Agaat (59 page)

Come and bend down here close to me, Agaat, so that I can check whether that's your latest needlepoint strategy. Give me a dream from the point of your needle. How many angels are there dancing there? And will you accompany me to heaven as embroiderer of deathbed stories? How would you design your deathbed accompanist if you were to be given the chance?

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

With quite a little air of importance she said it. In the chest register of the mezzo-domestico, the one who has to keep her pose under all circumstances, an air hostess on a doomed flight, a waitress in
Towering Inferno
.

As if she's singing of duck's tongues in port-wine sauce, or of pumpkin flowers in batter.

From its earliest incipience this morning the meal has been prepared with an amplitude of gesture. The first you-don't-know-what's-in-store-for-you-madam look I got just after breakfast, while I was still sprawling unproductively on the bedpan. With the dish full of springy, curling spinach-beet leaves she marched down the passage past my room to go and rinse them in the bath. Fresh from her vegetable garden of which she's so proud. Left right, left right, all she lacked was fife and drum. On better days she holds the sunripe strawberries under my nose before she mashes them with a fork. But today it's green. Colour of the dragon. The pennants are fluttering for the last battle of The Spout.

Three thorough rinses I heard, a stirring and a shaking and a splashing in the bath. This afternoon I got the smell, mercifully braised in butter with onion, a shred of bacon if I can still trust my nose. An hour ago the Braun started singing in the kitchen, at the high pitch of the puree setting. Zimmm-zoommm. Six, seven eight batches. I could hear the wet spinach slapping up in the jug, could see the slurry ooze down on the inside. Who does she think is supposed to eat it all? She'll get three teaspoons into me, maybe four. And she won't eat any of it herself.

Now she has enough for a constipated army. Perhaps she wishes she had a whole hospital of casualties to care for. So that she could repeat her ministrations from bed to bed. So that a Revolution of the Shitting Classes could erupt. Which she could suppress with a counter-offensive. Bored to death she must be. Three years long the same routines, over and over, the washing, the feeding, the pans.

In fact I know what she wants to achieve with her noisy preparations. She wants to attract attention. She wants to build up tension. She wants me to know that she's advancing. With a ruffle of drums. Tralalee tralaley!

Is it for my sake or for hers? Perhaps by this time she can't believe that she's held out so long with me so ill. Three years' dying. A lifetime's diaries. Perhaps she herself feels like a ghost by this time. Perhaps I'm sustaining her with my dependence.

The one old ghost had a very hard time and the other old ghost did its bit. Long live the two! Tralalee tralaley! Tralalee tralaley!

Who then thought up this pretty little song?

Two geese brought it over the sea.

Mach Toten lebendig.

Macht Kranken gesund.

The Farted Bride. The Three-cornered Pan.

What would Agaat be without her overtures?

The prunes have been stewing since early morning. I heard her take the packets out of the grocery cupboard, one, two, three. I heard her plop them in the water to soak before she put them on, heard her squeeze out the pips, plinks, plinks, into an enamel bowl.

Here they come, Mrs De Wet. Thou shalt behold thine prunes. More nourishing than sour grapes.

Perhaps she will relent. Perhaps she'll make a souffle. Just for the beauty of it. Would that be the reason for the march-tempo that I hear approaching down the passage? A risen light-green puff of a spinach souffle in a white dish?

No. She's selecting a tape. Thwick thwock, she pushes it into the player. Volume. Balance. Not a souffle.
The Slave Chorus
.
The Grand March
.
Va pensiero
.

I know this, this out-of-the-blue music-making. Accompaniment to the meal if she doesn't feel like talking to me.

Camouflage, the music is at times. When there are visitors. To chase them away she deliberately chooses the chickle-chockle on little drums and tin guitars that interests Jakkie so much. So that I shouldn't hear what she's discussing with them in the sitting room. But what's this all of a sudden that I'm not supposed to hear when all day I'm allowed to hear spinach pureeing and prunes plopping? I prick up my ears. Tchick, I hear under the music.

And another tchick. Open with the sideboard and shut.

