By then the whole den was full of the boxes. On top of the fridges, inside the fridges, stacked up to the ceiling. There were boxes of fireworks everywhere.
Lambert said if you wanted to do something you had to do it properly. He also bought six bottles of brandy, a crate of Coke and lots of plastic cups. Now only the people still had to come.
Treppie told Lambert if he wanted his party to look like an ‘evening cocktail’ he’d better cut the grass. He didn’t want Parktown Prawns crawling up his customers’ legs, did he? But Lambert hadn’t gotten that far. In those days they had a manual lawn-mower with blades that jammed all the time. And Lambert wasn’t so worried about the state of the lawn in those days.
So the grass was long that day before Guy Fawkes. Lambert was in a hurry to get the fridge finished and he shouted at her to bring his small spanner. Trying to find a little spanner in the long grass was just too much for her. So she gave him one that she thought would fit the tiny nuts he was trying to loosen. But it was the wrong spanner and he threw that one into the grass as well. It wasn’t long before he took all the tools from the box and hurled them by the fistful into the long grass.
‘This fridge must get finished! Now!’ he shouted. ‘Bring me my Phillips screwdriver.’
Now, finding a Phillips screwdriver in long grass is no joke. Each time she thought she saw it and bent over, he shouted: Ma, I can see your twat! Stand up! And when she stood up again, he shouted: Find my goddamn this! Or, bring my fucken that! After a while she was so confused that when he asked for pliers she grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on and passed it to him, even if it was a hammer, or a nail, or a screw.
That’s how she lost her bearings with the names of tools and things. After a while she was crawling on all fours in the grass, crying. It was dark and Lambert had put on the extension light. He said he was finished with things that didn’t work, things that didn’t run, things that didn’t wear panties and things that got lost in the grass. And he was finished with fancy larnies who didn’t RSVP to say they were coming to his party. Finished. Then he lost his head completely. He said if Triomf hadn’t seen a Big Bang before, today was the day. And if people thought they made history in this place by bulldozing kaffir-houses, then they were in for a big surprise. Now they’d see what real history looked like. It wasn’t bulldozing that made history, it was fire. Guy Fawkes. He took the spare can of petrol from the Austin and threw it all over the grass where the fridges stood. He told her to bring the boxes out of the den and pack them on top of the fridges. And then he poured petrol over the fridges, too.
She began to scream, but he said that if she didn’t shuddup at once he’d see to it that she made such a big noise she wouldn’t say another full sentence all the days of her life. He dragged her into the den and stuffed the pockets of her housecoat with Peking Ducks, shoving some into the front of her dress as well. He said it was a pity she wasn’t wearing panties, ’cause then he could’ve shoved them in there too. It was actually under her backside that he wanted to make a fire, and her cunt that he wanted to shoot into its glory. Disgusting mouth he’s got. He shoved her arms and her legs and her feet into the old fridge, and he slammed the door closed, knocking her knees silly.
That fridge was still running when the door closed. The light went off right there next to her head. It was cold. She remembers thinking this must be what hell feels like — sitting with squashed knees in a place that’s so cold it makes your teeth rattle. And then, moments later, you take off like a rocket into the sky. ‘Rack-a-tack-tack-tack!’ Into the outermost darkness, with subtitles.
Other than that, she remembers nothing. Pop says Treppie found her inside the fridge, knocked out cold.
When Pop and Treppie got home that night, the whole street was outside, watching the fireworks. By then, the den was burning brightly, but the fire brigade came and killed the flames. Lambert was completely stuffed up. Lying in the grass, filthy dirty from soiling himself as he gave in. He’d bitten himself and his mouth was full of blood. Both of them had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance. She was given oxygen. Afterwards, she coughed non-stop for almost a year. The doctor said her lungs had been injured by the fridge-gas leaking into her blood.
Treppie took it badly. Pop too. He began to stare out of his eyes with an extra faraway look, like he was riding up and down in a lift all day long. Only Lambert still had some kick left in him when he came back from hospital. His mouth was so sore he couldn’t manage anything but milkshake for a whole month. They had to spend their days making sure he was busy.
She told Pop they must give him things to fix, things that work in the end. If things don’t work, Lambert gets a fit or he begins to smash everything to pieces. Or he makes fires.
That’s how the postbox got there. But since the day Lambert first put up his postbox, it hasn’t stayed on its pole for more than a month at a time.
Mol looks at the gate. It looks faint in the mist. Gerty shivers softly in her arms. When Gerty coughs, it feels like she’s the one who’s actually coughing. If only something would come out. But it sounds like it’d be too much if it did come out.
It sounds like Gerty wants to cough her heart right out. Mol wonders what Gerty’s heart would look like if she coughed it out. Would it hang from her mouth by threads, or fall on to the bare cement and lie there, quivering?
She shuts her eyes tight.
‘Ughrr-ughrr,’ she helps Gerty cough.
‘Hrrraagh-hrrraagh!’ Gerty coughs.
‘Ughrr-ughrr, hrrraagh-hrrraagh!’ They sit there, coughing together on the stoep. Then Mol hears something else: ‘Who-Whoo!’
She looks up. Can you believe it? On top of the lamp-pole, etched against the mist, an owl perches. It’s got little ears. Must’ve gotten lost. The mist must be too thick for owls tonight.
‘Ughrr-ughrr, hrrraagh-hrrraagh, who-whoo!’ it goes in the front yard.
We’re singing in turns, Mol thinks, like Friar Jacob. ‘Ughrr-ughrr, hrrraagh-hrrraagh, who-whoo.’
10. THE NEVER-ENDING PAINTING
Lambert stands in front of the den’s inside wall with a can of spray-paint in his hand. He’s looking at his painting. The painting rises from behind his bed, filling up the whole wall.
Most of the time he sees nothing when he starts. It’s weird, seeing nothing where there’s so much.
But he knows he just has to be patient. If it takes too long, he can spray a spot or a line anywhere. After that he can always paint a tail on to the spot or a head on to the line. Then at least it looks like something.
’Cause not to know where to start, that’s the worst.
Then there’s just time and nothing.
Like when he left school. He was bored to death, especially between twelve and two in the afternoons. Time and nothing, like a draught down his neck. Without being able to close a door somewhere.
Then one day he began to draw South Africa with koki pens on the wall, copying from his history book.
The outer lines are green. They’re almost completely faded out now. Koki pens are like that. The little red peaks for the Cape mountains and the Drakensberg are bigger and you can see them better. Molehills, molehills, molehills. And the Orange River and the Vaal River and the Fish River and all the other big rivers are there too, in blue. The best was when he drew big thick arrows in black to show how the kaffirs swooped down on the country from above. And he drew big yellow arrows for the Voortrekkers, who occupied the country outwards from the Cape.
When he began to draw that day, it was just after twelve. Like now. Just after he got up. By the time he was finished it was pitch dark outside. That’s how the time flew.