Agaat (52 page)

With a hiccup the table rolled off the edge of the carpet, the bottle of Nederburg Rhine Riesling chinking in the wine holder, the larkspur trembling in the vase, the candle flame juddering in the candlesticks. Jak gave it another hard shove. As far as the furthest wall of the sitting room it rolled, past the half-moon table with the white swans of blown glass, and stopped next to the gramophone under the portrait of your great-great-grandmother.

Poor Jak de Wet, look at him, see what his wife has made of him, Jak said, as if addressing the portrait. First the stud bull. Then the obelisk. What dost thou say, O Great-great-grandmother? You are after all the origin of the world around here!

Jak kicked against the table-leg. The table bumped against the wall. The ice bucket fell down and the bottle broke. The record got stuck. You saw the needle in the pick-up head slide and bounce over the grooves. Will you ever forget the disfigured song, the treacherous smell of fennel?

Du meine Seele, du mein Herz Herz Herz Herz,

Du meine Wonn', o du mein mein mein Schmerz,

Du meine Welt, in der in der in der in der ich lebe,

Mein Hi Hi Hi Himmel du, darein ich schwebe be be . . .

Was that when you saw Agaat standing in the door? Could you read her face? She was half in the shadows. You saw her eyes shine.

Go away! you signalled with your eyes, what are you doing here? Vanish!

She resisted you. There she was, in the middle of the night, perfectly pleated, cap and apron and all, reporting from the backyard. She was barefoot. With an unfathomable countenance she stood there, broom and scoop ready in hand, and listened out the last phrases of the song.

Du hebst mich liebend über mich,

Mein guter Geist, mein bess'res Ich!

Soundlessly she approached and lifted the needle off the record, replaced it on its cradle.

How much had she heard? Had Jak heard her come in by the back door before you saw her?

Aha, the stage hand, Jak said, like a moth to the flame. He took one pace, stepped on a shard and swore, lifted his foot over his knee and removed a piece of glass.

On his way out he rolled the wine cooler towards Agaat.

Let the one foot not know what's befallen the other, he said, please do see to it that she cleans it all up nicely for you here, Mrs de Wet, and kindly make sure that she puts on shoes, otherwise she's liable also to tread on a splinter.

You remained sitting on the sofa with your head in your hands, listened to Agaat sweeping up the glass, packing away the records in the shelf and the music books in the lid of the piano stool, leaving by the back door, without a word.

That was the last time, you decided, that German music would land you in a farce in your own sitting room.

That was how you dismissed it. A farce.

What Jak said, all the terrible words, and what Agaat could have heard, that you banished from your thoughts.

 

But that was not the end of the German problems. The Simmentals were next and they came up for discussion two evenings later.

You could see all the time that Jak was upset about the night of the music, but it was too difficult to talk about it. And there was Agaat's presence, whiter than snow spotlessly whitewashed and mockingly correct and attentive. You certainly didn't want to add fuel to her flame.

How did it begin? It was before supper even, when you remarked in the bathroom that you were tired. All day long you'd helped with the spraying against fruit-fly in the old orchard and afterwards saw to it that the anchor-poles were treated properly with rust-repellent undercoat and silver paint and that the young ewes were dipped against blowfly, all the absolutely essential maintenance on the farm of which Jak took very little notice.

Tired! he shouted from under the shower, it's more than tiredness that's wrong with you, you're not all there, that's what, it's work, work, work as if you're being driven by the devil and it must be this and not that, all the time with your melancholy mug and the whingeing and the whining, help me here, help me there, I can't do everything on my own. And when midnight strikes, then you're transfigured into the great seductress, half-naked tarted up with your wine and your candles and your stupid music, and keep me from sleep, what's the matter with you? Do you think you're Marilyn Monroe on a Texas ranch?

You looked at the sinewy muscles of his arms as he dried himself. Something about his hard body, something about the emaciated appearance of his ankles and wrists disturbed you, as if his joints were under extreme pressure.

It's because there's always too much happening on the farm, he said, this is not a damned experimental farm.

