Agaat (58 page)

Have just been to cast an eye over the milking so there was Julies flirting with A. Hey there he says my griddle-cake how about it supposedly to the cow but I can hear it's actually for A. He doesn't look at her he talks straight into the udder that he's milking. For what does she walk around sniff-sniff in the hills all day just like a wildcat? is she perhaps ruttish redcat tigercat? ggggh does she hiss at me? They say all she sticks in & pulls out is a needle & a rag stick stick snip snip she doesn't look left or right pity about those titties about that bottom that dried-out sweet potato. A. pretends not to hear shirrrr-shirrrr she strains the first milk of one cow after the other.

 

Thought to myself Julies you'd better keep your trap shut my boy but I didn't want to interfere & I wanted to see what would happen & made myself small behind the tank. It's certainly not the first time but she just remains silent & he carries on.

 

No, he says, his foot is skew since the axle hit him head-over-heels but he knows Gaat was there Gaat wasn't she his little nurse that day. Didn't he feel it how she squeezed shut his veins so he didn't bleed empty how she doctored him that he didn't kick the bucket didn't he see how she cut white bands with her little shiny scissors snip snip snip how she bandaged his head nicely pinned all the loose ends together nicely with hr safety pins. But this foot of his just won't get fixed the toes keep dragging sideways in the sand just like a hub-less wheel he'll never get
to the moon all cripple like this but who wants to see the moon if he can gravy sweet potato? He thought by himself perhaps old shuffle-shoe could have a chance to snitch a snatch with the little laundry-mangle between them they have three good legs & three arms & that's enough for getting up on the lucerne-rick. Shipps-shipps he carries on uncouthly with the teats. Just take off he says beforehand for Djeesussake that cap with the point & that snow-white apron otherwise he schemes he's riding in the redcross police van peeeeeep paaaaaaawp. He gives hr a flowery headscarf he gives hr a red flowery dress with a sash around the middle then what does she say about that? Shorrr-shorrr he milks rudely with his head pressed into the cow's stomach & A. pretends not to see any of it.

 

Do I wish she had a heart? Do I fear it? The heart or the absence of one?

A. not herself since Jakkie has been at boarding school in Heidelberg. Works herself to a standstill before he comes home every weekend sweeps the garden paths scrubs the stoep washes curtains & polishes door-knobs & all the copper & silver & bakes the cakes & tarts & pies that he likes. Knits him beautiful cable-pattern jerseys with wool that she buys with her own money when we go to town. He's not the king I say he's just a child don't wear yourself to a rag he doesn't even notice but she just carries on.

 

What can I do about it? I do try every time when Jakkie comes home to arrange something that's at least an outing for A. as well. Picnic or to the ferry or the Bontebok Park or last year to the wildflower show or to the sea. Otherwise she doesn't go anywhere & sees nothing apart from the farm & the town. But it's difficult now that she's no longer a nanny. Jakkie jests get a wheelchair he says then he can pretend to have cerebral palsy then A. can go along everywhere as his nurse then he's hr licence. He says every time he sees her the point of her cap is longer. Haven't noticed it myself now I see all the caps are indeed higher on top & more pointed & completely filled with embroidery complicated patterns overlocked at top with little holes & scallops. Jakkie says she looks like the Pope.

 

A. crochets her own pullovers makes all her own house-dresses & aprons. Told J. we owe her a knitting machine for what she saves us in store-bought clothes or then at least my old Singer. He says that's going
too far give them the little finger & they take the whole hand & A.'s already got hold of all of us up to the armpits. A. is not ‘them', I say. J. says she's not ‘us' either & a sewing machine won't solve the problem it's just like a chamber in parliament before you know it they want to pass laws. J. says if he catches Jakkie again teaching A. to dance in the outside room then he'll send him to the Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch from Standard Eight, & then we'll only see him during holidays. He says he'll place him further & further away if things don't ‘normalise'. What is normal? I ask. Nothing on Gdrift is normal, he says. It's a hospital full of female experiments if at least it had served a good purpose or had a practical application but he thinks we're way past the point of no return & we must just note that he's not the one who laid the tracks here he's been a mere passenger for a long time now he asks himself why he doesn't jump off the train it would be better than to ride to perdition knowingly with a little gang of saboteurs on board.

