Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

One, two, three, one, two, three, we greet, we greet, the mighty sun!

Nice deep breaths, she says.

She brings my wrists next to my sides, suddenly drops them.

Oops, she says.

She’s at the foot of the bed. Fast. This is still just warming-up. She presses her fists against the undersides of my feet in a kneading motion, a mimic of pedals under my soles. One pedal is weaker than the other.

Busy little feet, she says.

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Any complaints so far, Mrs de Wet? She doesn’t look up from my feet.

She moves around quickly to the side of the bed, faces me head-on. Her voice a parody of gentle persuasion.

You get sore, you get stiff, your blood doesn’t flow properly, you get cold, your feet get blue, look how blue they are already, you get constipated, your general condition deteriorates if you won’t allow me to exercise you.

Allow, I say with my eyes, allow!

She grabs one arm by the wrist, straightens the elbow with the little hand. Wide circular movements she makes, first one way round and then the other way round.

Windmill in the south-east, she says, windmill in the north-west. Ickshee, ickshee, ickshee. Water in the dam, mud in the ditch, step on her head, dirty rotten bitch.

My arm terminating in its stiff claw swings through the air. Agaat is breathing faster, her eyes are shining.

Now bend, she says. She works the elbow joint.

Knick knack knick, she says, bend the tree, snap the stick.

My other arm is a lighthouse tower. It sweeps over wild waves. Agaat blows the horn. Two bass notes.

What do you say, Missis? We’re having fun, aren’t we? Now we’re giving this old body of yours a run for its money.

My bonnie lies over the ocean, she sings, my bonnie lies over the sea.

Agaat’s colour is high. Her breath comes panting. I catch her eye.

Agaat, you’re hurting me!

Just don’t be touchy, she says.

Slowly, I flicker, slowly with what’s left of me.

Shuddup, now the legs, says Agaat, but no sound comes from her, only her lips move.

Giddy-up, Shanks’ pony, she says aloud, and with my legs she forms an angle of ninety degrees above my torso. She bends my dangling feet up and down.

Her feet are going east, she sings, but she is going west.

Agaat plants corner posts. She puts them into holes. She hammers them in with a ten-pound mallet. She anchors them with braces, she paints them silver, she hangs the droppers. I smell tar. She sets up the drawbar. She tightens the wire till it sings. My ankles, my toes.

We have take-off, she says as she propellers them in her hands.

And now, she says, now to rise above this earthly vale of tears. Nourish also our souls with the bread of life, oh Lord.

She gathers me, the little arm under the backs of my legs, the strong arm under my arms.

Dough, dough, she says, rise for us. Hup! she says and lifts me, almost lifts me up, off the bed.

Kneaded well, waited long, she says, hup once more.

Shake out the raisins, she says, shake them out, God-hup helpyou!

I bounce slightly on the bed as she lets go of me.

She stands back. Arms akimbo. Her chest rises and falls.

Lighter by the day, she says.

She extends the little hand to me. With her strong hand she extracts the stunted little finger from the bundle of fingers of her crippled hand. She keeps the little finger apart between thumb and index finger, in the air before my nose.

Soon, she says, soon I’ll lift you with my little finger.

The first seven years on Grootmoedersdrift. Every day of the month you adjusted yourself again. Took iron pills and ate radishes. Prayed and spread your legs for Jak.

During the day you worked yourself silly on the farm. Tennis elbow from cutting silage, wrist infections from helping with the milking, cramps in your calves from walking the contours on the steep slopes with the surveyor day after day. In the evenings you had to lie in the bath for hours on end with the mustard extracts that Ma had given you.

Why do you drudge yourself like that? Jak asked, you’re not a bloody slave!

He was furious when you were ill. You could feel it in the body that he rammed into you.

Modern appliances are the answer, Milla, he said, these aren’t the Middle Ages any more. Why churn on with lucerne and lupins and compost when there’s fertiliser?

It’s all about synergies, Jak, you tried to staunch the flow, a game one has to play. With nature. It’s subtle. Nature is subtle and complex.

Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift.

The deepest stone in the drift. That made you cry.

You’re a fine one to talk! Jak scolded. Subtle! Bah! Nature! And you can’t get pregnant!

I’ll go for tests, you sniffed, for treatment, there are modern aids. For men too.

Was that when Jak conceived his strange theories about you?

Over my dead body, he said, there’s nothing wrong with me. Nor with you. It’s in your head something is wrong. It’s because you wear yourself out like that, he said, just stop bawling, then things will come right, it’s because you complain about everything, because you flap about here on the farm with a long face. Where is the loving gentle Milla that I married? Look at you, pale as pale, as if you’re anaemic.

He thought you were putting it on when you said you were tired. Invited Beatrice and Thys in the evenings on purpose so that you should have to go and get dressed and made up.

Just see how much life there still is in her after a day’s toil, a real never-say-die, my little Kamilla.

And then he winked at you, and rubbed it in even further.

Just a short while ago she was hanging from a branch, furled like a bat, dead-tired, now she’s chattering like a finch. Goes to show what good friends mean to you here in the Overberg.

You saw Beatrice looking from him to you and back again. I’m here if you need me, she’d already whispered to you a few times, but you resisted her. She was more inquisitive than anything else. And greedy. For power, for status. Constantly comparing her husband’s position in the community with Jak’s. And the gossip over who was, was going to be or wanted to be chairman of this or treasurer of that. Mud-slinging. Jealousy. The secession of the Swellendam members of the National Party from the Bredasdorp branch was the latest, and how she’d had tea with the wife of Van Eeden, the new chairman. You in your own terms were not an item. Barren. Dry ewe. You felt that everybody was against you. Jak was starting to sound like your mother when he provoked you. And the gossips were agog for news from Grootmoedersdrift, for reasons, for scandal.

Ma was concerned on the one hand, but also critical of your childless condition. You could hear it in her voice on the telephone, sometimes sneering, you thought. Even so you phoned her every evening. With who else could you talk about it? She recommended traditional remedies. Like standing on your head afterwards, like drinking an infusion of stinging nettle.

Some evenings you couldn’t stop crying after putting down the phone. This infuriated Jak.

That mother of yours, he said, a violent tea cosy if ever there was one, cosy on top and down below she latches her claws into you.

Then you really cried. Jak was right. It wasn’t about what you could or couldn’t do. It was yourself, something in you that offended her. Your character.

I am who I am, how can I help it? you sobbed.

Jak slammed doors and stormed out of the house and drove off when you were like that.

Just don’t leave me alone, you pleaded.

You tried everything to prevent him from going. Played on his feelings, flattered him, nestled up against him.