Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Every time his story was that dairy cows were just a nuisance, the slaughter-cattle were far less trouble and maintenance. But with his Simmentals that he acquired time after time things didn’t really go much better. They got eye cancer and every year there were deaths amongst the heifers calving for the first time. The vet’s bills for Grootmoedersdrift were astronomical. Jak’s solution was: Sell all the cattle.

Was that how it began? Jak’s proposal later at table? Sell the cattle herds, before they put us even more out of pocket. The market is good now, we’ll concentrate more on sheep and wheat, it’s lunacy to want this farm to look like a picture in a children’s book.

You made the mistake of protesting.

I’m not the one with the expensive hobbies, I’m not the one who’s forever experimenting with this that and the next thing, Jak. Nor am I the one who walks around with my head in a dream about how easy it is to grow rich from farming. It’s because you don’t inform yourself of all the factors, it’s because you don’t study all sides of a matter before you make an investment. That’s where the trouble starts.

You saw his face set in a grimace, but you couldn’t stop yourself.

If you want to buy Simmentals, then you select them by hand, Jak, and you see to it that each and every one has a decent pair of spectacles. Everybody knows that white faces are prone to growths. They’re spotted cattle and the spots must be on the nose and ears and around the eyes as well otherwise you sure as sure will have problems with growths. Don’t sit there looking at me as if I’m talking Greek, this isn’t Germany, the sun scorches the poor animals to a frazzle, seven, eight months of the year. But no, Jak de Wet of course thinks all he need do is take out the cheque book and phone the importer in South West Africa: Hello Mr Liebknecht, and I’m looking for seventy cows and the biggest champion bull south of the equator to service them, thank you very much, goodbye. And that then is supposed to guarantee success.

Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, I’ll clear later, let’s take a lantern, then we go and see next to the dam if the skunk that’s been eating the ducks’ eggs has stepped into the snare yet.

Jakkie looked at you.

Go ahead, you two, you indicated to him.

Jak clenched his teeth. He wanted to keep the child there to support his arguments. You knew about the promises when one day the cows fetched a good price, of the hang-glider and the microlight with which the two of them would inspect Grootmoedersdrift from the air and float over the kloofs like cranes.

How was a child to resist that? And how must you then present your case so as not to look like a spoilsport?

Sell the bull then if you must sell something, you said while Jakkie was still within earshot. After all we now have excellent offspring from him, younger bulls that would work just as well as him with the cows.

He glared at you. You could feel it was heading for a collision. You couldn’t stop yourself.

Was that perhaps what you wanted, Milla? a collision, after your humiliation two evenings earlier? A collision if a reconciliation wasn’t possible.

You pushed the point.

Year after year, Jak, you put the almighty Hamburg with the young heifers, year after year the calves are too big to be born independently, year after year I ask nicely: Please, get rid of the bull. It’s never you who has to deal with the consequences, you lie snoring and I’m the one who has to play midwife right though the night.

Are you stark staring mad! Jak exclaimed. That bull is worth its weight in gold to me, all the farmers of The Spout phone me to get Hamburg to cover their cows, I’m thinking of fitting out a sperm installation, then I spare the bull and make a profit out of him at the same time.

Jak, you don’t know what you’re doing, you said. Do you want to increase the misery artificially now as well? It’s very hard for the cows, they suffer unnecessarily, but what do you do? You always just walk away when it becomes too hard to behold, so you don’t see what it looks like, you don’t see how we have to damage the cows to deliver the almighty calves, one should have respect for the animals, one should assist them as much as one can. .

For God’s sake just don’t start that again, Jak said.

You looked at his mouth, his lips distorting with exasperation, the ridges on his jaws as he clenched his teeth. Something in that excited you. What was it? You could never place it. You felt it in your own mouth, extra spit, and in your gullet, a kind of widening, in your gums, an itchiness. You waited for his delivery. You closed your eyes, so strongly did you feel it coming. His voice was high and hard, his speech-rhythm emphatic. You sat back, you knew how it was going to be, how it was going to enter you, the deluge of solid, heated sentences.

You’re imagining things, Jak, you said. I’m not starting anything.

Jak slammed his hand on the table.

No, of course not, Milla, nothing said, nothing meant, I’m imagining things again, the old story, but I know what you think, you always want to get back to that. That I left you in the lurch with Jakkie’s birth. That I deliberately kept myself out of the way because I supposedly didn’t want to behold your travails. That you were unnecessarily damaged in the process. Those are always your exact words when you talk about it, so don’t think I don’t know what you’re insinuating.

Jak got up, went and stood behind his chair, clutched the backrest so that his knuckles showed white.

He was too early, the child, that’s all! A whole ten days! How was I supposed to guess it? I wanted to help you with it, and I wanted to be present, of course, it’s my son after all! But you, you think the worst of me, always have, you don’t want to think otherwise of me, you decided long ago, in the very distant past, that Jak de Wet is the villain of this story and he’ll remain the villain. All written up and bound, what everybody most wants to read.

But do you know, Milla, what it’s like to spend your days next to a woman who always knows better? In whose eyes you can’t do anything right? For whom everything that you tackle is doomed in advance? What it’s like to live with someone who’s forever hinting that you don’t love her enough? Who only cherishes her own little needs, no matter who you are, what you are, the whole you, that feels and thinks. .

Jak had never expressed himself like that. His voice was strained and his mouth trembled, but he held your eyes and pushed through with what he wanted to say.

. . the whole you, he said, with his own thoughts and dreams, not only yours, Milla.

His eyes were fierce and gleaming. You wanted to get up and go and put your arms around him on the other side of the table, but he retreated. That was when you recognised it for what it was, exactly what the strange expression was. It was fear, more even, hysteria it was. He tugged at his collar as if he needed air.

Just you don’t come near me, woman, he said, you keep your hands off me! His voice was hoarse.

Jak, you said, don’t, please, don’t you see then? That’s what I’ve always wanted, that you should talk to me like that, so that I could know what you’re about.

You moved around the table to him. He groped behind him, knocked over an earthenware jug, he was almost against the curtains of the sitting room trying to escape.

Leave me alone, just leave me alone, I know you, I know who you. . are!

Jak, calm down, you said, you’re overwrought, it’s not as bad as you’re making out, you’re imagining things. Come now, it’s only me, Milla, you look as if you’re seeing a ghost!

You! he screamed, short of breath, and extended his arm, pointed his finger at you. His hand was trembling. His chest was heaving.