Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Swallow, you hissed, swallow so that you can calm down, swallow, I’m not taking any more nonsense from you.

forehead of flame eyes of soot mouth from which glowing coals crumble roaring of flames lamenting and wailing cast me in a hearth of ice press my front in the snow roll me into a snowball one side of me the other side of me my cold and my hot my wet and my dry who can reconcile my moieties? neither glue nor thongs nor balm nor coalescence nor grafting nor oculation nor welding through my head runs a crack no sentence is completed no wisdom gained nothing more to swallow my teeth are loose my tongue abscised with exhaustion an apple of glass falls from my mouth oh last lip and jaw of woe oh last dream in mistletoe before the pitch may enfold me

is there then a last scream coming from me?

whose are the hands here around my belly squeezing my breath in and out? whose warm weight supporting me from behind and from below? gathering me from the front? rescuing me from the moieties dreamt? who collects my parts? who splints my neck in a straight line and lifts my chin so that my gullet should not become entangled in itself? who gently parts my shoulders like wings? who places a knee between my knees so that I should not cleave to my own flesh? who is a buoy beneath me so that I should not sink from my own weight not perish? in what body am I sustained as in a crib? tilted as in a cradle? who breathes beneath me as if I’m lying on a living bedstead my pulse ignited with another pulse my breath to the rhythm of another my insight capsulated in sturdy scaffolds my sentences erected on other sentences like walls built on a rock? Who?

where are you agaat?

here I am

a voice speaking for me a riddle where there is rest

a candle being lit for me in a mirror

my rod and my staff my whirling wheel

a mouth that with mine mists the glass in the valley of the shadow of death

where you go there I shall go

your house is my house

your land is my land

the land that the Lord thy God giveth you

is this the beginning now this lightness? can I venture it on my own? am I at last membrane between a willow and its reflection? A meniscus that transmits an image? Am I the crown of leaves in the air like the crown of leaves in the water? Yes without lamentation without sighing a permeable world world without end this rustling region culm inclining to culm the stone on the bank like the stone in the dam carried from cloud to cloud on the south-easter where the clover does not know of the humus and the stalk of the wheat does not deny the ear its fullness and the blue crane rises clamouring above the ripples of her beating wings framed by the reflected cloud and the reflected tree on the wash of the still river whose call returns to her for a last time from the valley in carillons in canon-thunder where to the smallest circling water-creature zealously writing everything reflects so with open eyes into the white light so whispering to my soul to go

in my overberg

over the bent world brooding

in my hand the hand of the small agaat

The turbulence is less now, the plane has been humming evenly for a few hours. Can still not sleep. The last few days on the farm remain with me, the dust on the Suurbraak road, the dried-up drift, stones, cattle grids, flower arrangements, legs of pork, professions of grief. And just look at him now. His bag of samples knocking at his knees.

Not puzzled things out for myself by a long shot, but I’m making fair progress, especially after this lot. God help us. Gaat making people by the graveside sing the third verse of Die Stem :. . When the wedding bells are chiming, Or when those we love depart.

And then all eyes on me for:. . Thou dost know us for thy children. .We are thine, and we shall stand, Be it life or death to answer Thy call, beloved land!

Wake up and smell the red-bait, as Pa would have said. Poor Pa with his ill-judged exclamations. Did at least make a note for my article on nationalism and music. Thys’s body language! The shoulders thrust back militaristically, the eyes cast up grimly, old Beatrice peering at the horizon. The labourers, men and women, sang it like a hymn, eyes rolled back in the head. Word-perfect beginning to end.

Trust Agaat. She would have no truck with the new anthem. Only Dawid didn’t open his mouth. Totem pole. He watched me closely, whether I was singing along. And then also: As pants the hart for cooling streams , all the verses according to Ma’s directions, a whole programme there before the coffin could be lowered.

It’s a Boeing 747, this time. A light vibration, now and again a few faint shocks, but not as bad as on take-off. The bag by my feet is starting to get in my way.

Inconvenient stuff to cart along. These fragments. Apart from the blue Delft birth-plate and the parcel of fennel seed, the horn and the bellows. Extra hand luggage that couldn’t go in the hold. Wild aromas of Africa, dry protein. Will have to be declared on arrival. Will in all probability be sniffed out by the customs dogs. Be confiscated.

Agaat insisted.

Blow me a note on it every now and again, she said, looked away. I’ll hear it, she said. Thought that’s what she said, only her lips moved. Then her voice was clear again.

And make yourself a nice fire in your fireplace. Do you have a fireplace? It’s covered in snow almost all year round there where you are, isn’t it?

Still ten hours of flying to the snow. The cabin in semi-darkness. Here and there the yellow shaft of a cabin light over the book of a late reader, a hostess in the aisle with glasses of orange juice, with extra blankets, with milk bottles for a baby. A few rugby players still up and down. Without exception younger than twenty, raucous all through the meal. Now and again sang a snatch, Make her say no make her say oh , to the tune of Macarena. Will have to write something about it. Wine, women and balls. Now also at last to rest.

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.

A nightmare it was. Had still considered a tour of the Overberg, a few tape recordings in the townships, all the old places once more, the farms and little towns with the odd names of which I try to tell people in Toronto. Entertainment for Vermaaklikheid, Le Fleuve Eternel for Riviersonderend. Rather just let be.

I do admire our Good Lord for his aesthetic flair in creating a world that is at one and the same time both heaven and hell. Who wrote that? Konrad? The Garden Party . Ma’s funeral obsequies, posies wherever you look, the garden in full flower, around it the summer drought.

Discrepancy, a gritty feeling ever since I set foot on land. The trip from the airport, the light glaring white, the blaze that blinds one. Arid red lands next to the road, black shadows of bluegums, pit dams with yellow condensation-rings, a last slimy dreg at the bottom. It’s always been like that. When and where did my romantic yearnings originate? Deserted farmyards, neglected buildings, rusty bits of machinery.

My standards have shifted, of civilisation, of human dignity. Drove for a long time behind an open lorry, full of labourers being carted to town for their Saturday shopping. Crush in the main street. Stayed in my car, stared out of my eyes. Boundary-maintaining body language if ever. Drunkenness in the streets of Swellendam. Your mother’s cunt! the coloureds yell at one another, unmistakable the inflection. Hurrying through them the whites with quick little steps and stolid faces.