Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Then a salute was fired, the last post was sounded, the band played, the national anthem was sung.

After that the medals and the honourable mentions.

There was a stamping of feet, a waving of flags, a saluting. Jak cursed the heat. You were sitting at the back of the block. There were too many hats and umbrellas in front of you for you to see much. When it was Jakkie’s turn, you got to your feet. He looked just like all the others, small, there on the barren surface and under the wide white-blue sky. His medal was pinned on, he stepped back, saluted, you sat down. The applause in the open air sounded like twigs snapping.

Afterwards Jakkie came to greet you. You’d last seen him almost nine months earlier. He was a different man. Clean-shaven, creaseless, a guardedness in his eyes, something around his mouth that you couldn’t place.

Agaat, you wanted to say, but your mouth was numb. You wanted to take out the envelope. Your gloved fingers slip-slided over the smooth chrome clip of your handbag,

Jak flick-flicked his finger against Jakkie’s chest where his medal was dangling.

Eighteen carats, he said.

Agaat, you wanted to say, but other people joined you to congratulate Jakkie. A corporal with a guest list herded you into the brick building where the lunch was to take place. The air inside was muggy with food smells and an undertone of hot metal. The ceiling was high and the hall was dusky but it wasn’t cool. There were fans against the ceiling churning the warm air. You were conducted to your seats. The choir sang three little songs. From the welter of the ages , and then a medley with Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do and other songs, and, while the seafood cocktail was being served, a canon, Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, let these thy gifts to us be blessed . The conductor signalled to the people in the hall when to join in and sing along. You couldn’t identify Jakkie’s voice amongst the tenors. You couldn’t even recognise him there on the rostrum, they all looked alike. There were two other pairs of parents at your table. Jak had the wine opened, poured, asked for another bottle and started chatting to the men. You looked at the other women. What was in their eyes? Nothing. Made up with eye shadow and mascara. Just like yours.

Jakkie and two other captains came to join you at your table. They exchanged glances without talking.

Next was the buffet. You noticed too late that the other women had left their hats and handbags at the tables. Again and again men’s shoulders bumped and brushed against the rim of your hat. Your nose was sweating but you had the tray in your hands already. Your heels were burning in your shoes.

Give me your handbag and gloves, Ma, said Jakkie.

Was there impatience in his voice? He cast one look around and a junior materialised to take charge of them.

Your hat, madam? the little chap asked.

Jakkie gave him a look and he stepped back smartly and marched away with one arm pumping up and down and the bag and gloves on his flat hand in front of him like a cake on a tray.

Jak gave you a look. It was a hall full of furious eyes, you felt.

From the stainless steel trays you had pumpkin served for you, potatoes, cauliflower in white sauce, peas. You thought of Agaat in the hot car in the parking lot. In a flash you imagined a separate table, all seated with servants in black-and-white uniforms. Perhaps you’d have another chance at the table to give Jakkie her envelope.

Madam? the carver asked, pork, lamb, beef, or a bit of everything?

Come, Milla, said Jak, pushing his tray into your back, the queue is long.

Lamb, you said, just a small portion.

Jakkie ate nothing. I can’t fly on a full stomach, he said. He and the other two kept glancing at their watches. He was far from you. Why didn’t you get up and walk around the table and give him the envelope? You looked at his uniform. It didn’t have a pocket into which it would fit without a corner showing. You can’t have a piece of white paper sticking out of the neat blue uniform, can you?

Jak was in his element. He’d loosened his tie and taken off his jacket. He was showing off his knowledge of fighter planes. A third bottle of wine arrived. The other women didn’t drink and you were too shy to hold out your glass again. It would have helped, a bit more alcohol, you thought. How can I get out of here? you wondered.

You tried to grasp your opportunity when Jakkie excused himself.

I suppose I won’t see you again, he said. He shook Jak’s hand, squeezed your shoulder. You tried to get up. Are you coming home for your birthday? you wanted to ask, but you couldn’t. This wasn’t the place for it. He’d gone before you could pick up your handbag from the floor. You had an image of the white envelope there in the gloom of your bag. What could it contain?

Sit down, Milla, there’s dessert and coffee to come, said Jak. The smell of the coffee under the hot ceiling turned your stomach. You stirred striations of chocolate sauce through the ice cream.

He can see like an eagle, that boy of mine, Jak was bragging.

You could vaguely, above the hubbub in the hall, make out the sound of the jets warming up.

He can balance on a three-strand steel wire one foot before the other, not an ounce of fear in him. I taught him from early on, in the mountains, in the kloofs, in the waterfalls, hand over hand on a slack chain with a rucksack on his back. He could keep his head in a butter-churn, that lad.

Then you were outside again in the white heat. You saw the women putting on their hats again, this time to protect their faces against the sun. But Jak stopped you.

For heaven’s sake take that thing off, you know you can’t see a damn thing from under that brim!

The first rending din was upon you, seven Impalas squirting orange, white and blue plumes of smoke from their tails. A self-important voice on the public address system asked for applause. How silly, you thought, it’s not as if they can hear up there in their capsules? That’s the way things have been all day, you thought. The occasion wasn’t for the soldiers. But for whom was it? The women trailed after the men over the tarmac, stood around where they congregated in little groups around the elephant tanks, the rooikat helicopters, the bush pigs, the bushbuck. Armoured game reserve, you thought.

Jak said, tidy up your face, it’s in the national interest.

Up and down on the hot tarmac of the showgrounds Jak walked telling and retelling his little band of new-found friends, or rank strangers, or just anybody who would listen, that it was his son up there against the blue, ascending straight up to the sun. You could see that he’d drunk too much, that he was still furious. You screwed up your eyes trying to see, the flakes of steel, how they tumbled spinning downward in formation, the tiny shards on the horizon that sped closer in silent ranks, and passed in silence, the ear-splitting noise lagging them at a distance.

Whenever there was a moment’s silence amongst the shrieking of engines and the commentary over the loudspeaker supplying the velocities and details of supersonic and subsonic engine capacities, Jak resumed his account to the bystanders. He gesticulated with his hands, bellowed into his audience’s ears to be heard above the noise.

You caught scraps of it.

. . then I test his reaction time. . stabiliser muscles. . reflexes, eye-to-hand coordination. . exceptionally fit. . they whisk a man in those flight simulators so that for days he thinks he’s custard.

With an excuse of headache you got out of there and returned to the parking lot. You couldn’t remember where the car was parked. You started searching amongst the rows and rows of cars. Your shoes were hurting you but you couldn’t take them off on the hot tar. The hard roofs of the cars and their glass and their chrome and their sideview mirrors reflected into your eyes so that you couldn’t distinguish colours. You became aware of walking in circles, you couldn’t remember in which row you’d been and which not. After a while you became confused about the colour of your car. It was a silver-blue BMW but there were many silverish cars that at a distance looked like BMWs. Silver-grey, silver-green, silver-khaki. Then you went and stood on the top step of an electricity substation and tried to read the number plates as far as you could see. CBY, CEY, CA, CAT but no CCK. Still later you just peered through the windows of cars, through the windows of three, four cars at a time to see if you could spot somebody sitting. Sometimes you thought you saw Agaat’s cap. Then you went closer but it would turn out to be a hat, or one of those dogs with red lolling tongues that sway when you drive.