Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

12 July 1955

Baked a pretty birthday cake with seven candles collected a whole boxful of little reading books from everybody who no longer uses them nicely wrapped in shiny paper & a ribbon but then there was another incident ai, one of the children I invited apparently mocked A. so she locked him in the outside toilet & he bawled the place down. Gave her a terrific hiding more because she refuses to tell me what he’s supposed to have said to her that made her lock him up. You tell me everything, you don’t have secrets from me I tell her, only good secrets you’re allowed that the Lord knows about.

16 September 1955

Just saw something that breaks my heart. Heard just now back there in the kitchen the red-chested cuckoo in the front garden but it carries on & on & and I go & look here on the front stoep to see where they’re nesting & all the time it was A. standing on the stoep all concentration. Every time he calls she whistles back wheet-wheet-wooee & then she waits until he replies, the little face sheer wonder, she can’t believe what’s happening. Just left again quietly because I could see it was a very private moment & thus far she hasn’t breathed a word of it to me. She goes around with I-have-a-secret written all over her face.

17 April 1956

All the drilling every day has not been in vain, A. really coming along so nicely in reading & writing. Saw her today sitting there & spelling out the stories in the Children’s Bible, asks me a big word every now & again: Righteousness, compassion, hallucination, ire, damnation, grace. I write them all down, nicely split up in syllables & put them up in her room next to her other lists so that she can absorb them. Have done memorising & summarising exercises and comprehension tests with her a few times. She’s not stupid at all, I tend to keep it to the Farmer’s Weekly & to farming matters that she knows. Hmmm, says Jak, teach the young idea how to shoot. Sarcastic as always.

3 May 1956

A. has the habit of just disappearing. Give her a hiding regularly but she carries on doing it. Had to scold like anything again yesterday. What do you do when you run off, what kind of mischief do you get up to? I dig she says. I look at the nails, I see the soil. What do you dig! I ask. Little furrows she says. What kind of little furrows? For seed, she says. Then a great light dawned for me about the fennel that’s shooting up everywhere in the garden & in the yard & next to the irrigation furrow & the orchard all the way to beyond the dirt road in the dryland I noticed the yellow heads of fennel in flower. You’re infesting the place! I say, you’re making work for yourself, you’ll pull up every last bush! I won’t she says they’re my plants. Impossible at times the child, wonder how long she’s been at it. Yes says Jak, Minister of Fennel one day.

28 June 1956

Last night a squabble with Jak again because apparently I’m spending too much time & money on A. Should never have shown him the cloth I bought. Red for a party dress for hr birthday in two weeks’ time. He says he doesn’t want a cake-gobbling here again it always just leads to unpleasantness & he’s tired of answering people’s questions about it. He says people ask him if Agaat addresses him as baas or pa or uncle. So now I teach her I’m nooi Milla & Jak is Mr de Wet. But she forgets, she still calls me Même when she’s glad or excited, & Jak of course will have nothing but baas.

10 November 1956

She remains self-conscious about the little arm. It’s too hot in summer for long sleeves but she won’t wear short-sleeved dresses & you can’t really have the child walk around with just one long sleeve.

15 November 1956

Found a solution at last. From fine crochet-cotton crocheted a pretty little jersey to wear over hr dresses, the right-hand sleeve is longer & with a cuff that covers half the little hand. Looks as if she’ll wear it like that. White ribbons in the hair as well. I make hr stand in front of the mirror. Now you look just like a snowflake I say.

18 November 1956

Crawled into bed with A. again last night & slept till the morning Jak leaves me just like that when he’s done & he’s not satisfied till I scream he’s hurting me as if that will do any good. Woke up in the early morning with A. crept up completely into me when I got up she woke up half-asleep still: I can whistle like the birds do you know? kokkewiet & johnny hangman & dikkop all of them.

22 November 1956

Got a bright idea from an old book for A.’s hair. I usually keep it cut short but can’t manage the woolly head all that well. So then we sat for hours in the backyard in the shade against the wall & I plaited her hair in little strings flat against the scalp but I couldn’t get it regular & in straight lines as in the picture. Must take a lot of practice like basket-weaving. So then the kitchen-girls laughed at the result: Now mies has just got Agaat white & then she tries to turn her into a Transkei kaffir-girl & then A. heard it & ran away when she saw herself in the mirror the fat was really in the fire & I had to undo it all & it took much longer than the plaiting itself because by now everything was properly knotted & it pulled & Agaat screamed like a banshee. A whole palaver. I suppose it’s better just to wash it every day with Johnson’s baby shampoo at least one knows it’s clean.

10 February 1957

Went to collect old arithmetic books from the school day before yesterday to work through. She multiplies & divides like anything & recites her tables to 6, not all that far behind the standard twos in town. Have started teaching hr notes & simple scales just for the one hand. The other one’s fingers can still not open all that well. We play simple tunes together I play the right hand. Must say I enjoy it tremendously. Jak says teach an ape to play chopsticks today & tomorrow he plays chop-chop with your head.

24 February 1957

Took A. up into Luipaardskloof to the bat cave she’s very fascinated by a mouse that can fly creepy & smelly the place & the swarms wheeling about our heads A. just wants to stay to look & asks how do they hang how do they sleep why do they squeak like that. Managed with great difficulty to get hold of one. Could show hr nicely the membrane between the spokes & the big ear for receiving the bounced-back squeaking sounds & the pig-like little snout-beak.

23 March 1957

Unpacked my old music books & started practising again after all these years, little Bach partitas & the old evergreens that aren’t too difficult to play. Liebestraum, Song Without Words, Largo. Gives me quite a new lease on life.

A. can’t get enough of music. Play hr Pa’s old records on the wind-up gramophone. She likes the lieder best, once I’ve told her the story & the words she wants to listen again & again, mad about the folk tunes of Mahler, St Anthony preaching to the fish & Wo die schönen Trompetten blasen. I play it until we can sing along little bits. She blows the trumpet notes through a rolled-up sheet of paper, beats the drums of ghost soldiers on saucepan lids & marches all over the house. We powder hr face white & draw a skull with charcoal on hr face & then she enters completely into it all. Kill myself laughing at all the actions. Just have to be careful always that Jak doesn’t come across it because he’s full of mockery as if he’s ashamed of playing & gentleness & laughter.

Let hr listen to the radio to the classical music programmes & teach hr the names of the pieces, the tempo indications, tell her the stories of the operas. She already knows many of the FAK songs & quite a few psalms & hymns. We sing them together in the morning when I wake hr & in the evenings when she goes to bed & when we’re working in the kitchen or driving to the sheep. Teach her the second voice. Oh moon you drift so slow & Let me wander through the heather are hr best. Can carry a tune quite well the little child. As pants the hart for cooling streams she whistles there in hr room when she’s pinning her rose beetles to the felt. A whistling woman & a crowing hen is neither good for God nor men I say. What’s a hart she asks. Found a photo of a hart in the old Encyclopaedia Britannica, absorbs knowledge like a sponge. Sits there & pages in the old books in the sitting room whenever she has a chance. Reads on hr own now every day three new words & three new things as I drilled her & write it down & sticks it up in hr room. Zither, lute, tambourine. Even copies it from the drawings.