Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

And what did he do, the poor man? He just tried harder to be good enough!

And then suddenly there was a another voice, higher, lighter, your voice.

What does that have to do with Agaat? She’s the best in the land, the best governess one could wish for!

You unlatched the screen door from its hook to make it slam.

At the top of her voice it resounded there out of the dark door-hole of the outside room:

Praise the Lord with joy resounding, oh my soul how rich the gift!

An exercise in prayerful attendance indeed. Thunder in the outside room when there’s lightning in the sitting room.

You went out onto the front stoep, the red bakkie was parked outside under the fig tree, its front wheels turned at an angle over the roots. So you must after all have dozed off, you thought, because you didn’t hear Jak come in during the night.

You went to have a peek at Jakkie, snapped on the light for a moment.

Fast asleep with his cheek on Agaat’s embroidered pillow slip, his room full of boy’s smells, his mouth with the slight down on the upper lip slightly skew against the pillow.

Jak was at the breakfast table at the usual time. He was pale. You could see he was winding himself up for something. You said nothing. You hoped it would blow over as it did generally tend to do. But you felt that this time it was different. When he’d finished eating, he folded his napkin and cleared his throat.

Phone, he said, phone now on the spot where I can hear you. Arrange with Jakkie’s school. Tell them Jakkie is going for a week-long scouting and survival trial in the mountains of the Tradouw with the Voortrekkers of the Montagu mountain club. That should satisfy them, or you can think up something better yourself, tell them he has mumps.

He smiled a tight little smile in Jakkie’s direction.

You got up from your chair. Jak did not look at you.

But in fact he’s only going with his father so we can get to know each other a bit better, not so? And so that he can taste a bit of what life’s actually all about. What do you say to that, old man? Go ahead and tell your mother of our plans.

Jakkie was excited. It was obvious that they’d been planning it for a long time.

Agaat came in with the dish of oats. With your eyes you asked: So what do you know about this? She pretended not to see you.

Jakkie started chattering about the route.

From Twaalfuurkop they would climb over the intermediate ranges of the Piekeniers above Swellendam and through the Bergkwagga Cracks and along the bushman caves at the Four Sluices. He carried on about the compass and the ropes and the maps and the leopards in the kloofs, and about the descent into the pass by the red krantzes with the body halters and the bolts and anchors after hiking all along the horizon from the bridge so that you and Agaat would be able to watch their progress over the last stretch through binoculars, and could accompany them along the pass, all the way to where you had to pick them up at the deepest point of the road on the bank of the Huis River.

You looked at Agaat again. Her face betrayed nothing. She cleared the porridge plates and pushed a platter of eggs to the middle of the table. She passed the spatula to Jak and he served Jakkie.

Eat, little man, so that you can build strength, said Jak, you’ll need it. We’re taking only peanuts and water and for the rest we’ll have to hunt dassies.

I won’t allow that, you said.

Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, let’s go and brush your pony, he’s mouldering in the stable by now.

Jak put his hand on Jakkie’s shoulder.

Jakkie’s staying right here, Agaat, he wants to eat his eggs. You go and brush his pony for him and while you’re about it see to the other horses as well, clean their stalls, take the muckrake and a spade and after that you might as well put out new straw in the stables, have the bales ready, just remember to take along the wire-cutter.

Jakkie looked at Agaat with wide eyes. She gave him a wooden eye. She wasn’t perturbed in the least.

Gmf! she said. And Jak grinned.

What were they scheming?

Your eyes she resolutely avoided. What did you want her to do? Jak held Jakkie in front of him like a shield. You went and made the call to the school. You heard them giggling over the lie while you were spinning your tale to the principal. You knew that Agaat was listening in to every word.

There was something different about Jak. You could tell from the grim resoluteness with which the preparations were made.

Jakkie was given a pair of real mountaineering boots with blood-red laces and a compass. He couldn’t sleep with excitement. In the evenings he and Jak calculated their hiking stages with compasses and pencil. Their halters and buckles and belts and slipknots and pulleys and hooks lay in the sitting room where they checked them for three days.

You did as Jak told you. You packed his rucksack and Jakkie’s smaller one. 18 kilograms and 8 kilograms exactly, the underpants and T-shirts and socks, light windcheaters, plastic raincoats with hoods, long johns, cloth hats and golfing-caps, the billycan and matches, a little bottle of methylated spirits for sore feet, the sleeping bags, the peanuts, the salt, the glucose sweets. The catapults, the little rolls of smooth wire and string for snares, knives, a torch, a packet of birdseed, water bottles. Within the weight allowance you managed to fit a slab of chocolate, a few guava rolls and a packet of rusks into Jakkie’s rucksack, but Jak threw them out when he checked the contents. Agaat stood in the doorway and watched it all.

Nay what, Jak said, this is not a picnic, we’re going to match our strength against nature. You just see to it that we build up our stamina beforehand, and have the food ready when we return.

Was it all as unexpected as it felt that morning? Not really. The signs had been there had you but wanted to notice them. Perhaps even then Agaat had a much better overview. She was always the one to draw your attention to Jakkie’s growing up, to his first steps, his first daring leaps, first circuit alone on the bicycle, first swim across the river. She was the one who always summoned you: Come and see, just come and see what he can do. Also when Jak taught him the abseiling technique down the tower silo. Your appeal: Just listen to what he can sing, made a feeble show against these achievements. You were tied to him only by this one thin thread of music, and you weren’t sure whether he just played along to humour you.

When Jak heard you making music, he would lure him away. Musical morbs again, he would say, and took him along to go running or rowing. They achieved the best times for father-and-son teams in the holiday races at Witsand, came home with glittering trophies and gilt canoes mounted on wooden blocks. They had ventured into the mountains for a day on occasion. But this project was too large. The scratches and the bruises and the gashed heads that you would have to doctor again. But that would be the least. Now there was a risk of exposure, of getting lost, in the wilderness, in the cold.

But was even that your real concern? My child, you thought, I’m losing my child, first to Agaat and now to Jak, the child of whom I’d dreamt. You put your hand on Jakkie’s curly head, felt him strain away.

I’m going along, said Agaat, she was behind Jakkie’s chair, her hands on the backrest.

So am I, you said.

Jakkie looked from one to the other, his eyes uncertain.

We’re going alone, said Jak. What do we want in the mountains with a wonky-legged woman and a one-armed golliwog? You could never leave your silly little farm all on its own? What would happen then?

He winked at Jakkie.

The cows would get scarlet fever, the wethers would drown themselves one by one in the drinking trough, go on, Jakkie, what else would happen?