Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

I open my eyes. Please, I ask.

What’s this please all about now? Enough of please, thank you! Blink your eyes when I press on the right place, I suspect somewhere on these maps is a spot, a weak spot or a soft spot that you want to visit again.

Hooikraal? Tygerhoek? Boschjesmansrug? Adderskop? Holgat? Van Rheenenshoogte? Lindeshof? Wolvelaagte? Varslug? Blydskap? Rietpoel? Jongensklip? Infanta? Ockertseinde?

All the battle sites. Farms, stations, towns. Beach hamlets. Wheat storages. Settlements. Train junctions. Kraals, corners, ridges, heads, holes, heights, bowers, plains, named after hay, after tigers, after bush-men and adders, long-forgotten van Rheenens and Lindes, after wolves, after fresh air and joy, after stones and pools, after distant princesses, after the end of some unfortunate Ockert. Of some of them I’ve never heard. She’s inventing half the names. I can’t see all the way to where she’s pointing. I don’t trust it. My own stink is in my nostrils. Acrid, grassy. Green manuring.

Come now, Ounooi, do your bit, it’s not for nothing I struggled and exhausted myself guessing and slaved away trying to satisfy you. Perhaps you’d like to inform me as well what we’re looking for here on these maps? So far from your bed? You can rest assured I won’t give up. I don’t give up and you don’t give up. That’s our problem, the two of us!

She settles the cap more firmly on her head, as if she’s heading into a wind. She changes hands, takes the stick in the crumpled paw, grabs a blue booklet with her strong hand, fans it before her face.

Got, but what a stink you can crap!

She strips the sleeve of her bad arm up all the way to the elbow. As if she’s preparing to grab a snake behind the neck. She looks straight at me.

All the better to show you, my child. She shakes the little arm at me. The handle of a mincing machine.

It’s the first time that Agaat has ever pushed up her right sleeve for me like that. It’s the first time that she’s sworn in front of me, with her mouth at any rate, and at me. She watches me watching the arm. The same thickness all the way, a thin rod with a wrong-way-round elbow.

Vadersgaven? Vinkelrug? Blink one eye if I’m getting warm, right? Blink both eyes quickly if I’m cold, do you understand me?

What does she want me to understand? The names, of fathers and fennel, mean nothing to me. I signal, no, heavens, have done, are you mad? I close my eyes.

Open your eyes, Ounooi, or I’ll fit you out with matchsticks, I’ll stick your four lids up and down with plasters before you can blink an eye. Look here, here, here. Have you been here? have I? What would we have wanted there? We know our place, don’t we? Where’er we walk.

Remhoogte? Bobbejaankrans? Perdekop? Slangrivier? Rotterdam? Bromberg? Heights, rock faces, hills, rivers, dams, mountains, commemorating baboons, horses, snakes; a topographical and zoological gibberish.

You know what, Ounooi, now that you’re shitting yourself so gloriously over there, I suddenly feel like a little glass of sherry. The one of which you always pour me a bit when we make trifle. What do you say, would you mind? It’s almost Christmas in any case. O come all ye faithful! Unto us a child is given! And apart from that, we have something to drink to, it seems to me. Here in our small corner!

Agaat’s back is straight. She walks briskly. I hear the lid of the liquor cabinet slam. Bang! And then Tchi! Left about-turn!

She returns with the Old Brown sherry and a little glass. She unscrews the cap, prepares to pour, looks at me.

Shame, dry-mouth, she says, but it wouldn’t agree with you, I’m afraid. She presses the open bottle in front of my nose.

Your health, she says, have you finished shitting now?

She looks at me with hard eyes. She doesn’t want to read my gaze.

It feels as if my foundation is falling out. The cramps come at intervals. Writhe. I could writhe with pain, clamp my arms around my stomach, could groan, take a deep breath and exhale. I could. Fold double.

Why are you looking at me like that, are you dumb? she asks but she doesn’t wait for a reply. She knocks back the sherry in one gulp. Looks at the glass, smacks her lips.

Right, she says, that gives cheer, where were we? She grabs the duster, pushes her glasses back on her nose. She reads the names in four-square march-time, taps the duster on the map like a metronome.

Uitvlugt, Niekerksbog, Avontuur.

Skeiding, Omkyk, Eigenaardigheid.

Lekkerwater. Laaste Liefde.

Vryheid.

Vermaaklikheid.

The grandfather clock strikes in between the names, a litany of longings, aspirations, achievements, losses. Agaat leaves space for the quarter. Cease-fire. Eleven o’clock. Another glass of sherry. Fantastic performance. She advances her positions.

Napky and Dipka and Kinkoe.

Caledon, Stanford, Napier.

Hermanus, Bredasdorp, Riviersonderend.

It’s released from her like a flood, the names of the towns. We stayed over here (she on sacks with the smelly servant in the hovel), visited there (tea and cake for her in the shade of a great old bluegum what more could one wish for), we went to fetch this (three bolts of tweed from a ship that had run aground), or buy that (genuine Dutch tulip bulbs that flowered yellow that year), and sold something else for a song (an out-of-tune piano on which I’d still played her Farewell ye halls of marble, farewell ye hills and dales). Here was a farmer’s day (a greybeard in a white coat directed parking), there a sale in execution (even the spades and pitchforks), a horse race (which big-mouth fell off his horse?), a meeting of paunches with bums sagging in khaki pants (like pigs with measles). Here was a sheep on the spit (for her the shin-bone that I kept in a white napkin), there a circus (peeped through a chink), a show, a dance, a day of prayer for rain.

All along the old battle positions.

Everything that you forgot and never even noted in your little books, says Agaat.

I was asking for this. Now there is no remedy. Now I get what I asked for and more. My bowels may be empty but now it’s Agaat’s turn to flush her system. She rattles off the farm names. Ting-ting on the brass band’s triangle, a horseshoe on which she beats time with the tip of her duster. Such heights and flats, vleis here, kraals there, dams, spruits, drifts, fountains where she had to sit outside and hold the fort and got sheep’s lung to eat.

Granted here and Begun there.

Welgelegen, Nietverdiend, Goedgevonden, Laatgevonden, well-situated, undeserved, found well or late.

A neck, a head, a ridge, a corner.

A kloof, a bush, a well.

From map to map, hoped, rejoiced, expected.

Sonderkos and Grootbaklei, Droëbek and Natteschoot. Out of Food but Full of Fight, Dry of Mouth and Wet of Loin: Agaat’s inventions.

Spanned out, turned back, rested, trekked, stayed.

Dankbaar.

Nooitgedacht.

Pious assertions of gratitude, feigned surprise at such good fortune.

Môrester to Avondrood, from star of morning to gloaming of evening.

Mumbling she follows her own routes, index finger on the lines. Helter-skelter amongst the various maps. She jiggles the sleeve back over the little hand. She look-looks at me. What’s the matter, Agaat?

Omkyk, she says.

Openmaak.

Soebattersvlakte.

Look round, open up, the plain of pleading. I plead with my eyes, come and clean me, I have finished now, I surrender, the white flag, you have overcome, please, then we can sleep.

That will be the day! says Agaat.

She is looking at the layout of the yard of Grootmoedersdrift, the house and garden plans. She aims up and down, forward and back. Here comes an outstretched arm, here comes a finger pointing, at me, at the plan. Here comes a stamping of feet. What is this coming here? Here comes something else. A salute.