You knew where this was heading. That was always his defence when you pointed out on your statements how much money was being wasted on Grootmoedersdrift, through sheer neglect, through the wrong purchases, through cattle diseases that could have been prevented with the right care. He got angry when you brought it to his attention, the proof of squandering. The seeder with the disks instead of teeth that he'd bought, when you'd told him all the time, disks don't work on shale, the stones get stuck in them and then the disks drag, wear away on one side and then the whole thing's gone to glory, the rowels that he never remembered to remove from the hoppers after sowing-time, so that they were rusted through from the guano remains when sowing-time came round again. And if only it had stopped there, with neglected machinery, but then there was the mastitis problem with the Jersey cows. Isolate the sick animals, Jak, remember the walk-through foot-bath at the entrance to the stables, strain the first milk from every cow every day, you had to insist time and time again without his ever paying any attention to your words.

Every time his story was that dairy cows were just a nuisance, the slaughter-cattle were far less trouble and maintenance. But with his Simmentals that he acquired time after time things didn't really go much better. They got eye cancer and every year there were deaths amongst the heifers calving for the first time. The vet's bills for Grootmoedersdrift were astronomical. Jak's solution was: Sell all the cattle.

Was that how it began? Jak's proposal later at table? Sell the cattle herds, before they put us even more out of pocket. The market is good
now, we'll concentrate more on sheep and wheat, it's lunacy to want this farm to look like a picture in a children's book.

You made the mistake of protesting.

I'm not the one with the expensive hobbies, I'm not the one who's forever experimenting with this that and the next thing, Jak. Nor am I the one who walks around with my head in a dream about how easy it is to grow rich from farming. It's because you don't inform yourself of all the factors, it's because you don't study all sides of a matter before you make an investment. That's where the trouble starts.

You saw his face set in a grimace, but you couldn't stop yourself.

If you want to buy Simmentals, then you select them by hand, Jak, and you see to it that each and every one has a decent pair of spectacles. Everybody knows that white faces are prone to growths. They're spotted cattle and the spots must be on the nose and ears and around the eyes as well otherwise you sure as sure will have problems with growths. Don't sit there looking at me as if I'm talking Greek, this isn't Germany, the sun scorches the poor animals to a frazzle, seven, eight months of the year. But no, Jak de Wet of course thinks all he need do is take out the cheque book and phone the importer in South West Africa: Hello Mr Liebknecht, and I'm looking for seventy cows and the biggest champion bull south of the equator to service them, thank you very much, goodbye. And that then is supposed to guarantee success.

Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, I'll clear later, let's take a lantern, then we go and see next to the dam if the skunk that's been eating the ducks' eggs has stepped into the snare yet.

Jakkie looked at you.

Go ahead, you two, you indicated to him.

Jak clenched his teeth. He wanted to keep the child there to support his arguments. You knew about the promises when one day the cows fetched a good price, of the hang-glider and the microlight with which the two of them would inspect Grootmoedersdrift from the air and float over the kloofs like cranes.

How was a child to resist that? And how must you then present your case so as not to look like a spoilsport?

Sell the bull then if you must sell something, you said while Jakkie was still within earshot. After all we now have excellent offspring from him, younger bulls that would work just as well as him with the cows.

He glared at you. You could feel it was heading for a collision. You couldn't stop yourself.

Was that perhaps what you wanted, Milla? a collision, after your humiliation two evenings earlier? A collision if a reconciliation wasn't possible.

You pushed the point.

Year after year, Jak, you put the almighty Hamburg with the young heifers, year after year the calves are too big to be born independently, year after year I ask nicely: Please, get rid of the bull. It's never you who has to deal with the consequences, you lie snoring and I'm the one who has to play midwife right though the night.

Are you stark staring mad! Jak exclaimed. That bull is worth its weight in gold to me, all the farmers of The Spout phone me to get Hamburg to cover their cows, I'm thinking of fitting out a sperm installation, then I spare the bull and make a profit out of him at the same time.

