Agaat (10 page)

After every question she waits for me to reply, but I keep my eyes shut. That means you're cold, you're far out, you don't have a clue, my need is a subtle one.

I open my eyes. I seek her gaze. I widen my eyes.

No! No! and again no!

Everything is swimming before my eyes, but she carries on. She coerces me, I must comprehend the extent of her goodwill. Nothing she wouldn't do for me. Anything within the bounds of justice and reason.

I close my eyes again.

Her voice rises by a whole tone. Slightly faster it comes now.

Read? Must I set up the reading stand and page for you?

Must I read to you?

Genesis?

Job?

A psalm of David?

Revelations?

The Bible according to Agaat. God's delirium and man's tremblement.

I open my eyes but I give no sign, I fix my gaze straight ahead of me. That means: Go away, you're irritating me.

From the corner of my eye I see her hitch up her shoulder. She rustles a finger through the pile of little blue books on the chair.

Or something from your own pen? That always interests you doesn't it? The good old days, ‘Agaat and the garden of Grootmoedersdrift 1980'? But this one is empty. It says ‘paradise' at the top and then it's just a list of plants.

She runs her finger down the page. Moonflower, flowering quince, silver birch, she reads. She slaps shut the book.

Pity it's not the whole story, she says, her mouth pleated, it's just a skeleton. And the gardening was quite pleasant. She taps the front of the book.

Perhaps I should write it up in here myself. But perhaps we should finish furnishing my paradise first before we start on yours, don't you think? We're right in the middle of it now. Hr little rm that you fixed up so nicely for hr in the back here, remember? How did the baas always say? Something for the
Guinness Book of Records
. First time in history. Interior decoration for an outside room. Thought you could hide it from me. Then the ounooi came to do inspection and left the door open. Then Saar saw. But by then I'd known for a long time.

Agaat is trying to provoke me. I give no quarter. I keep my eyes neutral.

Ad nauseam I've heard it in a variety of performances. Perhaps she's going to sing it again this evening. Seven aprons, seven caps, one dozen white socks and a little vase for homeliness.

Perhaps she'll beat time with her shoe in her hand on the armrest of the chair. That would be better. Anything would be better than her sitting still and reading and glaring at me every now and again as if I'd done her some wrong.

Let her leap, let her dance, let her grab one little book after the other and put it down and spin around in the middle of the room, a starched-aproned dervish without the blessing of release.

As long as she understands I also have my rights.

I want to see my ground, I want to see my land, even if only in outline, place names on a level surface. I want to send my eyes voyaging.

Perhaps you feel like a video?

She's not looking at me, she's looking at the books on the little pile.
I saw her counting them the other evening. There are sixty-three. I thought there were more.

The one about the snow wolves? Or the black-and-white killer whales? Or the giant bats of the Amazon?

A grimace on her mouth. As if she can see me hooking tiny damp claws into the mane of a horse, how I attach myself to the jugular vein, as if there's a close-up of my ingurgitating mouth-parts.

Anything rather than having to confess that I'm locked up here as if behind thick one-way glass and she's out there and doesn't know what on earth it is that I want.

Or a story movie? Before I go to exchange them tomorrow?

A Passage to India
?

Where Angels Fear to Tread
?

On Golden Pond
?

How many syllables can you speak without saying an ‘m'? Utter how many sentences without using the word ‘map'? Think how many thoughts before you stumble upon the idea of a schematic representation of the world?

You'd think it would be indispensable, like the air that you breathe.

My cheeks are wet.

I close my eyes. I keep them shut. I give up. I flicker my eyelids without opening them. Cheeky, that's supposed to mean, surely you can see it's something completely different, get the hell out of my room with your damned lists.

I hear her turn on her heel. Rapid steps down the passage to the bathroom. She returns with a warm cloth. She wipes my face in two swipes.

Stop blubbering, you'll choke, say her eyes.

It's tooth-polishing time, says her mouth.

I flicker through my tears, polish yourself.

Aitsa! says Agaat, how-now.