 

Would I mind if he left me? I have Jakkie. And Agaat.

Decided to increase Agaat's salary but not directly with money with animals. She's had a cow & a few sheep from the start. Had them & their progeny branded over the years & she kept tally. By now 30 Jersey & 120 merinos & a few goats. The arrangement is she can sell as she sees fit not that she has anything to spend the money on but I tell hr save it build up a nest-egg for yourself you never know what may happen one day. For the time being it's between hr & me. J. would never approve it if I consulted him about it in advance but if he asks I'll say see it as A.'s pension she'll also be old one day.

 

I leave her free to decide for hrself when she wants to have the animals serviced or dipped & sheared & so forth so that she can feel she has a bit of independence here what else does she have? She takes very good care. See hr often inspecting hr animals. Hr cows yield more milk than mine & her sheep's wool is better. See she makes extra hay & even with hr last profit ordered hrself a few drums of molasses from the co-op & she regularly drives hr merinos next to the drift & she stands behind them hrself so that they can eat as much as they like of the long grass there. Only hr bunch of goats is a nuisance half domesticated the creatures & sometimes escape from their pen & eat my plants in the garden.

Drove out today with A. for hr birthday 26 she is. How time flies! Went & had a picnic next to the Huis River. Had a good view of their working at the new pass. Nice strong stone walls packed there. If there'd been this fast road when you had to give birth to Jakkie, Même, she says out of the blue then we wouldn't even have had to stop. It's been a long time since she's called me Même.

 

Jakkie sent hr a parcel that she opened there at the picnic a blood-red apron with a card that I'm not allowed to see & that left her completely silent for the rest of the picnic & all the way home. Ai, she does miss him so. He says he sings in the school choir there in Heidelberg but all that the music teacher knows is Whispering Hope.

Jakkie home for the spring holiday. Busy time on the farm. A. busy all day & Jakkie at a bit of a loose end. Come let me help you with your German I say but he doesn't want me to. Then I said let's sing it's the best way of learning a language but in fact I wanted to get some idea of how the voice had broken. So I taught him Der Musensohn: Und nach dem Takte reget/Und nach dem Mass beweget. A delicate tenor as I'd suspected & still the perfect pitch & the fine sensitivity, ag it would be a sin if he didn't develop it. The most important thing is that I made some contact with him again.

Terrible day! It's just me here in the house, feels as if I'm going mad. What must I do to escape this hell? Seems as if everything I undertake is doomed.

 

By four o'clock this afternoon back already from long weekend at Witsand. Do miss Jakkie so much now that he's at school in Stellenbosch & it's generally more relaxed in the beach house. Thought it might be nice if we ate out for a change as a family in the hotel there at the end of the weekend but what a fiasco! Jakkie (full of enlightened ideas these days) says he doesn't want to go if Agaat can't go along. There you have it, said J., A. is the government of Gdrift but out there she's a domestic & look what I've brought up in my wisdom & now Jakkie also has wrong ideas in his head.

 

Surely there'll be facilities for the kitchen staff I thought a little table somewhere where she can sit & eat. So A. goes along in her best cap
very reluctant but for Jakkie's sake. When we arrive there she doesn't want to know anything about the hotel kitchen & she won't budge & she stays sitting in the car & next thing Jakkie gets up suddenly without apology or explanation & takes his plate of food with him to go & give it to A. & apparently she then scolded him so fiercely that he threw the plate on the ground. This Jak then found out because when Jakkie didn't return to the table he went to see what was happening outside & when they eventually returned to the dining room Jakkie's face was blood-red & he had a white ring round his mouth. Heard later that Jak had thrashed Jakkie with his belt right there in front of A. How could J. do such a thing? The child is fifteen already & very over-sensitive. Terrible atmosphere because then we still had to pack everything at the beach house & Jak shouts at everybody & goes like a bat out of hell back within two hours. When we got here he made Jakkie pack immediately & ordered Dawid to take him back to Stellenbosch in the bakkie.

