Agaat (77 page)

Back in the corner with the knuckle in the mouth. Ashen-faced, her moles look black. I simply lock her up. She must be taught to obey me. I send Saar to empty the pot. I say at the door what there is to eat. But she must ask properly in a full sentence what I must dish up for her. I've run out of patience.

After three days without food it came at last: ‘May I please have jelly with custard.'

 

Word for word, said after me, on the in-breath, whispered, eye cast down.

 

Jelly is for independent people, not parrots, I said. And you look into my eyes when you talk to me, otherwise I don't hear you.

 

Gave her a crust of dry bread. Mouth a sour slit, chin out, hungry enough, ate the bread to the last crumb. Obstinate little blighter!

Caught Saar smuggling food to the back room this afternoon. Keeping key in my bra now. Won't allow my discipline to be subverted here.

Breakthrough! At last! Lift the clapper of the slot, up she jumps, dances on one leg, claps hands, sings along gulp-gulp.

Then I left the door open, so wouldn't the little saucebox follow me to the kitchen with the tin plate from the bread. Sits down on the chair, says Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, words swallowed. Couldn't help laughing. Ate a big plate of food. Let go the spoon when I wasn't looking, stuffed it in with the hands. Let her be for the time being. Jelly and custard afterwards. What do you say when you've eaten food? Blinks slowly with the eyes, head to the front, thank you very much, softly on an in-breath, as if she's scared I'll steal her breath. In any case sounds more like imitation than sincerely meant. How does one teach somebody sincerity? What comes first? Sincerity or words of sincerity? But that's in the future, such distinctions. First just win her confidence to breathe fearlessly in the presence of her benefactor, blink in and out with the eyes, open and closed!

I stand behind her and pull her ears, do you see the Cape? and I pull harder, do you see the Cape yet? I pull until she makes a sound. The kitchen maids look at me as if I'm mad. Ai, nooi, they say, mind your own business, I say.

She must learn to speak on the out-breath. I blow on her eyelids until she opens her eyes in the morning. She keeps them shut tight, I blow and blow. Look into my eyes, Agaat! Blow out the breath of night! Sing: Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, sing: Higgledy, piggledy, pop, the dog has eaten the mop. You can only sing on an out-breath, on plenty of out-breath, sing Praise the Lord rise up rejoicing, oh my soul what rich reward. She looks at me with the heavens-what's-up-with-you-look. I press my finger on the mole on her cheek. Here, I say, is your exclamation mark. I count the moles in her neck. Here are your nine stars.

First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED!

Lessons in the prodigality of breath. The wind blows s-s-s-s-s, the cow blows mooo, the sheep blows baaa, the donkey brays hee-haw, the flower blows out its scent, the direction of a gaze is a blowing wind. North-west! South-east! All living things take a draught of air and blow it out with a sound in a direction, the hands before the mouth form a trumpet, for lack of a snout or a lowing muzzle. Call! I'm calling you! Hear! But she doesn't call back. Agaat has no faith in her own store of breath. As if she might jeopardise her life by talking.

Breakthrough! And this time in my own slow wits! Agaat teaches me but I don't grasp the lessons fast enough! Only today did I put two and two together: She has of course exhaled once, blew with the making of the fire, her lips puckered and all! So I have to play with fire to get her going! She looks at me with an ‘I-can-see-you've-got-a-plan' look. I'll put it into action this moment, I'll wager my life that it'll work! Must just prepare the way slowly and cautiously, it's not an opportunity I want to waste.

Looks as if it's going to work! Went and dug up the old bellows from the cellar, still from Pa's farm smithy. Very neglected, the old thing, peep, goes the dry hinge between the outer covers. First I sat with her in the backyard in the sun, rubbed the leather surfaces with lots of red polish, left it to absorb nicely in the sun, buffed it, all willingly she helps me, we got down to all the concertina folds of the book, the copper mounting as well, cleaned the hinges and rivets, polished everything to a shine with Brasso, sanded down the wooden handles, applied varnish. It's a beautiful antique, I must say. Agaat makes me remember things, opens my eyes, to things that get lost, things that I've neglected.

 

Her little hands flutter all over the body of the thing. Very excited she is about this thing, it's almost as if she can guess what it is, as if she knows it already!

Hold your palm in front of the spout, I say, I pull open the handles, I close the handles, peep, goes the neck, feel the wind, I say, just so the human lungs work, left and right, put your hands on both sides of my ribs, feel the river swelling, swell and go down, in and out, the sun comes up, the sun goes down, peep, says Agaat with held-back breath. Come let's oil the hinge, if you can get the fire going with the wind of your words, then the bellows are yours to keep, an extra lung to breathe along with yours, a fire-fiddle, a puffing book with hundreds of pages.

Beatrice phoned the river's in flood from the unseasonal showers that have been falling all the time. I ran down to the drift with Agaat, without telling her what was going to happen. Let's call the water! I said.

 

Open your ears, I say. Listen! Agaat all eyes. We look up in the drift with binocular fists. Hand cupped behind the ear. I make a trumpet for our mouths.

And then it came! She thinks I can do magic! I show, I say, I blow, I patter off the names of all the things that are washed down there by the river.

 

Twigs and leaves and skeletons of small game, fallen nests and root-clusters, the whole battleground of a dry riverbed gathered in a roiling, rustling mass of words, in a fume of dust at the foot of the water, the solid wall bulking in behind, the wattle branches blowing up before the advance, the wind in the wake of the first wave, the smells of wild bush: buchu, rooikat piss, khaki bush, torn away from the catchment area. Listen, I say, I have the river in my mouth, it's the beginning of all things. Is that blasphemy?

