Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

She starts a second round of snipping.

I want to see the mirror, I signal. Now!

Wait, she says, I haven’t nearly done. All the old fluff in the neck, she says.

Grrr, grrr, grrr, she saws at it with the serrated blade. My head is cold.

Almost done. Here’s another loose strand. Here’s another tuft. Oh well, that will have to do, Ounooi, it’s not as if your hair is what it used to be.

She brings the drier. The little hand twists and tosses my hair under the stream of hot air.

It’s too hot, I say.

Too this too that, says Agaat. She switches the drier to cold.

Don’t come and complain to me if your nose runs, she says.

She brings the mirror closer again. Last time I looked like Liza Minnelli. Before that like Mary Quant.

It’s the magnifying face of the mirror that she holds in front of me. My chin and cheeks bulge and distort, my haircut falls beyond the frame.

And then God saw that it was good, says Agaat, are you also satisfied?

Thank you.

Rather stingy with compliments tonight, aren’t we, says Agaat, use your imagination. You look exactly like Julie Andrews.

The hills are alive with the sound of music, Agaat hums. One phrase, then she changes her tune.

My grandma’s mangy hen.

Clack, she pulls the tape from the player. Too many tunes for one throat.

Now the ears, she says.

Well and good, my ears are exposed to view now.

The top comes off the little bottle of Johnson’s ear buds. Plop. Agaat shakes the bottle so that it looks like a porcupine full of quills.

First wet, she says, then dry.

She dips the end of the ear bud in a bowl of water.

The deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, she says, full of old wax. Say if it’s too deep.

She looks into my eyes while she pushes the lukewarm bud into my ear.

Just let me be please, I signal, it’s been too deep for a while now, you don’t need clean ears to die.

Oh yes, says Agaat, you do, St Peter sticks in his key to check.

She twists and twirls the stick. Liquid gushes in my left ear. It blocks up. One half of the world mutes.

Still waters, says Agaat.

The stick emerges with a dark-brown lump on its point. She holds it in front of my nose.

Well-greased, she says. Very healthy still. Pure turf.

She examines it minutely before she wipes it on the sheet and pushes the other end into my ear vigorously.

Please, don’t you have any respect? I ask.

It could have been worse, says Agaat as she takes possession of the other ear. Her voice cracks, she swallows the rest. But I inspect her jaw. It’s pushed far out and it’s agitated with subterranean rumbling.

At least you still have ears to hear! If your gut looks like the inside of your ears we don’t have a problem! Pure sweet-potato peat! All the way to the portals! Don’t keep looking at me like that! What more can I do? Everything is here now. Must I then divert the water from the godgiven drift itself through this room for you? Install a pump down there and lay a pipe to the room and flood everything like a deluge? Well, let me tell you, it’s dry! The drift is dry! There’s nothing left in it.

Forgive me.

How’s that?

Forgive me!

I didn’t say anything!

Or do you think perhaps that you’re in the ark here? That I have to cart in two of everything? You and I! That’s the two! That’s Two enough!

Forgive me!

Give you what? Arsenic or arsenite or arsenate? Don’t be silly. We’ll start with the usual medicine, otherwise it will just have to be an enema again. You can’t lie here like this. You’ll poison yourself.

She thinks she can scare me with her talk. I don’t scare any more. I’m tired. She tires me. I tire her. There are dark circles under her eyes. Her ankles seem swollen. When she sits on the chair, I see her knees, bloated like those of a pregnant woman. We wear each other out. How is this to end if she doesn’t want to make an end of it with me?

She puts on her glasses for the next task. Now the nails, she says, you know you dig holes into yourself. Just see what it looks like here, ai!

She straightens the fingers of my right hand. I’ve been feeling it for a while now. The cutting into my palms. But it wasn’t on the list. When I looked at my hands to try and draw her attention to them, she briefly rubbed them or tucked them away under the sheets. She shies away from the shrivelled little claws of mine, I can see it in her face. But tonight they’re on her list. Now that the room is full again, I’m the one who must be pruned back, scraped out all the way to my cuticles. So the wheel turns. Hip up, hop down.

In my right palm the nail of my middle finger has cut through the skin. The other nails have curled upwards where they’ve been pressed against the inside of my hand. Two are ingrown. That shuts Agaat up. Neglected area. Nothing that can inflame her more. She works away at every problem systematically. Little crescents of nail-clippings fall on the sheet amongst the hair. Into the quick the ingrown nails are filed away. The cuticles are pushed back. The cuts in my palms are disinfected, are given fresh plasters.

Now the feet. The dog’s-nails are filed down. I smell horn. The calluses on my feet are anointed with emollient. The minutes are counted while they dry. Then the filings are rubbed off.

A quarter strikes in the sitting room, how many does that make? I’ve lost count. What could the time be? It feels like deep, deep in the night. No other sounds except those of these foolish ministrations, the click of the tweezers, the rasping of the files, the tchi, tchi, tchi of the rubber soles around the bed, the white cap that ascends and descends over parts of my body. Is she establishing a firebreak? Is it to save time when I have to be coffined? Her lips now and again relax out of the straight line, they gape, as if she’s gasping for extra breath, now and again she compresses them completely, keeps them tightly pursed. A notch between her eyebrows. I can’t see her eyes.

Agaat recovers the faculty of speech when she beholds my hairy shins.

Orang-utan, she says. She clears her throat.

I don’t want to know what your armpits look like by this time. Stubble-field! Don’t let us forget about them!

She takes her magnifying glass, inspects my face.

And the stubble on your chin. And just look at how your eyebrows curl up. Little brushes in the nostrils. Heavens, seems to me there are two evenings’ work here.

Her voice is thick. She stands back. She takes off her glasses. She rubs her eyes.

Let’s just shave the old legs and then go to bed, she says, tomorrow is another day.

My left leg is soaped. The first stroke draws blood.

Thin, she gets out, too thin.

Razor in the air she stands and looks at the blood trickling a crooked little line through the lather, blotting the soapiness pink before the rivulet divides and drips onto the sheet on either side of my calf.

Yes, look, Agaat. Now you’ll just have to look well. Because there you have what you’ve been looking for. It’s only blood that’s inside me. Replete I still am with it. Heavy and dense I am with blood. And that is all that will flow from me if you make a hole in me. Blood! No ready-made pictures to make your skin crawl, nor a tent full of entertainment, that thing on my shin is no peep-hole of a kaleidoscope in which you can make glass fragments tinkle in pretty patterns. The costumes are your brainwave. The orchestra. The stage set you carted in here. It’s behind your curtains that the play is waiting to commence. You will have to produce the lines. Because the void is in you.

The darkened coulisses.

Like gills they drape layer upon layer.

I hear the effort of your breathing.

Rippling.