But everyone knew exactly what was going on. The children lay behind the closed curtain in the room, listening to everything the Beyleveldts said.
‘A very weak kind of Afrikaner,’ said Mrs Beyleveldt.
‘Weak? They’re worse than kaffirs, if you ask me,’ said Mr Beyleveldt.
‘It’s easy for them to talk,’ Old Mol said when they told her what the Beyleveldts were saying. ‘They’re only two in their half. People go rotten from living on a heap like this.’
‘What makes people go rotten is loneliness,’ Old Pop said. By then he was drinking heavily.
‘People get lonely when they think they’re better than other people,’ Old Mol said.
She was right. Old Pop drank on his own. He didn’t mix with the people at work. He also refused to go with Old Mol to the garment workers’ concerts.
‘All the other husbands go with their wives,’ Old Mol used to say, begging him to come with her. But Old Pop just said no. He said he was too good for the city and its people. He was a man of the soil. He read to them out of newspapers about the government’s plans to put the poor whites back on their farms. She’d still see what happened to white women who fell in with the Communists and the trade unions. Communists loved kaffirs and there were lots of kaffirs, he said. Lambertus Benade was a Nationalist and the kaffirs must know their place. That was the way Old Pop used to talk.
Mol’s feet feel like they’re going to sleep from all the crouching in front of Pop. Gerty starts coughing again. Mol rubs her little back. Pop opens his eyes. He moves his mouth as if to say: What you doing, Mol? But nothing comes out. He tries again.
‘What you doing, Mol?’ He reaches out to her with his hand, taking hers. His hand feels cold.
Mol wants to say: I’m looking to see if you’re still alive, Pop. But she doesn’t. She can see on his face he knows what she wants to say. She just says: ‘Gerty’s coughing.’
‘Gerty’s old,’ says Pop. He closes his eyes again. ‘Mol, it’s the middle of the night,’ he says, turning over.
‘I’m coming now,’ she says. ‘I’m just taking her outside to pee.’
But halfway out of the house Mol forgets what she wanted to do. She’s thinking about the look in Pop’s eyes as he lay there, looking at her. It was almost as if he was looking at her from a far place, and he could see more than just what he was looking at. Like a circus elephant. The older Pop gets, the more that look in his eyes reminds her of an elephant. Heartsore eyes, as though he’s looking through a peephole. If she remembers right, Pop’s eyes began to look like that when he was still very young.
She remembers the day Pop came back from the shunting yard, after they called him to go see about Old Pop in the train. Then his eyes had such a faraway look that Mrs Beyleveldt made him drink sugar water before he left for the factory, to fetch Old Mol. Treppie kept dead quiet all day long. He’d never spoken another word to Old Pop after that beating in any case. If he was naughty before the hiding, he became even more hard-boiled afterwards. That’s when he developed the twitch in his shoulder. Old Beyleveldt used to say he looked like a donkey with an itch. Treppie didn’t shed a single tear at the funeral. And afterwards he began to act like he was boss of the house. It was also then that Treppie started running her into the ground. She tried to complain to Old Mol, but by then Old Mol was a broken woman.
‘Your brother was terribly hurt, my child,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing more I can do now. The three of you will have to sort out your own lives.’
By that time, Old Mol was very ill herself. She coughed terribly. And Treppie drank all her medicine, for the alcohol. He used to get completely knocked out from Old Mol’s cough medicine.
Maybe if she gives Gerty some Klipdrift, it’ll help. But the Klipdrift’s in the sideboard and the keys are in Treppie’s pocket. He’s the one who always buys the brandy. He says he doesn’t buy it for Lambert to throw it back in a single day. Not that it makes much difference. If Lambert wants to drink he just turns Treppie upside down and shakes him out like a pillowcase till those keys fall out. The only thing that keeps him away from the bottle is when she lies down for him in the back room. Or when Treppie says he’s going to have Lambert ‘certified’, so they can tie him up on a trolley and force-feed him till his liver’s big enough for export to Uganda. The kaffirs in that place are still nice and wild, Treppie says, they love eating white man’s liver. Treppie says they call white man’s liver ‘patydefwagras’ in Uganda. When Treppie says this, Lambert goes white in the face. And then Treppie says, yes, go catch a fit now too, then we can take you with your convulsions and all to the halfway house, so they can see with their own eyes what kind of lunatic we’ve got on our hands here in Triomf. Then Lambert goes back to his den and starts breaking things till he cools down. Or he makes a fire in the yard, throwing anything he can lay his hands on into the flames. She’s lost three housecoats like that. Or he goes and paints on his wall for three days running. That’s the best. Then he bothers nobody. Or he goes and looks for wine boxes. After that he’s so tired he lies down on his bed and sleeps all day.
Mol pushes open Treppie’s door. She stands in the dark for a while to see if she can spot where he threw his pants down. He and Pop both sleep in their shirts and underpants for a week before going to the laundromat in Thornton. Treppie says he can hardly believe it, they used to have a whole yard full of twin-tubs and now there’s not even a single washing machine for their own clothes.
She can’t see a thing. Treppie’s put those sheets up against the window again. He specially went and bought himself sheets to hang up there. He says people who live in glass houses shouldn’t take chances. When she asks what he means by ‘glass houses’, he says their house sits on a bare piece of lawn like a monument to fuck-all. All it needs is a pedestal. He says he wonders what people think they’re actually exhibiting here. Then he says he wants to plant a hedge in front of the house so everyone will stop looking at them. But Lambert says he wants no more plant-rubbish near the house. His spanners just get lost in the plants.
Mol turns on Treppie’s light. He’s lying with his face to the wall. He snores, ‘krr-phooo, krr-phooo’. And he’s still wearing his pants, but it doesn’t matter, ’cause the half-full bottle of Klipdrift is standing right here in front of her, next to the bed.
A line of ants makes its way towards the bottle. Where do they come from? Mol wonders. She looks down at her feet. The ants are coming from the lounge. She switches on the passage and lounge lights. She bends over to look. Some of the ants are walking this way, some the other way. But they stick to the same line, knocking heads before carrying on again. Mol walks carefully into the room. She takes the bottle and wipes off a few ants. Ever since the day he fell off the roof, Treppie’s been drinking like this. He says his foot still hurts. The smell of Treppie’s rotten brandy breath fills the room. He’s lying with his head on a dirty white cushion.
No, he always says, you dare not use a pillow-slip in this house, they’re just nests for earwigs. Ever since Treppie told Lambert earwigs make holes in epileptics’ eardrums and eat out their brains, Lambert’s been scared to death of the things. One day, soon after Treppie told him about the earwigs, Lambert took all the pillow-slips and burnt them up on a heap of grass. Just in case, he said. Now they all sleep on dirty cushions.
Mol walks quietly out of the room and switches off the lights. As she opens the front door, moist air hits her in the face. Mist. A rare sight in Triomf, but she likes the feel of it. Nice and cool to breathe. Good for the blood.
She sits herself down on the edge of the stoep, with Gerty here next to her. What’s good for her must be good for Gerty too — thick mist and Klipdrift. Now she also feels like having a shot. She unscrews the cap and takes a sip. Her body shivers all the way down from her throat. Then she quickly takes another sip. The more you sip, the less you shiver. She prefers her brandy with Coke, but she’s not going to search for Coke and a glass at this hour. The house is making her ears zing tonight.