Agaat (9 page)

Authors: Marlene van Niekerk

BOOK: Agaat

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Only after midnight, when the guests were starting to take their leave, you withdrew into your own space, but you did not cry, you
pondered and planned and mustered your wits. Jak came to look for you. He was tipsy, full of talk, and amorousness itself after the commotion of the marriage feast.

He came and stood behind you in front of the mirror where you were sitting in your petticoat, caressed your neck.

Sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart, he sang to you, will you love me ever.

You hummed along for the occasion.

I could never marry a beautiful woman, he said, it would cost me too many a sleepless night.

You smiled. My dear husband, you said, what more could a boer woman ever wish for than a husband who leaps out of bed in the morning fresh and rested for his day's duties.

how long do wild peas lie before they mould? how long does a sheep suffer a sick tongue before it turns blue? how long in my symphyses did the midges multiply? in what creases or folds of the collar and the crotch the invisible mite of the mange? how many years the incubation of terror? in what subterranean seams does history precipitate? a catchment of rain does not elect itself the mountains choose and a mouth for the stream is gifted by the sea how was I then reservoired so wrongly such a still mephitic pool?

Wednesday 12 May 1960

Everything is starting to seem more real now that I'm making the lists. Two processes (three!) they keep each other on track but there are many things to think of at the same time. As long as I think of the things and not of the reasons. Heaven help me sometimes it feels too much.

Kriel & Co. list 1

Baby (a little girl or a little boy?!)
Nappies & pins
Blankets (holding and covering,
woolsey) (5)
Vests (long-sleeved it will be win-
ter) (7) Ma says you can never
have enough of them.
Crawlers (button-front)
Nappy covers (waterproof)
Cradle (perhaps after all get my
old white cot from Ma? Or is it
still down in the cellar here?)
Push-chair (Dunlop adjustable)
Pillows & covers
2 baths (thick plastic)
Towels (4 large & 4 small)
Baby shampoo & soap
Bath oil
Baby powder
Cotton wool
Earbuds
Small scissors
2 x 4 bottles + rings + teats
Bottle-brushes 2 (Saw a little
frame with coloured balls that
rattle & twirly things full of
angels & birds to hang over the cradle)

Kriel & Co. list 2

7 Long-sleeved uniform dresses
(blackâcould probably make
them myself but don't have time
now)
7 Aprons (high bib backstraps
crossed cf. Royal Hotel)
7 White caps with elastic bands
(try Good Hope CafÃ© if Kriel &
Co don't have the coloured girls
wear them there ask Georgie's
wife)
Hairpins (2 x 24 large)
Bloomers (strong black woolsey
school section)
Scholl shoes (rubber soles)
White socks (dozen)
Flannel nightgowns (2)
Nylon nightgowns (2)
4 bras 32 A (will just have to
grow into them I see the titties
are pushing fast)
Towels & washcloths
(curtains?) I can make up from
the odds drawer of the linen
cupboard. Bedding & pillows
enough. Off-cuts!âphone
Needle's Eyeâwill have to run
up a Sunday dress or two for
her quickly needlework she can
enough already she'll just have
to jump in herself & muck on I
won't have time can really not
buy everything new
Dr White's 4 dozen (Facts-of-life
talk! When will the right time
be?)
Elastic with loops
Mum (rub-on kind)
Lacto Calamine Lotion
Lifebuoy soap x 6
Johnson's baby powder (will
have to teach her how to keep
lace-up shoes fresh!)
Pepsodent x 6
Black polish (& brush & buffing
cloths)
Three small black irons & iron-
ing board (she mustn't use those
in the house in the mornings
must emerge fresh as a daisy
from the outside rm finished &
ready for the day)
Vim
Scoop & brush
Omo
Washboard
Starch (write down recipe for
her: cold water and ordinary)
Reckitt's Blue
2 Tin buckets
Sunlight soap (X4)
Zinc bath
No water as yet in outside rm
electricity one point?
(Two-plate stove?)
Tin kettle
Big pot for heating washing
water
Jug
Rooibos tea
Frisco
Powdered milk
Sugar (tin)
(NB for her needlework basket:
extra buttons for the uniform &
darning mushroom needles pins
scissors crochet hook crochet
yarn oddments of wool for more
of the jerseys she wears she
will start knitting them herself
now)
Bible
FAK (old one)
Cook & Enjoy?
Farmer's Handbook (Pa's old
copy, A. must learn the principles
old & new methods you never
know & it's good discipline)
Embroidery book

Optional:
Tin of ginger biscuits
Tin of rusks
Marie biscuits
Acid drops
Peppermint humbugs

Just a little something to suck on & something to enjoy with hr tea in the evening before going to bed. So much to do still. Quite ill with thinking of it. I ask J. doesn't he feel anything about everything happening now he says it's not necessary for him to feel anything I've got enough feelings for two. Next thing I see he's gone & bought himself a whole box of new clothes. A new noise on Gdrift he says & after all he can't appear without costume for the next act. I say why don't you rather go & read something to improve yourself your whiplash repartee no longer impresses me. Since I've been pregnant, he's at least more careful. Doesn't seem as if he wants to as much as touch me, never mind beat me. But the language he utters. Comes along just now & grabs the diary from under me. Blessed is the maker of lists creator of heaven and earth he exclaims. Blessed are the poor in spirit I snap back. What must become of us?

