Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

grow into them I see the titties

are pushing fast)

Towels & washcloths

(curtains?) I can make up from

the odds drawer of the linen

cupboard. Bedding & pillows

enough. Off-cuts! — phone

Needle’s Eye — will have to run

up a Sunday dress or two for

her quickly needlework she can

enough already she’ll just have

to jump in herself & muck on I

won’t have time can really not

buy everything new

Dr White’s 4 dozen (Facts-of-life

talk! When will the right time

be?)

Elastic with loops

Mum (rub-on kind)

Lacto Calamine Lotion

Lifebuoy soap x 6

Johnson’s baby powder (will

have to teach her how to keep

lace-up shoes fresh!)

Pepsodent x 6

Black polish (& brush & buffing

cloths)

Three small black irons & iron-

ing board (she mustn’t use those

in the house in the mornings

must emerge fresh as a daisy

from the outside rm finished &

ready for the day)

Vim

Scoop & brush

Omo

Washboard

Starch (write down recipe for

her: cold water and ordinary)

Reckitt’s Blue

2 Tin buckets

Sunlight soap (X4)

Zinc bath

No water as yet in outside rm

electricity one point?

(Two-plate stove?)

Tin kettle

Big pot for heating washing

water

Jug

Rooibos tea

Frisco

Powdered milk

Sugar (tin)

(NB for her needlework basket:

extra buttons for the uniform &

darning mushroom needles pins

scissors crochet hook crochet

yarn oddments of wool for more

of the jerseys she wears she

will start knitting them herself

now)

Bible

FAK (old one)

Cook & Enjoy?

Farmer’s Handbook (Pa’s old

copy, A. must learn the principles

old & new methods you never

know & it’s good discipline)

Embroidery book

Optional:

Tin of ginger biscuits

Tin of rusks

Marie biscuits

Acid drops

Peppermint humbugs

Just a little something to suck on & something to enjoy with hr tea in the evening before going to bed. So much to do still. Quite ill with thinking of it. I ask J. doesn’t he feel anything about everything happening now he says it’s not necessary for him to feel anything I’ve got enough feelings for two. Next thing I see he’s gone & bought himself a whole box of new clothes. A new noise on Gdrift he says & after all he can’t appear without costume for the next act. I say why don’t you rather go & read something to improve yourself your whiplash repartee no longer impresses me. Since I’ve been pregnant, he’s at least more careful. Doesn’t seem as if he wants to as much as touch me, never mind beat me. But the language he utters. Comes along just now & grabs the diary from under me. Blessed is the maker of lists creator of heaven and earth he exclaims. Blessed are the poor in spirit I snap back. What must become of us?

13 May 1960

Everything goes as if preordained. Three rooms furnished at the same time nursery & A.’s room & the gable room of the left wing for J’s office. He’s sleeping there most of the time now anyway & with the baby it will definitely be better he says so himself.

Now quite exhausted after the whole day’s organising. Scared all the time that I’m forgetting something important. Anxious. What a disruption it is! I know it’s right but I nevertheless hold my heart about it all.

Had cradle & chest of drawers put into the nursery with hole in top in which the washbasins fit & enough space next to it to attend to the child. Under the bath space for nappies & bath things. Had single bed carried in there & an easy chair so that I can lie there if necessary & a place to sit for feedings & chest of drawers with enough drawers so that at one glance I can put my hand on everything.

Bought curtaining with half-moons & stars the windows open into the backyard so that A. can help listen at night.

Had linoleum nailed to the scrubbing table for hr kettle to stand on. OuKarel has fixed cross-planks between the legs of the table for hr tin bath & hr suitcase. Had a plank screwed down on iron brackets over the table on which she can keep hr coffee & tea & mugs & soap & cleaning material & hammered a nail into the wall for mirror one corner cracked but perfectly usable. Had a copper pipe inserted in the wall between the two partitions where shelves of the storeroom were to hang hr uniforms & dresses (look for old wire hangers NB) devised a two-strip curtain on a cord so that hr stuff needn’t be so exposed to view next to the bed a crate with a cloth over it for hr Bible & hr glass of water for the night & hr candle almost forgot about the candle add to list 2 (Inside crate she can keep hr other reading matter.) Got Dawid to nail 4 apple boxes together & painted two coats of white & screwed in two hooks & and made a curtain for that as well for hr shoes & shoe polish below & hr wool & cloths & her needlework basket.

Little old yellow vase for a bit of homeliness with nasturtiums inside should look pretty there. Walls still bare & light-bulb without shade but there’s no point in having her think this is a hotel old bathmat in front of the bed so that she won’t stand on cold linoleum with the getting-up & hung old kitchen curtains a bit skimpy had to undo the pleats but still quite serviceable.

What can she think of it all? Will just have to be good enough. Fortunately nice & sensible.

J.’s office now in stoep room. Desk & filing cabinet & farm papers that used to be in second pantry carried over & his exercise apparatus out of the bedroom thank Heaven. Photos & trophies & things that stood and hung all over the place. Ma’am’s on the rampage baas on the stoep maid’s in her hovel and all’s right with the world sings Jak. Lord the man. At least he’ll be able to face people again now he says. And at a glance see what’s happening in the yard. As if the yard mattered a whit to him. Just as long as he’s satisfied now don’t have time for his nonsense too on top of everything. Expect Beatrice Pulpit-Polish will also want to come and do inspection some time. Missing a brain-bobbin, as Pa would say.

The morning sun lights up Agaat’s cap from the back. Full of embroidery holes it is, densely edged with shiny white thread. The points of light in the weft flicker as she approaches. She hesitates over my bed, inclines her head, feels along the high peak with both hands, touches the base on both sides, whether it’s well pinned, whether it’s properly seated. If the cap is on as it should be, she’ll be empowered to walk through fire. Her crown of glorified cotton, her mitre, her fire-barrel specked with light, that gives her dominion over the underworld. She deliberately touches it in such a way that there should be no doubt in my mind regarding her intention. She is mustered, she is prepared, I mustn’t give any more trouble, she’ll sort me out here, she’s the commander of my possibilities.

She’s going to list them for me, the options remaining to me, without skipping anything. As the Spirit moves her, with allusions to my incapacity.

The list gets shorter all the time.

She revises it ever more frequently.

At night on her camp stretcher she ponders what she should delete.

Three years ago the list was full of interesting variations.

Shall we ride to the lands with Dawid?

Would you like a picnic in your wheelchair next to the dam?

Must I take you rowing on the drift? Joke.

Do you want to walk up and down on the stoep in your walking frame?

Do you want to write with the splint on your hand?

Do you want to do exercises?

Do you want to sit on your own in the garden, next to the lavender hedge, next to the rambling rose, under the honey-bread tree?