Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

23 October

I show all the pictures of vehicles. Strange response. Ship? I’ll never get into that! Aeroplane? No never, I’ll run away! Train? See it steam, salt-and-pepper-now-I-go-better, I press the two-tone of the train whistle for her on the piano. No, alla, I’ll jump off! I’d rather walk! But you ride down to the lands in the bakkie with me? Yes, but it’s Même who drives it!

27 October 1954

A. was very naughty today. Stole kindling out of the Aga and set fire in the backyard to an unread newspaper and a lot of brand-new brown-paper bags that I use for storing herb seed, the little blighter! Got to her good and well with the duster. Don’t know what I’m going to tell Jak, he has such a thing about his newspaper. Gave her a good fright, pretended to be phoning the police, made as if I was telling the constable on the phone how naughty she was, asked that they should come and take her away and lock her up in a cell with bars behind a great iron door without food and without pee-pot. Now I really scared the blue heebie-jeebies out of her! That’s right, she should rather be scared than get all forward here. Now she’s good and terrified of the telephone. She listens around the corner every time I speak. I make full use of every opportunity. I ring off when I’ve talked to someone, but I keep the receiver to my ear, and pretend I’m telling the dominee and the police and the magistrate all her tricks and transgressions. This is really a very good way I’ve discovered of keeping her in her place.

4 November 1954

Almost the end of the year again. The first year of Agaat’s life with me. How quickly the time has passed! How different to other years!

I want to write up the beginning of the story but it’s so hot and I’m sitting here on the stoep and I’m feeling exhausted. I try to think back to that day, when exactly the idea got hold of me, why I did it. Because some days I really don’t know any more. We make excellent progress three, four days a week and then there’s some or other setback again. And then she has this way of looking at me that drives me wild. As if I’d destroyed her whole life when for once I have to chastise her! How else must she learn what is good and what is bad?

The Lord is my witness, I don’t know if I’m up to this! I sometimes no longer know myself with this child in the house. How is it possible that the small, deformed, pig-headed, mute child in the back room can make me feel like this? It’s she who’s nothing. And all I wanted to do, was to make a human being of her, to give her something to live for, a house, opportunities, love.

I’m frustrated and impatient and I can’t help it, sometimes she nauseates me (yes, I’m ashamed of myself, but it’s true!). The long jaw, the bulbous eyes that can glare so coercively, the untameable woolly mop, the little crank-handle of an arm, the sly manner at times, the cruelty that sometimes breaks through. How does one make a good heart in a creature that’s so damaged? How will I ever put enough flesh on the puny little body? How do I get all her senses and her mind operative? (Not to mention her conscience!). And a will (but obedient!) and a soul? She resists me, she’s a long way from being tamed.

Sometimes I feel as if the child is a dark little storage cubicle into which I stuff everything that occurs to me and just hope for the best and that one day when I open the door, she’ll walk out of there, fine and straight, all her limbs sound and strong, grateful and ready to serve, a solid person who will make all my tears and misery worthwhile. So that I can show all the world: See, I old you! You didn’t want to believe me, did you?

15 November 1954 morning

Saar came to call me just now from the garden in the back, come and see, Mies, what Agaat is playing. On tiptoe through the kitchen door and peep at her from behind the door. Wouldn’t there be an inquisition of the rag doll on the telephone stool! She deliberately places the doll filled with river sand in such a position that she has to fall off. Then she falls off, then she gets a slap, then she falls off, then she gets a finger in the eye!

Sit, doll, sit! If you can’t sit up straight nicely and look at me, and answer me when I speak to you, then I’m phoning the police!

Next thing she clambers onto the telephone stool, takes the receiver off its cradle. Hello, hello police? Come and fetch her, lock her up! She’s full of stuffing! She looks at me cheekily! She plays dumb! She does her business in her panties!

No lack of imagination, whatever else may be wanting!

The sharpening of the knives.

How many hours ago? I was still asleep, if you can call it sleep, the drowsy delirium in which I drift.

Sudden swishing sounds in the dark by the bed’s head.

Mighty striking-up. Last movement. Metal on metal. Con brio.

From the movement of air against my face I could infer her position. To and fro the rhythm firmed, a rocking to the tempo of the sleeper. She was whetting without varying the angle of the whetting-rod to my bed, a duller sound close to her body, a high sibilant hiss at the furthest point of the rod. The point of the rod was on the railing at the head of the bed, a whetting-wind over my forehead.

Oh, Agaat, what else will you still think up for me? Sharpening knives over the tip of my comatose nose.

It was the big knife, to judge by the sound, the one with the three silver studs on the handle. And it was the longest whetting-rod, the heavy one with the cast-iron handle, the one that’s stored in the long bottom drawer next to the old Aga because it doesn’t fit anywhere else.

It was a culinary demonstration. How old was she? Not old enough yet to handle sharp objects.

See, you support the rod against your waist and the point you rest on the edge of the table.

But that was long ago. The point of the rod now on the top railing of my bed, close to my head. The point of support the midriff of Agaat.

Dangerous game! If the rod were to slip! If the knife were to skip! If the blade were to snap! The meaning of danger! Life-threatening!

Yes, that’s how you do it! Remind me that I still exist! No lack of imagination! Whatever else may be wanting!

How many hours ago? Perhaps she too can no longer count down my hours cleanly. Perhaps she tallies them now by the sharpening of knives, by blades of grass, by the blooms of the bougainvillea dropping with the lightest of rustlings on the stoep.

My honed, grass-light hours.

The apron bands creaked as she sharpened.

Where are you rowing me to, Agaat, to what coast, to what river mouth?

Seven knives I counted by ear, they’re all there, down to the very thin worn-down little one with the crooked blade for scraping carrots and cucumbers in the kitchen of Grootmoedersdrift. Through my chinks I could see them flashing.

Wings of herons, a stormy sky.

Where are you flying to with blades, Agaat, to which high Langeberg horizon?

The bed sang.

In my closeness she found hollows of marrow for me. What more could I want?

Come and stand here in front of me, you’re big enough to learn to handle sharp objects.

I take her hands in mine, the small hand in my right hand. I press the whetting-rod against her body, the strong hand holds the knife, I show her the stroke, it must sing, I say, come let’s make the knives sing!

Why, she asks, do my hands feel as if they’re asleep for hours after I’ve been sharpening?

That shows you’re doing it right, it means the knowledge is going into you, into your flesh and into your bones so that you won’t forget the lesson: You shall know a good kitchen by the edges of its knives, a farm by the sharpness of its shares and its scythes.