Agaat (73 page)

Pray for me, Agaat, wipe the grey bloom from my cheek, from your cheek. There is a possibility of lustre. The black-ripe fruit. The sweet moisture. Wipe the bloom on your sleeve. Let there be radiance.

What are you doing there in front of the mirror?

Are you verily rolling up your sleeve in front of me again?

Why the exposure all the time? What am I supposed to see that I haven't seen yet? I know it, don't I. Your deformed arm. I brought you up, didn't I?

Your right sleeve, up, further up, over that shrunken hand of yours. Over that thin straight little forearm, bare as a crowbar? The round elbow a length of bent copper tubing? A brazen snake in the desert? Are you raising it above me? Your black sleeve, rolled up as far as your armpit, for a clean blow, for a straight strike? At which part of me are you going to aim? Are you going to penetrate me with it? Through the heart? With the same arm that made me pity you in the first instance?

One shouldn't pity deformities! Every deformity is a weapon, a lever, the seat of power and devastation.

Is that what you're trying to get across to me?

She holds the arm athwart her face. She turns it, moves it down. A fencing foil. One pace back she takes, one pace forward. Dip at the knees! Up jerks the shoulder!

Before the railings of my bed.

As on the moonlit night of the burial of the heart.

As in the Tradouw with the umbilical cord that jerks, the rope from which the child is suspended.

As before the sick bull in the holding pen.

As before the foaming waves of Witsand in the black bathing costume.

Low she keeps.

High she aims.

Does she want to charge?

Does she want to kneel?

Does she want to be assumed in glory?

What convulsion of self-exposure, what furious salutation is this?

No, she puts her knuckle in her mouth.

She takes her knuckle out of her mouth. She has broken the skin. Blood flows from it.

On this fragrant morning before my unbalanced gaze she prays.

Lord God in heaven, comes her voice.

Hear me!

Foot-rot!

Stinking smut!

She dips her head, the white cap casts a splash against the mirror.

Pip!

Roup!

Glanders!

Greasy heel!

Contagious abortion!

Waterpepper knotweed!

Who do I have other than you? Don't go away from me! Don't leave me! What would I ever do without you, with my words?

I'm looking for the suitcase!

Have mercy on me!

For thy Name's sake.

Amen.

January '84. You and Jak got a special invitation to attend the medal parade at Ysterplaat. The Air Force crest was thickly embossed on the card. The instruction was that the guests of honour should be formally dressed.
Ladies requested to wear head-covering and gloves
. After the ceremony a lunch with choral song in a hall and in the afternoon a military air show. Jakkie would sing and form part of a formation-flight squadron. He'd already informed you himself of the event just after returning from Operation Askari where they'd bombed the shit and toe-nails out of the Cubans, as Jak put it.

Jak came to press the card into your hand in the garden where you and Agaat were giving the roses a summer pruning.

First order, gold, Cross of Honour for outstanding service, leadership and bravery in specialised high-risk warfare, he read.

You passed the card to Agaat. Her mouth was set in a line, a flickering of eyelids. She said nothing.

You'd noticed, by then for more than a year, that Jakkie was no longer replying so regularly to her letters. You read her objections to this, she knew that her letters were now destined for your eyes as well. She taunted you in every intercepted letter.

I understand if you're too busy to write back, Captain, in that case just send a card to say that you're still alive, or make the phone ring three times to say you're thinking of me, your mother and I will know it's you.

To that there was in fact a reply, over Christmas, 1983 it was.

It was quite a thick letter delivered by hand by a fellow-pilot of Jakkie's passing through on leave. On the front it said only
Gaat
.
It had a blob of red sealing wax on the back. For Mr and Mrs J.C. de Wet there was an envelope with four photos with writing on the back, swift hard scribbles with a ballpoint pen. Over and over you switched the photos and read, over and over Agaat took them from you and read. What were the two of you supposed to do with it? Fierce was the writing:
Rambo de Wet next to his Impala after he'd bombed FAPLA positions at Mulondo on 23 December '83. Could see f-all of the cumulonimbus almost came a cropper. Sh-tting myself with the SAM's left and right round my head, one Impala shot in the tail but landed safely at Ondongwa, your own little Rambo also hit by a SAM-7, had to land at Ongiva, fortunately they'd fixed the landing strip there a few weeks earlier otherwise he'd definitely have seen his arse.

On the second photo the pen had started to slip.

Photo three was damaged, so hard had he pressed on the pen. What could it mean, the references to himself in the third person? That's not how you knew him.

Photo four was a group photo of pilots in front of their sleeping quarters, clearly reluctant to pose.

You showed Jak the photos only at supper.

He took them away from you quickly.

You didn't see them, he said, you don't know anything about this. What else? was there a letter? I want to see it, now on the spot!

He held out his hand to Agaat.

Ash, in my fireplace, she said.

You went to buy yourself a new blue dress and a matching hat with a turn-up brim and a new handbag at De Jagers in town. The dress was too short and Agaat let out the hem for you.

It could be a long day, you said to Jak, I'm taking Gaat along for company.

