Agaat (37 page)

Did we bring him up wrongly?

Can't have been too wrongly, for he has a job and a house and a will of his own.

It's Agaat who's been most badly hurt. She pines for him, I can see it, when she gazes out of the door in a certain way and closes her eyes for a moment, or, sometimes at night, when the doors here are thrown open and she lowers her embroidery and turns her head askance to listen, her cap tilted at an angle like a radar dish.

Does she want to phone him this morning? Perhaps she's struggling with the dialling codes for overseas. Perhaps she wants to pretend to be phoning him, for my sake. Perhaps she's trying to think what she'd better say then, how she should say it, for the benefit of my listening ears.

But I know what her face looks like when she thinks she's going to be talking to Jakkie.

Perhaps it's the undertaker, rather, that she wants to phone. For a preview. Perhaps she hopes that it will encourage me, such a quantity surveyor's assessment. Just as well that I've been deprived of speech.

Of the friends it's only Beatrice that Agaat still allows to see me, if she should want to, that is. After that conversation in Jak's office she's
rather withdrawn herself from me. Scared of her own emotions. Only now do I realise how widespread it must be. Blunted men, suck-weary women. Only death can still whet their appetites.

Agaat keeps their visits brief since she's realised it. Gives them tea in the sitting room, lets them greet in the doorway, not a step closer, takes them out again. Closes the front door on their backs. Sometimes they slip through, down the passage. The inquisitive mainly, the spiteful attracted to the bed of affliction.

Such vanity, it all seems from here. The endless stream of visitors that I had here at one stage. Until Agaat decided that was enough now. Now it's her turn and her turn alone.

Now that I have only my thoughts that I may think, without ever having to express them, the last scrapings of my senses. Light, dark, heat, voices, open doors, wind. The ruin that Agaat helps me to inhabit. A squatter in my own body. Wind-blown settlement. A perilous freedom.

So she would be able to spend the rest of her earthly days writing down what she went through with me. If I provisionally have the advantage, that's only because I won't live for long enough to read her writings one day.

She'd be capable of putting my head in a clamp to force me. Specially intended for my eyes. Niche market.

There she is dialling the number in the passage now, she sits down for the conversation. She'll dissemble more if she thinks I'm sleeping.

This is Agaat, she says. Her voice comes out low.

She clears her throat. Lower the girl.

This is Grootmoedersdrift, Nooi Beatrice, Agaat speaking.

That's better. In her place. Sharp and clear. The soul of innocence. The brownest servant in the land.

Morning, Nooi, how are you, Nooi?

No, so-so, Nooi. Nooi, I want to ask if you can help me, Nooi. I must get to town tomorrow, Nooi, with Dawid. I want to ask if you could come and watch over Ounooi here for a few hours, please Nooi.

Watch over. Masterly choice of words, Agaat.

What was that, Nooi? No, I must buy all sorts of things, at the chemist and from the shop. And I must arrange things with the printer, for the cards and the programme as the ounooi wants them all for the funeral.

Yes, there'll be many people, Nooi. If everybody comes it will be close to a hundred people, we'll have to stir our stumps, Nooi.

Stir our stumps. Lord. Is she making it up, perhaps? Perhaps she wants the farm exchange to hear. Perhaps she's talking straight into the monotone of the dialling tone.

No, Saar and Lietja wouldn't know, Nooi, they're farm people, they're unwashed.

You're right in there, my old body-servant, all the way to my neighbour's wife's tonsils you're in.

Yes, everything in order here, Nooi, just last night we almost had a mishap. No, the slimes, the slimes, you know, go and settle under in the lungs, as you know she can't cough for herself any more.

No, I knock it to the top as doctor taught me, then I remove it with a little suction pump, I know how to by now. Doctor was here, yes, he gave oxygen. We have oxygen here now.

Yes, he showed me how.

Not much, about two hours at a time, but then I get up, then I look.

How do you mean now, Nooi?

No, Nooi, the ounooi plays along very well, she knows I must do it all, she understands.

Yes, Agaat, she lies here and she understands. And she listens to the price you have to pay there on the telephone for a simple neighbourly favour. Old vulture's beak smacks as she devours the line. Feed her, Agaat. Feed her till she's gorged.

Agaat lowers her voice. She coughs.

No, quite clear. Completely conscious still.

No, doctor says you can't do more at home than I'm doing. He says otherwise she must go off to hospital.

That really wouldn't work, Nooi.

No, I just know, she doesn't want to. She signed the papers.

She doesn't want the machines on her. She thinks doctor wants to prescribe to her how. How she must, you know Nooi, how she must . . . go before . . .

Agaat shifts her weight on the stool. The boards creak in the passage. She is quiet for a long time. Would she be patting her cap to make sure that it's seated properly? Would she be concentrating on the floorboards?

No, says Agaat, she would never, she's too obstinate, she wants to do it herself.

I'll watch well, Nooi Beatrice, you know don't you, we know each other, the ounooi and me, we've come a long way together. She only wants me here.

No, I understand her, Nooi, she still wants to see everything, she wants to hear, I know, she still wants to taste and everything.

No, I just know. No, she can't, not a word, but I look at her then I know.

Yes, Nooi, please, Nooi. As early as you can, yes, Nooi. Eight o'clock, half past eight. There'll be breakfast here for you, Nooi.

Yes, by twelve we'll be back.

First to the co-op, yes, Dawid must get things, parts for the combine harvester that he has to keep in order, yes, and sacks.

Baling wire, yes, there's enough, the railway bus delivered.

A bit of a squeeze everything, yes, and the harvest is late this year, but I knew it would be around Christmas sometime, so my side is ready.