 

A. has disappeared it's almost dark & she's not back yet what's going to happen to us here? J. is out of his mind charged out of here in his running-clothes. How can they just leave me all on my own like this after all that?

For supper there's spinach. For dessert there'll be stewed prunes.

Green food and black food. 12 December. Already noted on the calendar, entered in the log book.

Puree.

In the Braun.

Zimmmm-zoommm.

And after that strained three times through a sieve.

Fine but fibre-rich.

Agaat came and stood in the doorway with her little hand folded in her big hand to tell me all this. She couldn't control the timbre of her voice. Couldn't spare me the details of pulping. She tried. But she couldn't. Triumphantly. Clipped. A real elocution lesson. Lips tensed around the p's. Breath expelled robustly as if she'd rather be singing. If only I could prompt her to perform something. A libretto for the great purgation scene. Prima donna on her Procrustean bed.

Or something of the kind.

In her present mood she'd rather call the thing by name outright.

Sometimes I wonder whether, if I were suddenly to recover my speech, we could in these last days find a language to understand each other.

In which to make last jokes.

Or first jokes.

First smile.

First word.

But perhaps a lot of jabbering would have prevented us from getting to where we are now. Where that is I don't know. I just have to guess. And she has to guess. Our positions in this studio, who is in the chair of the drawing-master, who the model on the podium. Both beginners
rather, I tend to feel, with a stick of charcoal in the hand, dumbfounded before each other's nakedness, without anybody to instruct us in the fashioning of a faithful representation.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into everything she does and says. Perhaps I'm imaging her evil. Or her goodness. Perhaps I've been delirious all this time because of a lack of oxygen.

Perhaps I'm more clear-minded than I've ever been. And perhaps she's trying at all costs to make me keep my wits about me. By providing me with material, pricks to kick against.

I know how Agaat's mind operates. She has no respect for a helpless human being. Possibly still pity. But not for long, then she wants to see signs of independence. She knows she'll have to generate it in me herself if she wants to see it, reaction, resistance. Because only when she's brought me to that will she have something to subjugate.

Spinach and prunes, thus.

Her chin has made that clear.

She will no longer be a passive spectator of my constipation.

She is now taking control of my bowels.

If she gets nothing else out of me, that she will get out of me.

Shit I shall shit, says her attitude. For her I shall address myself to the pan with abandon. Even if it is the last time. That's one thing of which I shall not deprive her. I may be struck dumb in the mouth, and too cowardly to face her for one moment longer than is necessary, and too ungrateful to appreciate it, the spectacle that she's contrived here in the room. But my stomach, my stomach and its overflow are hers. My last honourable mechanism. She'll work it for me. Work it and make it work. For the night is coming.

And if her ministrations don't have the desired effect, then she'll push a pipe up me and pump me full of lukewarm saline water. Would I rather have that? The glug-glug in my ears while I'm filled up from below like a gallon canister of Caltex? The bed tilted head-down at fifty degrees? Shaken by the feet to get rid of air bubbles?

Has she forgotten that she embraced my feet? Or is she pretending she meant nothing by that? Can she really have forgotten that she bowed her head over my shins, crumpled up her untouchable cap against my shins?

That was yesterday. Today, apparently, the Cape is Dutch again. Without a crease in the gable is her cap. Perhaps she embroidered herself a cap especially for the occasion. An allegory. Millions of tubes running through the stars. Stuck into the Black Hole, to mock the Evil One in her pit until she gives a sign of life?