Agaat (92 page)

 

A. can't get enough of music. Play hr Pa's old records on the wind-up gramophone. She likes the lieder best, once I've told her the story
& the words she wants to listen again & again, mad about the folk tunes of Mahler, St Anthony preaching to the fish & Wo die schönen Trompetten blasen. I play it until we can sing along little bits. She blows the trumpet notes through a rolled-up sheet of paper, beats the drums of ghost soldiers on saucepan lids & marches all over the house. We powder hr face white & draw a skull with charcoal on hr face & then she enters completely into it all. Kill myself laughing at all the actions. Just have to be careful always that Jak doesn't come across it because he's full of mockery as if he's ashamed of playing & gentleness & laughter.

 

Let hr listen to the radio to the classical music programmes & teach hr the names of the pieces, the tempo indications, tell her the stories of the operas. She already knows many of the FAK songs & quite a few psalms & hymns. We sing them together in the morning when I wake hr & in the evenings when she goes to bed & when we're working in the kitchen or driving to the sheep. Teach her the second voice. Oh moon you drift so slow & Let me wander through the heather are hr best. Can carry a tune quite well the little child. As pants the hart for cooling streams she whistles there in hr room when she's pinning her rose beetles to the felt. A whistling woman & a crowing hen is neither good for God nor men I say. What's a hart she asks. Found a photo of a hart in the old Encyclopaedia Britannica, absorbs knowledge like a sponge. Sits there & pages in the old books in the sitting room whenever she has a chance. Reads on hr own now every day three new words & three new things as I drilled her & write it down & sticks it up in hr room. Zither, lute, tambourine. Even copies it from the drawings.

 

Shame, how much the wiser is she for all of it? Should I send hr to school? I don't know what I thought would come of it. Will just have to see how things develop. She's now varnishing all the bugs with hard shells to try to preserve them but they just dissolve all the more quickly from it. Will have to phone nature conservation to ask them how one does it.

A. has now thought up a whole dance of hr own on the model of the Greeting to the Sun which she still does every morning. Decided to keep it up every day from the start because I still see sometimes the stiffness & the withdrawal into herself as soon as she's tired or tense. The Greeting works well as light exercise for the crooked shoulder. Now there's no stopping her now she's even teaching me. Again this morning we
had the so-called dance of the emperor butterfly that first sits dead still with its wings tightly folded, half-frozen in the morning twilight with dew on its nose & the outside of the wings pitch-black with white stars & its antennae still filmed with night & then it unfolds its wings with the dawning so she tells & she invents the dance as she goes along. Once, twice, three times slowly the wings open as soon as he catches the first rays of the sun & then he feels one wing is different & he turns his head & looks over his shoulder & he sees hey, but this wing is a heavenly blue on the inside & it tickles & it trills & it shimmers & he gets the urge to fly, quite intoxicated with his own colour in the sun that's rising higher & higher & shining brighter & brighter & he doesn't know if he wants the blue rather on the one or rather on the other wing he tries to have it on both.

 

Heaven knows where she fetches it all from. She's never seen the Apatura iris itself it's just what I've told hr about it.

 

A whole extended dance of the two of us it turned into this morning. First in hr room where she explained the dance & then into my room & out of my room by the door of the side stoep & round the front again & down the stoep steps & down the garden path & through the last gillyflowers & around the great oak in the middle of the garden. Even the little thin arm flutters & flaps along in the long crocheted sleeve. Then I chase hr & then she chases me & it tripples & it leaps with extended legs over the flowerbeds. Point your toes Gaat! I call & demonstrate the ballet position with the hands & she teaches me the quick flashing-open of the wings & the tilt & the sheer ascent & the tumbling & the drop of the great forest butterfly then we both roll in the grass, she half on top of me, our limbs intertwined. Caught! she shouts. Then she puts hr arms around my neck & says: Close your eyes open your eyes my Même you're my only mother. Now I'm crying too much to carry on writing here.

