Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

16 May 1968

A. now measures Jakkie every week — Friday evenings much ado about his supposedly growing so fast. Have just again observed the operation there in the passage she calls it keeping up-to-date the ‘growth rate’. He has to take off his shoes & exhale & open his ribcage & stand with his heels against the skirting board & his back up straight & his head to attention against the ascending ladder of pencil marks from each preceding birthday.

Suspect it’s just an excuse that A. thinks up to touch him because of course he’s starting to get shy nowadays. She presses & pushes his shoulders & neck & knees as if she’s trying to stop him from changing sometimes I’m scared she’s doing him some harm & then she brings the ruler & places it square & level over his crown & makes a small pencil line. Have just seen her holding him round the throat with hr strong hand while he’s standing bolt upright against the wall with eyes shut tight. But you’re growing way past me now you’re going to get an Adam’s apple just like your father just feel this almighty thick gullet.

What are these other lines? I hear Jakkie ask there at the end of the passage. Reply: low-tide mark depth of the drift height of the time length of the shadows who can tell? it’s an old house maybe it’s your mother who was measured there or perhaps your grandmother.

Who posted letters here? asks Jakkie & he clappers the copper flap of the post-slit. Internal correspondence says Agaat perhaps there was somebody in quarantine she says. What is quarantine? asks Jakkie. That’s when you don’t know what disease someone’s suffering from then you isolate them otherwise they infect the healthy people then they communicate only in writing because talking is too dangerous because the germs live in the breath.

In passing I got an almighty look from A. What does she want me to say? What would Jakkie make of it if he knew? Does she want to protect him from the knowledge? Or does she want to protect me? Or herself? Suspect in any case J. has already told him everything. Although perhaps he’d rather hush up the past from his son.

Concerning Jakkie’s birth there are several stories. One story is that A. changed into the noonday witch & caught him on the pass & stuck his tail into a pillowslip & chopped it off with an axe before de-hairing him further. But there are also always new stories & there is the last bedtime story that must always remain the same & of which I never can make out the ending.

I suppose it’s time for the facts of life. Wonder if I should leave that to J. Perhaps A. has also in that left us far behind. Saw her the other day standing there on the front stoep with him hr little hand on his shoulder & pointing with the other hand down there by the river the stallion pawing his front legs in the air trying to get on top of the mare.

15 July 1968

A. & Jakkie’s games — something about them I find disquieting nowadays. Do so badly want him to mix with children of his own age. Time that he went to school again.

They call each other from long distances. The game is apparently to see who has the finest hearing & turns up within a reasonable time. Sometimes it’s a terrifying hissing deafening between-teeth-whistling & hammering on the yard gong in season & out of season & a sounding of the lorry’s hooter fit to wake the dead. Put a stop to that the shouting with the hands in front of the mouth is bad enough. What on earth could fascinate them so about it? The one or the other vanishes into thin air & then the agreement is apparently to leave something behind in the vanishing-place like a handkerchief or a bottle-top (as proof of how far you could hear). The latest variation is the ram’s horn. The notes don’t really vary much. Sometimes though the duration of the notes & the intervals sometimes longer sometimes shorter. Just now again I was standing on the front stoep & heard one of them sounding up from somewhere in the mountain. Lugubrious it sounds plaintive it must have been A. she has a tremendous lung capacity from blowing fires into life in her fireplace & then very faintly from somewhere behind the ridges Jakkie answered. To & fro went the calling on the horn a code if I had to guess. What could the message be? Without content it would have to bore them very quickly but apparently they can carry on with it into all eternity.

12 September 1971

A. learns everything with Jakkie from his schoolbooks, asks him his idiomatic expressions & his multiplication tables. He teaches hr what they sing at school. Land of our fathers. She knows more verses of The Call of South Africa than he. You’re making it up! he says & she shows him in black and white in the old FAK. You sound just like a donkey when you sing she says stay in tune now! Do hope he retains his love of singing after his voice has broken. A lyrical tenor I would guess.

16 September 1971

Am all of a sudden not allowed in the bathroom when Jakkie is having a bath. Not J. either. No, he’s too big now says Jakkie but not for A. no she’s allowed. In & out with pyjamas and clean towels all bustle and display for my benefit. Sits with him on an apple box while he baths & chatters (have already removed the chair from there to discourage hr but she takes no notice). Had to go and fetch a bag of down in the little store for two new pillows and stuff them there in the backyard otherwise J. will complain of the mess & then I saw through the steam the movements. A. adding water or getting up to wash his back. Then I heard him ask her: Where do you come from? what does your name mean? Long stories she spins him. Couldn’t make out everything. She teases him he laughs and giggles he persists with his questions. A. says: I crawled out of the fire. Isn’t true says Jakkie you’re lying he says. Is true she says I was dug out of the ash stolen out of the hearth fell out of a cloud came up with the fennel washed down in the flood was mowed with the sickle threshed with the wheat baked in the bread. No seriously asks Jakkie what kind of a name is that? nobody else has a name like that. Baptised like that left like that. But it’s actually A-g-g-g-g-gaat that goes g-g-g-g like a house snake behind the skirting board. Gaat Gaat Gaat says Jakkie, sounding the g in his throat as if he’s gargling, it’s a name of nothing. That’s right says A. it’s a name of everything that’s good. It’s everything and nothing six of one and half a dozen of the other.

So there she was singing him an odd little song with Scripture thrown in an odd tune I’m writing it up here what I remember of it. Perhaps J. is right A. not a good influence on Jakkie. Can’t put my finger on it. After all she got it all from me but what she makes of it is the Lord knows a veritable Babel. Doleful in a way that makes me want to hide my head somewhere. This person! — how in God’s name did she get like that?

I’m the ear of the owl

I’m the eye of the ant

I’m the right of the rain

The song started off quite low & went higher & higher & faster & faster. Made me think of a choral piece. Which composer? Can’t think that I would ever have told her about it can hardly remember it myself it was so long ago at university. I write your name on the sand & the snow on the white loaf of my days. Everywhere on everything that is dear to me, I write your name. And by the power of this word I shall start my life anew. I was born to call you by your name: Freedom. Something like that. But A.’s song was about something else. Couldn’t make head or tail of it.

I stand sentry at the meal of the mealy-mouthed jackals (here she