Agaat (31 page)

Starting to feel halfway human again & feel like writing again even though I still cry a lot. Just after the birth I felt I should keep my diary up to date but the first weeks lame & no strength & the nightmares still carrying on. Post-natal depression says Beatrice. Comes & sits here with me sometimes when I'm playing Pa's old records but I don't want her here she gloats over my situation & she gets bored when I try to tell her about Brahms & his eternally unrequited love for Clara Schumann. She says no wonder I'm depressed it's the dismal Brahms that I listen to der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, das Leben ist der schwüle Tag & that was apparently also my father's problem. Then I think nothing of saying I want to lie down so that she can be on her way & A. is not behindhand & fetches her coat.

 

The brave little servant! how will I ever be able to repay hr? Oh moon you drift so low with constricted throat shame & Ma slipped her 20 pounds when Jak came to fetch us & an old church hat as well you can't be confirmed without a hat she says I ask you. A. says thank you nicely & just gives the hat a long look & later on the way home she says: I've got seven caps what do I want with a hat as well? I see the silly little green hat is hanging there in her room from a nail in the wall with turkey feathers in the band. What would Pa not have thought up to thank her. He would have written a limerick.

 

A. was off to town at the first opportunity with D. to buy embroidery thread & cloth & buttons with the money from Ma & wouldn't that
woman from Eye of the Needle see fit to phone. Whether I'm aware of the two dozen imported porcelain buttons & goods to the value of altogether over sixty pounds cash that A. bought from her. Apparently she first selected everything & then went & drew some more of her own money at the post office. Had to bite my tongue not to say listen here madam thread-pedlar aware or not that little girl was my midwife & my refuge in my hour of need & no cloth of purple or thread of silk or ivory of Sheba can be too good for hr hands but then I thought better of it & said nothing otherwise the whole district would have feasted on the story again. Don't I know how they batten upon death & birth & servants' bugger-ups not that A. is a servant or buggers up but they draw no distinction. Seems in any case as if A. is making excellent progress with the embroidery I see washcloths & tea cloths & some of my handkerchiefs have acquired edges & roses too pretty for words. I show them to Jak but he just goes hmf. Just keep my shirts out of her hands I don't want to look like a bloody Turk with a tulip on my shirt pocket says Jak. Don't know what she's got up her sleeve with the bought stuff there in hr room but I no longer go in there to check.

I was reading back tonight everything that I've written so far in these booklets it's quite a little pile by now & wouldn't make much sense to an outsider who doesn't know the circumstances. It comforts me to write up everything about home & hearth whatever Jak says. His latest is that I must sell it to Femina but he first wants to insert punctuation everywhere otherwise they'll think his wife with her Brahms & her French can't write properly & it's also much too long-winded according to him I must remember he says the housewife market wants things out of the oven in a jiffy & they want joy & sorrow with capital letters & enough commas so that in-between they can have a cry & a cup of tea. Can't understand why it irritates him so. It's not as if I'm trying to write a history book for high schools, is it?

 

On the other hand when I page through the booklets like this then I wonder what's become of me. Of my interests & my talents. Always in a hurry or sleepy or tired when I write. Just trying to keep up with myself on this farm every day. Husband child & servant over & over & that's where it gets stuck. What on earth would Dr Blumer have made of such subjects? Perhaps I should try to write in English. Perhaps domesticities will sound better to me in a world language. Can just imagine what Friedman the little whipper-snapper of a professor
in the English Department in those days would have said. Always filled the margins of my essays in his myopic little hand. You have come seriously unstuck here, Milla, what has become of your style, your wit, your vocabulary? According to the experts even psychology has to read like a thriller. Pace, remember, pace, texture & wry moments, only wry moments will satisfy my appetite. Of wry moments he would have had enough here if only he'd put on his glasses. More at any rate than in his great hero Charles Lamb. On Saying Grace. Where are the days. So vain the idea I had of myself then.

