Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Now, she says, concentrate, breathe.

My jaws creak.

A bit more, says Agaat, she turns the screw, so that we can reach everywhere nicely, she says.

With the last few turns she looks at what she’s doing. She avoids my eyes. Her gaze is fixed on my mouth cavity. There’s a flickering on her face.

In the road is a hole, she says.

I know the rest. In the hole is a stone, in the stone is a sound. Riddle me ree, perhaps you can tell what this riddle may be.

Now she’s looking into my eyes.

We do it in one go, she says. That’s better than stopping half-way. Otherwise you taste the nasty stuff, right? And then you want to swallow, but we’re saving your swallowing for food, right?

Tsiiiimmm, goes the brush, tsiiimmm-tsoommm in the air.

I close my eyes. I feel Agaat pulling away my upper lip from my front teeth. It can take half an hour or five minutes. It depends. If she sees tears, I’m punished. The toothbrush is on its slowest setting. It makes a low drilling sound when it touches my teeth. My whole head vibrates with it. The powder drifts up my nose. I concentrate. I breathe. I mustn’t choke.

And day and night in sun and moon, she takes up the song, as if nothing has intervened. She works her way through the teeth in my upper jaw. She lifts up my lip like the edge of a carpet.

The monkey sings the same old tune.

She peels away my lower lip from my guns. For my lower jaw she has a hymn.

Delay not, delay not, o sinner, draw near, she sings, the waters of life are now flowing for thee. She switches off the toothbrush.

Keep still, she says, I hear a dog barking. She pulls off one glove, shrrrts.

I lie with my mouth prised open. The air is cold in my mouth, the chrome plate presses against my palate. On my tongue seeps the chalky taste of the powder.

I hear no dog barking. Turtledoves are what I hear.

The doves of my yard.

Everything carries on as always, everything will be as it was, the shadows of the bluegums, the doves of morning. The next morning even, when I am gone, will be filled with the usual sounds, as if nothing had happened. The bail will jingle against the bucket, the storeroom door will scuff the threshold, the laughter of the farm boys down by the drift playing with their wire cars on the little bridge, you’ll hear it all the way from the yard, as now, the screen door will bang with the morning’s in-and-out around the kitchen.

Agaat scrapes her shoes on the front-door mat. She comes down the passage. I heard the bakkie come back. Perhaps Dawid had gone to fetch post from town. Perhaps there was a letter from Jakkie. Or a tape with some kind of pigmy music.

But when she comes in, her gaze betrays nothing of the kind.

Where were we? she says.

Every surface is attended to. She says nothing further about the dogs. I know her by now. She goes away and leaves me like this just so that she can come in at the door again. So that she can have a fresh view of her patient. Of the progress of the operation.

In the stone there is no sound.

Gone is the sun and gone is the moon.

The monkey’s mouth’s in a metal mount.

She undoes the screw, whirrrrs it in my mouth, pulls it out, plops it back into the water.

There’s a mite too much attitude to the wrist. As if she’s arranging flowers before an audience.

Right, she says, now for the dusting. She dips a swab in water. She wipes my gums, my palate, the corners of my mouth. There’s a special sponge to remove scurf from my tongue.

Say ‘ah’ for doctor, says Agaat.

I close my eyes. What have I done wrong?

The little mole-hand nuzzles out my tongue. The screw has squashed it in my mouth. My shrunken tongue, fallen in, deformed by the paralysis. There was a time when I could put it out and look at it in the mirror, read the signs myself. Your tongue betrays everything about your intestines.

I feel a tugging at my tongue. The grip tremors with a faint temptation: Where is it fixed? how firmly? with what strings? how long is it?

My tongue is being staked out for its turn at ablution.

The sponge is rough. With vigorous strokes my tongue is scrubbed down. It tastes powerfully of peppermint. Three times the sponge is recharged before Agaat is satisfied. My tongue feels eradicated.

There, she says, pulling away my lips from my teeth to inspect her handiwork.

Ounooi, she says, full piano.

She lets my lips slump back, arranges them decorously over my teeth so that I don’t smirk, and regards me hand on hip.

The only other option is simply to pull all your teeth. All in one go. Then the tooth fairy will put money in your shoe. The question is, she says, a glint in her eye, how much does one pump into you so that you feel absolutely nothing?

She turns away for the punchline, pronounces it as if it’s the most normal of sentences.

It’s not as if you can squirm or scream.

She rinses her strong hand in the bowl of water.

Only the gums and palate to go. That you like, don’t you?

She dips her fingers in the peppermint mouthwash. She puts her thumb and forefinger on either side of my mouth. She massages my gums, first the lower and then the upper. She looks out of the stoep door while she does it. The rhythm of the massaging action calms her. She becomes more tranquil. Her fingers move more gently, more kindly on my gums. Then it becomes caressing. Forgive me, ask the fingers, I also have a hard time with you, you know.

Now she’s not looking at me. You can’t talk, say the fingers. How in God’s name must I know what you want? For days now you’ve been nagging at me about something you want. I don’t know what it is! I can’t hear what you’re thinking!

More passionate the movement becomes. Agaat curses me in the mouth with her thumb and index finger. Bugger you! I feel against my palate, bugger you and your mother. I didn’t ask to be here!

I read her sign language with the membranes of my mouth, eyes closed.

If I could rub some speech into your mouth, then I’d do it, you hear! You’d better watch your step with me! You’d conk out without me! You’re conking out as it is, I can’t help it. And it’s I who conk out, I’m actually the one who suffers here.

She takes her hand from my mouth. Long strings of drool she draws out. She takes off the gloves. Slap, slap, they fall into the bin. She wipes my face, the tears from my cheeks.

Thank you, I signal briefly.

You’re welcome, says Agaat.

She turns her back on me. She tidies the things on the trolley. She looks at her watch. Suddenly she’s in a hurry. She draws the curtain with quick little plucks, arranges the covers over me.

I lie with my eyes shut. My mouth feels numb. Better that she should not see my eyes. Better that she should not think now that I’m asking her something. I’m waiting for her hand on my shoulder. That would mean: We do what we can, as well as we can, you and I, and: I’m not going far.

I wait for her voice, for her to say something like: I will think what it can be, I will find it out, just give me a chance, in the end I always riddle it out.

But she says nothing, slides something cold under my hand.

Joke.

The finishing touch to the scene.

It’s the hand-bell.

You ring your little bell, and I’ll ring mine.

Relentless, her memory.

Perhaps I can let the bell roll away over the bedspread, make it fall off the bed.

Now you just stop your snivelling, says the glance she flings at me. She draws the curtains completely, all but a chink, walks out with brisk steps.

In the front room the grandfather clock chimes eight o’clock. I hear Agaat opening the glass door of the clock and winding it. From the tempo of the winding I can tell she knows I’m listening. She turns slowly, so that I can hear the cogs clearly, the spring, how it coils in on itself.