Jak, you don't know what you're doing, you said. Do you want to increase the misery artificially now as well? It's very hard for the cows, they suffer unnecessarily, but what do you do? You always just walk away when it becomes too hard to behold, so you don't see what it looks like, you don't see how we have to damage the cows to deliver the almighty calves, one should have respect for the animals, one should assist them as much as one can . . .

For God's sake just don't start that again, Jak said.

You looked at his mouth, his lips distorting with exasperation, the ridges on his jaws as he clenched his teeth. Something in that excited you. What was it? You could never place it. You felt it in your own mouth, extra spit, and in your gullet, a kind of widening, in your gums, an itchiness. You waited for his delivery. You closed your eyes, so strongly did you feel it coming. His voice was high and hard, his speech-rhythm emphatic. You sat back, you knew how it was going to be, how it was going to enter you, the deluge of solid, heated sentences.

You're imagining things, Jak, you said. I'm not starting anything.

Jak slammed his hand on the table.

No, of course not, Milla, nothing said, nothing meant, I'm imagining things again, the old story, but I know what you think, you always want to get back to that. That I left you in the lurch with Jakkie's birth. That I deliberately kept myself out of the way because I supposedly didn't want to behold your travails. That you were unnecessarily damaged in the process. Those are always your exact words when you talk about it, so don't think I don't know what you're insinuating.

Jak got up, went and stood behind his chair, clutched the backrest so that his knuckles showed white.

He was too early, the child, that's all! A whole ten days! How was I supposed to guess it? I wanted to help you with it, and I wanted to be present, of course, it's my son after all! But you, you think the worst of me, always have, you don't want to think otherwise of me, you decided long ago, in the very distant past, that Jak de Wet is the villain of this story and he'll remain the villain. All written up and bound, what everybody most wants to read.

But do you know, Milla, what it's like to spend your days next to a woman who always knows better? In whose eyes you can't do anything right? For whom everything that you tackle is doomed in advance? What it's like to live with someone who's forever hinting that you don't love her enough? Who only cherishes her own little needs, no matter who you are, what you are, the whole you, that feels and thinks . . .

Jak had never expressed himself like that. His voice was strained and his mouth trembled, but he held your eyes and pushed through with what he wanted to say.

. . . the whole you, he said, with his own thoughts and dreams, not only yours, Milla.

His eyes were fierce and gleaming. You wanted to get up and go and put your arms around him on the other side of the table, but he retreated. That was when you recognised it for what it was, exactly what the strange expression was. It was fear, more even, hysteria it was. He tugged at his collar as if he needed air.

Just you don't come near me, woman, he said, you keep your hands off me! His voice was hoarse.

Jak, you said, don't, please, don't you see then? That's what I've always wanted, that you should talk to me like that, so that I could know what you're about.

You moved around the table to him. He groped behind him, knocked over an earthenware jug, he was almost against the curtains of the sitting room trying to escape.

Leave me alone, just leave me alone, I know you, I know who you . . . are!

Jak, calm down, you said, you're overwrought, it's not as bad as you're making out, you're imagining things. Come now, it's only me, Milla, you look as if you're seeing a ghost!

You! he screamed, short of breath, and extended his arm, pointed his finger at you. His hand was trembling. His chest was heaving.

He put his hand in front of his face, one hand around his throat. You were afraid he might have a fit. He plucked at his clothes as if there was something crawling on him.

You, you suck me dry, you worm my guts out of me, that's what you do, a leech, that's what you are! Nobody knows it, nobody can guess it, nobody can read between the lines, but don't think I don't see through you. Even if I'm the only one who sees, even if you fool everybody else around you. I hear how you talk to the neighbour's wife, I hear it all. I don't buy your story. I don't buy it any longer, do you hear! I don't buy it! Your tale that you spin everyone! The fine, intelligent Milla de Wet! How sensitive! How hard-working! Lonely! Long-suffering! It's a lie, an infamous lie! You don't suffer, you flourish, that's what! You're in your element here! A sow is what you are, an eternally ravenous sow with teeth like that! With wings! In Jerusalem! You're in the trough! In the trough with your snout in the swill! That's where you are! You batten on me!