She pushes the plug of the electric toothbrush into the socket. She holds the green toothbrush with the rotary head in the air to test it. Tsiiimmm, it goes, tsiiimmm-tsoommm. She unscrews the lid of the powder-stuff. She presses the head of the toothbrush in it. It's a dry polish. It tastes of lime, of dust, of blackboard chalk. Against the light I can see the dust particles eddying around her hands.

Right, says Agaat, the full piano, tooth by tooth, from the middle down the front to the back, first cheek-side then tongue-side, we start at the top.

She puts down the toothbrush in a bowl on the trolley. She puts on a pair of latex gloves. The rubber clicks and snaps. The small hand looks
like a mole. It burrows blindly into the glove. The other hand looks like pliers.

The monkey mourns the monkey's mate, she sings on a held-in breath.

She takes the mouth-clamp out of the sterile water. She lets it drip. Then she spins the screw closed. Wrrrr, it turns back on its thread. The drops spatter my face.

I flicker with my eyes, please watch what you're doing!

Ag so sorry, she says. She swabs my cheek with a piece of cotton wool. Swab, swab, swab. Left right left.

And monkey tears are cold and wet, she carries on singing.

Lord, I say with my eyes, Lord you.

I beg yours? asks Agaat.

She compresses the spring of the screw and manoeuvres it into my mouth. The flat cold foot of stainless steel rests on my tongue, the curved upper part fits into the hollow of my palate. She releases the spring. My mouth starts to open.

Jacked up, says Agaat.

She looks out of the door while she winds open the screw in my mouth. She knows the procedure. She likes Leroux's gadgets. The dry-polish toothbrush was a real winner. It gives her an opportunity to get into my mouth, under my tongue, behind my teeth.

Dry polish spares you, she said that day when she unpacked the toothbrush, we must use that mouth of yours for nothing but swallowing.

Now, she says, concentrate, breathe.

My jaws creak.

A bit more, says Agaat, she turns the screw, so that we can reach everywhere nicely, she says.

With the last few turns she looks at what she's doing. She avoids my eyes. Her gaze is fixed on my mouth cavity. There's a flickering on her face.

In the road is a hole, she says.

I know the rest. In the hole is a stone, in the stone is a sound. Riddle me ree, perhaps you can tell what this riddle may be.

Now she's looking into my eyes.

We do it in one go, she says. That's better than stopping half-way. Otherwise you taste the nasty stuff, right? And then you want to swallow, but we're saving your swallowing for food, right?

Tsiiiimmm, goes the brush, tsiiimmm-tsoommm in the air.

I close my eyes. I feel Agaat pulling away my upper lip from my front teeth. It can take half an hour or five minutes. It depends. If she sees tears, I'm punished. The toothbrush is on its slowest setting. It
makes a low drilling sound when it touches my teeth. My whole head vibrates with it. The powder drifts up my nose. I concentrate. I breathe. I mustn't choke.

And day and night in sun and moon, she takes up the song, as if nothing has intervened. She works her way through the teeth in my upper jaw. She lifts up my lip like the edge of a carpet.

The monkey sings the same old tune.

She peels away my lower lip from my guns. For my lower jaw she has a hymn.

Delay not, delay not, o sinner, draw near, she sings, the waters of life are now flowing for thee. She switches off the toothbrush.

Keep still, she says, I hear a dog barking. She pulls off one glove, shrrrts.

I lie with my mouth prised open. The air is cold in my mouth, the chrome plate presses against my palate. On my tongue seeps the chalky taste of the powder.

I hear no dog barking. Turtledoves are what I hear.

The doves of my yard.

Everything carries on as always, everything will be as it was, the shadows of the bluegums, the doves of morning. The next morning even, when I am gone, will be filled with the usual sounds, as if nothing had happened. The bail will jingle against the bucket, the storeroom door will scuff the threshold, the laughter of the farm boys down by the drift playing with their wire cars on the little bridge, you'll hear it all the way from the yard, as now, the screen door will bang with the morning's in-and-out around the kitchen.

