Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Jakkie twirled his glass in his hand. You caught his eye, signalled: Be quiet, just ignore. You beckoned to Agaat to clear the table.

Jak threw his hands in the air.

Are you all going to ignore me now? Have you swallowed your tongue, Jakkie? Then answer me when I’m speaking to you, chappie. Agaat, put down the dishes, you’ll just have to hear as well what your pet says to us. Kleinbaas Jakkie here, it seems he wants away, a little bird told me, away from his beloved nursemaid with whom he speaks in secret on the telephone.

Then Jakkie let go of his glass and it tilted out of his hand, and the wine splashed a long red stain on the white tablecloth.

Pa, he managed, and then Agaat was in between with cloths and water and salt, you could see her touching Jakkie, how she was trying to calm him with her body, now this side of him, now that, now over one shoulder and then over the other. She brought a clean glass from the kitchen and poured it full of wine for him and topped up Jak’s glass. A whole bustle she organised there around the glasses, as if she were trying to distract their attention by sleight of hand.

Our beloved Gaat, Jak continued, our baker and butler, just like a hen trying to keep her chickens together. Look at this dabchick, Gaat, he gets quite out of kilter when his father wants to catechise him.

Jakkie got up, threw down his napkin. Jak leant over the table and pushed him back into his chair.

No, have a seat first so that I can tell you something, man, he said, as if he were at a congenial gathering of farmers.

He started in a roundabout way, with Elsa Joubert’s book about which people were writing letters in the press at the time. The one your mother bought and never finished, he said, ostensibly because it was too sad, as if your mother’s ever had problems with any sadness. His eyes played mockingly over you, but you weren’t the one in his sights. Jakkie must explain to him what structural violence is, he said.

Jakkie looked up and looked away, his body was quaking with the trembling of his legs under the table. Agaat tried to sidle away towards the kitchen.

Then Jak got up and pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, tap-tapped his hand on the backrest.

Come, Gaat, come and sit down for a while, this was always your place, wasn’t it, he said. You must listen very carefully now, your kleinbaas, Captain de Wet here, is going to give us an exposition. I don’t see any structural violence or any other violence against you except that little half-way arm of yours. Fucked crooked or kicked crooked, doesn’t matter. No long journeys for you, only a nice servant’s room with a fireplace, settled for life here on Grootmoedersdrift. Structural advantages, I’d say. White people’s food, white people’s language, a white apron, white sheets and here’s your little white pet who shares his little secrets with you that his own mother and father aren’t allowed to hear. They hear only the little white lies. Come on, Jakkie, tell us, what is structural violence?

Jak walked around the table and gestured to Agaat to sit down on the chair. For a moment you thought he was going to take her by the thin arm, but he didn’t, he just gestured with his head. Agaat shut off her regard. Very upright, very rigidly she sat down on the edge of the chair.

White tablecloths, white candles, fragrant white flowers, Jak said and gestured with open arms, so white is she that she plays back all the little white things as she knows we like them. Exactly what old Poppie Whatsername also did, recounted her miseries as she knew the writer wanted to hear them, a story that could be sold, it’s being translated into all kinds of languages nowadays, they say. Even shares in the profits, the kaffir-girl. Remarkable business, Afrikaners making a name for themselves with coon stories that they pick up in the backyard and spread far and wide as gospel truth.

Jak took a large gulp from his glass.

Should your father tell you what he thinks, Jakkie? He thinks the world finds us whites in this country interesting only for what we’re supposed to have done to the hotnots and the kaffirs. And then they’re going to hold it against us all over again because we dare write down on behalf of the so-called victims what we did to them. No, we should rather kindly teach the poor devils to write their own stories and package it for them. First-class export produce. Whether we’ll then see anything of the profits is another matter!

Jak’s tongue was dragging. His gestures were emphatic.

At least he’s not violent, you thought. You tried to catch Agaat’s eye in case he should become violent. She feigned blindness to you, her eyes were on Jakkie who was taking substantial gulps from his new glass of wine.

How about it, Agaat? Jak prodded, you’re the exception here after all. Your nooi has already taught you nicely how to write, hasn’t she. Dear sir, yours respectfully, if I may make so bold. More Afrikaans than the whole lot of newspaper journalists can dream of. You after all write long letters to dear gracious Captain de Wet here. He can surely not have thrown them away. Perhaps he should collect them and post them to dear Mrs Joubert so that she can brush up your Dutch a bit so that everyone can understand it. Then you’ll have a new life. Then they’ll come and interview you. That Poppie didn’t know whether she was coming or going, so, apparently, they thronged around her to make TV movies. Over and over the same story of her long journey she had to tell, she must have got bored to death, wouldn’t surprise me if in the end she started adding on a journey here and a journey there, to at least keep the matter interesting for herself.

Jakkie shook his head, covered his face with his hands.

Jak, that’s enough, you said.

Jak kept talking over your interjection. How about it, Agaat? You wouldn’t have to add on anything if they asked you. Your story is better than the back page of the Rapport .

Bring pen and paper, then I’ll give you the long and short of it, he said to Agaat.

She didn’t move, remained looking in front of her. Jak walked up and down dictating.

White woman childless steals baby woolly with one arm stop one-armed woolly catches baby boy on mountain pass stop toy aeroplane explodes stop woolly saves stop woolly gives tit/shit/bread/head.

Perhaps you’d prefer a little song, Jak said. Your mother here after all always taught you little songs. That’s what you understand.

Jak didn’t sing. Here beyond the hill on our farm, he said, the sheep get bluetongue, the wheat gets rust, wifey blubbers, hubby batters, you name it, every disaster in the book.

And then? The son grows up, he squashes his father flat on the rocks of the Huis River, he becomes a soldier, a fighter pilot, for three years he bombs every FAPLA, SWAPO, MPLA and Cuban from an Impala in the moonlight in South West.

And look at him now! Strikes a funk at twenty-five in the year of our Lord nineteen eighty-five in our beleaguered South Africa, with bugger-all to say for himself. Just when we need him most.

And the woolly just writes on.

Jak first saluted Agaat, and then Jakkie.

I’m sure you are aware, dear Captain, that Mrs de Wet, your esteemed mother, opens all her servant’s letters to her son here. .

Jakkie glared at you for a moment, and then at Agaat. He blinked his eyes slowly, and put his head on his arms on the table.

So, Agaat, Jak said, that’s the story. Can you think us up a conclusion? After all, you’re used to embroidering!

How long did it last? Half an hour, an hour? Jak looked as if he was going to start crying. He slammed his fist on the table, but there was no strength in the blow.

Don’t you people have anything to say? he shouted.