells sour. She’s told Lambert it’s the fridge’s oils and stuff that makes it smell so bad, but he says the fridge is just dirty. She takes out the milk and pours some into Gerty’s bowl. Toby’s bowl too, otherwise he just drinks Gerty’s. Toby drinks his milk. Gerty stands in front of her bowl. Her mouth hangs open. ‘Aaraagh! Aaraagh!’ she coughs. Oh, dear God in heaven. What can she do? She picks up Gerty, but Gerty doesn’t want to be picked up.
Mol walks back into the room and turns on the light. Pop’s still in the same position. She crouches at Pop’s side of the bed. Gerty and Toby sit on either side of her. They look where she looks. They’re all checking if Pop’s still alive. A little thread of spit dangles from his mouth. She turns her head to hear if he’s breathing. She has to listen for a long time, above the noise of Gerty’s breath and all the other sounds, before she can hear Pop’s breathing. It’s very shallow. She feels it more than she hears it. She feels it on her forehead. It’s faint. Lukewarm. Lambert says a person’s lungs work like a fridge’s evaporator, cooling down your blood so you can live longer. That’s why the out-breaths are warm. It’s the warmth of your blood coming out. Blood must never be too warm.
Pop’s blood isn’t warm at all. The point of his nose always looks white, with that drop hanging there, and his lips are so cold they look slightly blue. His hands and feet too. Often, when they go to bed, he asks her to rub them a bit. Summer or winter, just his hands and his feet. Good old Pop. That’s the only part of him she has to rub nowadays. His little old willy looks like a raisin, wrinkled and pulled back into a little ball. Pop says he’s dried up now, thank God. Thank God? she asks. Then Pop says he gives thanks to God that he can’t cause any more trouble. ‘It’s not so bad, Pop, we struggle, but we still have each other.’ Then he says ‘each other’, blowing out his breath. It’s not a sigh. It’s more like he wants to blow out all his breath. Pop says he doesn’t want to carry on. But she says he must want to carry on, otherwise what will become of her? Then he says that’s exactly what Old Mol used to say, and look at Old Pop, he also carried on right to the bitter end. But he, Pop, doesn’t have enough strength even to do what Old Pop did. In any case, where would he find a train? Old Pop wanted a train, Old Mol said, ’cause he was hoping the train would ride to hell and off into the Karoo after he hanged himself from his belt. So his loved ones would be spared the sight. To him, that still sounds like a good idea, Pop says. Spare your loved ones the sight. And the smell. And the expense. Anyone who’s been swinging on a belt for that long in a railway truck in the Karoo is going to end up as dry as biltong. Light as a stick. Then all they have to do is dump you on the other side of De Aar. Matter closed, fixed up. Neat and tidy. No hole, no coffin and no headstone. Nothing, not even birds of prey, ’cause they don’t eat biltong.
But she says that story’s a lie, and then Pop says, no, that’s what Old Mol said she was told by Old Pop, before he did it. Mol says it sounds to her more like the kind of thing Treppie would say, and then Pop says, mind you, he did actually hear it from Treppie. Old Mol told Treppie ’cause she thought he was the one with the most insight and understanding, and he also took after Old Pop more than anyone else. That’s what Treppie says. Then she says to Pop, yes, but he’s also Old Pop’s child and he doesn’t take after Old Pop or Treppie, so what’s the big deal? At that, Pop just blows out his breath and says, well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
When Pop gets his breath back, he says Lambert doesn’t take after him either. She, on the other hand, is unlike both him and Treppie. When Pop finishes saying this, he goes funny and quiet and then she knows he’s wondering whose child Lambert really is.
When they were small, Treppie used to give her sweets, in exchange. Sweets that he stole from the café. Then, one day, Old Mol caught them. ‘Why? Why? Why?’ she wailed, beating her head against the wall with each ‘why’. ‘Why, why do you do it?’ And then they both said, for sweets. Treppie told Old Mol he’d give her sweets as well if she’d just stop beating her head against the wall like that. Treppie took out his whole supply of sweets, a shoebox full, which he dragged out from under the bed. He told Old Mol she could have any sweets she wanted. But Old Mol knocked the box down on to the floor and began beating her head against the table. Then Treppie pulled down his pants and bent over. He said she should beat him rather than bang her head so hard against the table. Old Mol said she never laid a hand on anyone, but Old Pop would see him right. When Old Pop got home that night, he was already drunk. He dragged Treppie out from under the bed and took him all the way to the shunting yard, so no one in the house would hear. He said he was going to give Treppie the kind of hiding he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his living days. When Old Pop got back that night, Treppie wasn’t with him any more.
Old Mol began crying all over again. She asked Old Pop to fetch Treppie, but he told her she could go fetch that ‘piece of shame she brought forth’ herself if she wanted to. Then Old Pop turned to her, Mol, and gave her a look like he wanted to start hitting her too — she was very sickly those days and her chest was weak — but Old Mol jumped between them and said, ‘No! No! No! Hit me instead!’, and Old Pop slapped Old Mol so hard she fell right on top of Mol. They must make their own plan now, he said, ’cause he was buggering off. So she comforted Little Pop and Old Mol and they all went looking for Treppie, up and down between the railway lines, behind the warehouses and under the coal-wagons. After searching for a long time, they heard a little cry in an empty goods train, and there they found him, sitting in the straw. He was covered in blood. They had to half-carry, half-piggyback him all the way home. Old Mol laid him down on the kitchen table and began to clean him up with a towel. His face and body were badly cut up. Some of his teeth were missing and his eyes were so swollen he couldn’t see a thing. His nose was completely broken. It remains skew to this day. His backside was covered with puffed-up, purple-blue welts from Old Pop’s belt. And one of his ribs was cracked.
‘God help us,’ Old Mol kept saying, crying softly as she wiped the blood from Treppie’s face and body.
She and Little Pop felt bad, especially Little Pop, ’cause he’d also done it, and now Treppie had been forced to take the punishment. Her too; she’d allowed it long after it stopped being a game. But if she hadn’t, she’d never have seen a sweet in her life again and they’d never have taken her anywhere with them. Like the circus or the bioscope in the afternoons after school, or the horse races, where you could stand around the stables till someone asked you for something and then you said yes, but that will cost two bob, hey.
‘This child must see a doctor,’ Old Mol said to Old Pop the next day, but Old Pop said over his dead body, then the Welfare would be on to them again, and once the Welfare started with you, you had nothing but misery for the rest of your days. But they already had so much misery, Old Mol said. People who wanted to help couldn’t be all that bad. But Old Pop answered her with his fists. He hit her so hard that both her eyes closed up.
For two days, Old Mol stayed at home to look after Treppie. Her plan was to keep the three of them inside until Treppie looked better. She told everyone he had mumps, so they wouldn’t visit.