 

Odd how much one forgets even though it's only about pots & pans. Had to add or correct things everywhere. Then I had a sudden inspiration to write the dedication that had been in my heart all the time but the time was not yet ripe for it but now it seems as if all my trouble with A. has after all been rewarded. So sweet-tempered nowadays. Three attempts before I was satisfied. Difficult to sound heartfelt on paper but that's how I feel. Must still copy it neatly into the front of the first book.

Can place my trust 100% in A. She has a remarkable way with Jakkie that much is definite. The first weeks she sat up by his cradle hour after hour & even now still every day. Is patient helpful quick to learn knows her place. Has undergone a major change of attitude it seems. Honestly didn't think I was going to stick it out with hr. Before Aug. still thought I'd be forced to find some other refuge for her because I could see nothing but hardship ahead. But what on earth would I have done without hr now? She picks him up when he wakes up & changes him when he's wet & cleans him when he's dirty & bathes him & dresses him as if it's the child of her own blood day & night immediately she's on the spot when he cries & she sleeps with hr window open to hear him at night. Says she's awake even before he can as much as squawk & then she comes in at the back door & soothes him & sings to him that always calms him down. I've told her she can sleep on the camp sretcher with him in the nursery while he's so small it would be more convenient she pretends not to hear me suppose she doesn't feel comfortable with the idea & so I just dropped the matter because I suppose Jak would also have something to say about it. The Hottentot Madonna of the Langeberg he says St Agaat of South Africa the halo is in place when can we expect the canonisation. If only A. hadn't gone & overheard him.

It's not an easy child. Ma says firstborns just are like that. Beatrice has all sorts of theories. He's scared of my hands scared of my face & I have trouble suckling & as it is I have so little milk. A spring lamb says A. always has more whims than autumn lambs but with her she says he behaves himself as if it were April all the way.

 

She's always cheerful & tireless. Often watch her when she doesn't know I'm looking so tender & hr mouth so soft & hr body even though she's no more than a child herself (have now written her name on the birthday calendar 12 July exactly one month before Jakkie. Won't forget it again!) so protective of the helpless little creature. Feel myself in her shade her inferior by far in terms of patience & ingenuity. Feel weak in the face of the task. Still often weepy but at least somewhat less than at first. Often sit in my chair in front of the glass door feeble & listless then A. comes & lays the baby fragrant in his little white blankets & soft clothes gurgling in my arms. As if she wants me to share in the well-being she awakens in him or if she wants me to be kindled by the first little smile she gets out of him. But his little face clouds over immediately when he notices me & he frowns as if he's seeing a dreadful problem on my face & he grimaces & he cries fit to break my heart so then I return him to A. she always has a plan. Let's push him in his pram to the dam let's sit there for a while in the shade of the willows let's sing to him so he can grow human let's go for a drive with him over the ridges so that he can feel the lie of the land up & down over the hills sikketir sikketir over drift & fields all the way to the old bridge of Vaandrigsdrift let's take him over the plain to Malgas & sail with him over the river on the ferry so that he can get used to crossing the deep & dark places.

Allowed myself to be carried along with A.'s proposals this last week & every day today again we packed the baby-case & packed a picnic for ourselves & got into the car & followed our noses. A. doesn't want to sit in front wants to sit in the back with the child in his crib. Watched hr in the rear-view mirror how she looks at him every now & again & rearranges a little blanket or covers a kicked-open little hand or foot & then gazes out again this side & that side over the land in its light-green spring attire the lambs playful on the dam walls the crops hand-height the fennel—her fennel!—in flower next to the road (once she opened the window to smell it & smiled with me in the mirror) the tops of the bluegums sprouted shiny-red what is she thinking? but I'd rather not ask. She rocks & she soothes the child.