Yes, so now we can only wait . . .

Agaat's voice sounds tired.

Yes, yes, only to town, as I say, Nooi. We have to deliver things. No, the eggs and the milk. Pumpkins. Onions too. And I must exchange the videos. But the story films upset her, now I keep to nature films.
National Geographic
, yes.

That's right, Agaat, butterflies, bats, killer whales. Juicy bribes for the neighbour's wife.

Agaat rubs out an insect on the passage floor with the point of her shoe.

Yes, Human and Pitt, she says.

Quickly she speaks now.

Yes, that's here already, it's standing in the shed. They want to come and do it here. Yes, they say it's better at home when somebody has been lying for such a long time already.

Dominee, yes, he phones regularly and asks, yes, Mrs Dominee as well, but Ounooi doesn't want them here, nor the elder.

I do the service.

I do it, yes. I pray and I read when she feels the need, and I sing.

Yes. It will be here on the farm. In the graveyard here.

Yes, it's been dug for a long time. Next to her mother's. Wire netting over it so that things can't nest in it.

Weeded, yes. Whitewashed, too, the wall. Everything tidy. I sowed a few painted ladies seeds there, they're nicely in flower now.

Who? Jakkie? Last time he still said he was coming. It's snowing there, he says it's lying thick. Tomorrow I'm sending him a telegram so that he has it, black on white.

He's working, yes till just before Christmas, they don't have a holiday now.

No, it's arranged. Everything's arranged. So will you please come tomorrow, Nooi? Thank you very much, Nooi. Till tomorrow then, Nooi. Thank you, Nooi. The same to you, Nooi.

I beg your pardon, Nooi?

No, doctor says he thinks less than a month, Nooi, perhaps a month.

No, Nooi, yes, Nooi, we can only hope for the best, Nooi. Well, that's fine then, Nooi. Till tomorrow, Nooi. Goodbye, Nooi.

Tsk, Agaat sucks her teeth.

I don't hear her replace the receiver.

The board next to the telephone stool creaks as she comes upright and then it creaks again as she sits down again. Then it creaks again. Then she replaces the receiver with a soft click. Then it clicks again as she lifts it.

Is everything in order, Agaat?

She slams the phone down hard on the cradle. The receiver falls off, I can hear it banging against the wall as it swings from its cord.

Tring, goes the telephone. Again the receiver is slammed down.

She walks down the passage with loud confused steps. She walks past the kitchen door, she walks blindly into the sitting room. She kicks over something there. She sets it upright. It falls over again, metal on wood. Other things fall. Thud, it goes, thud, thud, thud. She's back in the passage. She wants to come to me, but she can't. She's dragging something, wires across the floor.

What do I hear? A groan, a curse, a sob?

Two doors slam. The kitchen door, the screen door. And then another one, the outside room's.

A dog barks.

What else do I hear? Windows are slammed shut, stiff copper catches violently pulled over the lip of the window frame, and then opened again.

Curtains are yanked shut, too far so that half of the window is exposed again. Plucked to and fro, two rings come undone.

I understand, Agaat. It was too much. Your voice, your words, your news, your request, it was too much for you to hear.

I see you. You're standing in your room, you're standing and you can't stand any longer. You bend at the middle and you bend at the backs of your legs, your back hunches, you crawl forward over the linoleum. You take the poker, you pull out the grate. You crawl into your hearth, white cap first. You go and lie with your knees pulled up in the old black soot. You make yourself heavy and you make yourself dense and you sink away under the concrete with your fist in your mouth.

How can I blame you for wanting to vanish, Agaat? That you want to get away from me, away from the tyranny of me? More inescapable than ever, now that I can say or do nothing, now that I myself am floundered, and am immoveable as the stones. I would want to open
myself to you and take you up into myself and comfort you. But I cannot, because I am your adversary exactly because I am as I am, mute and dense, and you are looking for a safe refuge from me. Under your own stones.

How can I accompany you to where you are now? At the heart of the hearth, under the soot, where you want to conceal yourself, under the foundations, under the stone strata, where they are blue, where you find a crevice into which to disappear, and haul in the block of stone on top of you, so that you can be occluded, with your arm over your head, with your fist in your mouth? Until nobody searches for you any more, to draw you out, to split you into parts and stretch you over spars and to infuse you and to chafe you and to rap you till you scream, till you sing, till you dance to their tune? Till you feel time click shut behind you and everything else falls silent, in your mouth no taste any more save the clean chalky tang of lime and scale?

So that I can come to be there with you, with my hand on your hip bone, with my hand on your shoulder tip to wait with you in the dark. For them to be rendered white and tidy, your bones, one by one, your clavicle, like a rudder, like an ensign, your shoulder blades like fans, your ribs shiny spokes, inside them a cleared hold, with every mast and beam caulked and planished in the dense rock face, the rock that retreats before your entry, a small fanfare. So that you can come to rest with all that is yours fixed and impermeable like pitch, your sails furled.

How can I be with you while you become a fern, a jaw of something inchoate, a keel, a beckoning nodule that flows in the grain of stone?

I shall go and lie with my head in that corner, with my ear on the place where the last trace of you lingered. I shall draw the suppurate stain of you into my nose, careful that you should not mark me, so that you shall be free of me, and free of yourself, a fume, a dark blemish that mists over the stone on which I am lying with my cheek.

Open at page 221, Agaat said. Her voice was clear. She put the old Farmer's Handbook on your lap. End of October it was, 1960, the year of the botulism.

Ask me from the beginning, she said, ask me all the symptoms, and all the cures, ask me trick questions, I've learnt it all, I know everything now, I'll never make a mistake again.