Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

5 October

I’m getting Agaat used to her role in the house. Put an apple box in front of the sink so that she can reach. Now washes the coffee cups every morning for me. Already quite adroit with the weak hand, inborn carefulness it seems. I indulge her by letting her wash Jak’s socks and handkerchiefs and underpants in the tub in the backyard. She doesn’t want one to look when she’s working with both hands. Sleeve of weak hand always dirty and wet, she doesn’t want me to roll up that side.

9 October 1954

First reading and writing lesson. Using the Biblical ABC, two birds with one stone, went to unearth old alphabet chart in cellar with which Ma still taught me.

A is for Adam, every animal gets a name.

Then Eve his companion to Paradise came.

B is for Babel, a tower they built.

Confusion of tongues the wages of guilt.

C is for Christ, our Redeemer and Lord:

To Him we must listen, His favour afford.

She holds the pencil in the left hand just like the knife. Still shy of the weak hand, keeps it out of the way, hides it more if one looks. I say, Agaat, the Lord made you like that, you needn’t be ashamed.

10 October

Why do my pebbles and shells go grey? asks Agaat, my tongue is tired with licking them. We put them in a glass bottle next to her bed to look pretty again. Water is to shells what love is to the soul of people, I say. Without love the soul turns grey as ash, and dry and cold. I’m brown as mud and my mouth is full of spit, says Agaat. She licks her forearm and shows me. She tucks her hands under her armpits. Loaves in the oven, she says, warm as warm, feel. Becoming really sharp, the little child.

Phoned Ma to tell her how well we’re getting on, full of insinuations as always: Pleased you have something to warm yourself with, my child.

13 October

To the forest with Agaat. Quite high up in the indigenous bush. Told her about the giant emperor butterfly that’s black on the outside and inside blue like an eye when it spreads its wings. The jewel of the forest. Apatura iris. The eye that guards the secret of the soul. Only good people get to see it. Has Même seen it yet? asks Agaat. She looks at me like that, I can’t lie. I hope to see it in my lifetime, I say. We can come every day, she says, how many days are a lifetime? If we find it, then we catch it and put it in a bottle and then it can’t escape, she says. Cruel little grin. Where does it come from? I mustn’t forget that this child led a different life before I found her. No, I tell her, a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity. Where do the bats live? she asks.

14 October 1954

We now read and write every day. She’s making remarkably quick progress. We count sums on our fingers and toes. Agaat leaves her weak hand out of the count. I give my hand in its place, I turn the page and rub out her wrong-way-round threes and fives when she’s struggling, she keeps one hand under the table.

Together we make up a whole person with two strong hands, I say. Am I your child? asks Agaat. You’re my little monkey, I say. We learn the wind directions and the names of the months and the seasons of the year and its festivals and what they stand for. In this way I feed her a bit of (religious) history. Good Friday, Easter Monday, Van Riebeeck Day, Day of the Covenant. I found you on the Day of the Covenant, do you remember? I ask. That shows that it’s all in the Lord’s plan. She just looks at me wide-eyed.

15 October

Our herbs that we planted are growing lush and beautiful. Agaat picks slips of everything and tastes everything, chews the seeds. Knows all the names, parsley, celery. Fennel still her favourite. Fennel and coriander, I say, the one is like the other. Isn’t, she says, the one is for liquorice, the other is for dried sausage. She’s very perceptive, has an amazing memory, not to be wondered at I suppose, she gets so much attention, I repeat everything until it’s penetrated, a child must be drilled, is what I’ve always believed.

16 October

Gave Saar such a dressing-down this morning. Agaat busy in the backyard washing Jak’s underpants and handkerchiefs and socks in the zinc tub. I hear Saar mocking: You must rub, little girl, you must rub! His snot’s thick and his feet stink and his snake spits such big gobs. The kitchen maids are jealous of Agaat. They’re full of gibes. Won’t allow them to come and spoil all my hard work here.

18 October

Had to intervene today. Saar’s children taunting Agaat in the backyard. Whose child are you can I have one too! So then they grab all the washing she’s done already, throw it into the dust. She does nothing, just juts out the chin. Funny, Agaat doesn’t cry, have never seen her cry no matter what happens. Don’t take any notice of them, I say, they’re not your sort.

This evening at bedtime she says: They say I come from a drunkcunt on the other side of the mountain. Sis, that’s ugly, I say. Clearly old enough to start asking questions now. She looks at me with big eyes. What would she be thinking in that coconut of hers? How much would she remember? I dosed her so heavily to get her here. And then she slept for days from the valerian. Don’t quite know what story to tell her. Perhaps just the simple truth, but I feel now is not the time yet.

I must in any case first write it down myself before I forget it, what it felt like, how it came about. The commission, the task, spelt out in black and white, for her sake, so that she can read it one day (though I wonder anew every day what exactly I’m trying to bring about here and why I’m doing it as I’m doing it, and what’s going to come of it, Heaven forfend!).

Then, tonight as I was getting up off the bed (must have slumbered in for a while there with her), she woke up. Out of the blue she says: Lys is my sister, she showed me how to catch a mole. How do you catch a mole? You look for the hills, you see which one is fresh and then you squat one mole-day away and you pee on the ground. You wait and you wait and you pee and you pee all the time on the same spot. And then? You have your wire and your stick. And then? Then you wait and you keep your eyes open and you say all the time mole, mole, here’s the hole! And then? Then he pushes a hole in that spot because the soil is soft from your pee. Then he pushes, then he pushes, then you wait until he’s pushed hand-high, then you hook the wire quickly into his hole and you jab with the stick, one blow and pluck, then you get him by the hind leg, he can’t see, but he can bite like anything. And then? Then you flatten his head with a stone, then you skin him. Why do you want the skin? It’s soft. How do you get it soft? You stick your wire through, you wind it with your wire, Lys holds the one point, or you hook it to a thorn bush, then you wring the skin every day until it’s soft.

Dear Lord above! Would rather not think what else lurks in that past!

20 October

Took A. to town with me today, had hair appointment, she kept on wanting to take my hand, walk next to me nicely, I said, you don’t hold hands in town, you’re nice and grown-up now. A. very fascinated with the hairdresser, takes the little broom from the servant there and starts sweeping up my hair into the dustpan, where does hair come from? she asks. Otherwise very good all the time while I was doing shopping.

Then I bumped into Beatrice in Kriel and Co. and she says we must go and have a cooldrink at the Good Hope Café. What about Agaat? I ask. Buy her an ice-cream and tell her she must wait outside, says B. Ai, she can be so unfeeling! The child is so small still. No, I say, I’ll speak to Georgie. Hmph, sea kaffir, says Beatrice, he won’t mind, but he should know who’s really his clientele. Then I asked for a table at the back half behind the screen in front of the kitchen door and then the waitress in her white apron and cap, thud, flap, through the swing doors, brings A. a huge cream soda float with a long-stemmed teaspoon and a straw so that her eyes widen like saucers. Then other waitresses come out as well to look at A. Go away, I say, it’s just a child. And then A. eats the whole thing, I should have known it was too much, but B. had ordered it, from spite or something. Her whole face said, so you want to don’t you, now you’d better eat your way through what’s in front of you and see what comes of it. A. sucks and sucks at the milky green stuff in the long glass, her eyes fixed fast on Tretchikoff’s Dying Swan hanging there against the wall. When we got outside, she puked something terrible on the pavement and I held her head over the gutter and B. marched click, clack, on her high heels away from us as if she didn’t know us. Really, some people.