Agaat (86 page)

He said if I wanted a knife I had to be a man and a man can dock a tail. He forced me. You too, Ma too. My own hanslam you selected for it, would you believe.

Jakkie was speaking more loudly, vehemently, you could hear that he was upset.

I'm no longer scared of him, Gaat, for that I've almost seen my arse too many times in the service of his pathetic National Party. Fucking Mirages that fuck out, fucking missiles around my ears. Killed hundreds of people, more than I'll ever know. Jesus, what a disgrace! How must I live with it for the rest of my life? I'm ashamed of it, that it happened to me, that I didn't see it sooner. Always just: You'll do what I tell you, chappie, salute, general! I puke of it, of this pathetic lot who tell themselves they've been placed here on the southernmost tip with a purpose and they represent something grandiose in the procession
of nations. O wide and sorrowful land blah blah blah with flag and Word and trumpet. It's sick! Sick! It's better that I go away before I do something rash. He's pathetic, my father. My mother too, she's pathetic. They keep each other pathetic, the two of them, with all their wealth and wisdom. The whole community here intoning their anthem, peeep, squeak the little wives, bu-urp croak the husbands, they with their stud farms breeding bulls for the abattoir and babies for the army, they with their church steeples and iron fists towering towards heaven. Who do they think they are? Blind and deaf against the whole world? How long must it still carry on? And their God, he's one of them, half-a-head elevated above the bald pate of the local dominee, God Almighty, the Auditor of the Land Bank.

The orchard has ears.

That's what Agaat said. You knew it was meant for you. You wormed away backwards and came to your feet carefully and walked back. You picked up a few oranges at random to have something in the pocket, a proof.

Pathetic, you thought, my child thinks I'm pathetic.

You went and changed into another dress. Nobody need know that you'd crawled on your stomach. On your back where the August sun had beaten down, it felt hot for a long time after, itchy all over the shoulders.

All the time that afternoon while Jak was taking Jakkie around on the farm to see his latest activities, you felt as if another tape was spooling in your head with commentary.

The bokbaai vygies a feverish rash, the Namaqualand daisies a knee-high blaze. The whole garden an indictment, wide and sorrowful.

Jakkie stood gazing at it.

Gaat's work, you said.

Gaat's and mine, Jak said. Your mother, don't you know, had fainting fits for months on end. She went and fell into the ditch that evening after your medal parade. Agaat must have told you. On top of a rotten cow. Got such a fright she was all aquiver.

Jak held open the door of the new abattoir for Jakkie. He'd always been squeamish, he said, about the slaughtering on the block, the old axes and the knives at the draining-gutter under the bluegums, where the dogs lick, where the gauze cage sways in the wind.

An abattoir was an asset on Grootmoedersdrift, he said, solidly built, complete with shiny steel surfaces, neon lights, completely automated bearing-surfaces, industrial refrigeration plants. Jak tapped against the wall, stroked the shiny surfaces with the back of his hand.

Pale in the light of the cooler, in deep marinading dishes, lay the
sheep and the suckling pigs with their legs tied together. Agaat had already threaded them along the spine on the central braai rods for the spit-braai the following day.

You stood back out of the cool-room. The dull light over the rumps, the ribs and legs, the headlessness, the disgrace.

You'd stood next to Agaat the day when the installers came to demonstrate the machinery. You couldn't watch, the fear of the animals between the railings of the isolation pen, the swinging up onto the moving hook of the living animal, the blood in the drainage chutes, the screaming saw-blade.

See, now somebody with one hand can slaughter all on her own, Jak had shouted at her above the noise.

Jak took a sheep's head out of the cooler, held it up by the ears before Jakkie. The head from the slaughter, belonging to Dawid and company, that they'd not collected yet. He slotted the blade into the grooves with a click and took hold of the head on either side by the ears. Slowly he guided it over the steel surface to the blade.

Now watch closely, he shouted above the din to Jakkie, no mess, no splinters, no force, as quick as breaking your neck.