What could it be? Whatever it is, it proceeds at a leisurely pace, to the beat of the music, down the passage.

I mustn't hope for it. Fantastic timing it would be.

What do I see?

Yes I see. My eyes are open. I must believe them. With the rolls of maps held out in front of her on her arms she marches into the room
solemnly. An offering. She stops just inside the door for me to take good note. She drags up a chair with one arm. Her face absolutely straight. She gets onto the chair. One by one she takes the rolls, hangs them by the loops from the picture rail. Doesn't open them. Everyone rolled up and still secured with little bows.

Right, Agaat, Mrs de Wet here understands the trade-off!

An evacuation for an exposition! Fair enough!

A poop for a peep!

A panful for a panorama of Grootmoedersdrift!

Who else could think up that anagnorisis should coincide with catharsis?

Yes, Agaat, right enough, what is Mrs de Wet going to see? Mrs de Wet is going to see her arse. I know how your mind works. First Jak and now I. Calculated in such a way that we have only ourselves to thank.

Now she wants me to applaud. Now that I'm tired and worn out with everything that she's been pushing under my nose. Now that I've become so feeble and so heavy of breath. Now that I must shit for old times' sake. Without any pressure of my own. A mere sewer.

And here my spinach is now. Steaming in a saucer on the bridge. A bit of bicarbonate of soda to make it green.

But first there is another manoeuvre.

A shake manoeuvre. Little brown bottle. Shiny teaspoon.

First the Pink Lady, says Agaat, then the spinach.

The Lady is pink as the gums of dentures are pink. She is deposited on the seam of my tongue. She tastes of chalk and chewing gum. Three times she enters me. Agaat pleats her mouth.

Yuck, she says, I don't know how you get it down.

Never mind, Agaat, I know.

Just a spoonful of spinach makes the medicine go down, Agaat sings.

Three sips of chlorophyll.

With every teaspoon her excitement increases. She can't hide it. Could never. From the beginning her area of expertise. Ever since I've been unable to get onto the toilet seat myself, clean myself, she started formulating her rules and regulations, more and more complicated as my paralysis increased. Clean and unblocked she wanted to keep me all through my sickbed.

As if the second coming itself would take place along that passage.

Three sips of sweet black cellulose.

Tasty, the little prunes, says Agaat.

My dosing is a hurried business tonight. Who wouldn't start becoming impatient for a denouement? Agaat has switched off the music.
Doesn't want to miss anything. Especially not my crapulent opening chords.

It's explosive, I know, the mixture of pink and green and black gunge. A rainbow preceding the deluge. An old Grootmoedersdrift recipe.

My stomach starts churning. Ghorrr! it goes. Ghorrr! and gharrr! and gu! and blub! And in between the little singing sounds, zimmm-zoommm.

Agaat's merry-go-round. Music to her ears.

Strike up, she says with a straight face.

She pulls the sheets from me. No nonsense tonight. We're going to make doubly sure. She puts on latex gloves. She pops a suppository from its silver container. Translucent it is. Glycerine. For the laxation of the sensitive system. It has the shape of a bomb.

Not even time to turn me on my side tonight. A short cut will do as well. She pushes a hand in between my legs from the front. She runs a finger through the split of my buttocks to find the right entrance. She pushes in a finger to relax the sphincter.

Nothing wrong with the arse, she mutters. Old nag's arse. Wouldn't say it's been cut open. Mommy's mattress button.

The point of the pill is hard. She pushes it in without ceremony.

Take it, she says, take, swallow it. Otherwise I'm taking the horse's pill-gun.

Listening is all very well, but who has ever argued with a sphincter?

She pushes it in still deeper.

I feel the muscle slip shut, contract the pill into my anus. Immediately I feel the effect.

Plop, plop, Agaat discards the gloves into the bin. She doesn't cover me again with the sheet.

Hold on, she says to me, I'm just returning the tray.

As casually as if-you-please.

Hold on.

Am I Atlas? The myth is the wrong way round. The earth like heaven is not above us, but inside us. For us to retain in our cavities and to surrender through our orifices.

