Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Everything? Every what thing? Rather say it’s a pastime till I’m in my place six feet under.

Sometimes when I can no longer bear it, the two of us together like this, trapped in the room, without any escape, I plead without disguise. I flicker through my tears. One eye flutters more rapidly than the other.

Please, talk to me, I want to talk, I want to explain things.

Sometimes she consents, but venture one sentence into the maze, and she stops.

Look for the butterfly, Agaat! You’ve seen it before! Show it to me!

But mainly she ignores it when I’m like that. Mouth set in a sulk. Chin out. Her eyes flash. The message is clear.

Your soul! Me having to look for your soul! Bugger your soul!

I can guess what she’s feeling, what sentences she’s addressing to me in her heart. Once I spelt it out for her word by word.

It’s too late for tears now, tears just make you choke. So choose. Choke or talk about things you can afford to talk about.

She pretended not to understand whose words these were.

I never cry, she said, you’re the one who cries.

Just so, I said.

She just gave me a look and walked out.

I’m not made of glass, she said later, while she was soaping my arms.

She was washing me very gently. I don’t think I’d ever felt her touch me so gently, as if she were afraid I’d break.

I’m not made of glass.

She knows she’s transparent to me, she knows I can read her thoughts and express them too. It’s no longer all that safe for her in this sickbay. She’s decided to restore my voice to me. And she wants to honour her decision. She knows she’s caught in her own snare.

Gently she soaped me. Once more on an inhalation she said: Not of glass!

She was washing my arm with her strong hand. The washcloth disappeared a long time ago. My skin is too thin. When she saw the dampness in my eyes, she stopped immediately.

No, not again, she said, and rubbed me dry with a rough towel.

That was yesterday.

This morning I woke up again with the headache. Through the haze in my head I wanted to understand it, the dynamic between us. I can’t understand it. It’s too difficult for me. I wanted to explain it when the talking-hour struck.

Then something entirely different to what I’d planned came out of me. Because I feel so powerless, so needy, then I attacked her, then I started casting aspersions upon her.

You and the fires of Grootmoedersdrift, Agaat. The fire on the mountain, the fire in the hayloft, was that you?

Accusations have always set her off. And complaints. And criticism. If I can’t mollify her, that’s the only alternative. I can anger her. And if I can anger her, I can get angry myself. That would be better than nothing.

Who’s the arsonist here on the farm? Who’s the great setter of fires amongst us?

That hit the mark. All that she could do, was to draw off my pee and get out and turn her backside on me to pick hydrangeas, the ones far down, those that are a bit tousled already with sun and water. The prettiest ones, the strongest, those she’s saving. It’s a matter of timing.

Blue-purple hydrangeas for my funeral, with the white dahlias and the white Joseph’s lilies, nicely rounded off with a little ribbon of crape, I can just see it.

The quarter-hour strikes in the front room. Here comes the preview. In the grey vase. The vase that was not on the clearing-out list. Could still be used at my funeral, I thought to myself. Scenes from coming attractions, as Jak would have said. Not yet quite the demure style of the funeral arrangement. Pretty, lively, informally arranged are the voluptuous blue heads with the yellow privet branches and the bronze-coloured foliage of the prunus nigra, sprays of abelia, orange Cape honeysuckle, a few orange roses. And to round it off, under the base, how else? a few large exuberant bronze leaves of coleus, the plant we call fire-on-the-mountain.

Just look at the hydrangeas, says Agaat, they’re flowering as if it’s Christmas, I must take cuttings.

She clears a space on the night-table next to me. Her neck is stiff.

Just picture it, is written all over her face, what it will look like on the half-moon table at the front door, there where the guests will be entering. Sincerest condolences, Agaat, it must be a great loss for you. Will that be good enough for you? Or do you think the orange and all the branches are a bit too wild?

If I could I would like to tap the stick of the feather duster on her face. Alphabet of the underworld. Percussion band.

Hands on hips she stands and surveys her handiwork. Well then, Ounooi? Looks as if you want to have a bit of a chat, we have half an hour left.

She takes the duster by the head.

We’ll gather lilacs, she sings on an inhaled breath.

A B C D E F G H

I blink H and A and G and swearword on the auxiliary list that’s supposed to indicate feeling.

Wow now, says Agaat, which one now?

Y·O·U, exclamation mark, I spell, N·O·O·N·D·A·Y W·I·T·C·H.

Well I never, says Agaat, how’s that for a parting shot. What else?

S·A·R·C·A·S·T·I·C, I spell, Y·O·U K·N·O·W W·H·A·T I M·E·A·N.

No, I don’t know, says Agaat, you’ll just have to spell it out.

F·I·R·E O·N·T. M·O·U·N·T·A·I·N, I spell. I roll my eyes at the flower arrangement.

Yes, doesn’t it look pretty with the blue, says Agaat.

If I’m trying to be difficult here on my deathbed, is the message, she’ll pretend to think I’m senile.

Can there be a doubler barrel? How do I deal with it?

B·R·O·W·N S·U·I·T·C·A·S·E, I spell.

Where, when, why, question mark, Agaat taps for me on her scraps of paper. They flutter like leaves. I blink Y·E·S Y·E·S exclamation mark.

She puts down the stick. She reformulates my question for me in my own strain, with all my modulations of indignation. And with her own increment of pepper.

What, I ask you for the how-manieth time, happened to your brown suitcase that I put on the half-shelf of the washstand in the outside room, on the day of your birthday, twelfth July in the year of our Lord nineteen sixty, when you moved in there? What happened to all your possessions from the back room? To the pretty dresses that I hung up there for you on the railing behind the curtain, a red and a blue and a yellow one, specially made for you with my highly pregnant body and all? To your first shoes that I had bronzed?

Absolutely right, I blink. How excellently you can guess at the senile thoughts of an old woman. What is your reply to this?

Agaat stands back a little, hands on her stomach. She looks me straight in the eye. The cutting-up of an ox is her reply. Fluently she recites.

Sirloin, cut into flat slices and fried in a pan.

Wing rib, suitable for pot-roasting, bones may also be removed and meat rolled.

Flat rib, suitable for pot-roasting, may be rolled.

Prime rib, suitable for pot-roasting, may be rolled.

Mid-rib, suitable for pot-roasting, may be rolled.

Silverside and topside, suitable for corned beef, pot-roasting, biltong. Shank, may be roasted, but more suitable for salting and boiling.

Thick flank, may be salted and boiled or stewed.

Cheek, can be stewed.

Neck, for soup or stewing.

Collarbone, for soup.

Brisket, best suited to pickling and boiling.

Bones, are generally sold to kaffirs.

Tail, soup and stew.

Hoof and shin, brawn.

Pauper’s rib, for soup and stew.

Do you want to hear about the cuts of the birthday hanslam as well? Agaat asks, the nice fresh braai chops for the nice fresh kitchen-skivvy? The two of them, skivvy and lamb, both cut up much better than an old tough cow, let me tell you that!

She falls in with her stick. Oh Japie is my darling she sings, so early in the morning.