Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

On the second photo the pen had started to slip.

Schwarzenegger of the Overberg with infected eardrum (left, note the plug) with his Mirage F-I after the photo-recce of Cuvelai. Had to fly under the radar, just about heard the thorn bushes scraping his belly.

Photo three was damaged, so hard had he pressed on the pen. What could it mean, the references to himself in the third person? That’s not how you knew him.

de Wet after his sufficiently hard-arsed command of two Alouettes through ack-ack to cover the troops on the ground at Cuvelai. It’s the only position that really saw its arse. The FAPLA is as cosily as ever entrenched at Cahama, Mulondo and Caiundo. The SADF top brass are making a glorious b-lls-up. They think we’re bats with radar in our heads. Overhead the moon is beaming, ha!

Photo four was a group photo of pilots in front of their sleeping quarters, clearly reluctant to pose.

We now hear here that the Caiundo attack had never even been properly approved at Ops HQ. Hence the sulks. Military & national strategy are non-existent we scheme. Regional conflict my arse, it’s a full-on international f-ck-up! It could have been prevented. Pik & Magnus are sitting on their brains down there in Pretoria. Sorry, Pa, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Hope to see you at the survival parade in February!

You showed Jak the photos only at supper.

He took them away from you quickly.

You didn’t see them, he said, you don’t know anything about this. What else? was there a letter? I want to see it, now on the spot!

He held out his hand to Agaat.

Ash, in my fireplace, she said.

You went to buy yourself a new blue dress and a matching hat with a turn-up brim and a new handbag at De Jagers in town. The dress was too short and Agaat let out the hem for you.

It could be a long day, you said to Jak, I’m taking Gaat along for company.

Over my dead body, said Jak, in that Agatha Christie outfit of hers, it’s a gala occasion and we’re guests of honour of the Air Force, she won’t be allowed, we’re going to eat with the VIPs in the mess, what do you want to do with her then? There aren’t any amenities.

I’ll eat, Jak, and then I’ll excuse myself, it’ll have been a whole morning’s to-do and then I’ll want to rest, then I won’t want to look at a lot of aeroplanes.

You said it casually, so as not to upset him.

We can look for a shady tree, you said to Agaat, also as if it were the most ordinary thing on earth. Then we’ll be out of the crush, we can read magazines, you can pack a picnic for yourself, take the cool bag, I take my knitting, you pack your embroidery-basket, then at least we can make the afternoon worth our while for ourselves in our own way, I have no desire to get a crick in my neck from staring up into the air all the time.

Will I see him? Agaat asked.

You’ll see him in the air, you’ve always wanted to see what it looks like.

She glared at you.

You waited until Jak had pulled out the car, before you gave the signal. Agaat was ready, the house was locked. You opened the front and back doors simultaneously. You got in at the same time, Agaat with her baskets and tins, you with your cream-coloured handbag and the new shoes for which you’d had to stick plasters to your heels.

Jak was furious, he swore at everything ahead of him and overtook on double white lines up blind rises. In Swellendam he stopped with squealing tyres in front of the off-sales and bought a six-pack of beer, started drinking it immediately.

You didn’t even dare look back. You felt Agaat’s jaw jutting into your neck. Of all the summers of my life, you thought, this one is the ugliest. The hills were dry and dreadful, False Bay’s water flashed like steel when you crossed Sir Lowry’s Pass.

A curtain-raiser of lighter planes and gliders was in progress when you arrived. From far away you could already see the cars flashing in the sun, whole fields of them.

Can we please just try to find a little shade, you asked.

There was a separate entrance a long way further, a sandy road amongst the rooikrans bushes, the only greenery as far as the eye could see. You saw coloured people capering and dancing with bottles in the air when low-flying planes came by. You heard them holler, salacious comments for the helicopters that came and hovered on the spot in the air and double-decker Tiger Moths flying upside down. They were draped all over one another.

That’ll be the day that I’ll park my car for you amongst a crowd of drunken hotnots, Jak said, but we can drop her here so long, here amidst her family of the flats, then she can learn to speak a bit of Cape, will do her good, her sounding like the Farmer’s Weekly in an apron. Do you think one afternoon is enough for rehabilitation? If you could teach her, Milla, just imagine how quickly they’ll get on top of her.

That’s enough, you warned, but you knew it was in vain. This was Jak’s four-beer bravado.

Agaat is nice and grown up, isn’t she, he persisted, I thought that was why she came along today specially, and it’s high time, stands drying up in the stable like an unserviced mare.

Hey chickelay chickelee, Jak sang, and swayed his body behind the steering wheel, come sit by me, chickelay chickelee!

You didn’t know how he’d come upon the little song all of a sudden. With such an expression too, as he looked around at Agaat. Even when you were young, he’d never looked at you with such an expression, not even as a joke. And this was no joke. You were ashamed, in three directions.

Come on, Agaat, he taunted, while he drove slowly through the clusters of coloured people, gave them a fright and made them scatter by accelerating unexpectedly, what do you say? Have you seen anything that interests you yet? I’ll pay him for you, you know, so you can crutch him, a real city goffel with long heels and a gap between his front teeth and a shiny shirt! You’re stuck out there on Grootmoedersdrift without any company, if you’re satisfied, we’ll buy him for you. You’ve got the whole day to try him out. On appro.

Jak took his hands off the steering wheel and twisted and rubbed his palms in the air in front of him.

Ride the woolly, hip-hip hay, hip-hip hay! he sang.

The people yelled across the shiny BMW in the sand there, they pushed their tongues through their front teeth at Agaat, swore at Jak, hammered their hands on the roof.

It was a mistake, you realised. Not one of you should have come along. Jak was ashamed to drive with the coloured woman in the back of his car, he was ashamed of you sitting next to him in your big blue hat.

Amongst the vast wastes of motor cars he at last found a parking place.

Sorry! you signalled with your eyes at Agaat as you got out. You took ten rand out of your purse and placed it on the seat.

Cooldrink, you spelt with your eyes.

Agaat gave you the dead eye. She had a long white envelope in her hands.

Give it to him, she said, don’t fold it.

You put it in your handbag. Between your gloved fingertips you thought you felt a slight thickening in the envelope, a texture.

It was terribly hot on the parade ground. The air above the tar shimmered. All the women in your block of seats were wearing hats. Only in the first row where the wives of the ministers and the brigadiers and the generals were sitting, sunshades had been put up.

The chaplain opened the parade with scripture reading. He prayed that the angels would guard over the brave soldiers who had to drive away the Philistines from our borders.

The Prime Minster made a speech. He pointed with his finger. He wiped his brow with a white handkerchief.

The Minister of Defence spoke. South Africa has the best defence force in Africa, he said. He read the weapons off a list. They’re all here to be seen today he said, but they’re worth nothing without the well-trained youths manning them. We care for the injured. Our hearts go out to the friends and family of those who fell in the service of their fatherland, he said, it was the highest sacrifice that was asked, that was brought. Another list. The dead.