Agaat scrapes her shoes on the front-door mat. She comes down the passage. I heard the bakkie come back. Perhaps Dawid had gone to fetch post from town. Perhaps there was a letter from Jakkie. Or a tape with some kind of pigmy music.

But when she comes in, her gaze betrays nothing of the kind.

Where were we? she says.

Every surface is attended to. She says nothing further about the dogs. I know her by now. She goes away and leaves me like this just so that she can come in at the door again. So that she can have a fresh view of her patient. Of the progress of the operation.

In the stone there is no sound.

Gone is the sun and gone is the moon.

The monkey's mouth's in a metal mount.

She undoes the screw, whirrrrs it in my mouth, pulls it out, plops it back into the water.

There's a mite too much attitude to the wrist. As if she's arranging flowers before an audience.

Right, she says, now for the dusting. She dips a swab in water. She wipes my gums, my palate, the corners of my mouth. There's a special sponge to remove scurf from my tongue.

Say ‘ah' for doctor, says Agaat.

I close my eyes. What have I done wrong?

The little mole-hand nuzzles out my tongue. The screw has squashed it in my mouth. My shrunken tongue, fallen in, deformed by the paralysis. There was a time when I could put it out and look at it in the mirror, read the signs myself. Your tongue betrays everything about your intestines.

I feel a tugging at my tongue. The grip tremors with a faint temptation: Where is it fixed? how firmly? with what strings? how long is it?

My tongue is being staked out for its turn at ablution.

The sponge is rough. With vigorous strokes my tongue is scrubbed down. It tastes powerfully of peppermint. Three times the sponge is recharged before Agaat is satisfied. My tongue feels eradicated.

There, she says, pulling away my lips from my teeth to inspect her handiwork.

Ounooi, she says, full piano.

She lets my lips slump back, arranges them decorously over my teeth so that I don't smirk, and regards me hand on hip.

The only other option is simply to pull all your teeth. All in one go. Then the tooth fairy will put money in your shoe. The question is, she says, a glint in her eye, how much does one pump into you so that you feel absolutely nothing?

She turns away for the punchline, pronounces it as if it's the most normal of sentences.

It's not as if you can squirm or scream.

She rinses her strong hand in the bowl of water.

Only the gums and palate to go. That you like, don't you?

She dips her fingers in the peppermint mouthwash. She puts her thumb and forefinger on either side of my mouth. She massages my gums, first the lower and then the upper. She looks out of the stoep door while she does it. The rhythm of the massaging action calms her. She becomes more tranquil. Her fingers move more gently, more kindly on my gums. Then it becomes caressing. Forgive me, ask the fingers, I also have a hard time with you, you know.

Now she's not looking at me. You can't talk, say the fingers. How in God's name must I know what you want? For days now you've been
nagging at me about something you want. I don't know what it is! I can't hear what you're thinking!

More passionate the movement becomes. Agaat curses me in the mouth with her thumb and index finger. Bugger you! I feel against my palate, bugger you and your mother. I didn't ask to be here!

I read her sign language with the membranes of my mouth, eyes closed.

If I could rub some speech into your mouth, then I'd do it, you hear! You'd better watch your step with me! You'd conk out without me! You're conking out as it is, I can't help it. And it's I who conk out, I'm actually the one who suffers here.

She takes her hand from my mouth. Long strings of drool she draws out. She takes off the gloves. Slap, slap, they fall into the bin. She wipes my face, the tears from my cheeks.

Thank you, I signal briefly.

You're welcome, says Agaat.

She turns her back on me. She tidies the things on the trolley. She looks at her watch. Suddenly she's in a hurry. She draws the curtain with quick little plucks, arranges the covers over me.

I lie with my eyes shut. My mouth feels numb. Better that she should not see my eyes. Better that she should not think now that I'm asking her something. I'm waiting for her hand on my shoulder. That would mean: We do what we can, as well as we can, you and I, and: I'm not going far.