What do I hear Agaat sing as she marches down the corridor? Not Italian, no.

Tho' there's one motor gone we will still carry on, We're coming in on a wing and a prayer.

There the pan perches covered with its clean white cloth. There hang the maps rolled up against the wall. There's a merry rattling in the kitchen. Small arms. Beyond the ridge the regiment is mustering. What
do I hear, is Agaat singing there? Singing so that I can hear where she is?

The Braun is being packed away in its box in the pantry.

Are you still holding on? the call comes, I'm just putting the spinach in the fridge quickly!

As if I could call back.

It cramps. A cloudburst somewhere higher up. A burgeoning mass. Completely fluid. Definitely a risk trying to pass wind.

Just don't, Agaat calls through the clatter of dishes, just don't go and squitter all over your bed, I put on clean sheets this morning.

I start to sweat.

The prune saucepan is scraped out. Slap, goes the lid of the rubbish bin. Heavy artillery!

Tralalee tralaley! Tralalee tralaley!

I feel as if I'm going to faint. I close my eyes. I concentrate on a point above my nose. The crepe-sole shoes approach down the passage.

I must, I must march all the way to death.

Aitsa, says Agaat, look at the old mare sweating. Now we've really got you going, seems to me.

A hand lands lightly on my shin. Sweet as a dove.

I open my eyes. Thunder and lightning. Bring the pan!

Yes, I'm bringing it, don't rush me now, you make me wait for hours every morning.

Bringthepanthepan!

So, Ounooi, have you seen yet what I brought you this evening? A surprise. All this time I've been thinking there's something that you want to see but I kept missing it. And so it was this all the time? Am I right? All the time? The maps? Yes or no?

Panpanpanpan!

The maps please, from out there in the sideboard, right under your nose. That's what you've been asking all this time? Am I right, yes or no, Ounooi? There I go carrying in just about the whole yard in here and it's just down the passage in the sitting room where all this time I've forgotten to look.

Butter couldn't melt. Lying without turning a hair. There she stands with the pan in the air, the white cloth over the arm.

Yes, Agaat, you're right. So put the ridges under my arse instead of your holy of holiest pan. From Bot River to Heidelberg, the municipalities, the districts, the regions. Unroll it under me, keep the edges together, and watch me make a sewerage farm out of them. And if the local is too lowly for you, bring the seven continents so that I can shit them into oblivion for you one by one. What does it matter in any case?
Fold the water map into a little boat, set the contour map for a sail. Caulk the holds with pulp from Grootmoedersdrift. Then I sail away on my last voyage in it.

Up to my chin in shit.

Once and for ever put in my place.

Would that satisfy you?

Hey hey hey! Convulsion-kick! The animal's just about had it but it's the kick that hurts most!

Keep your damned pan then. Stick it up your own arse. Rather give me the Republic and its provinces, the whole South, then I'll darken for you the Light of the Word that the Dutch supposedly brought here on the Dromedaris. You're excellent proof of what a bad idea it was. Your name may be holy, but your soul, Agaat, is at times as black as the hearth out of which you crawled. Don't you have any mercy? Have you now decided it's time for me to paddle-paddle through shit to the underworld? Time for those who came to play God the Creator over you? Have you now decided there's no remedying this confusion and this gibberish? Well, be comforted. The last trump is being sounded.

Here it comes. Here I lie, I can do no other. Covered whiter than snow or not.

Don't carry on so, Ounooi. You're not a child, good heavens!

Just in time. The enamel is cold under my buttocks.

She pinches her nose with one hand, pulls over the sheet with the other. Oh say can you hear, she says on a bated breath, the thunder almighty?

She picks at the little pink bows. Zirrts, the maps roll open. All along the picture rail, two full walls.

Zirrts, zirrts, zirrts, she says, as she unties them. Prrts, prrts, prrts, she mimics the sounds emanating from me. O'er the veld it comes wafting wide, she says.

She gestures with wide-open arms at the exhibition. Everything is there, even the house plans and the schemes for the landscaping of the garden. Graphs, tables, indexes.