Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

In the topsy-turvy you hadn’t even thought of that. But she was right. There had to be a control. So that nobody could say that you’d made mistakes.

Doctor is playing golf, said Mrs Vet.

Take a pen, sweetheart, you heard yourself say, and write! Raw linseed, lime, barley, tannic acid, coffee, brandy, Hamburg tulip poisoning, crisis Gdrift, 13 September, 5 p.m., have you got it? You rang off before she could reply.

You went and fetched the bakkie and parked it in the backyard. Agaat had the bakkie loaded with bottles of sugared coffee and the bottles of egg-whites with brandy, the big rusk bottle full of lime-and-oil cream, the drum of barley water and the drum of slimy raw linseed on water, all sorted into boxes. And the thin rubber tubes, the Coopers dosing-syringes from the shed, a bottle with tannic acid, a measuring spoon, the thicker rubber tubes and cans for the enemas, plastic funnels, tins full of boiled water and bottles with screw-tops and extra bottles and containers.

The whole rescue mission was ready to roll within an hour. Everybody wanted to bundle into the back of the bakkie. Agaat looked at you, now you had to speak. She tried to calm Jakkie. He was bawling his head off with the hubbub.

That they had to be very calm not to frighten the animals, you said, that they had to work slowly and with a plan to your and Agaat’s orders nothing more and nothing less, that they must not talk loudly, and make no restless movements, that everybody first had to go and scrub their hands and rinse them every time between every animal. And that Saar and two big boys and one littl’un were in your team. And Lietja and two striplings and the other three littl’uns in Agaat’s team. And that they should remain behind you when you arrived in the camp because you first had to get to the bull in the holding pen to doctor him.

O-alla-got, Saar said and tied her headscarf tighter.

Don’t come and o-alla here now, where are your menfolk? you scolded. Why can’t you keep them on track?

Saar looked away. But was there also something else in her attitude? Because she’d seen Agaat ordering you about and you doing everything exactly as she said, a little servant-girl of hardly thirteen? Her face was cunning. There wasn’t time to say arrange your face. In any case you thought twice before saying that to the kitchen-maids.

You sent one of the boys to go and commandeer OuKarel. You knew Agaat had everything right about the medicine and you had learnt from your mother about the procedures with tulip poisoning, but experience was what was lacking. You needed OuKarel’s eye there, you felt. You remembered your mother’s belief that a bull, not to mention a new one, wouldn’t co-operate if there wasn’t a man in the company.

In the camp the animals were huddled around the drinking trough as Agaat had predicted.

And there was Hamburg, his hump seven hands high above the rails of the holding pen. He’d be able to flatten it like nothing. His head was hanging, strings of drool from his mouth, and the piss and the thin slimy dung ran out of him. He pressed himself against the back of the partition.

How had Agaat got him in there? How would you move him to the threshold of the crush pen? Would the headclamp be in working order?

Wide-eyed the maids stood staring. Agaat trotted off to test the lever of the clamp. Up and down she pressed it so that the flat shaft first bent at the hinge in the middle and then lifted up. Open and shut she operated it, the steel arms of the clamp flashing in the sunlight over there at the far end of the crush pen.

How are we going to get him in there? you asked her.

He’s already half dead, Agaat said, look how deep his eyes are, he’s wonky in the front legs, he won’t give us grief.

How? you asked with the eyes.

Agaat hooked the index finger of her strong hand in front of her nose.

With the bare hand on his nose-ring?

That’s how I got him there in the pen, Agaat said.

You didn’t believe her. The holding pen’s gate was wide open. You were sure she’d prodded him in there from behind.

The holding pen was one thing, one would still be able to roll free under the lowest bar of the pen. But the crush pen was a narrow gully with high cement walls. There was one escape route, that was to the back. But how would you worm past the bull if you were in front of him and he gored you? He would fill the gully from wall to wall.

At the front end, in front of the headclamp, there was a shutter of steel that could be lifted if he should decide to rush forward.

But what if everything happened very quickly? You’d be paralysed with shock, you’d slip, the one who had to lift the shutter could lose his nerve, you’d be trampled.

Who should take the bull in there?

You hesitated.

I’ll take him, said Agaat, her mouth set in a straight line. He knows me. He’s soft in the nose. He won’t bugger around for no reason.

Ho my mother, said Saar.

You go and sit in the bakkie with Jakkie, Agaat said, and wash your hands before you touch him.

Push the other cattle away from the drinking trough, she ordered Lietja, count them, there should be seventy.

And for you she tallied on the fingers of her strong hand. One bottle of egg and brandy, one bottle of coffee, two pints of the rusk bottle’s lime-and-linseed water mixed with two tablespoons of tannic acid to the pint, decanted into two Coopers canisters.

She would lead the bull as far as the clamp, you had to secure his head. Then somebody had to open the shutter so that she could get out in front.

Agaat ordered two boys to go and fetch planks and to build a scaffolding on little drums outside the crush pen on both sides so that you could reach across to dose the bull.

What if he gores you? one whispered to her. What if he tramples you?

They retreated stepping on one another’s feet. Mush! they giggled. Arsgaat!

Dry up, said Agaat, a bag of acid drops for everybody, if you help nicely here. Stand ready, hand us what we tell you and keep your big traps shut or I’ll make dog-mince of you.

You’d never forget it, the sudden subservience of everybody, big and small. Something changed gear that afternoon on Grootmoedersdrift.

Agaat put the medicine containers precisely in sequence on the wall on either side of the headclamp. She blew into the rubber tubes to check that they were clear. She squeezed the triggers of the dosing-canisters and squirted medicine on the ground until she was satisfied that they were working correctly and without air bubbles. Her mouth was set in a line, her chin jutting far forward.

Bring a rope, you called to the boys, bring a stick.

For what? Agaat asked.

So that I can have something with which to pull you out if he runs amuck, you said, then you grab the rope or the stick.

She looked at you. Agaat Lourier can’t pull herself out of the gully with one arm, her face said.

Or I push the stick under your apron’s shoulder-straps and lever you out, you said. You couldn’t look her straight in the eye.

The gully is too deep. The stick is too short. You’re too weak. It wasn’t even necessary for her to say it.

Perhaps we should rather wait for the vet, you got out. Your voice was low.

Wait till I’m in, she said to you, climb on the wall and walk behind me. Don’t put things in his head. Think one thing and think it straight.

First try to prod him from behind, you said.

You try, Agaat said, he doesn’t want to, he’s too buggered.

You went around the back of the holding pen. You prodded the shitting bull in the flanks with a stick. He didn’t budge.

Agaat straightened her cap with both hands. There at the gate of the holding pen you saw it. The one shoulder pulled up, the pace forward, the pace back, the genuflection. Then she opened the gate and went in and closed the gate behind her. Plumb towards the dead strip between the bull’s eyes Agaat advanced, bold and high her mien.