 

I want Agaat to understand that if you call things by their names, you have power over them. But never mind words, she's becoming quite her own little person, scratched out a mole there with a stick, just in time. Roll around, roll around, little pink claws scrabbling before the flood, its little coat all teeming with colour. We sat together and watched it
drying, how the snout first came to life, how it dug itself in, blindly in under a damp dark mound. Agaat scratches it open, puts her finger into the hole, looks at me, with little ‘I-want-to-go-in' eyes.

 

You're not a mole, I say, you're an above-ground creature, you walk in the light.

Jak no longer wants to eat in Agaat's presence in the evenings. She gives him the creeps, he says. So now I bathe her and feed her in the kitchen in the early evening and put her to bed so that he doesn't have to have any dealings with her.

 

You'll see yet what she's going to mean for us, I say.

 

He says I mustn't make him complicit in my latest project. He's already complicit enough in my farm, in my house, in my everything. Don't know what I must do with Jak. He takes offence if I ask him the slightest little thing.

We practise facial expressions. I try to develop the mobility of the face beyond just the eyes, around the mouth, in the carriage of the body. Look friendly, look sad, look excited. Look like a full moon, a field mouse, a blossom tree, a dead wall, fresh fire. The ‘dead wall' she does very well! I play notes on the piano for her and then I press on spots of her face and give a sound value to every spot. She's my little brown piano I say, I'll play her full of notes until she sounds like a concert.

At last! First rhyme on the out-breath, first own independent words! The Lord is my witness, I'm thoroughly exhausted with trying to breathe life into the child. Did then make the promised big bellows-fire here in the back next to the slaughter-bluegum. Assorted woods for the best effect, wattle, bluegum, oily pine cones. A lesson in sound for two. First we lay blowing on either side of the woodpile. As the wood started ticking, snapping, popping, crackling, we imitated sounds, we stoked a blend of sounds, kips, phuit, shffiit, gh-gh-gh-gh, ts-s-s-s-k, ph-ph-ph-ut, b-hub.

 

Your mouth is a spark, the roof of your mouth is fire, the shaft of the flame is your tongue!

Then we danced the fire! Two flames! Agaat quite inspired. Jumps up and down, whirling the little legs, quaking with the arms. Altogether wild. I blow with the bellows under her dress. You're the fire! I egg her on. Just had to stop her from coming too close.

And there it came at last, after more than three months' trouble: A fire and its ashes and smoke! she yells and swings her arms, of her own accord she yells it, with a breath coming straight out! She grabs the bellows, all you can see are sparks flying, so hard does she work it, she presses the lower handle against her body with the weak hand and pumps it with the strong.

 

We extinguished it with a pail of water. She wanted to catch the white, hot, hissing whirls of steam with her hands.

 

Let them be, I said, they turn into clouds that bring rain again.

 

Clouds can't burn, she says. She blows the bellows under them. Phirrrt, phorrrt, up in the air.

 

Burn, cloud, burn! she calls.

 

My ears were ringing with it. My blood felt too much for my veins. Now she'd made the bellows her own, I said, to keep for ever as a souvenir of how she came to talk in the world.

 

I hope she can calm down, perhaps just a little bit of valerian tonight at bed-time.

Agaat is starting to grow. I weigh and measure her regularly. She's catching up nicely now. Had her at the doctor's again, easier this time, he says she's perfectly normal except for the mechanical defect of the little arm. I make her stand against the door frame of the back room and make pencil marks every month. I write her weight on the calendar in her room. She eats everything and I no longer have to keep track of it, only spinach she refuses flatly. I poo green, she says.

I now always use fire for special lessons. She learns faster like that. It binds her attention. Reacts more spontaneously. More open to me. In the evening in front of the fire in the sitting room I read from my old Children's Bible everything from front to back. Then she has to tell it back to me. The blood on the door frames, the red sea, the column of fire in the desert. We've now almost reached the gospels. In good full sentences and nice and straight of back, shoulders nicely pulled back, her hands clasped in front of her she has to repeat the stories. Sometimes she clams shut, then I make her pump the bellows and talk along with the bellows, then it goes better again. She now sleeps with the bellows in her bed. When she opens her eyes in the morning, she starts pumping the book.

What time could it be? Why is everything so quiet? When is Agaat coming?

I wish I could have one last bath.

How distant they seem, the days when I could make my way to the bathroom on my own with my walking sticks.

Agaat has abandoned the great ablutions. She still appears with a tub full of steaming hot water, but it's only a gesture.

I hear six strokes. Is it evening? Or morning?

She'll be here any moment now with her fragrant waters. She'll dip the cloth in it. She'll wring it quite dry, she'll leave it over my face to steam. Then she'll dip her small hand in the water and dab me with it till my whole body is full of cool wet patches.

Often I wake up only when she's already doing it. Touching me with water. She gets to every part of me but I'm no longer invaded or besieged.

It feels as if she's embalming me.

Small baptism she calls it.

She doesn't say it out loud. I read it in her eyes. She makes sure that I can see, she uncovers my patched eye when she's working on my body, so that I can see what's happening, so that I shouldn't get a fright. She keeps me going with our eye game. One-eye game it is now, because the other one has fallen shut. She sees to it that my mind stays active, all the time I must interpret, she knows when it's too difficult, then she gives me audible clues.

Listen to the knocking, children, she sings when she auscultates me lightly, more to keep me alive than to get rid of the phlegm, it feels.