Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

You wrote that you could hear Agaat rolling out flaky pastry, thud, thud, with the wooden roller on the kitchen table, for Jakkie’s chicken pie. You went to investigate and her chin was pushed out all the way. She knew that Jak wanted to take Jakkie away to the mountains as soon as he arrived that afternoon. She knew that he wouldn’t be granted a break to eat, she knew that Jak wouldn’t allow any tasty food to be packed for the trip. And yet she was continuing, her lips pressed firmly together, with her preparations.

Were you imagining things, or had you heard her talk on the telephone every now and again the previous week, in the stealthy hours just after lunch while you were lying down?

Was she conniving with Jakkie again?

You didn’t want to ask.

Whatever it was that Agaat had up her sleeve, you knew that her plan would always suit you better than anything that Jak could contrive. You were counting on her by this time. To make things happen in your family, or not happen. Or to stop things from happening. Or to predict things. Rain, wind, floods. She could read your mood like a sky, predict Jak’s movements long before he himself knew what he was going to do.

The twilight was setting in already. You were starting to worry, Jak had gone for a drive in the bakkie earlier to see whether he didn’t meet them on the road. Then the phone rang. It was Jakkie. To say that he’d torn a ligament in rugby and would only be able to get a lift home the following morning and he didn’t think he’d be able to be very active, the doctor said the leg needs rest.

Was it all Jakkie’s scheme? Thought up on his own?

Jak had just recently acquired television on the farm. Perhaps Jakkie wanted to stay at home watching sport rather than go mountaineering, or just wanted to relax at home? Perhaps Agaat wanted to watch television? Perhaps she wanted to get Jak away from there, because he’d forbidden her to watch television, didn’t want her to see too much of the school riots in the north.

You give them the best that you have and just see what you get in return, he said, and glared at you as if it had been you who had stuffed Afrikaans down the gullets of the people.

Jak said nothing when he heard that Jakkie was no longer arriving that evening, and that he couldn’t go mountaineering. He tightened his headlamp around his head, filled his water bottle in the kitchen and shouldered his rucksack.

Agaat went and fetched his ropes on the front stoep and came and put them in his hands.

Oh yes, of course, I almost forgot, what would I do without you, Agaat, Jak said.

His voice was odd. He looked her straight in the eyes. He tugged at the roll of ropes in his hands.

Without any greeting he walked away from the yard in the dusk. You and Agaat watched the little light until it disappeared up into Luipaardskloof.

Perhaps it’s all to the good, said Agaat, her face expressionless.

She went and fetched her best bottle of preserved quinces from the pantry shelf and said she thought she’d make some custard quickly, to be ready when Jakkie arrived the following day.

Nine o’clock that evening Jakkie phoned from Swellendam and said he’d decided after all to come that night and would you and Agaat come to fetch him please, his lift wasn’t going any further. His knee was bandaged and he had a bad limp. He and Agaat greeted each other with poker faces and he said there’d better be chicken pie and quinces and custard and she said but how else.

They didn’t give you an opportunity to get a word in edgewise.

You three were together that evening as if Jak didn’t exist. Jakkie tucked into the chicken pie. He wanted to watch the news on television, because of the so-called situation in the country. He was in the debating society of Paul Roos he said, and he had to take part in a debate on the advantages and disadvantages of Afrikaans as medium of instruction in black schools.

He was now really getting beyond her in his education, Agaat said, but what would he say to a game of Scrabble?

The two of you helped Agaat wash the dishes and then waited for her to have her meal in the kitchen and then you sat playing the word game around the dining room table till after half past one that night.

Why can’t it always be like this? you thought. Such peace, such harmony? But every now and again you intercepted a glance between Jakkie and Agaat and knew the peace would be short-lived.

‘Quick’ Jakkie built. ‘-grass’ you added for ‘quickgrass’. ‘Karooquickgrasses’ Agaat made of this, by using a blank and spending her last ‘s’ to make ‘tricks’ of ‘trick’ that was already in place vertically on the board. All seven letters and on a red block as well and Agaat won. But only after she’d had to show Jakkie the kind of quickgrass in the old Handbook for Farmers because it wasn’t in Chambers. He maintained Agaat was fabricating it, there was no such type of grass. Then there was a whole argument about whether a word was valid if it wasn’t in Chambers and you had to decide the matter. There’s more to a language than is written in a dictionary, you said, and there would have been mighty little happening on Grootmoedersdrift if you’d had to farm only with the words in Chambers.

That was how you decided. Agaat was the winner, out and out.

Agaat always wins, Jakkie said. He winked at his packed rucksack that was standing ready on the sitting room floor. You pretended not to see anything, not to see at bedtime how Agaat double-locked all the doors and windows, not to see her signalling to Jakkie with her little hand to lock the kitchen door from the inside. Pretended not to see Jakkie walking, suddenly without a limp, across the kitchen floor to lock the door with a loud grinding noise.

But Jak’s onslaught did not come at night.

You had just returned the following morning from the first round of taking out feed, busy in the garden putting in plants for winter when suddenly he was standing behind you. Dishevelled. Red in the face, a white ring around his mouth, spit accumulated in the corners of his mouth.

It was twelve o’clock and the sun was shining viciously.

Jak’s mountaineering clothes were torn. It looked as if he’d wrestled in the dust with some wild creature.

You carried on with your work, thought you would keep it light, would pretend not to have noticed that he was in a state.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill, you said. You moved to the flowerbed behind the plume bushes to be out of sight of the workers on the yard or of somebody coming out onto the front stoep.

Jak hauled you upright, grabbed you by the front of your dress.

Nobody would believe me, he hissed in your face, nobody, everybody would think I’m mad if I had to tell them about you, but I know I’m right! About how you really are!

You tried to keep your voice light and removed his hand and bent down next to your flowerbed where, with the little hand-trowel, you were putting in seedlings for the winter garden. Calendula, a few sowing trays of purple pansies.

A voice crying in the wilderness? you said, you must be careful, next thing the baboons will be barking at you!

Yes, said Jak, you’re right, I see it in the wilderness, I see it when I’m hanging from my ropes between heaven and earth, then I understand it, dumb retarded bastard that I am, I see it only after I’ve run myself to a frazzle for miles, or when I’m clambering up sheer rock faces. Then I see it, then I see what’s happening here!

Good heavens, Jak, what about the glories of nature? you asked. When last did you see a march rose, hmm? Or the great emperor butterfly of Grootmoedersdrift? You frequent such privileged vantage points, you should put it all to better use!

Jak kicked the trowel out of your hand and pushed you over off your haunches so that you landed flat on your behind in the flowerbed.