Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Nowhere was there any shade. As you brushed past the cars, the metal burnt you through your clothes so that time after time you started back, all the time the heat-glow from the car bodies radiated down on you, at short intervals there was the thunderous whistle of the grey needle-nosed fighter planes that sheared low over the roofs out of nowhere, and set the whole parking lot glittering and echoing before swooping away again into the blue, tilting their wings in precisely measured quarter turns, belly up, back up, perilously on the side-fins through the high masts of the loudspeakers and the wires and the towers.

Anti-aircraft avoidance nosedives below radar range for espionage photography of enemy positions, the commentary went, deafening from the loudspeaker trumpets.

This is what hell is like, you thought, this is the temperature, this is the sound of hell. Just so do you search there for someone you’ve lost.

Gaat! you wanted to scream, there in the deserted parking lot.

Gaat! to make her white cap suddenly materialise above the expanse of motor cars.

Here, Gaat, here! you’d call and wave your hands so that she’d come and fetch you. She’d see that you were in need but pretend that it was nothing.

That’s how you were used to doing one to the other.

You couldn’t find the car. You found the ablution block and felt heartened but not for long. It wasn’t the same one that you’d run into quickly that morning when you arrived. That had been a red-polished cement floor, not grey. Poor Agaat, you thought, where would she have found a place to pee?

Under the flat tin roof of the ablution it was oppressively hot. It smelt strongly of Jeyes Fluid, but at least it was in the shade. You could still hear the announcements on the loudspeakers, but they were muffled now.

In the gloom you rinsed your face and wrists again and again at the basin. The water was warm. You took off your shoes and stockings. The plasters on your heels were scrunched up. You dripped water onto your chafed feet and dried them with toilet paper. You wet your handkerchief and wiped your armpits and back under your dress, and underneath your bra, from above and below.

You lowered yourself against the wall until you could sit on the cement, your legs paralysed all of a sudden. You remembered the envelope. You opened it. It was a delicately embroidered bookmark.

For your Bible, Jakkie, the accompanying card said, put it in with Psalm 23. Remember, the Lord is your Shepherd in all the dangers that you have to face. Love, Agaat.

You rested your head on your knees and wept.

Later the noise of the jet fighters abated. You started hearing other sounds, softer snoring sounds as of toy aeroplanes. It was comforting after the violence of the fighters. You felt sleepy, drifted off. Until somebody came in later and asked you if you were feeling ill and you said no, just hot. Then you got up and washed your face again, applied make-up, powdered your nose. You went into a toilet cubicle and put on your stockings again, folded bits of toilet paper and pushed them into the backs of your shoes.

Outside, hundreds of people were making their way to their cars. There were only a few of the little traffic helicopters in the air and the voice of the announcer, much softer now, interspersed with march music. You searched for the gate through which you’d entered the parking lot from the showgrounds, but you were forced back by the streams of people moving in the opposite direction. To and fro next to the chicken wire you walked trying to perhaps spot Jak or one of the table companions to attract their attention. You were panicky. What if you didn’t find Jak? What if he just decided to leave without you? What if then for good measure he chucked Agaat out of the car as well? Would she have the common sense to just remain sitting dead-still in one spot until there were just the two of you left there in the empty parking lot?

You could do nothing but wait in the crush. You remained standing against the chicken wire with your handbag and your hat in your hands. Later you put on the hat in order to be more visible. People smiled at you.

How did you eventually reach the car, reach home?

There are shreds that you remember. Jak charging, swearing, past the slow line of cars on the left shoulder of the service road, Agaat tumbling around on the back seat rigid as a totem pole. You clinging with both hands to the door handle on your side. The abuse that you had to listen to as far as you travelled, the terrifying speed.

You and this golliwog of yours, I’m never taking you anywhere again! Never, do you hear? I’m not going to have my name dragged through the mud in front of the whole goddamned world. That was how Jak began. Spit showered the car as he spoke.

It’s a great day in my son’s life and from beginning to end you cause nothing but embarrassment! There I had to drop everybody just like that to tag along looking for you and your pet woolly-lamb, I was still thinking after the heat of the day let’s take a few people and Jakkie out for a drink somewhere in a nice restaurant overlooking the sea, but no, Milla gets lost so that I have to get the whole of Ysterplaat on red alert! Where were you in any case that you didn’t hear it on the loudspeakers? Mrs Milla de Wet, would Mrs Milla de Wet please go to Gate B, her husband Mr Jak de Wet is waiting for her there. Mrs de Wet! Mrs de Wet! Everybody’s laughing at me, the man who can’t look after his wife, there I am for hours standing at Gate B and then on top of it all I have to explain what a wog’s doing in the whites-only toilet. How do you think one explains something like that? And that after I warned you. From the start! But you won’t listen! It’s Agaat here and Agaat there and Agaat everywhere! Jesusgodjerusalemalmighty, I have so had enough! Do you hear me? Of you and the scum you brought into my house! Enough! Enough! Enough!

Jak didn’t speak again. He switched on the radio and turned the knob of the shortwave band, to and fro through the crackling whistling stations until he found what he was looking for. The news and weather forecast. He turned up the volume all the way. There’d been more riots on the Rand and reports of subversive activities. And the forecast for the winter-rainfall area from the Hottentots Holland mountains to Cape Agulhas was a strong south-easter, temperatures of more than thirty degrees and a warning of a fire hazard.

It was deep dusk by the time you got home. That hour of the Overberg summer that always filled you with apprehension. The deceptive light, the smell of sunbaked dust, the wind fraying out the bluegums.

Agaat opened the gate and didn’t get back into the car. Not that Jak waited, he pulled off in a cloud of dust and charged in violently over the gravel. You caught a glimpse of Agaat in the side mirror. The dogs were jumping up against her. She bumped them aside with her hips.

Later, after you’d had your bath, after Jak had withdrawn himself, you switched on the table lamps and drew the curtains in the house, fed the dogs and fetched the cream in the little room where the separator stood. In the backyard everything was dark and still. The bolt on the door of the outside room was still drawn. The bottles for the house milk had not been sterilised and set out on the table in the kitchen as usual. The tray that Agaat always put out on the work surface with cups for supper, was standing up straight behind the kettle on the shelf. You looked in the food tins that you’d brought out of the car. The sausage sweaty, the sandwiches soggy, untouched.

You got the torch and put on a pair of tackies to go and look for Agaat. At first you were angry. Why should I have to fret myself? you thought. Everybody flaunts their feelings, but does anybody ever ask me what I’m feeling?