What they’re reading today he already knows off by heart. About how He led them from the land of the Egyptians and took them to a good, wide land, a country flowing with milk and honey, where the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites lived. Then Mol goes ‘ites-ites-ites’ with that flabby mouth of hers as she tries to say all those names. She thinks it’s funny, the old bitch.
The only thing that’s different about this year’s Exodus is the musical accompaniment. Lambert’s sitting there on his crate and playing ‘tingtong, ting-tong’ on that thumb-piano of his. As they get to the pests and the plagues, he plays it quicker and quicker. What works on Lambert’s tits the most are the frogs that jump from the rivers into everyone’s beds. And the tabernacle puts him clean on to a high, about Aaron’s robe, with its bells of pure gold and pomegranates on the hem so he’ll tinkle and stay alive when he goes before God. Lambert’s got a horse-high hard-on for that woman again. Ja, shame, the poor bugger, he must be playing on that thing to stop himself from getting another fit. He looks quite worn out from all the fits he’s been having lately. Fits for fuck-all nowadays. Three, four times in January alone. And he won’t take his pills either; he says he needs to have all his wits about him so he can fix everything he’s still got to fix. He’s working himself into a bigger and bigger state as it gets closer to his birthday. But everything he touches, he breaks. This Benade is no Midas, that’s for sure.
Like the other day, when he found out the bathroom mirror was too big. A ghost of a millimetre, but still too big. Then of course Lambert tried to cut the mirror himself. Broke the thing to pieces. He told Lambert those pieces were still quite okay for pasting on to the hardboard, but of course he went and lost it again. He took a hammer and smashed those pieces one by one until there was nothing left but grit. So now he sits there and plays a tune without end, for the sake of his fits, for the pillar of cloud and the Red Sea and the bitter waters of Marah. ‘Pe-ting, pe-teng, pe-tong.’
So he can’t bear the sight of Lambert either.
Not to mention Pop. He sits there with his fly gaping ’cause the buttons that Mol sewed on have all come off again and Pop keeps losing his safety pin. The trouble started early this morning when Pop was shoving his shirt and vest into his pants so he could cover his shame, as he puts it. Mol kept pointing there with her finger. Then he, Treppie, asked them if they thought they’d just been kicked out of paradise or something, and if they reckoned their shame sticking out all the time was likely to bother anyone.
He actually just said that to cheer them up a bit after last night. It was Saturday and the grass had to be cut in the middle of the night again, and there was almost another fuck-around with the people next door.
But then Pop suddenly decided to get difficult, and he let rip right there in the passageway.
Didn’t he, Treppie, know that death was the biggest shame of all, and that nothing whatsoever could cover it up? Just look, he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling of the passageway, just look at the state in which he would have to meet his maker — with empty hands and not a single button on his fly. And surely it wasn’t asking too much that your shirt at least cover your shame while you were still alive? That was the least a person could do, he said. And, he said, the ones who survived him had better make sure he got washed decently and laid out nicely for his final journey to the pearly gates.
Pop’s been making these heavy speeches lately, at the funniest times and in the strangest places. Like this one, in the middle of the passageway, on an empty stomach. Or in Shoprite. Like when he started giving the baked beans in tomato sauce a sermon the other day.
He was looking everywhere for Pop and he couldn’t understand where he’d got to — all they needed was dog food. He found him standing in front of the specials shelf. That day it was baked beans.
You beans, Pop said, you might fancy yourself in your tomato sauce. But I say unto you, let someone just add some pigfat and then you’ll be worth bugger-all. ’Cause it’s all just a matter of pigfat and pulses. Which means it’s all about nothing. Poof! The next thing you know, someone farts, and then someone else says sis, what’s that smell, and then that’s it, you’re finished. Nothing! Finished, out, gone! Pffft! No one, but no one can escape this trinity of beans, farts and death. Amen.
Not bad, not bad at all. He didn’t catch everything Pop said, just a word here and there, but from what he could make out it sounded nice and sharp.
What he didn’t like was Pop’s face and Pop’s voice. Pop didn’t laugh and he didn’t smile, and his voice sounded like something rattling in the wind. He sounded completely different from the way he, Treppie, would’ve sounded if he’d suddenly started giving the beans a talking to. And God knows, he preaches a lot, whether his audience is on special or not. But it’s always a game. This speech of Pop’s was different. It wasn’t a game. ’Cause the next thing Pop went and swept those beans right off the specials shelf. First he swept them off the top two racks, with his right arm to the one side and his left arm to the other. Then he put his foot to the tins on the bottom rack. They went crashing far and wide. It was so bad he had to drag Pop to the car kicking and screaming. You would’ve sworn it was Lambert carrying on like that, not Pop. Or even him, Treppie, ’cause he gets unhinged pretty bad himself sometimes. But Pop’s a softie, never allows an angry word to pass his lips. Yet here he was lecturing at the beans. Kicking tins around in Shoprite and swearing his head off. Not that he was completely sober, either. The two of them had thrown back a couple earlier that afternoon, but most of the time the Klipdrift just makes Pop sleepy. And wine makes him silly. He’d never seen Pop go off the rails like that before.
When they got home, he sat Pop down in his chair and switched on the TV full-blast, so Pop could fall asleep. Then he went and told Mol what happened.
It was Lambert, she said. Pop was worried about Lambert going backwards before he even started going forwards. And it broke his heart that things always seemed to go like this with the Benades. Generation upon generation. Lambert wouldn’t even have a generation to come after him. What would happen to him one day when the rest of them kicked the bucket?
Well, yes, that’s surely enough to make anyone want to preach to the beans.
He, for one, really doesn’t want to be around the day Lambert finds himself all alone in the world, without any children he can call his own. The day he has to make a polony sandwich on his own. Or mow the lawn.
In January alone, that postbox came off three times. And every time it happened, the whole lot of them had to jump to attention, or else. Then Lambert lifted all the loose blocks from the parquet floor, even the ones that were just half-way or quarter-way loose. Dug them out with a screwdriver. He said he wanted to sand the things underneath so they’d stick properly the next time, once and for all, but then he made another fire and burnt the lot of them. Now the passage is full of potholes and everyone’s feet keep catching. Now it’s not just Lambert who suffers from the falling sickness here in Martha Street.
Take Mol. She tries to get into the kitchen with her Shoprite bags, but she’s down before she can get past the kitchen door. Then it’s just plastic bags all over the passage. Or Pop. He tries to switch off the TV after the peace song, but he trips over his own two feet and knocks his head against the sideboard. Then the sideboard falls off its brick. And the cat off the sideboard. Now they’ve got a headless cat again. Some things never change.