Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Don’t be ungrateful I said & if you have something to say say it now don’t nurse grievances but the mouth is set in a thin line. Have a nice cup of tea before you go to bed I said & you can let me know if there’s anything more you want. Don’t you say thank you, then? What kind of manners is this? Didn’t feel like hassling further so I issued the orders instead. 6 o’clock in the morning she must be at her post in the kitchen & make me a nice cup of coffee in the blue coffee pot with the proudpourspout and for the baas in his room on the stoep & milk & sugar & rusks on the tray and I don’t want to see a long face.

Suddenly out of the blue she asked where are my things what happened to my things? I showed hr the suitcase under the washstand. Do you think I want to steal your stuff? I asked. But by then I was feeling really sick couldn’t get to the house in time vomited copiously in the drain there next to the kitchen my stomach in revolt I took a bucket from the kitchen and said at her door throw water in the drain and wash away the puke because the dogs will come and sniff at it there & when I left I said lock your door at night remember you’re a big girl now there are no-goods about.

Well then, more I can’t do for her salvation & my pen is almost dry. Must remember to buy a new bottle of Quink.

Half-past twelve

Did after all just go & peek through the nursery window into the yard & her light is still on at least the door is closed now but the bucket is still just where I left it & there’s a smell of puke in the air in the yard. It will have to be as it wants to be. Too tired to talk once again. Must get to bed now otherwise tomorrow will be too difficult. The child feels as if it’s pressing down in me.

Agaat comes in with my midday meal. She speaks with cinnamon. It floats behind her, a pennant of persuasion.

She allows me my nose today.

I must rejoice in my privileges.

I must grit my teeth and put behind me the tooth-polishing and the post-planting, the windmill and the borehole, I must remember she’s also only human and she has her limitations.

As if that convinces me!

I must simply reconcile myself to the fact that she’s left me alone for hours on end the last few days.

I mustn’t hold it against her that she did no more than her duty, thoroughly and at the right time, but without blandishments, without words.

I must know I was asking for it.

I mustn’t be difficult.

I mustn’t go around signalling something that nobody on God’s earth can guess at. I must keep it simple please she has her hands full as it is thank you.

I mustn’t accuse her.

She does everything as well as she can.

She does her very best for me.

That’s the argumentation, the sophistry of spices as she’s sprinkled them for me and mashed in with a fork: the cinnamon, the cardamom, with the butter, the sugar, to a perfect pumpkin puree.

I smell for all I’m worth to get all the messages. If I could, I would have sniffed loudly to say: I understand, Agaat, your meaning is crystal clear to me. Mashed potatoes with meat sauce, sweet pumpkin with cinnamon, red jelly with custard. What more could one want? It’s a whole story on its own, Sunday food on Grootmoedersdrift.

But it’s not Sunday.

What day is it? I ask with my eyes on the calendar, I can’t see that far any more.

Agaat puts the tray down on the trolley. She picks up the hand-bell from the floor where it’s been lying for three days now, it looks strange in her little hand, the gesture with which she puts it into her apron pocket contains an element of self-chastisement.

Monday eleven November, the year of our Lord nineteen ninety-six, she says, the fields are white with wheat.

What would she want me to say if I could talk? Would she ever have said something like that to me when I could still talk? She sometimes says such things with a straight face and uninflected voice as if it’s the most ordinary thing, as if she’s talking to herself. The fields are white with wheat. Must I become something that I am not yet?

Dawid got hurt, she says, she doesn’t look at me, she sterilises my teaspoon in a glass of boiling water.

Got a cut on his hand from a combine blade that broke and I had to bandage it first, that’s why I’m late today. You must be hungry by now.

Clink, she puts down the teaspoon in the saucer, tests the temperature of the potato with the back of the little finger of her left hand. Still too hot.

She talks with her back to me while opening the curtains and the lace linings wider. Her movements are less curt, she trains her voice to moderation. The purple glow of the bougainvillea rushes into the room.

Hay is strong this year, she says.

There is an unevenness in her voice, she clears her throat.

Grains are swollen out, we’re winning more than five bags of Sterling per morgen. I made Dawid grind a sample and I baked a small loaf and it, it, rose right out of the. . tin.

Her voice fades away towards the end.

Did you smell it? she still manages to add.

I see her vividly, standing over the mixing of the sponge at first light, over the dredging of the table with white flour, sprinkle-sprinkle with the little finch of the right hand that knows to snatch dab-dab with gathered fingertips in the flour bag, I see her mix and knead, knead and knock back with the palm of the strong hand, fold over with the small hand, knead and knead till the dough springs back, then the covering in a cool quiet place for the first rising, the knocking-back, the proving and the kneading-through, I see her at the shaping in the tins, at the putting into the hot oven and an hour later bending for the testing with the steel knitting needle, the tapping on the back of the small brown rabbit, the turning-out on the old bent wire rack. How many loaves, how many cakes, have been turned out on that little frame? That she would not have thrown away, absolutely not.

And the eating, Agaat? The slicing and the buttering and the apricot jam and the tasting all alone at your set place when you’ve done with me here in the front of the right wing?

Of bread I am told.

Hunger is imagined for me.

Light is granted me.

Time.

Colour.

Life flows through me as if through a transfusion rigged up between her and me. She monitors the rate of flow.

The bougainvillea scorches my eyes. Agaat stands in front of the door and looks out, she hangs there, she hooks herself in place there for strength.

It’s flowering as if it’s being paid, she says, took a long time, but now it’s found its feet at last.

I look at her back with the cross of the apron bands.

Turn round, I want to say, look at me, forget about it, it’s over now. You do everything you can. I want for nothing. It’s not your fault. You are the best nurse one could wish for. We’ll try a different route. How, after all, can you be expected to guess what I want? The day will come when you will think of it yourself, of your own accord. Then you’ll come in here with the maps under your arms and with triumph on your face.

And I know what that mug of yours will look like then, your jaw-bone will be all the way out there, you’ll suppress your smile but the mole on your cheek will be an exclamation point. So you can come away from the door now, it’s not all that bad.

Sometimes when I stare at her back hard enough, she feels it, then she turns around. Brave, as open as possible to receiving everything transmitted to her.

Today I can tell from the shoulder perched at a slight angle that she’s not ready yet. But it’s lower than it was yesterday, than it was this morning. And she’s talking about bread.