Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

You thought of Jak who’d appeared in the door of your bedroom the night before their departure. He was quiet, his footsteps so light that at first you supposed it was Jakkie. He didn’t say a word. Just came and lay next to you and placed his head on your breast. You didn’t move, you heard him swallow, after a while you put your hand on his neck, startled at how sinewy he felt, how bony his back, his vertebrae, his protruding shoulder blades. You hoped that he’d tell you that he knew the route like the back of his hand, that he would protect the child with his life, but he didn’t. He went away, as silently as he had come. Against the backlight you saw his silhouette, his skull with the shorn hair, his neck tensed.

You sat there in the bakkie for hours, you and Agaat. Sometimes an exclamation broke the silence when one or the other of you thought that you saw something, an arm waving, two figures standing next to each other on a misty skyline, a cloth hat amongst the silver bushes, a white collar disappearing into a crack. But it was always just the shifting of the mist, of the sun that from time to time glowed more strongly through the clouds and made colours flare up amongst the black rock faces.

Let’s drive to the place where they’ll come down, Agaat said after a while, perhaps they’re waiting there already.

You drove slowly to give them time to arrive, then again faster to be in time in case they’d already arrived. As you drove further into the pass, in amongst the rugged rock faces, the black river far below, you remembered the trip twelve years earlier. Agaat was inspecting the horizon, the binoculars pressed tightly to her eyes. You could see from her mouth that she was thinking the same thing. You heard her mumble.

I’ll climb up right here, I’ll drag you out of the holes, I’m coming to fetch you down, I’ll fill the pass with my barking from one end to the other, rousing all the baboons all the way to Swellendam so that you can hear with your own ears I’m looking for you.

Was it an hour, another two hours that you waited there in the deepest part of the pass next to the red rock faces? You had to switch on the engine every now and again to activate the windshield wipers. In between short bursts of sunshine the rain sifted down in blue sheets. You constantly looked at your watches, but it wasn’t at the position of the hands that you looked, it wasn’t ten o’clock or then eleven o’clock and then half past eleven, there were other distances, other circuits, revolutions between you and Agaat.

Just tell me that they’ll come, you said to her.

She darted you a swift look. Me, the look said, you want me to reassure you, me, after you caused this trouble, you and your baas!

After a while she did after all mumble, looking straight ahead: They’ll come.

It was Agaat who first spotted them, in the rain, two small dark bundles crawling slowly down the rock faces.

There, there! she shouted.

You both grabbed for the binoculars, her hand was on yours.

Give it to me, she said, give it to me, I’ll look. She pulled the binoculars out of your grip. You let go. You pleaded with your eyes: Let it be true! She returned your look with the usual message: Don’t make such a fuss, either it’s them or it’s not them, I’m not the Lord God on high.

You regarded Agaat as she adjusted the lenses. Her mouth was moving, mimicking what moved up there on the rock face. Or didn’t move. What could she be seeing? Mountain-goats, lumps of sliding turf, sodden bushes worked loose and rolling down? The mountain had been playing you tricks all morning.

It’s them, she managed to say.

You grabbed the binoculars. You couldn’t find them, a swirl of surfaces and ridges and grooves of stone.

Where, where? you screamed. Agaat directed you. Pushed, pulled at the binoculars. A notch at the top. A little way down, to the left. There where the rock is a deeper red above the ledge.

There they were in their green windbreakers. Pressed flat against the rock face, motionless before both of them simultaneously switched a handhold, exchanged one foothold for another cranny. Jakkie was tied to Jak with a rope. But that, you could see, was useless. They weren’t anchored to anything above them. They were carrying their rucksacks. Any disturbance of balance and they would fall down from there, the face was too shallow, handholds and footholds few.

You couldn’t watch. You pressed the binoculars into Agaat’s hand, lowered your head on the steering wheel.

She tried to tell you what was happening. Your ears were humming. You felt as if you were going to faint. What was that suddenly on your back? Agaat’s little hand? What was it that she was tracing for you there? Jak and Jakkie’s movements on the rock face, along the ridge of your spine, next to the knobs and depressions of your vertebrae, Tradouw, the way down. ‘They’ve seen us! They’re waving at us! Show your lights!’

You didn’t want to look and you didn’t want to wave and you didn’t want to show your lights. Agaat reported step by step. How Jak hoisted down the rucksacks, how he hammered in the pegs, made the ropes longer, how he hammered in the anchor for securing the main rope deeper than all the others, how he checked Jakkie’s halters, the pulleys, the clips, the nooses. How he slid down first.

Still you wouldn’t look. When Agaat spoke again, her voice was altered.

A scraping and clicking, a clucking, a hissing, murmurings, mutterings, issued from her. You shut your eyes tighter. You could feel her stirring next to you on the seat. Her apron rustled, like a turkey drumming. Then she swore. Got! Got! Got! In a frenzy she got out, left the door open, a sharp herby smell suddenly in your nose, you lifted up your head, opened your eyes.

There she was in front of the red nose of the bakkie, right in front of you so that you couldn’t see anything of what was happening down there in the kloof. You could see it coming, as if she were swearing with her whole body. She acted it out with her arms, with her feet, the hanging, the sliding, the kicking out. The point of her cap rose and fell like a thing, white and black, that scoops, that arches its neck, that pitches. She bent her knees, got on to her toes, swayed sideways, stepped forward and stepped back.

Then you could no longer stay in the bakkie. Then you had to get out.

There Jakkie was hanging, thirty metres from the ground, far away from the rock face, his legs too short to gain purchase, he hooked at the face with his claw-hammer, but he couldn’t reach.

Swing yourself, Jak tried to instruct him from below, swing yourself forward, towards the mountain! Jak signalled with both his arms, forward, forward.

You could see Jakkie trying to impel himself with his legs. He couldn’t generate enough momentum. His legs dangled. He looked up. Something wasn’t right. It was the anchor on the ridge, it was working itself loose up there. He plucked at it, showed Jak: There’s a problem.

Then part of the rope jerked loose and Jakkie’s head’s snapped back as the rope tightened again.

Jump! Jak shouted, untie yourself! Or so it sounded, you couldn’t hear very well from up there. From Jak’s gestures you could make out what the instructions were. Cut loose your halter! Hang! Hang by your arms until you’re hanging still, dead still, keep yourself up straight, keep your legs together, cut loose. Let go! I’ll catch you, I’m here! He struck his breast with the flat of his hand, I’m here, I’m here, I won’t let you get hurt, I stand fast for you, here!

He turned round to you to show you, he’s there, his hand on his chest.

And then suddenly it went dark in front of your eyes. Agaat put her small hand behind your head and clapped her big hand in front of your eyes.