The latest is that he wants to paint the house. Now it looks like 127
Martha Street has to be painted snow white for the fucker’s birthday. And as the devil would have it, they found a letter in the postbox about painting houses the other day, with a golden stamp in the middle and a number under the stamp. At the bottom of the letter they found a list of numbers, including their own, which meant they could have three thousand rand worth of free paint — a little present from Wonder Wall for the New Year. That’s what Lambert read there. And then he started going on and on about the paint until Pop filled in their address and everything to say yes, please, they’d be happy to accept the free paint. Lambert posted it the same day, like the letter said he must. He, Treppie, didn’t even get to see it. He was at the Chinese. They only told him about it later, and then he asked them if they’d read the fine print. This was going to cause shit. But they didn’t even know what fine print meant. Fat lot they know! Then, just a few days later, the shit arrived in the form of a little man in a striped shirt and a tie full of flowers. He measured the house with a little wheel that he pushed around by a handle. The ceilings too. He asked for a ladder and he climbed on to the roof, measuring: ‘katarra! katarra!’ all over the corrugated sheets. Pop and Mol and Lambert were at Shoprite, and so there he sat, all alone. Him and the man and his little wheel with its little meter, measuring their house inside, outside and on top.
The man took out his Wonder Wall letter and showed him the signature on the dotted line. He asked if Treppie knew whose signature it was. That’s when he should’ve said, no, he didn’t. But the man looked him straight in the face and so he said, yes, it was his brother’s signature. The man said, no well, fine. If it was a close relation, then he, Treppie, could sign these other papers while his brother was out. The man pulled out a long paper with three carbon copies, all of them so full of fine print it would’ve taken three days to read. Please just sign, here, here and here, he said. It was a mere formality, just to say yes, they confirmed they wanted free paint to the value of three thousand rand. He told the man he should leave one of those carbon copies behind so his brother could go through it, but the man was already halfway out the door and he said the carbon would come when they delivered the paint. It would take a month or two, ’cause they had so many pledges they couldn’t keep up. Next thing, whoosh, he was gone in his Uno.
Pledges, he thought, but what had they actually pledged? They won some paint with the right number under the gold stamp. That was all. Why would you want to pledge anything if you’d won something? Unless it was your faith in Wonder Wall. He could swear there was a fucken snag of sorts somewhere.
To tell the truth, that wasn’t the worst of it. What made him feel really sad were all those thousands of metres the man clocked up on his little wheel. All of it painted white, pure white, without a trace of their comings or goings.
He looks at the bathroom. The man measured in here too. It would make for a bit of an unsociable shit if paint was the only thing you could smell around here. He knows every little mark and crack in this room. In fact, if there’s one room in this house he can call his own, it’s the toilet. This is where he catches his breath, and this is where he figures out what’s what and who’s next. It’s the place where he scratches the monkey for fleas, as Pop always says when he stays inside for so long. Well, whether or not it’s fleas he doesn’t know, all he knows is that it’s a necessity.
Treppie looks around in the bathroom. There’s the soft rubber tube they use for siphoning petrol on a nail behind the door. Their toothbrushes, warped and lopsided, in the little blue plastic glass on the shelf. His and Pop’s and Lambert’s razors, on the window ledge. And Mol’s hairbrush, so full of caked, grey hair you almost can’t see the brush any more. Three bent-open hairpins. Two buttons.
In the same way, you’ll find their personal effects all over the house. Their spit and their blood and their breath. And paw marks, all over the walls.
Yellow afternoon light shines through the bathroom’s frosted window, making a dull spot of light on the wall. Just there, someone’s oily hand touched the wall. Must’ve been Lambert. King Kong was here.
What the hell, what will be, will be. From high-gloss to matt-finish in the space of a single lifetime. Maybe it’s also not such a bad thing, after all. With every face-lift you lose something, but what have they got to lose in any case? Not exactly what you’d call museum pieces. Just the collected works of wear and tear. The little bits of baggage from the Benades’ Great Trek, full of dirty marks. Burnt black, caked up, flopped out, moth-eaten, unstitched, sticky and rusted, with dog-hair on everything too.
Not quite wallpaper, this. And by no means a tabernacle. Just the blues of 127 Martha Street. The fine print of fuck-all. The dregs of Triomf!
Would you believe it! And he’s sober as a judge. His guts must be full of gas. At least it’s a case of self-generated intoxication. Not like the hot air and the fine-tuning that gives Pop his kicks.
Take for example how Pop and Mol fell, hook, line and sinker, for Malan’s story in ’48. Another Great Trek story. This time it was on the wireless. Old Mol was no longer with them. Just the three of them sitting around the kitchen table in Vrededorp. He still remembers saying blah-blah-blah when that flat-mouthed old toad in a hat began croaking about the election. About how his party, the ‘Purified’ National Party, was depending on everyone to bring the Great Trek to its logical ‘conclusion’. Pure, undiluted shit! How his party would lead them through this new Great Trek, through all its ditches and drifts and its risks and dangers. And how his party would fend off every threat, how it would destroy the enemies at the Blood River of the labour market, fighting to the bitter end. Because this time it wasn’t a Great Trek upcountry to escape the English, he said, this time it was the rural Afrikaner’s Great Trek to the cities, and for those who were already there, the poor and the reviled, it was the Great Trek to the higher professions and big capital.
Come again, he said. It was a Great Trek back under the English yoke. Only now the yoke had a drill-bit and its name was Anglo. But Pop and Mol told him he must shuddup, they wanted to listen.
How they listen, if anything gets said about the Great Trek, the Promised Land, Everyone-Together-Through-Thick-And-Thin. How they listen!
Whether that place is full of milk and honey or full of petrol and oil and bricks and mine dumps, it makes no difference. And if, on top of it all, the voice promising everything sounds like a preacher, then they’re all ears. Fired up. Ready for take-off.
That’s why Mol thinks that Niehaus chappy from the ANC with his bedroom eyes is such a together little boykie. She says he reminds her a lot of Malan. In that case, he tells her, she should vote for the ANC, but she says not a damn will she vote for the kaffirs. Then he asks her, but what about Niehaus, he’s a white oke? In that case, she says, maybe she will vote for the ANC after all, ’cause Niehaus looks to her like the kind of leader you can follow with complete trust to the bitter end. What’s more, he looks like a man who’d follow his own leaders to the bitter end, come hell or high water, and that’s enough for her. Then it feels like the National Party.