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‘Just a little mine tremor,’ he says.

A sinkhole, more like it.

Then they lie and listen to the wind and the first thunder, rumbling in a different way now. They watch the flickering against the wall as the lightning gets closer and closer.

‘Kabam!’ it strikes, right above them, so hard that the windows rattle in their frames.

‘Good God!’ says Mol, almost jumping out of her skin.

‘Never mind,’ says Pop, ‘we’re lying on rubber. And the house is earthed.’ He puts her hand back where it was.

Now the first loose drops of rain start falling, ‘plop! plop! plop!’, here and there on the corrugated-iron roof. The room is white from all the lightning. The sounds of the storm begin to fill up the whole world.

‘There it is, now,’ Pop says when the rain finally comes down.

‘Shorrr’ it runs off the gutterless roof.

‘It’s from all the trouble today,’ Mol says, ‘this rain.’

Pop gives the hand lying on top of him a little squeeze. Mol gives him one back. Then Pop’s breath starts to come more evenly. He’s almost asleep now. She hears the first drips all over the house. She forgot to put out bowls. Too bad.

Just before Mol falls asleep, she feels Pop’s little thing moving slightly under her hand.

She smiles in the dark.

He rises in his sleep, she thinks, just like Old Mol’s bread. The rain on the roof makes her sleepy. It feels like her eyes close all by themselves.

15. URBAN ANGEL

Lambert looks up at the helicopter. His mother and Pop and Treppie stand next to him. He went out early this evening, and when he got back from doing his rounds, the helicopter was there. Then he went inside and told his people they must come out on to the front lawn. So the neighbours and the people in the helicopter could see the Benades had nothing to hide.

Now the helicopter dips and turns, flying low over the houses of Triomf, block by block. Its blue searchlight shines into everyone’s backyards. The whole street’s full of people who want to know what’s going on. They stretch their necks this way and that to see if they can catch a glimpse of someone running away or climbing over a prefab wall. Everyone leaves their front doors open. Some of the houses have little Christmas trees with lights that switch on and off all the time. It’s two weeks into December already. He’s told them he wouldn’t mind a tree like that in their own lounge, with little lights and things. For putting on the sideboard. Treppie says it’s kitsch, but then he says it actually depends on your class. What’s kitsch in Houghton is art in Triomf, he says, but his heart bleeds for anyone, never mind his social standing, who spends so much money on material things. Whether it’s kitsch or art, a tree like that costs a shithouse full of money. And the fuckers who get rich from selling those trees know all too well it’s not an electrical trick their customers are looking for. What they want is Jesus on an automatic time switch. Jesus on, Jesus off. And it’s been a bit rough on that poor Son of Man, Treppie says, inbetween all the onning and offing. For years on end. But no one seems to want to know anything about it. That’s why angels are so blessed, he says. They’re permanently switched on to ‘Hosannah in the highest’. But not with electricity. With holy current. That must be quite something, he says, but he doesn’t look like he believes what he’s saying.

Now the helicopter’s blue light shines right into their faces.

‘Ow!’ says his mother. She holds up her hand in front of her eyes. Pop looks the other way.

No, man, what are his people doing now, they must look straight into the light, with open eyes, so they can make themselves known to the protectors of the law. Let them shine their fucken light. If they want to interrogate him here in his own yard, then he’ll say to them, look, if it wasn’t for his regular patrols in the streets at night, which he does of his own free will, without expecting anything in return, then Triomf would be the same as all the other suburbs. Full of murder and robbery and killing. As things stand, Triomf is one of the safest areas in the whole of Jo’burg. You wouldn’t say it, with all the riff-raff and scum just a stone’s throw away, there on the other side of Ontdekkers. It’s all thanks to one white oke who can be seen regularly on the streets at night. They know they can’t just come and take chances here in Triomf.

That’s why, when he’s out at night and he walks past a munt, he shines his torch right into the munt’s eyes and then he says: Watch your step, my mate, I’m checking you out.

And nowadays he also tap-taps on his gun. Which he wears in his belt. Then their eyes go big, like saucers.

He sticks the gun in the belt that he took off his Man About Towns. He made a new hole right at the end of the belt, and now he can only just get it on again, under his belly. The stretched elastic in his shorts won’t hold the gun nice and tight. When he puts the gun into his belt, everyone can see it.

News travels. By this time, anyone who’s up to funny business will know about him. Especially now that he’s armed.

His family don’t know about the gun yet, but they stare at him like they do. ’Specially his mother. He figures that maybe they saw his list. And he thinks his mother saw more than just the list. He swears she saw THE MOLE IN THE FRIDGE. All his stuff was shifted away from the wall when he came to. But maybe he did it himself, when he was burning the rubbish. Or maybe they scratched around in his things when he was lights-out.

No respect for his privacy. But what can he do? He can’t remember so nicely any more. And when he woke up, he wasn’t wearing his shorts.

Lately, Treppie’s been holding his hands in front of his eyes like binoculars, and then he sings, in a deep voice:

‘I see a bad moon rising

I see trouble on the way.’

Or he pretends he’s pulling a gun out of a holster and then he does a crazy little dance with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out and his head pulled back into his shoulders. Then he pretends he’s shooting up into the sky, ‘crack! — crack! — crack!’.

And when he asks Treppie what now, then he says no, he’s just playing Lambert, the Sundance Kid.

Treppie’s arse. He doesn’t need to know about the gun. Nobody needs to know. He’s not going to start bothering about a licence now. In any case, nowadays it looks like every second kaffir’s got a gun, especially when they march up and down the streets and shoot off their weapons into the sky. No one can come and tell him they’ve all got licences. He’d thought it was against the law, but the policemen don’t do anything. They just lie on their tanks and watch. Treppie says that’s the official standpoint of the Ministry of Law and Order. Dis-cre-tio-nary po-li-cing. He says it’s just another word for shit-scared constables. But, he says, their shit comes in two different colours: one for when the Inkatha impis are on the march with their guns, and another when they think it’s APLA. When they reckon it’s APLA, they go on a raid across the border at night and shoot the APLAs full of holes in their beds. Never mind if they’re just apprentice-APLAs who’re still wet behind the ears. And with the ANC they don’t even bother any more. Treppie says that’s ’cause the ANC’s the biggest cannon of them all.

Well, all he knows is that if trouble comes their way, he’ll be on the right side. The police will still be grateful for people like him one day. People they can rely on. He stands for law and order here in Triomf. Like that little bloke in Urban Angel, who works for nothing and then gets a kick in the teeth for thanks. But in the end he’s still everyone’s hero.

So he doesn’t mind. He’s looking after Triomf, and he knows his day will come. Every dog has its day, no matter what Treppie says. Treppie says he mustn’t walk around so much on his own at night, ’cause he hasn’t got a groundswell behind him. He’s an individual, and the police are hard on lost individuals.