It was a little year-old merino ewe, earmarked for the knife, a well-filled round fringe of wool on the forehead, the ears velvety, pinkish, the wrinkled nose of her race, the mouth already slightly crooked and shrunken under the nipple-coloured snout.

Jak pressed the head down on the neck, pushed it against the blade with his hands on either side on the cheeks. There was a jolt as the teeth of the saw seized the wool and then it was bone, a scream rising higher and higher as the fleece got thicker along the forehead.

Jak came away from the blade with the two open halves to show you. It looked like a cross-section model in a biology laboratory, the soft grey hemispheres of the brain, the white sinus chambers, the brown furrows of the nasal passages, the mouth cavity with the long halves of purplish tongue, thinner than you'd expect, from which a trickle of blood was welling, the jaw with the two front teeth sawn apart.

Easy, see, said Jak and clapped the two halves closed like a book. He turned the head at a right angle and starting from the snout he cut it up into cubes with rapid strokes, so that the outsides fell open onto the sawing surface like the pieces of a jigsaw. He switched off the machine, removed the blade and put it in the sink, and swept the blocks into the off-cuts pail with the back of his hand.

Child's play, he said, and with his foot he pushed the pail in by the door of the cool-room.

What could have been going through Jak's head? The logic of his sightseeing tour escaped you.

Next was Jak's new merino stud rams. Under the direction of the stock-breeding expert of the Tygerhoek experimental farm he'd done experiments to determine the influence of the various feeds and feed supplements on the fertility of the sheep. You listened to him explaining all this to Jakkie. You could have sworn he was a stud farmer.

There were four rams, a dozen or so ewes, each in a separate pen with a number and a steel post-box in which the records of their feeding schedule were kept.

What you see here is worth tens of thousands of rand, said Jak, all the champions of Katbosch and Zoetendals Valley and Van Rheenen's Heights.

They're all very close already to the Super Utility Merino. That's the objective.

Jakkie wasn't listening. As if he were on the look-out, his eyes kept wandering in the direction of the road which one could see from the pens.

What he was looking for, said Jak, was one hundred per cent pre-potency, a lambing rate of a hundred and fifty per cent, early weaning time and the greatest possible uniformity and regularity of build, plus then super-wool qualities.

You all had to examine the one ram with him.

Hannibal, it said on the tin name-tag.

If you consider, Jak said, that there were only fat-tailed Hottentot sheep with knock-knees and Cape sheep covered in tatters in this country when the white man arrived here, then we've come a long way.

The ram retreated slightly on its delicate little feet as you approached.

Down on your haunches, said Jak, otherwise he'll get a fright.

He clicked his tongue and murmured reassuringly.

Finer of fleece than the Rambouillet and even than the Vermont, hardier than the Saxony, more compact than the Australian, such a South African merino. Perfectly adapted to our conditions.

Jak folded open the fleece on the back so that you could see the wool.

Four inches, very soft, not a cross-thread in sight, just see how wide is the staple, he said. Feel. Top spinning quality. Look at the deep crimp.

Jak isolated one tuft.

He took Jakkie's hand and put his fingers on the tuft. See how it stands up, nice cauliflower tip as well. Just feel the character. Deep character.

He opened the fleece in two other places.

Just see, everywhere the same, even to the belly, and well-oiled throughout.

Jakkie was more interested in his father's tone than in the information, that you could deduce from the way in which he started leading him on.

Just look at that head! Jakkie said. Only you heard the mockery.

Yes, now isn't that spiff, Hannibal, Jak said, and turned to the sheep, we're talking about your head.

Jak was on one knee next to the ram and took its jaw in his hands.

Big, strong, open face, alert and masculine.

He pulled open the mouth a bit so that one could see the gums and the teeth.

Broad mouth, free of blemishes. And just feel that silky-soft skin on the nose.

Jakkie rubbed over the nose with cautious fingers.

He'd never realised, he said, that a sheep had such a long nose.

As it should be, Jak said, long and finely-curved, and just see how wide a curve the horns make around the head and how big the ears are, lively soft ears for his baas.

