Elephant eye! Looking out from a hole, a faraway, dark place, with an old wrinkled eyelid that half covers the eye. And the wrinkles underneath, down and across, from so much looking out. And tears! But not elephant tears. Human tears! ‘Plop-plop-plop!’ they fall on to her feet. Thick, fat, lukewarm tears. Dear Lord, have mercy!
She feels her own breath coming quickly now, her own heart skipping a beat. She doesn’t want to look at that eye of his any more. Not at his mouth either, Pop’s mouth that’s all in a pout with crying. Just like an elephant’s. All he needs now is a long trunk reaching out blindly into the air. Reaching out for her! No! She mustn’t start thinking about elephants now. Better not.
‘Ag, Pop man, you’re making me all dirty again with these tears. Watch or I’ll have to take another bath.’
Pop knows all too well it’s getting a bit much now. He tries to make a joke, sniffing inbetween the words.
‘You should be glad, old Mol, at least there’s still some moisture left in me!’
But the joke doesn’t come off. And now he’s really crying. Now she also can’t take it any longer. Dear Lord, Jesus. She can’t hold it back any more. She joins in, nothing to be done, she’ll cry with him a little. She goes and sits flat on her backside, next to him, there on the cold cement floor. Weighed down by all the crying. Toby pushes himself between their legs. He licks their tears.
‘Hell, old Toby, and we haven’t even had a drop to drink!’ says Pop.
Mind you, maybe that’s just what they need right now. A stiff tot to fix them up a bit.
‘All right,’ says Pop, ‘maybe that’s just the thing.’
He blows his nose into the wet rag. Then he passes it to her so she can also blow her nose.
‘Get dressed, Mol, I’m going to get the sideboard keys out of Treppie’s pocket.’
He knows he’s taking a chance. A naughty little look breaks through the misery on his face.
‘Just watch me,’ he says, worming his wet arms through his shirtsleeves. Then he’s out of the door, in nothing but his shirt. In the candlelight, his thin, white calves look like little dry sticks.
MAN OF STARS 
They walk to the den, each with a glass in hand. She holds the candle on its little lid. Pop’s got the Coke and the Klipdrift. He pulls up crates so they can sit on either side of Lambert. He puts down the candle next to Lambert’s head. The flame throws funny, dark little patches over Lambert’s face, and long, pointy shadows on his painting; the one of their house and the things in Africa. Toby sits near Lambert’s feet.
They sit down. Washed clean and done now with their crying, they look at Lambert lying there on his back. Only his head sticks out from under the worn old blanket. Funny shadows play on his face. He snores quietly. Pop sits back a little.
She holds out her glass for Pop to pour. He pours for both of them.
‘Well then, cheers,’ he says, clinking his glass against hers, just above Lambert’s chest. He does it very carefully.
She points. At least he’s not blue in the face any more. She takes a sip.
‘Strong as a horse,’ says Pop. ‘He’s sleeping nicely now.’
She remembers that Lambert’s shorts are still on the line. Pop waves it away, she mustn’t worry, that’s the least of their problems.
‘Tomorrow’s another day,’ he says.
‘Should we wake him up?’ She looks at Lambert’s fat cheeks going in and out as he snores.
‘What for?’ Pop looks scared.
‘For a sip of Coke.’
‘The game’s not worth the candle. It’s best to leave him.’
Mol suddenly feels silly. ‘Not the candle, the Coke. And not the game, the watermelon! The watermelon’s not worth the Coke.’
‘Don’t play games, Mol, God can hear you.’
Pop points a finger at her, but he can’t help it, he also smiles a bit.
‘Shsssh!’
Lambert stirs. His arm pushes off the blanket. Now his big fat forearm lies across his chest. It’s full of scorch-marks. His mouth opens and closes. He’s mumbling something. She signals to Pop he must come closer so he can also listen. They bend over to hear what he’s saying.
‘Light blue, my beloved, for ever and ever,’ he says in his sleep. Back and forth he turns his head. His lips are pouting and his cheeks tremble. There’s a deep hollow between his eyes. It looks like his face was assembled from many different pieces, as if it’s not one face but many faces. Mol looks at Pop, as if to ask, will he ever be okay again? Pop looks like he wants to run away, like he wants to scream. He looks the way he looked that time when Lambert put on the video of Frankenstein’s monster, when that terrible creature got up from its bed with its pasty face and then walked right through the door, killing live electric wires with its big paws. That was a horror. Pop doesn’t like horrors.
Lambert’s talking again.
‘Orion washes my feet,’ he says. Now it’s his legs that tremble. His blanket slides off on one side. His stomach looks blown up. His thing moves a little. Then he lets out a big sigh.
‘He’s dreaming,’ says Pop.
She motions to Pop, he must straighten the blanket.
‘No, you,’ says Pop.
Carefully, she pulls the blanket over him. She imagines he grabs her right now and strangles her to death, in his sleep. She’s getting the creeps here!
She sits back. Lambert’s quiet again. Pop pours another drink.
‘Light blue, my beloved.’ Does Pop know what it means? Yes? No?
‘Orion washes my feet’? Pop shakes his head.
‘Who’s Orion again?’
‘I’ve shown you before, Molletjie, it’s the man in the stars, the one with three shining jewels in his belt.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the sky at night. I’ll show you. He’s easy to make out among the others. You can recognise him by his belt.’
‘I thought the stars were burnt out.’
Pop reaches out to her over Lambert’s belly.
‘Don’t worry, Molletjie, if the light from their fires reaches us, you can be sure they’re still full of life. Even though Orion is worlds away from us, his light will always reach Triomf. For ever and ever.’ Pop squeezes her hand.
Poor Triomf. Endlessly far beneath the stars. A very sad business, if you ask her.
‘You could say it’s heaven’s fireworks, Mol. Our Father in heaven’s Guy Fawkes. And it carries on and on, across the generations.’
When Pop starts like this, then it’s the Klipdrift talking. Then he tells her far-fetched stories about heaven. And it always makes her sad. She fights back her tears. Enough crying for one day. They must go sleep now.
Should they take their blanket? she wonders.
No, he says, he’s got a plan. He finds the old greycoat in the trunk on top of their cupboard. The one Old Mol used to wrap the dough in after the first kneading, so it would rise in the night. They can sleep under it, says Pop. It’s not so cold tonight, anyway.
TO SLEEP
When she blows out the candle, it’s very dark in the room. She lies on her back with her eyes open, like Pop, lying here next to her. Now that her eyes are used to it, she can see a bit.
The wind starts blowing outside. She feels funny in her stomach. It must be hunger. They didn’t eat a thing all day long.
‘That’s rain coming,’ says Pop.
The loose panel in the dressing table suddenly shakes, ‘cheeree-cheeree’. There’s a rumbling noise somewhere deep under the ground. The house shudders.
What was that? She puts her hand on Pop, under the coat.