Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Why would any self-respecting woman put up with it? he shouted. Why? Why?

Why would she allow herself to be shoved around without phoning the dominee? Without telling a single mortal? Why? Why does she stay? Why does she have a child by such a man? Why does nothing of the fuck-up at home ever show to other people? Always only excuses! Her homestead, her farm, her birthright, her child, her reputation in the farming community? All just to be able to stay with this Jak de Wet, the poor bloody bugger who has to hear every day that he won’t do, he’s trash.

His eyes were staring wildly in his head, veins bulging on his forehead. With every question he prodded you with his foot, against your knees, against your ribs.

Jak, you’ll have a heart attack, you said, calm down.

Bitch! As if you cared! Shall I tell you why you stay with me? You need me to mistreat you. Do you know why? That’s how your mother taught you. And her mother before her taught her, all the way to Eve, to the tree in paradise.

Jak tore off his shirt so that the buttons popped. You were shocked at his body, so lean and so hard.

Don’t look at me, Milla, that’s what’s bloody-well left of me and at least I know it. A wife-batterer with self-knowledge. What about you? Do you know what I see, Milla?

A cattle farmer, a connoisseur of sheep, a wheat and soil expert, a gardener. You keep things running smoothly on this godcursed little farm. But what do you look like? Like something out of your mother’s old books. Genoveva of Suurbraak. And why? Because you feel inferior. Because you want to feel inferior.

Look at me, Milla! Look, here is your accomplice. I help you with it. Do you think it’s possible to become like me all on one’s own? And you can’t tell anyone about it, can you? Where on earth would you have to begin? More difficult than a magazine story, I can tell you. There it’s the hero who has the insight and the heroine who swallows it all whole.

I the precious, I the victim. How would you ever get something like that past your lips at your sanctified tea-drinking at a church bazaar? No, oh no, there you also have a substitute, there you prefer to worship your b’loved Jesus nailed to his cross. A pity the pictures always show him with his bloody little feet already neatly nailed together. Otherwise you could dream with your mouth full of bazaar cake that Pilate was poking a stick up his holy hole. Which would make him more worthy of your worship!

Jak, you’ll burn in hell, stop it!

No, Milla. I’ve been there for a long time! You’re the one pretending to be in heaven. Never a word in public, no, your mess is for the nest, for the inner chamber. Selected me by the balls, didn’t you? Raised me to your hand! Bedtime story! Little woman whines for attention until she gets the kind that she most appreciates. Thud, bang, blood in the nostril, from ballroom to slapstick in two winks.

Backbone of the nation, bah! Thanks to you and your kind the Afrikaner deserves an early demise. You’re a pestilential species!

See what you look like! You like it. Tell me: How do you rape somebody who wants to be raped?

You just wanted not to be seen by anybody. To and fro you stepped as he shoved you, just to remain behind the plume bush. The sharp leaves cut your hands every time you fell against the bush.

Fall, come fall once more, then I’ll have earned some points. Then you’ll notice me! An Oscar for Jack the Ripper!

He slapped your garden hat off your head with one hand and caught you on the cheek with the other hand, and as you ducked away, again on the other cheek. Left, right, left. The slaps burnt on your skin.

A healthy flush! A few good slaps! That’s all you can tolerate from me isn’t it? Otherwise you don’t trust how much I love you.

Papa’s little princess! So scared of the wolf in the dark! Au, stubbed her little toe! That’s where it comes from. That’s the beginning of it all. That’s what you did with Jakkie when he was small. What will you say when your heir turns out a bloody faggot one day? When I was his age, I’d long since lain with girls, but where does he lie? In the outside room, I bet. What’s to come of it?

Jak, you don’t know what you’re saying, I can’t listen to this any longer.

You sat amongst the leaves of the plume bush and pulled up your knees and lowered your head. He bent open your arms, squatted by you, spoke into your face, you could smell him, his unwashed body, his bitter breath.

Sis, you said, sis, you stink, get away from me.

With all the shoving and wriggling the seeds of the plume had come loose, white itchy feathery tips that descended around your heads, clung to your arms.

What’s a bit of sweat, Milla, compared with the smell that hovers here over Grootmoedersdrift?

Look at Agaat! What must she think of you when she hears you allow yourself to be shouted at and beaten up? Every day at her post. Starched and ironed. A masterly maid! She plays you much better than I do, doesn’t twitch a muscle when you find fault. And she learns from it, Milla, I’m telling you today, and don’t forget it, all the time she’s learning from us.

You tried to get to your feet, shouted against his tirade. Then why don’t you go away? Why do you stay with me if I’m so dreadful?

You grabbed at him, thought he would come to his senses if he felt a touch. But he took your hands and threw them from him.

I can’t go away, Milla, even if I wanted to. I’m stuck here! You batten on me! But I’m almost done, do you hear me, almost. Then you can advance again. You’ve provided a reserve, after all. In the hanslam camp. Agaat Lourier. Pre-raped. Yes, don’t look at me like that, it’s the truth! As no man can rape a woman. She’s ready for you! To the bitter end! Because that much I can tell you now, I’m not going to make it all the way with you, Milla, that I know in my bones!

Jak kicked over the seed trays, trampled the new seedlings.

Pansies! he shouted.

The two of you think you can stop me from getting to Jakkie. You think you can scheme behind my back. You think you can make him soft, you and your skivvy. With your caterwauling and your carryingson and your nods and winks. What is to become of him? What am I to tell him about his mother if he asks me? Have you thought of that? He knows more than you think in any case. And do you know how? Your skivvy tells him! Blow by blow!

Jak, you’re out of your mind, you must get help, you said, as calmly and as firmly as you could.

Then he shoved you out from behind the plume bush almost into Jakkie standing there with his white bandage around his leg and a basket of dried pears that he’d fetched from the drying-trays. Jak didn’t see him at first. You signalled at him with your hands behind you to be quiet, but his final sentences sounded out loud in the open. And then you saw Agaat running up the stoep steps and she was pressing her hands to her ears.

Help! What help! I’m not the one who was sick here first, Jak shouted after you, it’s you, you’re the one who’s sick here. I’ll get well, I’ll get myself away from here, even if I have to do away with myself!

Jak looked into Jakkie’s face for a single moment and half brushed over his eyes. Then he walked away in the opposite direction, towards the sheds, his bare upper body white in the sun.

Jakkie walked in front of you to the house. Hobbling.

Walk properly dammit, I know you’re putting it on! you wanted to shout at him.

But how could you? You pressed both your hands to your glowing cheeks. A healthy flush. You looked at the palms of your hands, your forearms, criss-crossed with tiny itchy cuts all the way to the crook of your arm.

Agaat kept the announcement for dessert. Concentration-camp pudding. You could tell from its appearance that it hadn’t been a good day in the kitchen. Baked in too much of a hurry, so that the sauce bubbled out at the sides, burnt black on the edge of the white enamel dish. All the food was burnt. She’d just disappeared in her usual manner in the afternoon and put in an appearance only after five to cook. And then she stood by while you were eating. It was a silence broken only by the rubbing of the creeper against the window frames, and now and again the chittering of a loose gutter in a gust of wind. You had a fire-red rash on your hands and arms and you were full of white streaks where the Lacto Calamine Lotion had dried on you.