Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Shame, how much the wiser is she for all of it? Should I send hr to school? I don’t know what I thought would come of it. Will just have to see how things develop. She’s now varnishing all the bugs with hard shells to try to preserve them but they just dissolve all the more quickly from it. Will have to phone nature conservation to ask them how one does it.

15 April 1957

A. has now thought up a whole dance of hr own on the model of the Greeting to the Sun which she still does every morning. Decided to keep it up every day from the start because I still see sometimes the stiffness & the withdrawal into herself as soon as she’s tired or tense. The Greeting works well as light exercise for the crooked shoulder. Now there’s no stopping her now she’s even teaching me. Again this morning we had the so-called dance of the emperor butterfly that first sits dead still with its wings tightly folded, half-frozen in the morning twilight with dew on its nose & the outside of the wings pitch-black with white stars & its antennae still filmed with night & then it unfolds its wings with the dawning so she tells & she invents the dance as she goes along. Once, twice, three times slowly the wings open as soon as he catches the first rays of the sun & then he feels one wing is different & he turns his head & looks over his shoulder & he sees hey, but this wing is a heavenly blue on the inside & it tickles & it trills & it shimmers & he gets the urge to fly, quite intoxicated with his own colour in the sun that’s rising higher & higher & shining brighter & brighter & he doesn’t know if he wants the blue rather on the one or rather on the other wing he tries to have it on both.

Heaven knows where she fetches it all from. She’s never seen the Apatura iris itself it’s just what I’ve told hr about it.

A whole extended dance of the two of us it turned into this morning. First in hr room where she explained the dance & then into my room & out of my room by the door of the side stoep & round the front again & down the stoep steps & down the garden path & through the last gillyflowers & around the great oak in the middle of the garden. Even the little thin arm flutters & flaps along in the long crocheted sleeve. Then I chase hr & then she chases me & it tripples & it leaps with extended legs over the flowerbeds. Point your toes Gaat! I call & demonstrate the ballet position with the hands & she teaches me the quick flashing-open of the wings & the tilt & the sheer ascent & the tumbling & the drop of the great forest butterfly then we both roll in the grass, she half on top of me, our limbs intertwined. Caught! she shouts. Then she puts hr arms around my neck & says: Close your eyes open your eyes my Même you’re my only mother. Now I’m crying too much to carry on writing here.

2 August 1958

Quarrel with J. about A.: What do I want to do with hr when she’s big? he asks, after all she can’t stay in the house with us for ever. I’d better make a plan, he says, it’s either she or him.

25 August 1958

All hell loose here. Went out to B. to deliver down for her eiderdowns this afternoon. When I got back A. was sitting in the corner in hr room & it’s chaos. Apparently J. got the idea into his head that A.’s stuff in her collections is infesting the house with beetles & wood-borer & mites & undesirable fungi & heaven knows what else & then he chucked out the whole lot in a heap in the backyard. Ordered A. to get rid of the rest. Apparently doesn’t want a single object or picture or list of words or feather or horn or packet of fennel seed in hr room except what belongs in a bedroom.

Helped her to rescue what could be rescued & consoled I’ll help to start all over again with the collection but she’s inconsolable over hr birds’ eggs & hr mounted insects & dried wild flowers. Even the leopard skull smashed there in the backyard. Good Lord it’s all the child possesses such innocent little playthings. Fortunately the fossil stones are unharmed.

Very sad about all the pictures that J. tore up. Thought I’d keep a few for hr from when she was small so that one day when she’s grown up she can marvel at them.

26 August 1958

A. sulking. What does she want me to do? I can’t exactly fling J. over my lap & give him a hiding for what he’s done? I know better than to scold him. Best is to stay out of his way & not to confront him. She refuses to eat sits there at table & glares at me as if I’m the one who broke her stuff.

28 August 1958

Took A. to the circus tonight to console her & then that also turned out a fiasco because we bought three tickets but then they wouldn’t let her go in with us on the white side. The man was in fact quite rude. What could I do? So then we went to the non-white entrance & then the white ticket wasn’t right & if she wouldn’t make me buy a coloured ticket & all & then she didn’t want to go in on her own but by then Jak & I already had our tickets & of course by this time he was already irritated with all the trouble with his now-do-you-see expression on his face. So I suggested that he should go in & Agaat & I would stroll around outside amongst the cages & the caravans outside & look at the animals & the artistes because it was still dusk. A whole to-do there at the entrance to the approach tent: The elephant & the ponies with plumed crests & the horse-lifter with his tiger-skin suit & the clowns starting to practise to be funny. We would then go & wait for him in the car. But that was then of course not good enough either & he grabs me by the arm there amongst all the people & he hisses in my ear: You will go in with me woman & then I had to leave the poor A. right there. Had just enough time to give her money for an ice-cream. Terrible sitting there in the tent. Could enjoy nothing so upset was I & I could think of nothing but A. who’s really not used to strange places & so many people. When we came out she was sitting in the dust next to the car in the parking lot because of course it was locked all the time. Fortunately it wasn’t cold but now she’s angry with me all over again & all I was trying to do was make it up to her.

J. has just been here glaring at me: Write! Write! with those little claw-paws of yours what good is it going to do you? There’s a life here to be lived & decisions to be taken & work to be done & next thing I see you’re sitting & churning away at your silly little books & I’m waiting for you in the room don’t forget I’m your husband & I also have my needs. When he’s like that there’s nothing to be done about it. Will just have to go so that he can have done & cool off.

29 August 1958

Crawled in behind A’s back in tears again last night. J. particularly rough after the whole circus episode & swears & scolds & abuses me to my very soul. Another dress with a broken zip. I suppose I shouldn’t turn to the poor child for refuge. In the end she was the one who comforted me. Never mind she says I don’t have to feel bad she looked through a slit in the tent & saw the ringmaster’s high hat & the antics of Tickey & the trapeze artists on the highest rung their red velvet slippers with the shiny stuff & then she stood back when the drums started ruffling to say here it comes they’re going to jump & then she could see from the shadows on the tent wall & the spotlights how they swung & let go & turned somersaults in the air & caught each other by the arms at the last minute & then she went closer again & saw the trumpets shining as they were lifted to blow. So then of course I cried more than ever & the more I cried the more tightly she locked her arms around me. Nothing to about cry she whispers in my ear, must I go & make Même a glass of warm milk? Father in heaven how am I going to resolve this matter?