Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Gave her a crust of dry bread. Mouth a sour slit, chin out, hungry enough, ate the bread to the last crumb. Obstinate little blighter!

23 March ’54

Caught Saar smuggling food to the back room this afternoon. Keeping key in my bra now. Won’t allow my discipline to be subverted here.

24 March ’54

Breakthrough! At last! Lift the clapper of the slot, up she jumps, dances on one leg, claps hands, sings along gulp-gulp.

Little turkey jumps over the ditch

Little turkey runs from the witch

Then I left the door open, so wouldn’t the little saucebox follow me to the kitchen with the tin plate from the bread. Sits down on the chair, says Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, words swallowed. Couldn’t help laughing. Ate a big plate of food. Let go the spoon when I wasn’t looking, stuffed it in with the hands. Let her be for the time being. Jelly and custard afterwards. What do you say when you’ve eaten food? Blinks slowly with the eyes, head to the front, thank you very much, softly on an in-breath, as if she’s scared I’ll steal her breath. In any case sounds more like imitation than sincerely meant. How does one teach somebody sincerity? What comes first? Sincerity or words of sincerity? But that’s in the future, such distinctions. First just win her confidence to breathe fearlessly in the presence of her benefactor, blink in and out with the eyes, open and closed!

25 March ’54

I stand behind her and pull her ears, do you see the Cape? and I pull harder, do you see the Cape yet? I pull until she makes a sound. The kitchen maids look at me as if I’m mad. Ai, nooi, they say, mind your own business, I say.

28 March ’54

She must learn to speak on the out-breath. I blow on her eyelids until she opens her eyes in the morning. She keeps them shut tight, I blow and blow. Look into my eyes, Agaat! Blow out the breath of night! Sing: Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, sing: Higgledy, piggledy, pop, the dog has eaten the mop. You can only sing on an out-breath, on plenty of out-breath, sing Praise the Lord rise up rejoicing, oh my soul what rich reward. She looks at me with the heavens-what’s-up-with-you-look. I press my finger on the mole on her cheek. Here, I say, is your exclamation mark. I count the moles in her neck. Here are your nine stars.

29 March ’54

First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED!

2 April ’54

Lessons in the prodigality of breath. The wind blows s-s-s-s-s, the cow blows mooo, the sheep blows baaa, the donkey brays hee-haw, the flower blows out its scent, the direction of a gaze is a blowing wind. North-west! South-east! All living things take a draught of air and blow it out with a sound in a direction, the hands before the mouth form a trumpet, for lack of a snout or a lowing muzzle. Call! I’m calling you! Hear! But she doesn’t call back. Agaat has no faith in her own store of breath. As if she might jeopardise her life by talking.

8 April ’54 tea-time morning

Breakthrough! And this time in my own slow wits! Agaat teaches me but I don’t grasp the lessons fast enough! Only today did I put two and two together: She has of course exhaled once, blew with the making of the fire, her lips puckered and all! So I have to play with fire to get her going! She looks at me with an ‘I-can-see-you’ve-got-a-plan’ look. I’ll put it into action this moment, I’ll wager my life that it’ll work! Must just prepare the way slowly and cautiously, it’s not an opportunity I want to waste.

8 April twelve o’clock

Looks as if it’s going to work! Went and dug up the old bellows from the cellar, still from Pa’s farm smithy. Very neglected, the old thing, peep, goes the dry hinge between the outer covers. First I sat with her in the backyard in the sun, rubbed the leather surfaces with lots of red polish, left it to absorb nicely in the sun, buffed it, all willingly she helps me, we got down to all the concertina folds of the book, the copper mounting as well, cleaned the hinges and rivets, polished everything to a shine with Brasso, sanded down the wooden handles, applied varnish. It’s a beautiful antique, I must say. Agaat makes me remember things, opens my eyes, to things that get lost, things that I’ve neglected.

Her little hands flutter all over the body of the thing. Very excited she is about this thing, it’s almost as if she can guess what it is, as if she knows it already!

After lunch

Hold your palm in front of the spout, I say, I pull open the handles, I close the handles, peep, goes the neck, feel the wind, I say, just so the human lungs work, left and right, put your hands on both sides of my ribs, feel the river swelling, swell and go down, in and out, the sun comes up, the sun goes down, peep, says Agaat with held-back breath. Come let’s oil the hinge, if you can get the fire going with the wind of your words, then the bellows are yours to keep, an extra lung to breathe along with yours, a fire-fiddle, a puffing book with hundreds of pages.

12 April ’54

Beatrice phoned the river’s in flood from the unseasonal showers that have been falling all the time. I ran down to the drift with Agaat, without telling her what was going to happen. Let’s call the water! I said.

Open your ears, I say. Listen! Agaat all eyes. We look up in the drift with binocular fists. Hand cupped behind the ear. I make a trumpet for our mouths.

River come, river come!

From the mountain’s store of water!

From the fern-fringed waterfalls!

From the rainman’s dripping sleeve!

And then it came! She thinks I can do magic! I show, I say, I blow, I patter off the names of all the things that are washed down there by the river.

Twigs and leaves and skeletons of small game, fallen nests and root-clusters, the whole battleground of a dry riverbed gathered in a roiling, rustling mass of words, in a fume of dust at the foot of the water, the solid wall bulking in behind, the wattle branches blowing up before the advance, the wind in the wake of the first wave, the smells of wild bush: buchu, rooikat piss, khaki bush, torn away from the catchment area. Listen, I say, I have the river in my mouth, it’s the beginning of all things. Is that blasphemy?

I want Agaat to understand that if you call things by their names, you have power over them. But never mind words, she’s becoming quite her own little person, scratched out a mole there with a stick, just in time. Roll around, roll around, little pink claws scrabbling before the flood, its little coat all teeming with colour. We sat together and watched it drying, how the snout first came to life, how it dug itself in, blindly in under a damp dark mound. Agaat scratches it open, puts her finger into the hole, looks at me, with little ‘I-want-to-go-in’ eyes.

You’re not a mole, I say, you’re an above-ground creature, you walk in the light.

18 April ’54

Jak no longer wants to eat in Agaat’s presence in the evenings. She gives him the creeps, he says. So now I bathe her and feed her in the kitchen in the early evening and put her to bed so that he doesn’t have to have any dealings with her.

You’ll see yet what she’s going to mean for us, I say.

He says I mustn’t make him complicit in my latest project. He’s already complicit enough in my farm, in my house, in my everything. Don’t know what I must do with Jak. He takes offence if I ask him the slightest little thing.