Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

She holds up the full urine bag for me to see. Dark yellow, almost amber-coloured it is, but not clear.

Cloudy, she says, but it makes the bluest blue.

She opens the stoep door, holds the bag far away from her, walks out with small brisk steps. I watch the mirror. There she is in image now. She knows the range of the reflection, she’ll see to it that she stays within it.

Douse the fire with cream, put out the flames with my last dark fluids.

I mustn’t complain, I was asking for it.

The hydrangeas are deep purplish-blue, just the colour for my funeral arrangements. That’s what she wants to say with the whole palaver of emptying the bag so conspicuously. She knows I can see her in the mirror. There are other hydrangeas around the corner as well where she could go and empty it out. But these are from the mother stock. Here she learnt to empty her own little chamber pot.

That’s the kind of risk I run since I’ve been able to talk to her. Her punishments become subtler. The message is: Your influence will be felt for a long time yet, even unto the capillary roots of the plants of your garden. I’ll keep up the old traditions for you.

I see her crouch down between the leaves. Only her behind sticks out.

I understand, Agaat. You turn your arse on the last conflagration that you’ve perpetrated here in the sickbay.

She stands back. She examines her handiwork. Beautiful voluptuous, purple orbs of flowers.

Pissy, pissy in the pot, who makes the bluest of the lot?

Am I imagining things, or is she shaking her head there?

How dare I ask her such things? Imagine, she an arsonist! Am I going out of my mind now?

Go ahead and shake your head, Agaat. I know it was you. Who else?

She puts the empty bag down on the lawn. Here come the little scissors from the top pocket of her apron. She snips one, two, three, four, five flowers. She moves out of range. She’ll go round the back to the kitchen to put them in water, then go and select a vase in the sitting room. Perhaps I’ll be lucky. Perhaps I’ll be given flowers next to my bed today. That will teach me to keep my questions to myself.

I wonder about the timing of the sudden appearance of our new means of communication. The old alphabet chart. Would she have remembered it all of a sudden out of the blue? A technique she read about long ago in the pamphlets and conveniently forgot about? Or did she avoid it because she was too tired? Because she realised she would be empowering me in my last moments here where I no longer hesitate to speak my mind? Because she could guess what would come out, what had to come out between us?

Perhaps it will never come out, perhaps there’s even less of a chance now than before. Perhaps that which has to be said has nothing to do with the truth.

And do I myself know what it is? Is the truth beyond what happened or didn’t happen, what happened how and where? Beyond the facts? I’m the one who’s being tested to see whether I have the words to arrive there.

Perhaps it was the maps that gave her the idea. The place names. The pointing at the dots of the towns till I nod, yes, tell me about Protem, tell me about Klipdale, what happened there, what we did there, who we saw there.

Shall I ask her? How did you come upon the idea of hanging it there, the alphabet chart, the old yellowed, varnished cardboard sheet with the fold down the middle, with the ornate capitals and the Bible pictures and the scenes from the history of salvation, stiff prophets and visions amongst grapevines and sheaves of corn?

I could ask, now that I can pose questions.

Why did you keep it till now? After all, you’ve known all along that I’m itching to talk, you could surely have guessed that I’m lying here brooding over all my life?

I could confront her with it. Perhaps she’d only wave a little blue book in front of my nose. Because she did find it after all then, the third parcel. About her first life on Grootmoedersdrift. Barely alive and I her source of life.

Now it’s the other way round.

Me dying and she to accompany me.

Who’s going to give in first? On the facts of the past? Or does our assignment lie here in this present?

Here I’m cutting my own throat now, she said when she hung up the alphabet.

Did I hear aright? She whispered it on the inhalation.

Here I’m cutting my own throat now.

But whose throat is it really? It’s my spelt-out words that she has to pronounce for me, it’s my sentences that she has to complete aloud for me.

Who’d want to bluff at the end? That everything is in order? Forgive and forget and depart in peace?

Perhaps it would have been better to have kept to eye signals to the very end, without any chance of a retort on my part. Perhaps we could have brought the matter to a workable conclusion if we’d resigned ourselves to the list of questions?

Are you cold? Are you hot? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Too dark? Too light? Do you want to poo? Do you want to pee? Do you want to read? Do you want to listen to SAfm?

Yes and no.

But it’s getting more complicated. Now she’s added to the alphabet auxiliary lists on slips of paper, opening phrases and conjunctions. She’s stuck them up there close to hand around the chart, short cuts by which we can arrive more quickly at the point. They stir and rustle with every draught or current here in the room, they flutter up and down when Agaat walks past, the loose slips, as if they were alive.

I am, I wish, I fear, I hope, I believe.

Because, but, and, nevertheless, notwithstanding, even so.

Necessary conjunction which betonkeneth concord, who wrote that again?

Milla. Jak. Agaat. Jakkie.

I’m no longer hungry, and I’m beyond tired. .

Whom did I love in my lifetime and why?

I have, I will, I can, I want. Or not. I would be able to. I would have wanted. If I could have it over, then. . What might have been.

There’s a whole grammar developing there on the wall. Every day there’s more of it. Question mark, exclamation mark, swearword, dots to mark an implication. A skeleton of language, written down in print and in script with a Koki chalk, bigger, more complicated than Agaat on her own, than I or the two of us together could think up. If it had to be fleshed out as well. . muscles, skin, hair, nerves, glands. .

How, when, who, why, what. .

But my nerves are extinct and my muscles are moist cotton wool, my hair grey strands, my skin worn, my glands dry dumplings. My secretions trickle out of me through tubes. My poo and my pee are no longer my own. My sphincters no longer open and close me. I am one might say permeable.

Why would she want now of all times to invest me with language?

Up, down, under, before, behind, above, in.

Or perhaps ‘invest with’ is the wrong expression here.

Goad with, perhaps.

She is the one who takes up Japie. She can put him down whenever she wants. Or she can pick him up and walk out and go and dust somewhere. Or she can turn him round to point his stick at the map.

Japie mostly stays in the corner of the room. She holds him in the left hand, she always starts from the beginning again, she points, letter by letter. A is for Adam, B for Babel, C for Christ, our Redeemer and Lord. She looks at what I signal and she points and she points until there’s a word, three words, half a sentence, and then she starts guessing.

Don’t put words into my mouth, exclamation mark, I then have to spell out for her. Don’t anticipate my meanings, don’t impose the wrong stress, wrong nuances on me. Exclamation, exclamation, exclamation!

My protest is not of much use. She gets impatient when it takes too long. She wants to make my sentences flow for me. She wants me to sing. She’s looking for a rhythm. A march from the FAK.