Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

4 July 1979 Front stoep

Mountain still overcast after the snow yesterday dark blue in the south with rainbow it’s cold & still perhaps another precipitation advancing. Listening to Schubert’s string quintet in C major (that second movement, where does it spring from? from the approach of death?) some or other moth that has eaten the covers of my records ai I have so little time for myself on this farm. Feel as if I’ve forgotten everything I ever learnt. J. gone to drop Jakkie at Cape Town station. Didn’t want to go along. A. neither. Took leave here at home for her sake she can’t exactly give him a hug in her apron there amongst all the people.

Lots of talking at table again last night A. standing there with hr hands on her stomach hr face in the shadows. I know what she’s thinking: He’s still so young. The plan is that directly after his basic training at Valhalla & the officer’s course in Waterkloof he’ll join the Air Force permanently & after his flying training at Langebaan Road go to university for his engineering degree three birds with one stone says J. he won’t have to interrupt his studies later for national service he earns a salary while he’s studying & with every exam that he passes he gets more stripes & further promotion is guaranteed. Apparently the best & most honourable career for a young man in SA today & if he’s lucky he’ll get the chance on top of it all to wipe out communists.

Wonder where A. is. Disappeared into thin air when they left here. What on earth does she do to console herself?

4 July 6 o’clock

J. not back yet. A. is though a plume of smoke in the chimney. Comfort fire. Must be cold after her escapades. Tracked hr this afternoon down next to the wild-fig avenue & further down next to the river she couldn’t cross rushing water so there she stood & did hr funny movements forward & back turn around stamping the feet the arm up the cap down. Could only half make out hr singing by standing at the water upstream & downstream. Snowstorm. Perhaps not all there in the top storey.

Quarter past 6

Just heard the door of the outside room open & and peeked behind the woodshed at her feeding the hanslammers again the singing quite gives me the shivers. Couldn’t make head or tail perhaps if I try to write down what I remember of it. Child is gone/time is short/put in the oar/ shift round the rudder/put up the chock/wind up the ratchet/under the mill sits the one-armed dwarf/hear her turn/it’s the meal it’s the snow it’s the salt it’s the bone/listen to it grind/agaat agaat agaat.

Rather ominous. Typical. Always makes herself larger than she is at times of crisis.

8 July 1979

Has snowed again. Light sprinkling lower down than yesterday just like castor sugar. Can smell it clean white sheets piled up in the sky. A. always excited by weather conditions. Have to give hr extra jobs to keep her occupied. Should perhaps increase the size of her herds a bit so that she has more to see to. See the first letters to Jakkie are already written & lying ready for posting on the sideboard.

9 July 1979

Perhaps I should really try again this year to make something special of Agaat’s birthday (31!) now with Jakkie gone like that & doing his own thing I get the feeling that the diary-keeping doesn’t really make very much sense any more. Don’t have that much to report on any more. Agaat is Agaat. I think I made the best of hr that I could. More I think than many other people could have managed. Can’t complain apart from that. She’s now quite a housekeeper & keeps a sharp eye on all aspects of the farming. Perhaps with Jakkie finally gone there will in any event now be less occasion for tension here in the house & she’ll from now on be able just to live with us without strife.

Maybe bake a large chocolate cake? Place a nice bunch of flowers in front of hr door as a surprise & on the 12th drive with her to Witsand? She’s so fond of the sea when it rains. So many shades of grey & white she always says such an almost black sea.

W·H·O S·T·A·R·T·E·D T. F·I·R·E O·N M·O·U·N·T·A·I·N, I ask.

I look at the alarm clock. It’s taken ten minutes to spell out, even with Agaat’s abbreviations of articles and conjunctions.

Do you think it was me by any chance? Agaat asks with her eyes. She looks away quickly.

Yes, I signal, according to our customary code. One blink with both eyes.

She looks at me just long enough to catch my reply.

Hottentot madonna, she says.

She pushes at the side of her cap, she grasps the stick of the duster more firmly, she lets me continue, she taps on the chart. After every tap she looks at me. A tap B tap C tap D tap.

D is right I blink with my right eye. It must be so boring for her. Then she ticks from A again. I stop her on I, I is right.

And then she has to start tapping again from the beginning, as far as D. D·I·D We again spelt ‘did’.

D·I·D Y·O·U S·T·A·R·T T·H·E F·I·R·E. .

In the hayloft? she completes my sentence. Quite correct, that’s what I wanted to ask. She places the duster upright in the corner. End of conversation.

I should have stuck to the weather, to the rainfall figures, the sheep-stealing statistics for the year of Our Lord 1996. I should have kept to pure farming matters, to how she wants to run things henceforth here on Grootmoedersdrift. I should have known that by this time.

She comes to stand by my bed. She folds her hands on her stomach. Her reply comes direct and without hesitation.

The cream separator, she says, to ensure that it works properly, place it on a solid foundation and make sure that it is dead level. If a machine separates badly, that may be because it is turned too fast or too slow. The speed can be adjusted only when the milk-supply tank is half empty. If a first-class machine does not separate properly, it is because the supply tank is out of balance and vibrates excessively, or because the centrifuge is not calibrated in the spring when the milk is poor and again in the autumn when it is richer. Watch the spout where the cream runs through. If the cream tends to cover the spout, the speed is too high for the quantity of milk passing through the supply tank, if it emerges from the spout in scallops, it is being turned too slowly. If the cream falls from the spout into the cream dish almost but not quite perpendicularly, that is in the case of the vast majority of creamers about the right consistency. In any case rinse the supply tank regularly with skimmed milk.

Farmer’s Handbook. I was asking for it. Douse the fire with cream. Extremely original. What argument can I bring against that? She will recite all her texts to me rather than talk to me openly.

I flicker my eyes. Bravo! that means.

She ignores me. She bends to unhook the urine bag. She drags the chamber pot under the open tube to catch the drops. Tip, I hear it drop on the enamel, tip.

Leroux first came to fit the catheter for the urine bag and then came to make the hole for the gut bag. Home surgery with local anaesthetic. Agaat’s decision. The wound was supposed to heal first before the bag could be attached, but it wouldn’t. Now every time she empties the bag she has to perform a major disinfection around the stoma. She enjoys it. All my orifices interest her. The more I have the better.

I had to be moved as little as possible, was the consensus. The pan was too high for me. So lower the madam. That was what Agaat decided. Make a hole in her side. She threatens me every day with the feeding tube in my trachea as well, but I refuse. I don’t want another artificial portal punched into me. I don’t want to eat anything more. I want to talk. There’s a lot to talk about. Now that we’ve found a way with the alphabet chart.