Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Do you want to read notes and hum?

Do you want to go for a swim in the reservoir?

Shall I make you some custard with apricot jam and bananas?

But that’s all in the past now.

I close my eyes.

I have a life beyond your lists, is what it wants to say. I have needs that you cannot imagine, even if you were to cast your cap in bronze.

It maddens her. That she can’t meet my every need, that she doesn’t know everything I think, that frustrates her beyond all measure.

To peer into my head at what is playing there, that’s what she desires. There’s protest in her voice when she speaks, but I know that’s only the upper layer, that’s what she can afford to have me hear.

Shall I draw the curtain a bit?

Do you want to listen to the morning service?

A tape?

Wine women and song?

The pan for number one?

The pan for number two?

Too cold?

Too hot?

Sit up straighter?

Lie down flatter?

Eat a bit more porridge?

Fruit pulp? There is cold melon? With a bit of salt?

Water?

Tea with honey and lemon?

After every question she waits for me to reply, but I keep my eyes shut. That means you’re cold, you’re far out, you don’t have a clue, my need is a subtle one.

I open my eyes. I seek her gaze. I widen my eyes.

No! No! and again no!

Everything is swimming before my eyes, but she carries on. She coerces me, I must comprehend the extent of her goodwill. Nothing she wouldn’t do for me. Anything within the bounds of justice and reason.

I close my eyes again.

Her voice rises by a whole tone. Slightly faster it comes now.

Read? Must I set up the reading stand and page for you?

Must I read to you?

Genesis?

Job?

A psalm of David?

Revelations?

The Bible according to Agaat. God’s delirium and man’s tremblement.

I open my eyes but I give no sign, I fix my gaze straight ahead of me. That means: Go away, you’re irritating me.

From the corner of my eye I see her hitch up her shoulder. She rustles a finger through the pile of little blue books on the chair.

Or something from your own pen? That always interests you doesn’t it? The good old days, ‘Agaat and the garden of Grootmoedersdrift 1980’? But this one is empty. It says ‘paradise’ at the top and then it’s just a list of plants.

She runs her finger down the page. Moonflower, flowering quince, silver birch, she reads. She slaps shut the book.

Pity it’s not the whole story, she says, her mouth pleated, it’s just a skeleton. And the gardening was quite pleasant. She taps the front of the book.

Perhaps I should write it up in here myself. But perhaps we should finish furnishing my paradise first before we start on yours, don’t you think? We’re right in the middle of it now. Hr little rm that you fixed up so nicely for hr in the back here, remember? How did the baas always say? Something for the Guinness Book of Records . First time in history. Interior decoration for an outside room. Thought you could hide it from me. Then the ounooi came to do inspection and left the door open. Then Saar saw. But by then I’d known for a long time.

Agaat is trying to provoke me. I give no quarter. I keep my eyes neutral.

Ad nauseam I’ve heard it in a variety of performances. Perhaps she’s going to sing it again this evening. Seven aprons, seven caps, one dozen white socks and a little vase for homeliness.

Perhaps she’ll beat time with her shoe in her hand on the armrest of the chair. That would be better. Anything would be better than her sitting still and reading and glaring at me every now and again as if I’d done her some wrong.

Let her leap, let her dance, let her grab one little book after the other and put it down and spin around in the middle of the room, a starched-aproned dervish without the blessing of release.

As long as she understands I also have my rights.

I want to see my ground, I want to see my land, even if only in outline, place names on a level surface. I want to send my eyes voyaging.

Perhaps you feel like a video?

She’s not looking at me, she’s looking at the books on the little pile. I saw her counting them the other evening. There are sixty-three. I thought there were more.

The one about the snow wolves? Or the black-and-white killer whales? Or the giant bats of the Amazon?

A grimace on her mouth. As if she can see me hooking tiny damp claws into the mane of a horse, how I attach myself to the jugular vein, as if there’s a close-up of my ingurgitating mouth-parts.

Anything rather than having to confess that I’m locked up here as if behind thick one-way glass and she’s out there and doesn’t know what on earth it is that I want.

Or a story movie? Before I go to exchange them tomorrow?

A Passage to India ?

Where Angels Fear to Tread ?

On Golden Pond ?

How many syllables can you speak without saying an ‘m’? Utter how many sentences without using the word ‘map’? Think how many thoughts before you stumble upon the idea of a schematic representation of the world?

You’d think it would be indispensable, like the air that you breathe.

My cheeks are wet.

I close my eyes. I keep them shut. I give up. I flicker my eyelids without opening them. Cheeky, that’s supposed to mean, surely you can see it’s something completely different, get the hell out of my room with your damned lists.

I hear her turn on her heel. Rapid steps down the passage to the bathroom. She returns with a warm cloth. She wipes my face in two swipes.

Stop blubbering, you’ll choke, say her eyes.

It’s tooth-polishing time, says her mouth.

I flicker through my tears, polish yourself.

Aitsa! says Agaat, how-now.

She pushes the plug of the electric toothbrush into the socket. She holds the green toothbrush with the rotary head in the air to test it. Tsiiimmm, it goes, tsiiimmm-tsoommm. She unscrews the lid of the powder-stuff. She presses the head of the toothbrush in it. It’s a dry polish. It tastes of lime, of dust, of blackboard chalk. Against the light I can see the dust particles eddying around her hands.

Right, says Agaat, the full piano, tooth by tooth, from the middle down the front to the back, first cheek-side then tongue-side, we start at the top.

She puts down the toothbrush in a bowl on the trolley. She puts on a pair of latex gloves. The rubber clicks and snaps. The small hand looks like a mole. It burrows blindly into the glove. The other hand looks like pliers.

The monkey mourns the monkey’s mate, she sings on a held-in breath.

She takes the mouth-clamp out of the sterile water. She lets it drip. Then she spins the screw closed. Wrrrr, it turns back on its thread. The drops spatter my face.

I flicker with my eyes, please watch what you’re doing!

Ag so sorry, she says. She swabs my cheek with a piece of cotton wool. Swab, swab, swab. Left right left.

And monkey tears are cold and wet, she carries on singing.

Lord, I say with my eyes, Lord you.

I beg yours? asks Agaat.

She compresses the spring of the screw and manoeuvres it into my mouth. The flat cold foot of stainless steel rests on my tongue, the curved upper part fits into the hollow of my palate. She releases the spring. My mouth starts to open.

Jacked up, says Agaat.

She looks out of the door while she winds open the screw in my mouth. She knows the procedure. She likes Leroux’s gadgets. The dry-polish toothbrush was a real winner. It gives her an opportunity to get into my mouth, under my tongue, behind my teeth.

Dry polish spares you, she said that day when she unpacked the toothbrush, we must use that mouth of yours for nothing but swallowing.