Here and there and everywhere Jak touched the ram, as if he were sculpting something.

Broad in the shoulders, broad in the chest, deep ribcage. Sturdy flanks. See how spacious the leap of the ribs, how straight the topline from the neck to the tail, square across the rump, well-filled buttocks, enough place for the balls.

He squeezed the soft downy scrotum lightly.

The ram picked up its back foot and step-stepped when Jak touched its nuts. Jak caught the paw and steadied the ram by the horn with his other hand.

Wait, Hannibal, he said, we're inspecting your feet. Straight and strong from the heel to the knee, he won't stumble or twist, this sheep. Just look at that hoof, nice and amber in colour.

Jak got up and closed up the wool where he'd opened it.

Jeez, Pa, Jakkie said, you should become a praise-singer for sheep, that was quite a text for the prodigal son.

You weren't surprised that evening at table when Jak got going.

So what do you say about the political situation these days? he asked Jakkie.

Really, is it necessary, you tried to intervene, we're enjoying our meal so much.

For Agaat's sake you said that, to console her where she was standing with a guarded expression over her dishes. Because we weren't enjoying our meal. There was a silence around the table.

Agaat's hand. It was impressive what she'd brought about there. Extra special just for the family, on top of all the preparations for the great feast the following day. All the old favourites, the choice dishes that Jakkie had grown up with, were on the table. A steamed river eel on spinach to start. Chicken pie, ox tongue, roast hare with field mushrooms that she'd dried the previous autumn, stewed dried peaches and roast potatoes, green beans with onion and shiny sweet-potatoes and cauliflower with mustard cheese sauce and pumpkin fritters, and a salad of baby beetroot in a vinegar reduction, and baby onions in a sweet-and-sour sauce. Everything dished up in the best porcelain and garnished with fresh parsley and chives and rosemary and mint.

She hadn't as usual first asked permission to use the best table linen and the crystal glasses and the silver. There were two candelabra with candles and a flat table arrangement of cinerarias and creeper shoots. Around Jakkie's plate she'd made a birthday garland of the first blue wine-cup babiana that she'd gone to gather in the fynbos-kloof.

What made you think that it was for herself as well? You tried to remember why you'd forgotten her birthday. Twelfth of July. The thought made the food congeal in your mouth. The day of the telephone conversation? Had that been the birthday?

You could find out if you wanted to. You'd be able to get Jakkie on his own, could ask him if she'd really been talking to him that day. Whether it was on the twelfth of July. But you said nothing then, you remained silent. You felt it welling up around you, the tide of things that had to be said. Your arms felt numb. You felt hot. Your whole body was itching.

I'm asking, what do my son's politics look like these days? Jak insisted. Jak had drunk too much. You placed your hand on his, but he shook it off, gesticulated with his fork in the air.

He's in the Air Force after all, surely he must know more than the man in the street.

Jakkie twirled his glass in his hand. You caught his eye, signalled: Be quiet, just ignore. You beckoned to Agaat to clear the table.

Jak threw his hands in the air.

Are you all going to ignore me now? Have you swallowed your tongue, Jakkie? Then answer me when I'm speaking to you, chappie. Agaat, put down the dishes, you'll just have to hear as well what your pet says to us. Kleinbaas Jakkie here, it seems he wants away, a little bird told me, away from his beloved nursemaid with whom he speaks in secret on the telephone.

Then Jakkie let go of his glass and it tilted out of his hand, and the wine splashed a long red stain on the white tablecloth.

Pa, he managed, and then Agaat was in between with cloths and water and salt, you could see her touching Jakkie, how she was trying to calm him with her body, now this side of him, now that, now over one shoulder and then over the other. She brought a clean glass from the kitchen and poured it full of wine for him and topped up Jak's glass. A whole bustle she organised there around the glasses, as if she were trying to distract their attention by sleight of hand.

Our beloved Gaat, Jak continued, our baker and butler, just like a hen trying to keep her chickens together. Look at this dabchick, Gaat, he gets quite out of kilter when his father wants to catechise him.