I drive & show hr the world. Over the ridges over the plains over the rivers. Storms River, Breede River, Korenland, Buffelsjag, Karnemelks, Duivenhoks. We have picnics with hr favourite food cold sausage & bread with apricot jam & red cooldrink & sago pudding on dam walls & banks in the shade. Even dug up my Oxford Collected Poems & read to her & taught her a few new English words. It's all really to console hr & to mollify hr to remind hr of the good things which should not come to nought. I look at hr & I cry secretly because I know it's my little child in hr arms there that makes her now at times totally forget the quick steps & the stiff formal air that she affected & in unguarded moments become again as she was.

Reread the little books from the beginning. What is it with me this need to go over everything again now as if I'm searching for something that I lost? Tell myself I've lost nothing. I have what I've always wanted. And I've also got A. back & it's all good it has all come to good as the Lord wanted it. So then I wrote the inscription that I composed the other evening in block letters in the front of the first booklet with today's date so that I can remember one thing: That I owe it all to the coming of little Jakkie.

It's been 3 days now & I still don't know how to write it up & if I should write about it at all if writing can countenance it. J. would murder her if he were to know. Can't tell it to anybody.

 

Have been seeing wet patches on the uniform for a while now & when I ask she says he must have drooled on me or he most have burped a wet wind will go & change. Without twitching a muscle. After the first few times she must have taken precautions. She knows the rule child-minding or not the uniform must be spotlessly white every moment of the day. So then last Wednesday one of those little spring mizzles & I had a nap in the afternoon & I wake up there's a silence in the house heavy & deep & I stay lying on my bed listening to the dripping & looking over the stoep scattered with flowers from the wisteria like little blue butterflies in the wet & the gutters are dripping softly a turtle dove calls it's almost done raining & I feel happy & grateful that I've always in spite of everything been able to keep everybody on track on Gdrift & when at last I get up & go to have a look there I find the cradle empty. Feel the covers still lukewarm from his little body & I press my nose
into the blankets they're so sweet & I know A. has come to fetch him to give him the bottle everything is so quiet.

 

Didn't want to call or make it known that I was awake wanted to shelter in the hushed sleeping afternoon as in a nest in the rain. Softly to the kitchen on bare feet there the back door is wide open & smell of wet is so sweet & everywhere it's dripping with rain. The water on the stove in which we always heat the bottles of milk was still warm I felt & 3 clean bottles were standing upright on the tea cloth A. somewhere feeding him with the fourth one I knew. But then she wasn't in the sitting room either there on the green sofa & not on the stoep either & not in the spare room either.

 

So then I saw from the nursery window that the outside room's door was closed but the outside latch was off & then I knew immediately that's where they were & then I wasn't easy the servant's quarters is not a place for my child but I thought perhaps A. had just gone there to put on a clean apron & had taken him along. Put on slippers & went out into the backyard & A.'s curtains were tightly drawn but I didn't want to knock & then I was ashamed of myself because Jakkie was nowhere safer than with A. Walk around the back because then I remember there's a small window at the back & it's muddy & I clamber onto a paint tin & the window's open a chink & I cling to the window sill to peer into the room.

 

There is A. with her back to me on the apple box in front of her bed. Hr one shoulder bare the crooked bones of the deformed side wide open to view & I look & I see & I can't believe what I see perhaps I dreamed it the apron's shoulder band is off & the sleeve of the dress hangs empty & her head is bent to the child on her lap. Could just see his little feet sticking out on the one side. Perfectly contented. There I see on her bed on a white towel untouched lies the fourth bottle full of milk. There I stand in the drizzle on the paint tin that's sinking away in the mud with my forehead pressed against the window sill & I listen to the little sounds it sucks & sighs it's a whole language out there in the outside room I can almost not bring myself to write it.

 

Went & put on my raincoat & wellingtons. ‘Have gone for a walk' I wrote on a piece of paper for A. & the exact time half past three so that she could see I was awake. Walked along next to the drift & stood by the deep places & looked at the drops falling on the water in ringlets
& the eels coming to see if it was food dropping. Saw to it that I stayed away for an hour.