Quarrel with J. about A.: What do I want to do with hr when she's big? he asks, after all she can't stay in the house with us for ever. I'd better make a plan, he says, it's either she or him.

All hell loose here. Went out to B. to deliver down for her eiderdowns this afternoon. When I got back A. was sitting in the corner in hr room
& it's chaos. Apparently J. got the idea into his head that A.'s stuff in her collections is infesting the house with beetles & wood-borer & mites & undesirable fungi & heaven knows what else & then he chucked out the whole lot in a heap in the backyard. Ordered A. to get rid of the rest. Apparently doesn't want a single object or picture or list of words or feather or horn or packet of fennel seed in hr room except what belongs in a bedroom.

 

Helped her to rescue what could be rescued & consoled I'll help to start all over again with the collection but she's inconsolable over hr birds' eggs & hr mounted insects & dried wild flowers. Even the leopard skull smashed there in the backyard. Good Lord it's all the child possesses such innocent little playthings. Fortunately the fossil stones are unharmed.

 

Very sad about all the pictures that J. tore up. Thought I'd keep a few for hr from when she was small so that one day when she's grown up she can marvel at them.

A. sulking. What does she want me to do? I can't exactly fling J. over my lap & give him a hiding for what he's done? I know better than to scold him. Best is to stay out of his way & not to confront him. She refuses to eat sits there at table & glares at me as if I'm the one who broke her stuff.

Took A. to the circus tonight to console her & then that also turned out a fiasco because we bought three tickets but then they wouldn't let her go in with us on the white side. The man was in fact quite rude. What could I do? So then we went to the non-white entrance & then the white ticket wasn't right & if she wouldn't make me buy a coloured ticket & all & then she didn't want to go in on her own but by then Jak & I already had our tickets & of course by this time he was already irritated with all the trouble with his now-do-you-see expression on his face. So I suggested that he should go in & Agaat & I would stroll around outside amongst the cages & the caravans outside & look at the animals & the artistes because it was still dusk. A whole to-do there at the entrance to the approach tent: The elephant & the ponies with plumed crests & the horse-lifter with his tiger-skin suit & the clowns starting to practise to be funny. We would then go & wait for him in
the car. But that was then of course not good enough either & he grabs me by the arm there amongst all the people & he hisses in my ear: You will go in with me woman & then I had to leave the poor A. right there. Had just enough time to give her money for an ice-cream. Terrible sitting there in the tent. Could enjoy nothing so upset was I & I could think of nothing but A. who's really not used to strange places & so many people. When we came out she was sitting in the dust next to the car in the parking lot because of course it was locked all the time. Fortunately it wasn't cold but now she's angry with me all over again & all I was trying to do was make it up to her.

 

J. has just been here glaring at me: Write! Write! with those little claw-paws of yours what good is it going to do you? There's a life here to be lived & decisions to be taken & work to be done & next thing I see you're sitting & churning away at your silly little books & I'm waiting for you in the room don't forget I'm your husband & I also have my needs. When he's like that there's nothing to be done about it. Will just have to go so that he can have done & cool off.

Crawled in behind A's back in tears again last night. J. particularly rough after the whole circus episode & swears & scolds & abuses me to my very soul. Another dress with a broken zip. I suppose I shouldn't turn to the poor child for refuge. In the end she was the one who comforted me. Never mind she says I don't have to feel bad she looked through a slit in the tent & saw the ringmaster's high hat & the antics of Tickey & the trapeze artists on the highest rung their red velvet slippers with the shiny stuff & then she stood back when the drums started ruffling to say here it comes they're going to jump & then she could see from the shadows on the tent wall & the spotlights how they swung & let go & turned somersaults in the air & caught each other by the arms at the last minute & then she went closer again & saw the trumpets shining as they were lifted to blow. So then of course I cried more than ever & the more I cried the more tightly she locked her arms around me. Nothing to about cry she whispers in my ear, must I go & make Même a glass of warm milk? Father in heaven how am I going to resolve this matter?

