Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

I’m itching.

Possibly because I couldn’t laugh. The theatrics with the neighbour’s wife yesterday, perhaps that was too macabre. Milla, the drama queen. Jak’s name for me. What in heaven’s name would he have said if he’d seen me here like this? Or done?

Closing scene. She-devil with shingles. Perhaps he would have emptied a bucket of water on me and lowered the curtain.

Thursday 3 December 1996. Twelve o’clock.

Itch.

Nobody who knows it or to whom I can say it. Possibly not a drama. Something for the stage, though, Jak. Art in miniature. The Scourge of the Seven-Year Itch.

This bed. A chrome railing. Covers up to my chin. Under that my skin heaving with the itch.

Where is Agaat? When is she coming?

Itch.

Not a word that one could sing, except in a hotnot song perhaps, words for Agaat’s St Vitus’s dance with which she keeps the demons at bay. I hear the servants talk of it, the to-and-fro-ing over the yard at night.

The Sunday morning

The Sunday morning

I didn’t care

My mommy’s words keep

Fresh in Tupperware.

I can scratch myself — that would have to be the message of the Gospel.

Where is Agaat?

Job itched.

But he wasn’t paralysed, and he had a potsherd.

Could it have been itching that caused the creation? They say the stress of isolation causes people to scratch their heads.

Why is Agaat not coming?

Who led the Bear out into the firmament? Who swathed the sea in a mantle of mist? All too pretty. Who clothed man in skin, made him susceptible to itching?

I can see myself in the mirror. As far as I can make out there is nothing swarming over my face, no nest of spiders erupted on the bedspread.

In a life-skills booklet, a Do It Yourself, I read that when you become aware of an unpleasant sensation in your body, you must concentrate on it. With a quiet mind. Deathward set. First you will become curious. And after that you will see it as an opportunity. Apparently you will discover that the sensation doesn’t remain the same. What you had assumed to be one sense impression with one name, is in fact a sequence of different impressions, nameless and unnameable. Like clouds they will drift past and disappear. Temporary. Unimportant. Like everything. Like breakfast cereal.

Definitely a less far-fetched doctrine of salvation than the Resurrection after three days. Short Form. Doesn’t need volumes.

In the beginning was the Skin and the Skin was God and the Skin itched in the outer darkness. No name needed, you need indeed then only say: I am who I am.

Where is the wretched Van der Lught with his chubby cheeks so that I can see his face when he hears it?

The world as the impotence of an itching God, and the sons of men, they scratch Him.

Milla, calm down.

Left side, front quadrant, twenty to seven if my head were a clock face.

That’s where it started.

A prick, like that of a mosquito bite.

I said to myself, nothing can bite you here, no flea could survive here.

But one thing leads to another. A second prick right next to the first, twenty-three minutes to seven, as if from a mosquito grazing in a circle. Zimmmm-zoommm. Oh mosquito, where is thy sting? I would be able to extract it with my imagination.

But it was not a mosquito.

It was legion. Snap, Crackle and Pop. All over my scalp. But not Rice Crispies.

Harpies, swarming like seconds, like fractions of fugitive seconds, minuscule little black monsters, scourging the dome of my skull.

And if I’m not permitted to scratch, give me the Book then, I’ll rewrite it, from front to back, with my hand set in a cast of iron. The waste and wild and the streets of jasper. With itching I shall replace them. It’s momentous enough.

And after that the hordes migrated over my neck and they gathered their forces in pools of itch in the hollows of my collarbone. And their numbers were vast and they migrated along my backbone, in columns, in a multitude of battle arrays. And in the fullness of time they returned by the front route, with intensified force, all along my ribs. They excavated me under my breasts, arrow-headed letters strayed from a text. And they marched across my belly, an inflamed track of itching all the way to the pit of my navel, amen.

Preacher-tick.

Ringworm.

Rubella.

Shingles.

Scab.

So many mansions in my Father’s house.

On my flank, on my shin, against my inner arm, squamous.

I wait, my hands inert hooks next to my sides, my mouth bitter.

Drool.

Squirm.

Tears.

Sweat.

Do it yourself.

My cheeks itch, my forehead, my gums underneath my lips. It itches all along the cleft of my buttocks, all the way into the inside of my hole, all along the white ridge running there, where Agaat cut me at the birth, and further, in every grey membranous fold of my posterior does it itch. Can I say it? All the way into my cunt. Cunt. Milla Redelinghuys’s cunt itches. Who would ever have suspected she had such a foul mouth? Not if it is gagged. Cunt. What is deeper than cunt? All the way into the depth of my black irrational womb it itches me.

Here she comes!

Lord, Ounooi, what’s the matter now?

She’s next to my bed, she searches in my eyes. She swabs my face with a tissue. Gary Player.

Drenched with sweat!

She throws off the covers.

Now I mustn’t mislead her.

Are you so hot then?

No, but carry on with your list, the list you made for me!

Is it the shivers?

No!

Can’t you breathe?

No!

Are you in pain?

Is itching pain? How must I reply? No, itching is not pain. It’s suffering, yes, but it’s like somebody who suffers an urgent call of nature. Relief is what one wants. Not comfort. Not nursing. People with an itch and people with an urgent call of nature, they belong in a farce. In a Greek comedy, perhaps? A philosopher shitting in the shadow of national monuments, a guffawing catharsis. The yearning for inconsolability is something else. That’s for tragedies. But nobody itches in tragedies.

So blink, Ounooi, blink your eyes, I can see you’re in a terrible state here, I’m asking, is it sore somewhere?

Perhaps ‘somewhere’ is a start.

Yes, somewhere!

Your head? Is your head sore again?

Yes, my head!

Headache?

No!

But your head all the same?

Yes!

Headache syrup?

No!

Neck stiff!

No, no, stay with the head!

Head? Is it lying uncomfortably?

Uncomfortable yes!

If only she would touch my head, that could be a start. It’s not the first time.

She rearranges the pillow. My head keels over on the pillow. Prickly pear full of Christmas lights.

Better like that?

No!

Well what then? With the head? Nightmares? Nasty thoughts?

No! Yes! Yes!

What, Ounooi? Be clear! You’re giving double messages! No! or Yes!

That time again on Grootmoedersdrift! Yes-and-no time! say her eyes.

I must prevent her from getting angry. Nightmares, nasty thoughts, those she can’t tolerate from me. I must just be good and stay good.

She holds out her little hand and then the strong hand. In, out, like switches. In, out.

Give with the one hand and take with the other it means. Yes or no. Be clear.

No! No! No! Agaat, my head! Put your hand on my head!

I flicker upwards with my eyes.

She places her hand on my forehead. Under her hands is an infestation of fine mites, under the palm it tingles, it squirms, it wells up out of the deep, it’s not mites, it’s maggots.

You don’t have a fever, Ounooi, what is it then?

Don’t take your hand away, keep it right there! I move my eyes to and fro, up and down.