Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

You noticed that evening how other men looked at you. You looked back, nodded, smiled, felt that you had the right to enjoy yourself.

You look breathtaking, Beatrice came and whispered in your ear, is there something I don’t know?

And you look stunning, you said, how are your suckling pigs?

Jak darted you a look.

Over coffee the people at your table bickered over agricultural matters. The new owner of Frambooskop excused himself, clearly didn’t want to get involved in an argument at his own party. It was about profits and costs and optimal utilisation of soil.

Two-stage! Two-stage! everybody shouted and Beatrice’s Thys beat out the syllables on the table with his hand. Wheat, fallow, wheat, fallow, or, better still, wheat on wheat. With the new fertilisers one couldn’t go wrong, was the consensus, bumper crops every year, it was an Overberg miracle. They looked at Jak, who was living proof of the miracle, even though after five years he’d sold the land that had treated him so well to start farming beef cattle.

Jak hit the right notes. The soil analysis laboratory of FOSFANITRA had impressed him from the start, he said.

Modest enough he could be.

With his gentleman’s hands he demonstrated. They could scientifically determine exactly how much phosphate, how much nitrogen, how much potassium one needed per morgen for a good yield.

Scientific or not, I don’t agree, you said.

Jak looked at you, taken aback. You felt yourself blushing, took another sip of wine, but you could also see the people waiting to hear.

That’s a mistake farmers can always make, you said, that they prepare a rod for themselves and their dependants with which everybody will be beaten one day when the wheel turns.

Ag, Milla, what rod and what wheel are you talking of now, my dear wife?

You laughed. He was so hypocritical. ‘My dear wife’ before the guests, my dear tarted-up wife who looks like nothing unless something gets into her.

You were angry, twelve years’ worth of anger. You intercepted quite a few covert glances. People didn’t want to say it out loud, but everybody knew that Dirk du Toit, to whom Jak had sold the land on which he had made his profits, was as good as bankrupt. You knew why.

I’m speaking of the wheel of Lady Fortune, you said, and I’m speaking of her assistants the moneylenders, my dear husband, they who make themselves indispensable by offering certain essential services and goods on credit, and I’m speaking of monopolies.

They waited for you to continue, the guests, they couldn’t believe their ears.

For farming that’s always a dangerous thing, you said. Here in the Overberg we’ve known it since the days of the Barrys. The lessons of history are there for those who want to take the trouble to study them.

You’re telling me, said one, I’m still farming today on a little triangular slice of the original round family farm. Staked out way back by my great-grandfather on horseback, a beautiful round farm. He was mortgaged up to his ears to the Barrys’ firm and when they went bankrupt, he lost all his land. From one day to the next he lost everything, he kept just a little sliver like that.

It was a freckly chap from Bredasdorp, a Van Zyl. His jacket sleeves were too short. His thick wrists covered in dense red hair protruded as he described a triangle with his hands to indicate the portion.

Oh my goodness, somebody exclaimed, a slice of pie, but that should be quite enough for you, Flippie!

People laughed at the naughty innuendo, but it didn’t help. There was muted grumbling. The director of the fertiliser business was within earshot and quite a few officials of Agricultural Technical Services gathered around when they heard the subject being broached. You thought, good, let them hear for once by all means.

My point exactly, you said. My mother still has an old five-pound note of theirs. A kind of bank they were, you remember. ‘Here for you, Barry and Co.’ is written on it. So much so that when the whole lot went under just about everything ground to a halt from Port Beaufort, the whole Heidelberg plain, the whole Overberg from Caledon to Riversdal and over the mountain all the way to Worcester.

Well yes, in these days I suppose one has to say Fertilise or button your flies. That was the contribution of one of the sallow Dieners of Vreugdevol.

The roar that arose drew more people to the table.

What’s going on here? We also want to hear! What’s the joke?

Jak was uncomfortable. He tried, but he couldn’t get up because people were crowding around the table. He fumbled with his bow tie, took large gulps from his glass.

Ask Milla de Wet! one called out, she started it. Ask Jak, looks like she’s got him under her thumb!

You were angry, but your secret of the day made you impetuous. Jak would just have to look after himself for once, you thought.

Look at the condition of the soil, you said. Thinner and poorer by the year. Just look at the dust when the wind blows before sowing-time, look how it erodes in winter. From sowing wheat all the time. From greed. And from worry. Because the bought-on-credit fertiliser still has to be paid off. And the Land Bank is squeezing.

That’s right! Round and round on the merry-go-round all the way into the ground!

That was Dirk du Toit, who’d bought Jak’s land.

Tell them, Dirk, I called, tell them what happened to you, you see they don’t want to believe me.

Dirk made a cutting motion across his throat.

Yes, I owed them. Then they forced me to sell all my wheat to them, at cost. Their idea is, it’s our fertiliser, so it’s our wheat. Then they sell it again, then they keep the profit.

Everybody started talking at the same time. Out of the corner of your eye you saw Adriaan, one of the Meyers brothers, owners of the fertiliser company, surveying the palaver, a parsimonious little smile round the corners of his mouth.

You tapped on your glass with your knife.

Listen, you said, that’s not all, the real point is this. .

Aitsa! the little four-share plough of Grootmoedersdrift! Now she’s going for the middle furrow!

It was Gawie Tredoux of Vleitjies. He was United Party by birth and a Freemason and he liked you. He passed along a glass of dessert wine to you. You lifted it in his direction and took a sip, put your finger in front of your lips, indicated that you couldn’t drink too much. Oh come on, he gesticulated back and took a big gulp from his own glass. You put your hand on your stomach. So? he signalled with his eyebrows. Really? You nodded. He raised his glass high: Congratulations! Jak intercepted the exchange. You smiled sweetly at him before speaking again.

The real point is: The Overberg is the bread basket of the whole country. Remember: Good wheat and good bread, and the nation’s well fed.

She’s a poet and she doesn’t know it! somebody shouted and rapped on the table.

Jak looked away.

You knew of one more supporter at the table, the new young extension officer, Kosie Greeff. The little chap glanced around somewhat anxiously when he saw that you wanted to say something. His wife looked at the glass in your hand. Beatrice as well, all the women at the table thought that when a woman opened her mouth like that in male company it had to be because she was tipsy. You’re welcome to look as much as you like, you thought to yourself and smiled at Beatrice.

It was young Greeff who’d convinced you of the new rotational system. He was having an uphill battle in the region. Now he was red in the face because it was his area of expertise that had cropped up in discussion.

Mrs de Wet is right, he said, and what’s more, gentlemen, the soil problem in the hill country is a bigger problem than the so-called colour problem.