A. very responsible helps only too diligently with everything around the place: Stacks pumpkins pulls potatoes plucks the geese. She shines in the kitchen, can make a good white sauce already & a quite presentable
stew & hr flapjacks & scones are excellent. She's managing very well with needle & thread. Gave hr a needlework basket for hr little things. Teach hr something new every day, buttonhole flat-seam blanket-stitch. I praise hr often & she reacts excellently to praise & encouragement & tries only to excel & improve herself. She's even been to pick blackberries & made blackberry jam according to the recipe in the book without one sticky patch in the kitchen. For the rest very perceptive came & reported that the chickens were sneezing & we could prevent an outbreak of roup. Lost only about four day-old chickens & all the others including turkeys & ducks treated preventatively. J. has this idea that he can build poultry-runs in a draught so that's what he has for it. He says the chickens got it from me & A. we infect everything we touch & what will I do if he gets chicken flu?

A. solemnly came to sing to me this morning for my birthday. Best wishes dear Même on this your birthday, That the Lord you will keep we earnestly pray. She'd baked an orange cake first thing this morning all on her own & written 33 on it with icing sugar in higgledy-piggledy letters. Then she gave me wrapped in a scrap of green velvet stitched with blanket-stitch & tied with a red ribbon hr prettiest fossil. Was with her the day she picked it up on the mountain. Haven't yet been able to make out what it is. Some or other floating seed with membranous wing or otherwise a membrane-winged insect. A parasitic wasp perhaps. Looks exactly like a little galleon & the stone-ripples look like waves. A remarkable likeness. Can't really believe she wants to give it to me. It's our ship, just the two of us where are we sailing to? she asks me. What could be happening in the child's head?

Can't abide J.'s aggression towards A. any longer. An unbearable atmosphere in the house. She's an early bloomer he says she ogles him. What nonsense but perhaps I'm missing something. Hear the maids teasing in the kitchen: But you're pushing tits Aspatat. She's been moody of late. I suppose the start of the trouble.

A. reads all the time went & fetched a lot of Ma's books out of the cellar last year. Genoveva, Alone in the World, Prisoner of Zenda, Scarlet Pimpernel, In the Footsteps of the Master by HV Morton & In the Steps of St Paul by HV Morton & Late Harvest. A. knows them all by heart
& asks for more books. J. doesn't approve of hr reading adult books. What's the difference I ask after all she reads the Farmer's Weekly.

Lay awake all night about A. She's always been inclined to disappear but now it's getting too bad. Saar & Lietja say they find her roaming with her reading-book down there by the labourers' cottages but she runs away when they call hr. Must be looking for company shame. I suppose I must tackle the facts of life. Shouldn't be difficult she knows about covering & lambing & calving & all creatures great & small birds & bees. Came to tell me the other day she'd uncoupled the terrier single-handedly when one of the labourers' dogs got stuck in her again.

Really rather put out by conversation with Beatrice this morning. Suspect she drove over on purpose to come & bring me the news. Apparently people are gossiping about A.'s situation & it seems the dominee's wife has plenty to say on the subject. No it would appear we're involved in ‘subtly undermining community values' & defeating the ends of the political policy of the authorities & what would happen if everybody did what I'm doing with A.

 

A good question I suppose.

 

B. just carries on & on: Yes it will jeopardise Jak's position in the church & the farmers' associations & the regional branch of the party here if we don't set our house in order & heaven knows what else.

 

I say Jak's church is skin-deep anyway & the child means so much to me & even though Jak & I differ on the subject I still feel as though I'm a better wife to Jak because I have more love in my heart & can care for an independent creature. B. looks at me askance but I carry on. Through hr I see the world through fresh eyes I say & I ask: Does she Beatrice have any idea what it is to be childless?