Agaat (28 page)

You watched the lay-bys as you passed them. You had to fight against the illusion that it was the car that was stationary and that it was the mountain that had wrenched loose out of its grooves and was gnashing past you, a merry-go-round of grey rock faces, rocky inlets. You knew them all, the stopping-places. You were aiming for the one by the waterfall. There was most space there, there were a few bushes to park behind.

Tradouw, you thought, a child of the Tradouw. Gantouw, the way of the eland, Tradouw, the way of the women.

You brought the car to a standstill in a shower of stones.

Agaat did as you said, placed newspapers and blankets on the back seat, with two doubled-over clean sheets on top. You had to lie down. It felt as if you were tearing apart, as if your spine was splitting.

Sing, you said, sing me something.

Breathe, said Agaat, you said I had to tell you to breathe, breathe, and blow. Blow! Blow!

She waited till you started breathing and blowing. Then she herself took a breath so deep it lifted her shoulders and struck up. Oh moon, Agaat sang for you, you drift so slow on your bright throne.

Her voice emerged too high, out of tune. She cleared her throat, started again. Firm this time, and low, nicely on pitch. The moon, kept on a short tow-rope, tight and low along the horizon. She pulled off your wet underclothing over your legs and covered your upper body with a blanket as you did with the cows in winter. She put a blanket roll under your head.

So calm so clear, she sang, and I so sad and lone.

Now wash your hands, you said. Pour the water into the basin, add two caps of Dettol, wash your hands again, wash me from below, take a cloth, take the red soap, wash well. Have ready the scissors, the knife, the floss, the string, the cloths, the sheets, the smelling salts, line everything up where you can reach easily. There'll be a lot of blood, don't get a fright, just do everything you'd do with a cow. And sing, carry on singing here for me, so that I can get hold of a rhythm. Sing something fast.

The boys are cutting the corn tonight, corn tonight, Agaat sang.

Her voice rose, you blew.

My love's hanging in the berry-bush, berry-bush.

You felt pressure in you, downwards, outwards pressure like a tree-trunk.

Now push, she said, my love is hanging in the bitter-berry-bush.

Breathe! Push! Blow!

You bellowed.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, push Agaat said.

You felt her weak hand low on your belly, there it was feeling, this side and that side of the bulge it pressed, like a spatula against a ball of dough, and gathered you lightly from below your navel and stroked down over your lower belly, one two three times. As you had taught her to feel over animals, whether the lamb was lying transverse or the calf was breeched.

Push, said Agaat, he's lying right, his head's in the hole, I can feel him.

Look who's coming in from outside out, she sang, on the intake of breath.

Breathe in, push, blow, blow, blow!

The other hand was inside you, you felt, the strong one, it reamed you as one reams a gutter.

Breathe in and blow, now you must push, Agaat said, he's coming, I feel him, he's hanging in the bush, he's hanging nicely, he's hanging like a berry, head first.

Now you must, now you must, Agaat coaxed. Softly, rapidly, urgently, the language that you spoke to the Simmentals that had such trouble calving. You heard yourself, your voice was in her. You heard your father with animals, when you were small, when you stood next to him in the old stable on Grootmoedersdrift, the language of women that he could speak better than your mother.

You couldn't any more. You were depleted.

He's stuck he's stuck his head is stuck in the hole.

Agaat was in panic, you could hear.

Take the scissors! you screamed. You felt it, the cold steel against you, it felt too slow, she was hesitating.

Cut, God! you screamed, cut open all the way to the hole!

You felt the sharp incision, one blow, another blow. There was a spurt of blood out of you all the way up to the upholstery, it dripped back onto you.

You felt a slipping, you tore, you were open, you screamed, you called, bitterly, you listened to, held your ears like. Like tarns, like eddies, like echo-bearing chasms, like wind-winnowed waterfall, you
held them till you heard what was neither of you nor of Agaat.

The sound.

You strained upright, heard the scissors clatter to the ground, saw the strings dangling, slime and threads of blood out of you.

A bundle was put down on you, a bawl swaddled in cloths, your arms were gathered together from where they were dispersed, the arm from the river first and then from the mountain, from left and from right your arms were placed around the bundle, a tiny white cocoon with red palm-prints, a big one on one side, an unfurled fan, and on the other side the bloody forepaw of an otter. Agaat's mismatched hands that had performed the deed for you.

Blood drenched it, Agaat's apron was red all the way to the bib, Agaat's cap a cockscomb, there was a plashing in your ears, a poppling, your heart was open. Full and shiny, far and near. A waterfall. From the highest cliff a down-feather twirling on the foam, a little lily bobbing after the haze of your body, a patch of scarlet in black moss, a throat, a tongue, a gong in the dripping sparkling jet.

There was a ride on an open vehicle, the wind was cold on you. You bled on cabbage leaves. You came to every now and again and sank away into a faint again. The mountains fell on you. Agaat was in front with the driver. That you still knew, that she came and told you, close to your ear.

Everything is fine, she said, my même, she said, I've got him with me, he's safe, I'm holding him for you, we'll be there now-now!

We drive like the wind with you and your child, we ride, we ride, round curves wild and wide, snip-snip went the scissors, snip-snip, and my cap, my cap, how red is its tip.

You came to in the hospital and cried. Where is Jak, you cried, where is Agaat?

Jak's in his canoe on the Breede River. Agaat's sitting in the fireplace, she won't come out.

It was your mother. You did not want to see your mother.

It's a boy, she said, a fast boy. A real De Wet. All its toes and fingers and a handy spanner. His father's pretty mouth. You tore badly, along the cut to the top.

She indicated with her thumb and forefinger.

That servant-girl of yours got hold of you a bit roughly. They still have to sew you up.

