Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Agaat doesn’t want me to thank her. She averts her eyes. She brings ice-cold wet cloths and wipes me with them, she takes a small, rough towel that she’s warmed in the oven and rubs my whole body warm with it, she rubs cold handfuls of Lacto Calamine Lotion all over my skin. She waves it dry with an open diary. The pages flutter. A bat, a butterfly, a blue gryphon. She puts on my tunic, fastens it behind my neck. She covers me. She walks out of the room with a straight back.

Itch-free I remain behind.

14 December 1966

At long last a bit of a holiday. Really and truly feel I need rest after this year of calamities. J. constantly agitated & full of conspiracy theories about the assassination of Verwoerd. Mother hardly cold in her grave then that on top of it. Haven’t really had time to be quiet & also not had much time to write how life does pass & Jakkie’s growing up & the old people precede us & you forget the moments that were precious to you.

Just yesterday before we left Agaat & I went by Ma’s grave to take some flowers & I realised then I didn’t really cry all that much in July but if I were to mourn what exactly would it be for? Perhaps that in spite of everything I did after all yearn for her approval? For one spontaneous embrace? Her body forgivingly pressed to mine? So much that now cannot be set straight or talked about. Yes at last liberated from her. But what will I measure myself against now? Now that her judge-mental eye no longer falls on everything I do? It’s terrifying in a way.

Perhaps I wanted to cry because she died before I could tell her the whole truth about J. But in any case the whole funeral & the gossip that made its way back to me just made me realise anew that honesty & intimacy are not things that are easy to afford. But how do you defend yourself against your own mother? Her directions regarding the funeral felt like a last trial.

Fortunately I could count on A. Didn’t have to spell out anything for hr. She was a real live wire with the funeral & supervised the cooking for more than a hundred people who had to eat. It was a palaver with seating on the stoep because then it rained a deluge. A whole saga at the drift of course. The coffin duly arrived all the way from Barrydale by horse-drawn cart as Ma had stipulated in her will — in her way also bent on her little portion of drama. So different to Pa who wanted nothing but for his ashes to be scattered on the Tradouw. So there the drift was flooded & the horses balked I suppose also because of the crape funeral coats wet and heavy on them & they refused to cross. So A. left everything just like that in the kitchen & went and helped D. and his team. Unload the coffin and carry it we don’t want the ounooi to get washed away in the drift & bring the lip halters she says. They unload the coffin & then the horses rear up & the water splashes & they snort but she keeps hr side short & Dawid keeps the other side & they all keep their funeral faces solemnly composed & walk shoes & all ever so dignified through the water with Kadys and Julies with his floppy foot shlip-shlop bringing up the rear. So then they loaded the coffin back onto the cart for the last stretch up to the graveyard here next to the old orchard where it then was so wet & muddy that they had to put down planks & sacks for the people to stand on & had to pump the water out of the hole.

Heaven knows why one had to take so much trouble over something that in any case is going to waste away to dust in this case to mud because it rained incessantly all year from before June and thereafter. Ma’s headstone collapsed twice & as far as we drove yesterday all the way from Skeiding to Port Beaufort the wild fennel was standing hip height on both sides of the road. A. says it’s hr trademark. If I were she I’d keep my mouth shut about that I warn her. It’s not everybody who likes a taint of liquorice in their cow’s milk. She asks for who is the place in the graveyard between the ounooi & the great-great-grandmother?

Witsand 16 December 1966

Flag-raising & Day of the Covenant on the beach today quite moving such a bright blue windless day at the sea. There is no strand so wild or far away but there is found thy name in majesty. The minister prayed for the new leaders who must lead the nation after Dr Verwoerd was so brutally taken from us by the powers of darkness. Jak says Tsafendas is a communist. I say the poor man is mad who in his senses would dream of stabbing the Prime Minister of South Africa to death with a knife in parliament we’re not that kind of country. Jak says don’t have any illusions this is just the beginning.

A. stands firm as a rock next to Jakkie where he’s frolicking in the little breakers. Three other nursemaids in the shallows this morning where the toddlers are playing. They tuck their gaudy frocks into the elastic of their bloomers so that they won’t get wet — jump and scream when the waves come. They don’t talk to hr. She keeps to one side & and she puts on airs with hr black & white clothes the whole holidays so far there’ve been many opportunities for striking up friendships. Shame A. is alone I say to J. Shouldn’t have said it because that caused another spat. He says she’s got everything a woolly could wish for & it’s better that she keeps herself apart he really doesn’t want hassles with a hobnobbing then next thing you have young goffels climbing in & then she gets that way & then she’s lost to us. I tell him that’s not the point what worries me is that she’s too old & too cold & too high & mighty even to think of young goffels but it’s holiday after all & what does she have of her life as a young girl? Have! Have! J. shouts don’t even start with have she has everything a coon-girl’s heart could desire and furthermore she has Jakkie more than you or I have him or had him or ever will have. Why do you worry about her? Look at him. He doesn’t make any friends either he just tags along with Agaat all the time it’s not normal.

Haven’t really thought about it like that but I suppose J. has a point. Notice that Jakkie gets bored quickly with other children. Even when he’s alone with me. Perfectly subdued but if it carries on for too long he gets the fidgets. The moment Agaat is around he livens up. She always has a joke or a new game. Not that J. ever takes any trouble to help bring up Jakkie but that will probably start now. See he feel-feels him & says where’re your muscles my boy.

17 December ’66 morning

Is J. right? Does A. really ‘have’ Jakkie? I keep an eye where possible but the two of them are sometimes highly mysterious. Always try to listen when she tells him stories. She always begins with the ‘first story’ the 2nd and the 3rd etc. up to the ‘last story’. They say fairy tales can have a strong influence on a child’s mind. There’s the one story that he always wants to hear last of all & of which he never tires & when she changes one word of it he shouts no! no! that’s not how it goes even if he’s already almost asleep. The no-shouting is all I hear of it except for a few times just the beginning which I eavesdropped on from around the corner: once upon a time there was a woman who was terribly unhappy & who lived like this & that & was she unhappy because she was ugly? & was she unhappy because she was poor? & was she unhappy because she had no friends? etc. & to everything the answer is no but then I can never hear the right answer. On Gdrift it’s always the fire crackling in A.’s room which prevents me from hearing the ‘last story’ properly & now it’s the rushing of the sea. A. deliberately opens the window on the beach side & talks softer & softer at the bed’s head. Eventually he always goes to sleep from it however active and excited he’s been in the course of the day & she Lord how it goes to my heart! she smiles complacent as a sphinx when she gets up there & rearranges her cap.