Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

That’s not true! I play with her & I teach her to sing & dance. If he were only to give her a bit of attention & to take the time to get closer to her he’d see that she’s an extremely interesting little person (perhaps that’s not the right word, rather wilful, intense, complicated, imaginative — too much so — rather a live wire than a flat tyre as Pa always used to say).

28 May 1955

Bought A. 24 new crayons & 10 jars of poster paints. This evening learnt to write & draw sheep hen donkey rooster. Good perception especially the shape & position of ears mouth etc. I teach her to mix the colours & to cover the whole page not just in the one corner. She’s managing well already but I can still see the backlog.

This evening I thought she was sleeping already, she came & showed me a picture of the farm with GROTMODERSDRUF solemnly written at the top. You have wings because you are my angel she says. I had to help with the practising of the wings on a separate sheet. Only Lucifer the rebellious angel has such spindly black wings I say. Jak has a thatch of black hair on his head & thick black eyebrows & two red spots for cheeks, is sitting on the bonnet of a red car with black wheels. She couldn’t quite get the little man into the car I had to show her & so there I was X2 with my red dress & patched-up wings & Jak X2 first on top of & then inside his car in front of the Grootmoedersdrift homestead complete with chimney & gables & green trees & blue mountains & a flower garden full of birds & lambs & butterflies.

There are two of me now & two of Jak & one of every living thing but where are you then? I ask. She’s inside she says. You’re looking for me I’m hiding from you in the fireplace. Shame the poor child can she be altogether happy? I wonder.

30 May

This morning A. jumps up & down on hr bed & suddenly manages to produce a whistle. Now she can’t stop jumping & the whistle comes more & more regularly great excitement!

4 June ’55

New habit of A.’s. She presses her head against me, you always smell so nice she says. Pushes hr head into my jersey drawer when I’m getting dressed & then just now she disappeared into thin air & I search & I search there I find her in my room, half crawled into the bottom shelf & gone to sleep there with hr head on my jerseys. Now I understand why the cupboard is always so untidy. Always find the little red jersey on top & warm from her sleeping on it. What are you doing in my wardrobe? I scold, sorry she says & my heart grows soft, I press her to me. Your body is sweet she whispers in my ear can I also smell like that one day?

4 June ’55

Our best thing nowadays is to walk in the veld & learn the names of things. Insects, birds, small reptiles, small mammals, grass varieties, wild flowers, stones. I take Pa’s old reference books along in a rucksack & a notebook & a pair of binoculars & her magnifying glass & then we identify things & collect examples. I learn remarkable things myself. A. has a good eye, remembers all marks, sees things that I don’t notice, white speckled breast of a lesser kestrel in a tree, pupae in the grass & cocoons hanging from twigs, webs spun between blades of grass, lizard skeletons, droppings of hare & dassie & antelope. The hangings of the fiscal shrike interest her. That’s why its name is Johnny Hangman I explain but then of course I had to explain the death penalty & its reasons as well.

Showed her a while ago a fossil that Pa picked up way back in the mountains & now she’s got a thing about it, is forever picking up rocks & says break it open there’s something in it & then upon my word she’s been right three or four times! How do you know? I ask. Some stones are warmer than others she says. Can it be that the child has second sight? Arrived here the other day with a little frog, didn’t even know such a thing existed tiny as a match-head, micro-frog according to the amphibians book & today again the loveliest little ivory frog. First had to explain ivory & then how an elephant’s tooth made its way to the name of a frog.

Mole snake, fruit bat, horse-shoe, tapeworm, finch-grass, drift-sand, smother-crop, cannibal spider, emperor butterfly. Soon discovered compounds don’t always work in the same way, sometimes had to think up something to satisfy her.

So then I had this bright idea, a fortunate inspiration it was, or not even that, a premonition & I looked under Agate in Pa’s old minerals book & there it was! Remarkable! Cloud agate Plume agate Fire agate Eye agate Iris agate Snakeskin agate Moss agate Rainbow agate! Look, I say, all the world is in your name. The things of the world are tied to one another at all points with words I say & we know one thing through the name of another thing & we join the names together. It’s a chain & if you move one link then they all move the possibilities are endless.

She wants to go & catch that blue butterfly, she says, for hr collection. I say you don’t catch it it’s holy. She’s not scared of butterflies she says they don’t bite what is holy. I said I’d think. Full of that kind of question nowadays. Where is heaven, why do people die, where is one’s soul attached, why is a thing the thing that it is & not another thing. Heaven is a stone she says out of the blue. Yes I say precious stone walls of jasper & streets of gold. No she says that’s not what she means & she shows me the stone with the fossilised fern leaf. That’s the soul she says trapped in heaven, I ask you!

In the evenings she unpacks all our finds & arranges them by kind. Can’t keep up with dishes & bottles boxes bands & scrapbooks & felt squares, pins, thumb tacks, paper clips for all the specimens she wants to display. Remarkably precise & persistent the child, it’s exceptional I think. I give her a free hand even though it smells like a witchdoctor’s shop there in her little room. Saar & Lietja say she was born with the caul. What an adventure!

7 June ’55

This afternoon after lunch A. disappeared into thin air & returned very dirty. Had actually walked to the forest on hr own! I gave hr a good hiding. The tokoloshe will catch you, I said it’s no place for little children remember your name is Good. Good, she says crying, one good two goods, goods is loose goods she says crying & and goods are a lot of things that don’t have a name & goods are your goods that you have in your suitcase, stolen goods. Not at a loss for words. I tell hr look out you don’t talk back at me do you want another hiding? Good is true good is beautiful good is noble.

8 June ’55

What all are you writing in your little book? asks Agaat. A story, I say, about a little girl who can whistle already! Can I too? she asks. Here she is now taking the red crayon!

I rite in my meme’s boke.

I lov hir verry mutch.

My one hand is big and the uther is smal,

She lovs me verry mutch to.

Let’s spell properly:

write

book

love

her

very

much

other

small

too

She’s speaking good Afrikaans now. Only the infinitive of the verb in combination with preposition creates problems at times. To about laugh, she says, to about cry.

10 June 1955

I put up all the pictures she draws on the walls of her room, two eagle owls on a branch, a red princess with a crown on her head, a bristling black cat on yellow paper. The child amazes me. Looks at me the other day when we were having a picnic under the big old rock fig: Why can a tree only be a tree? Because it’s holy I say. What is holy? she asks again. I say everything that’s wild everything that’s free, everything that we didn’t make ourselves, everything that we can’t cling to & tie down. Your soul is holy. Wouldn’t she gaze at me: But you caught me & tamed me. So I pressed hr close to me, shame.