Your mother's smile was strange. Was it fright? Shock? Schadenfreude? Judgement? You didn't understand it. You cried. They brought the bundle, you didn't want it, you cried.

Bring me Agaat, bring her here, go fetch her, bring her to me, you cried, bring Agaat, I want Agaat.

Blew snot, your hands over your mouth, your hands on your collarbones. You wanted to choke, you wanted to die, you wanted to get back in under the mountain, trail your heart behind you, drag it in, a bloody trail, a fist on bloody cords.

They dosed you with medicine. They said you were suffering from shock. They sewed you up. They brought the bundle and took it away, brought and took away. Your milk wouldn't come. You were taken to your mother's house.

Agaat was there in her white apron and her white cap, at the garden gate.

She'd come out of the fireplace.

Not a stipple of soot, not a spot of blood, you heard yourself say, from the water, from the fire, from the hollow under your lip.

She held out her arms.

Give, she said softly, give him to me, I'll watch.

On the trolley next to my bed the hot water is steaming in the washbasin. It smells of Milton. Over the fume of disinfectant I detect the fragrance of lavender. Agaat knows Milton sets my teeth on edge. But she persists with it. She says she prefers it to Dettol. Dettol is for hospitals and for childbirth.

Sometimes she adds lavender to the Milton water, or fennel, to make it more pleasant for me, at other times mint, or lemon verbena. She's read up in our gardening books, she says, herbs are good for the blood, for the concentration, for the nerves. I get the message. I must concentrate, I must have nerves of steel. And about my blood, I know, I mustn't worry overmuch, she'll pep that up for me with mint.

Agaat lifts one side of me. She manoeuvres a triple-folded bath towel in under me. Then she walks to the other side and tilts me and straightens the towels under me. All this she does with the strong left hand. With the right hand she steers and pulls and slips and folds. Like a conductor, with the one hand she beats time, with the other she signals the major entries, for percussion, for the trombone, and with that she gives the feeling, passionato, grazioso, every wash-time a concert.

The little right hand feels different to the left when it brushes against my skin, cooler and smoother. It's as if recently she's been touching me more often with the weak hand, a sweep of the knuckles, or a fluttering of the four gathered fingers, a weightless shell-shaped palm resting on my stomach for a moment.

It's as if she's less concerned about my seeing that hand of hers. Now and again I catch a glimpse in the folds of the facecloth when she puts it in the washbasin, in the pleat of a curtain as she opens it. Then it steals away before I've had a good view of it. It hasn't changed. A little frizzled paw with a folded-in thumb such as one sees in verrucose chickens.

Every day she wears one of the light crocheted jerseys that she's made part of her uniform, the right sleeve lengthened so that it covers the hand all the way to the knuckles. But I've caught her a few times now stripping back the longer sleeve when she washes me. She knows I see.

Butcher's sleeve, she says then.

She folds back the bedding all the way and drapes it over the railing at the foot of the bed. She adjusts the bed so that my upper body is marginally more upright. She fits the rigid support so that my head is stable. Head Lock by LimberUp & Co.

We're doing a full-body tonight, Ounooi, it's midweek. Then you'll feel a whole lot better.

She spreads a bathsheet over my body from my feet up to my waist.

And seems to me we'll have to massage the feet, they feel a bit cold to me.

I feel her hand on the bridge of my foot. It's the left hand, it feels warm. She does a little rub there, as if my foot needs cheering up. Hang-foot. Sometimes, to prevent my muscles from shrivelling as happened to my hands, she fits the foot-support. Foothold by Feet & All. The stirrups, Agaat calls it. But mainly I ride bareback. Lord, imagine, me in my present state on horseback, hairy death, the ceaseless whinnying, because he'll know what's mounted him.

She unties the ribbons of the bed-jacket behind my neck, she pulls it down over my arms until she can take it off over my hands.

It's thin sleeveless hospital-wear that Leroux brought, for easy effective handling of your patient, I heard him say to Agaat.

But she'll feel the cold, because the muscles are dead, so always keep her covered under several layers of light covers, even though it's summer now.

Leroux speaks to Agaat in the passage outside my door. He thinks he's in a hospital where voices can't be heard over the rumbling of trolleys and clattering of crockery and buckets and nurses rushing around. He tells her everything about his latest conclusions and proposals and he issues his latest directives. I hear him clearly. It's only the floorboards that creak as he stands and rocks on his toes, and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the front room. Agaat never says anything in reply and she never asks any questions. She knows I hear it all. And she doesn't want to tell me herself. About my lungs that are getting weaker all the time. And about my swallowing. She wants me to hear for myself and decide for myself about the appliances and the hospital.

She's simplified everything to a single question: Do you want another nurse?

To that my answer is no.

Agaat covers me with a large towel before she pulls the tunic, under the towel, from my body. She lifts the washbasin from the trolley onto the serving-top and draws it nearer across the bed, over my body.

First the left, she says, and takes my arm from under the towel and lays it down on the bed close to my body. She handles it like a fragment, something that belongs to me only by loose association. A dead arm, but a life-like replica. Like an artificial arm. But an artificial arm needn't be washed like this.

Breathe calmly, Ounooi, says Agaat, and tests the water with her left elbow, as I taught her with Jakkie long ago.

Her grip is gentle but firm. She anticipates on my behalf the impact of the wet warm cloth by keeping constant contact with my body, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my hand. She hasn't forgotten a single one of her lessons.

Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, she sings on the in-breath.

She soaps the cloth, wrings it half dry and washes the arm with firm soapy strokes up to the armpit. She swivels the wrist, the wrist can still swivel. She washes it as if it could still be stained from the silver bangles that I used to wear, and my palm that she folds open, that she washes as if I'd just deboned a chicken. And between my fingers, which she straightens, and up against the cuticles she washes as if I'd been working in black garden soil.