Over my dead body, said Jak, in that Agatha Christie outfit of hers, it's a gala occasion and we're guests of honour of the Air Force, she won't be allowed, we're going to eat with the VIPs in the mess, what do you want to do with her then? There aren't any amenities.

I'll eat, Jak, and then I'll excuse myself, it'll have been a whole morning's to-do and then I'll want to rest, then I won't want to look at a lot of aeroplanes.

You said it casually, so as not to upset him.

We can look for a shady tree, you said to Agaat, also as if it were the most ordinary thing on earth. Then we'll be out of the crush, we can read magazines, you can pack a picnic for yourself, take the cool bag, I take my knitting, you pack your embroidery-basket, then at least we can make the afternoon worth our while for ourselves in our own way, I have no desire to get a crick in my neck from staring up into the air all the time.

Will I see him? Agaat asked.

You'll see him in the air, you've always wanted to see what it looks like.

She glared at you.

You waited until Jak had pulled out the car, before you gave the signal. Agaat was ready, the house was locked. You opened the front and back doors simultaneously. You got in at the same time, Agaat with her baskets and tins, you with your cream-coloured handbag and the new shoes for which you'd had to stick plasters to your heels.

Jak was furious, he swore at everything ahead of him and overtook on double white lines up blind rises. In Swellendam he stopped with squealing tyres in front of the off-sales and bought a six-pack of beer, started drinking it immediately.

You didn't even dare look back. You felt Agaat's jaw jutting into your neck. Of all the summers of my life, you thought, this one is the ugliest. The hills were dry and dreadful, False Bay's water flashed like steel when you crossed Sir Lowry's Pass.

A curtain-raiser of lighter planes and gliders was in progress when you arrived. From far away you could already see the cars flashing in the sun, whole fields of them.

Can we please just try to find a little shade, you asked.

There was a separate entrance a long way further, a sandy road amongst the rooikrans bushes, the only greenery as far as the eye could see. You saw coloured people capering and dancing with bottles in the air when low-flying planes came by. You heard them holler, salacious comments for the helicopters that came and hovered on the spot in the air and double-decker Tiger Moths flying upside down. They were draped all over one another.

That'll be the day that I'll park my car for you amongst a crowd of drunken hotnots, Jak said, but we can drop her here so long, here amidst her family of the flats, then she can learn to speak a bit of Cape, will do her good, her sounding like the
Farmer's Weekly
in an apron. Do you think one afternoon is enough for rehabilitation? If you could teach her, Milla, just imagine how quickly they'll get on top of her.

That's enough, you warned, but you knew it was in vain. This was Jak's four-beer bravado.

Agaat is nice and grown up, isn't she, he persisted, I thought that was why she came along today specially, and it's high time, stands drying up in the stable like an unserviced mare.

Hey chickelay chickelee, Jak sang, and swayed his body behind the steering wheel, come sit by me, chickelay chickelee!

You didn't know how he'd come upon the little song all of a sudden. With such an expression too, as he looked around at Agaat. Even when you were young, he'd never looked at you with such an expression, not even as a joke. And this was no joke. You were ashamed, in three directions.

Come on, Agaat, he taunted, while he drove slowly through the clusters of coloured people, gave them a fright and made them scatter by accelerating unexpectedly, what do you say? Have you seen anything that interests you yet? I'll pay him for you, you know, so you can crutch him, a real city goffel with long heels and a gap between his front teeth and a shiny shirt! You're stuck out there on Grootmoedersdrift without any company, if you're satisfied, we'll buy him for you. You've got the whole day to try him out. On appro.

Jak took his hands off the steering wheel and twisted and rubbed his palms in the air in front of him.

Ride the woolly, hip-hip hay, hip-hip hay! he sang.

The people yelled across the shiny BMW in the sand there, they pushed their tongues through their front teeth at Agaat, swore at Jak, hammered their hands on the roof.

It was a mistake, you realised. Not one of you should have come along. Jak was ashamed to drive with the coloured woman in the back of
his car, he was ashamed of you sitting next to him in your big blue hat.

Amongst the vast wastes of motor cars he at last found a parking place.

Sorry! you signalled with your eyes at Agaat as you got out. You took ten rand out of your purse and placed it on the seat.

Cooldrink, you spelt with your eyes.

Agaat gave you the dead eye. She had a long white envelope in her hands.

Give it to him, she said, don't fold it.

You put it in your handbag. Between your gloved fingertips you thought you felt a slight thickening in the envelope, a texture.

It was terribly hot on the parade ground. The air above the tar shimmered. All the women in your block of seats were wearing hats. Only in the first row where the wives of the ministers and the brigadiers and the generals were sitting, sunshades had been put up.

The chaplain opened the parade with scripture reading. He prayed that the angels would guard over the brave soldiers who had to drive away the Philistines from our borders.

The Prime Minster made a speech. He pointed with his finger. He wiped his brow with a white handkerchief.

The Minister of Defence spoke. South Africa has the best defence force in Africa, he said. He read the weapons off a list. They're all here to be seen today he said, but they're worth nothing without the well-trained youths manning them. We care for the injured. Our hearts go out to the friends and family of those who fell in the service of their fatherland, he said, it was the highest sacrifice that was asked, that was brought. Another list. The dead.