Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Come and fetch me, Jak, I want to come back. And I’m bringing someone with me, somebody who needs care, you announced later that evening when the call came through.

Just not your mother, Jak started.

My mother can care for herself, Jak, it’s the youngest child of Maria of Piet who was, she’s being terribly neglected here in the hovels, she’ll perish if somebody doesn’t intervene.

What nonsense, Milla! If the people want to perish, then they perish, why must I take responsibility for it?

You needn’t do anything, Jak, it’s my child and I’ll raise her.

Between you there was the usual barrage of clicks and beeps of the fellow-listeners on the party line.

When Jak spoke again, his voice was dry.

We’ll talk later, Milla, you obviously have no idea. .

Never you mind, Jak, all shall be well. .

I’ll be there at twelve tomorrow, and then I’ll want to leave at once, tell your mother I won’t be eating.

He put down the phone in your ear. You stood there clutching the receiver to your chest. Images rose before you, of you hand-in-hand with the child turning your back on Jak and walking away, of you glaring at him until he lowered his head and stood aside to allow you to pass.

Your mother came out into the passage. Without a word you walked past her and went to your room and started packing your things.

One by one you held your clothes up in front of you in the unsteady light of the generator: Floral smock, sleeveless summer blouse, full-length petticoat hemmed with lace, before you folded them and packed them in the case. The generator switched off. Through the window you caught a glimpse of a torch moving away from the house in the direction of the cottages. You thought of the child there, in the dark, amongst the people you’d seen that afternoon.

Open-eyed you lay in the dark amongst the cases on the bed and thought about what you’d say, to the frowning elders, to the little deacon of the farm collection in his black frock-coat, to the hatted-and-handbagged older women at the ward prayer-meeting, to George the Greek of the Good Hope Café, to sanctimonious Beatrice, to MooiJak de Wet arranging his cravat in front of the mirror before going out on a Saturday evening.

Your neat speech wouldn’t stand up, no matter how often you rehearsed it in your head: Here I stand, I can do no other.

The argument faded before your excitement. Your heart started beating so hard that you had to get up to drink water from the ewer, to light the candle and snuff it again, to stand by the open window looking out over the yard. Your heart. You placed your hand against your neck to feel the pulse.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, went through your head, one two buckle my shoe, blind man’s buff, you’re it, you must hide, you must seek, you’re out, ring-a-ring-a’roses, pocket full of posies, a-tishoo! a-tishoo! we all fall down, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can, four stand in the road four hang in the road, two gore you in the groin and one flicks away flies, what is it? Look at the clouds, do you see the cayman with its pointy tail and do you see the centipede, do you see the Magicman? And the swift-spit snake? Let’s count the horses stamping their hoofs behind the moon and the stars of the Southern Cross and of the Scorpion and the thirty-three fleeces of the thistle till we get sleepy, till we sleep. Outside walks a sheep. Iron on the hoof, pumpkin on the roof, down in the stable all the calves are fast asleep. Do you hear the rainman shuffle-shambling along the Langeberg? Do you see his grey sleeve trailing along the slopes? And the wind in the black pines, and the wind in the ears of wheat hissing over the hills, as far as the ear can hear, the hills of Rietpoel and the hills of Protem, the round-backed hills of Klipdale and Riviersonderend, the dale of rocks and the river without end, swishing and sweeping, one rustling billowing blanket of sweet quivering stalks to where the lands end against the slopes of the mountain of which this side is Over. Overberg. And on the other side the Table Mountain that I’ll go and show you one day when you’re grown up.

The next day you were waiting for them at the back door. You saw the bickering party approaching from afar, hurrying to the yard. Maria with the basket in one hand and the refractory child in the other. And Lys, the eldest daughter by Maria’s first husband. Hessian bag in one hand, gesticulating with the other. According to your mother the only member of the family who was worth anything. She worked in the house. She was the one who tattled the tales of the cast-off child.

Behind you in the kitchen your mother cleared her throat.

Think before you act, Milla, you’re not the only one who’s going to be affected by this, she said. Hard-heeled she stalked into the house.

Sheepishly the little group came to a halt before you. Maria mumbled a greeting, her head hanging. Lys stepped forward, performed an arm gesture, a sweep of the elbow, signifying that she could be trusted as the representative of her family’s interests.

Morning Kleinnooi, I’ve heard Kleinnooi wants to see my mother and the child, so I came along to hear what the kleinnooi has in her heart, if the kleinnooi doesn’t mind.

The little girl didn’t make a sound, just wriggled with all her might to escape.

Maria yanked the child closer.

This picture didn’t accord at all with your fantasies. In Lys’s gaze there was something you couldn’t fathom. As if she had a suspicion of what was coming. She met your eye insolently. You had to look away.

What would you have thought if you’d been she? So, you in your floral dress, with your armpits smelling of lavender, bite it off, and chew it as we’ve been chewing it for a long time, and then you swallow it gobbet by gobbet with your whitey spit. Take! Guzzle it! It’s our crippledness here that’s been born to us!

Is that what Lys thought? Improbable. Absolutely practical considerations rather, you realised. Her voice was full of calculation when she started speaking, her eyes much more impertinent than her voice.

Kleinnooi, excuse, but is Kleinnooi perhaps feeling out of sorts?

Not out of sorts, out of place, you felt out of your depth, caught out. There were, except in your head, no histrionic thoughts, only a scene that must have played hundreds of times in the past, on farms everywhere in the region.

No what, Lys, I’m fine, let’s just get out of the sun, come in, I have cooldrink for us.

You walked ahead of them into the kitchen to where you’d set out the glasses and the Oros and opened the fridge to take out the cold water. Behind you you felt how Lys, as an initiate in the whiteman’s home, accepted the unusual invitation on behalf of the others and hustled them in at the back door.

So tell me a bit about the child, you started while you poured the cooldrinks into the glasses.

How did she get so deformed?

Lys had her story ready, she delivered it in between smacking gulps of Oros.

No, Kleinnooi, she was just born like that, she started, her arms folded, regarding the child.

Very small and red, with the little hanging arm, at first we thought it was a bit of gut hanging out. Dakkie said sis, Hekkie said take away.

And you, Lys? you wanted to ask, but you swallowed your words.

Ma here was quite odd from looking at it. Didn’t want to give the child tit.

Lys waited behind her glass for a reaction.

We said to Ma, Ma take her, give her tit, she’s going to kick the bucket.

That’s enough, Lys, you wanted to say, but the woman was playing for the benefit of Ma in the gallery.

Pa Joppies said give here, let me go and get rid of that, it’s not my child, my arms are straight as poles, both, my hands are as good as shovels, look, nothing’s the matter with me. Yes, Pa Joppies, I thought to myself, your two feet with which you kicked Ma good and proper in the belly when she was carrying, they’re straight too.