Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Beatrice opens the curtains further.

Is it too light?

I open my eyes as wide as I can.

Lord woman! Can you see me then?

She comes nearer. Looks me in the eyes. I can see the plan forming in her head. She holds a finger in front of my nose, moves it from left to right. I follow my neighbour’s wife’s finger with my eyes.

Heavens, she says, so you can really still see. . and. . everything.

Yes, see and everything, hello Beatrice, I blink. She wants to giggle, swallows it quickly.

She closes the curtain slightly again. Nervous, uncomfortable with me, can’t face it. I can’t face her either. So much embarrassment on the face, so much fear and aversion, all at the same time. She’d look at me much more readily if I were a stuffed pig with an apple in my mouth. She did look at me more readily when I was stuffed. Mrs de Wet with a sentinel in her mouth. Would Beatrice ever have given Thys a blow job? She certainly always could open her mouth wider than anybody else on the church-choir gallery. To articulate with emphasis. Thy praise shall linger on my lips.

Shall I open the doors a bit, it’s a bit close in here.

Beatrice tripples to the stoep doors, opens them.

Here comes a play for voices. And for smells. For neighbour’s wife, sparrow-fart and the intimations of mortality.

A-g-a-a-a-t! she calls in a little high-pitched voice. A-g-a-a-a-t! first to this side and then that side of the stoep.

A swarm of sparrows takes off from the bougainvillea. Beatrice’s dress is the wrong shade of blue next to the purple.

I wish she would leave. I wish Agaat would come and take her to the sitting room and say she’ll manage thank you and give her tea so she can get herself gone. I’ll signal off, off here with the Neighbour’s Wife in search of a Drama, she can keep her heartfeltness for when I’m cold and coffined, thank you. I’ll blink my eyes until Agaat understands: I’ll be content with Saar, Saar can sit with me tomorrow when she goes to town, I’ll go mad with such sanctimonious blethering in my ears all morning, stark staring mad. All that Saar ever says is ‘oumies’. When she sweeps the passage, she stops for a moment, straightens up, and looks in here. ‘Oumies,’ she says then, an acknowledgement of my existence, on the same small scale, the single word, as the scale on which I now live. She looks at me as one looks at a sheep that has long since lain down with bluetongue. ‘Oumies’. Ounooi. Indeed. What more is there to say? It’s honest at least.

Sickbed comforters generally don’t talk to you but to themselves, especially if you’re in the process of dying. You’re a trial run for their excuses.

I wonder where Agaat can be, says Beatrice. I hope she doesn’t often leave you on your own like this now, after all, you can at any moment. . you can at any moment need her. Ai Milla that you should lie here so at the mercy.

Beatrice clicks her tongue. She looks round the room. Her eyes dart swiftly, scrutinisingly over everything. She thinks I’m not all there. She thinks I can’t really see, I’m just a reflex of pupils. She thinks I can’t see how she slides open the drawer of the dressing table and peeks into it while she’s talking, how she picks up the folded towels from the two bedpans and looks into them, how she picks up the medicines from the trolley and screws up her eyes to read the names on the little bottles, how she runs her finger along the bedpost, how she glances askance at the camp sretcher against the wall.

Must say everything looks nice and tidy here, she says, clean and all. I suppose it’s better than the hospital, familiar isn’t it, I suppose one would rather just be at home.

The volubility of the living. Her cup runneth over. Bountiful she wants the harvest to be from death’s dominion, from death’s antechamber. She wouldn’t have wanted to come for nothing, that’s clear. I can just hear her account: Nothing in the bedpans, doesn’t look as if they’ve ever been used. I suppose everything has just about ground to a halt in that department. The woman eats almost nothing. The maid says just little-little bits of thin gruel.

What the one madam wishes the other: thin gruel and a seized-up internal mechanism. I can see it, the smugness of the impeccable messenger, the primly-pleated pout, it would take more than a bedpan under her backside to conquer her conceit.

Shall I go and see if I can find Agaat?

Beatrice comes to loom over me. She looks as if she wants a twig to prod me. She should just open her eyes, there are sticks on the trolley, flat ice-cream sticks and ear-buds, she can choose. I want to say boo! I want to put out my tongue. I open my eyes, wide, suddenly, and then I peel them back for her, and I flicker for my neighbour’s wife by my bier of death, the flicker of death, sustained and unmistakable, the vibrating blackwhite eyelash butterfly. Leminitis camilla . Map butterfly. Liberated in the occluded valley. Haven’t felt so lively in a long time. The effect is all one could desire. It is sung. Mezzo-soprano in The Spout.

O Lorrrd Mil-la, Oh Go-o-od he-e-l-ep! Steps back, back, her eyes glued to my face. Boer diva in stage shock, Jak would have said.

Yes, don’t look away, Beatie, look, that’s what you get for coming to stand by my bed with a fastidious smirk on your face. Look how my eyeballs quake! It’s my last little bit of muscle power! With that I can move worlds!

She runs down the passage. Gaat! she screams. Her voice is shrill.

Gaat, come quickly, Gaat! Help! The oumies!

Out at the back door. Cat-twah! the screen door slams. I hear her hammer on the outside room’s door, a window is pushed open. A scream. I count the seconds. Then the screen door slams again. Another scream.

Lorrd Jesus please, help! Beatrice exclaims. She’s by the telephone in the passage. I hear the back door open again. I know who it is. I know who’s waiting surreptitiously in the kitchen to hear what’s going on, I know who’s standing behind the door and listening attentively. I want to laugh. I wish I could laugh. Water comes to my eyes. Beatrice the emphatic, Beatrice whom Agaat could imitate so well since childhood. We eavesdrop on her together, Agaat and I. We wait behind the curtains.

Thys, Thys is that you Thys? Thys, yes listen Thys I’m here with Milla de Wet and I think she’s on her deathbed the woman, and I think that maid of hers is dead already.

Agaat, yes.

No, I told you don’t you remember, she phoned this morning and asked I should come tomorrow she has to go to town for all sort of business and funeral arrangements.

Thys, no, listen to me now!

No, I thought I’d rather come and have a look this afternoon already, the maid sounds half odd to me.

No, towards five o’clock. Didn’t you get my note that I left you on the sideboard?

No, when I got here everything was wide open and the yard deserted and Milla was lying all on her own in a pitch-dark shut-tight room with a green thing over her face.

Over her mouth and nose, yes.

In any case so then her eyes peeled back and her eyelids started fluttering, something terrible.

No, Thys, I didn’t touch her.

No, that’s what I’m telling you, she was nowhere to be found, so I went to see where the creature could be when you needed her and then I found her in the outside room lying with exactly the same green thing on her face!

No, through the window, the door was locked, but I could see, the girl’s bed is next to the window.

No, I don’t know, I was out of there so fast.

A tube? No, I don’t know about tubes, Thys.

What?

Poison? No, Lord, Thys, I don’t know, but now is not the time.

Yes, I hear you. Just come. No, Thys, gas or poison, it doesn’t matter.