13 May 1960

Everything goes as if preordained. Three rooms furnished at the same time nursery & A.'s room & the gable room of the left wing for J's office. He's sleeping there most of the time now anyway & with the baby it will definitely be better he says so himself.

Now quite exhausted after the whole day's organising. Scared all the time that I'm forgetting something important. Anxious. What a disruption it
is! I know it's right but I nevertheless hold my heart about it all.

Had cradle & chest of drawers put into the nursery with hole in top in which the washbasins fit & enough space next to it to attend to the child. Under the bath space for nappies & bath things. Had single bed carried in there & an easy chair so that I can lie there if necessary & a place to sit for feedings & chest of drawers with enough drawers so that at one glance I can put my hand on everything.

Bought curtaining with half-moons & stars the windows open into the backyard so that A. can help listen at night.

Had linoleum nailed to the scrubbing table for hr kettle to stand on. OuKarel has fixed cross-planks between the legs of the table for hr tin bath & hr suitcase. Had a plank screwed down on iron brackets over the table on which she can keep hr coffee & tea & mugs & soap & cleaning material & hammered a nail into the wall for mirror one corner cracked but perfectly usable. Had a copper pipe inserted in the wall between the two partitions where shelves of the storeroom were to hang hr uniforms & dresses (look for old wire hangers NB) devised a two-strip curtain on a cord so that hr stuff needn't be so exposed to view next to the bed a crate with a cloth over it for hr Bible & hr glass of water for the night & hr candle almost forgot about the candle add to list 2 (Inside crate she can keep hr other reading matter.) Got Dawid to nail 4 apple boxes together & painted two coats of white & screwed in two hooks & and made a curtain for that as well for hr shoes & shoe polish below & hr wool & cloths & her needlework basket.

Little old yellow vase for a bit of homeliness with nasturtiums inside should look pretty there. Walls still bare & light-bulb without shade but there's no point in having her think this is a hotel old bathmat in front of the bed so that she won't stand on cold linoleum with the getting-up & hung old kitchen curtains a bit skimpy had to undo the pleats but still quite serviceable.

What can she think of it all? Will just have to be good enough. Fortunately nice & sensible.

J.'s office now in stoep room. Desk & filing cabinet & farm papers that used to be in second pantry carried over & his exercise apparatus out of the bedroom thank Heaven. Photos & trophies & things that stood
& hung all over the place. Ma'am's on the rampage baas on the stoep maid's in her hovel & all's right with the world sings Jak. Lord the man. At least he'll be able to face people again now he says. And at a glance see what's happening in the yard. As if the yard mattered a whit to him. Just as long as he's satisfied now don't have time for his nonsense too on top of everything. Expect Beatrice Pulpit-Polish will also want to come & do inspection some time. Missing a brain-bobbin, as Pa would say.

The morning sun lights up Agaat's cap from the back. Full of embroidery holes it is, densely edged with shiny white thread. The points of light in the weft flicker as she approaches. She hesitates over my bed, inclines her head, feels along the high peak with both hands, touches the base on both sides, whether it's well pinned, whether it's properly seated. If the cap is on as it should be, she'll be empowered to walk through fire. Her crown of glorified cotton, her mitre, her fire-barrel specked with light, that gives her dominion over the underworld. She deliberately touches it in such a way that there should be no doubt in my mind regarding her intention. She is mustered, she is prepared, I mustn't give any more trouble, she'll sort me out here, she's the commander of my possibilities.

She's going to list them for me, the options remaining to me, without skipping anything. As the Spirit moves her, with allusions to my incapacity.

The list gets shorter all the time.

She revises it ever more frequently.

At night on her camp stretcher she ponders what she should delete.

Three years ago the list was full of interesting variations.

Shall we ride to the lands with Dawid?

Would you like a picnic in your wheelchair next to the dam?

Must I take you rowing on the drift? Joke.

Do you want to walk up and down on the stoep in your walking frame?

Do you want to write with the splint on your hand?

Do you want to do exercises?

Do you want to sit on your own in the garden, next to the lavender hedge, next to the rambling rose, under the honey-bread tree?

Do you want to read notes and hum?

Do you want to go for a swim in the reservoir?

Shall I make you some custard with apricot jam and bananas?

But that's all in the past now.

I close my eyes.

I have a life beyond your lists, is what it wants to say. I have needs that you cannot imagine, even if you were to cast your cap in bronze.

It maddens her. That she can't meet my every need, that she doesn't know everything I think, that frustrates her beyond all measure.

To peer into my head at what is playing there, that's what she desires. There's protest in her voice when she speaks, but I know that's only the upper layer, that's what she can afford to have me hear.

Shall I draw the curtain a bit?

Do you want to listen to the morning service?

A tape?

Wine women and song?

The pan for number one?

The pan for number two?

Too cold?

Too hot?

Sit up straighter?

Lie down flatter?

Eat a bit more porridge?

Fruit pulp? There is cold melon? With a bit of salt?