Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

Would I mind if he left me? I have Jakkie. And Agaat.

5 April 1974

Decided to increase Agaat’s salary but not directly with money with animals. She’s had a cow & a few sheep from the start. Had them & their progeny branded over the years & she kept tally. By now 30 Jersey & 120 merinos & a few goats. The arrangement is she can sell as she sees fit not that she has anything to spend the money on but I tell hr save it build up a nest-egg for yourself you never know what may happen one day. For the time being it’s between hr & me. J. would never approve it if I consulted him about it in advance but if he asks I’ll say see it as A.’s pension she’ll also be old one day.

I leave her free to decide for hrself when she wants to have the animals serviced or dipped & sheared & so forth so that she can feel she has a bit of independence here what else does she have? She takes very good care. See hr often inspecting hr animals. Hr cows yield more milk than mine & her sheep’s wool is better. See she makes extra hay & even with hr last profit ordered hrself a few drums of molasses from the co-op & she regularly drives hr merinos next to the drift & she stands behind them hrself so that they can eat as much as they like of the long grass there. Only hr bunch of goats is a nuisance half domesticated the creatures & sometimes escape from their pen & eat my plants in the garden.

12 July 1974

Drove out today with A. for hr birthday 26 she is. How time flies! Went & had a picnic next to the Huis River. Had a good view of their working at the new pass. Nice strong stone walls packed there. If there’d been this fast road when you had to give birth to Jakkie, Même, she says out of the blue then we wouldn’t even have had to stop. It’s been a long time since she’s called me Même.

Jakkie sent hr a parcel that she opened there at the picnic a blood-red apron with a card that I’m not allowed to see & that left her completely silent for the rest of the picnic & all the way home. Ai, she does miss him so. He says he sings in the school choir there in Heidelberg but all that the music teacher knows is Whispering Hope.

14 September 1974

Jakkie home for the spring holiday. Busy time on the farm. A. busy all day & Jakkie at a bit of a loose end. Come let me help you with your German I say but he doesn’t want me to. Then I said let’s sing it’s the best way of learning a language but in fact I wanted to get some idea of how the voice had broken. So I taught him Der Musensohn: Und nach dem Takte reget/Und nach dem Mass beweget. A delicate tenor as I’d suspected & still the perfect pitch & the fine sensitivity, ag it would be a sin if he didn’t develop it. The most important thing is that I made some contact with him again.

Saturday 15 February 1975 half past six

Terrible day! It’s just me here in the house, feels as if I’m going mad. What must I do to escape this hell? Seems as if everything I undertake is doomed.

By four o’clock this afternoon back already from long weekend at Witsand. Do miss Jakkie so much now that he’s at school in Stellenbosch & it’s generally more relaxed in the beach house. Thought it might be nice if we ate out for a change as a family in the hotel there at the end of the weekend but what a fiasco! Jakkie (full of enlightened ideas these days) says he doesn’t want to go if Agaat can’t go along. There you have it, said J., A. is the government of Gdrift but out there she’s a domestic & look what I’ve brought up in my wisdom & now Jakkie also has wrong ideas in his head.

Surely there’ll be facilities for the kitchen staff I thought a little table somewhere where she can sit & eat. So A. goes along in her best cap very reluctant but for Jakkie’s sake. When we arrive there she doesn’t want to know anything about the hotel kitchen & she won’t budge & she stays sitting in the car & next thing Jakkie gets up suddenly without apology or explanation & takes his plate of food with him to go & give it to A. & apparently she then scolded him so fiercely that he threw the plate on the ground. This Jak then found out because when Jakkie didn’t return to the table he went to see what was happening outside & when they eventually returned to the dining room Jakkie’s face was blood-red & he had a white ring round his mouth. Heard later that Jak had thrashed Jakkie with his belt right there in front of A. How could J. do such a thing? The child is fifteen already & very over-sensitive. Terrible atmosphere because then we still had to pack everything at the beach house & Jak shouts at everybody & goes like a bat out of hell back within two hours. When we got here he made Jakkie pack immediately & ordered Dawid to take him back to Stellenbosch in the bakkie.

A. has disappeared it’s almost dark & she’s not back yet what’s going to happen to us here? J. is out of his mind charged out of here in his running-clothes. How can they just leave me all on my own like this after all that?

For supper there’s spinach. For dessert there’ll be stewed prunes.

Green food and black food. 12 December. Already noted on the calendar, entered in the log book.

Puree.

In the Braun.

Zimmmm-zoommm.

And after that strained three times through a sieve.

Fine but fibre-rich.

Agaat came and stood in the doorway with her little hand folded in her big hand to tell me all this. She couldn’t control the timbre of her voice. Couldn’t spare me the details of pulping. She tried. But she couldn’t. Triumphantly. Clipped. A real elocution lesson. Lips tensed around the p’s. Breath expelled robustly as if she’d rather be singing. If only I could prompt her to perform something. A libretto for the great purgation scene. Prima donna on her Procrustean bed.

Or something of the kind.

In her present mood she’d rather call the thing by name outright.

Sometimes I wonder whether, if I were suddenly to recover my speech, we could in these last days find a language to understand each other.

In which to make last jokes.

Or first jokes.

First smile.

First word.

But perhaps a lot of jabbering would have prevented us from getting to where we are now. Where that is I don’t know. I just have to guess. And she has to guess. Our positions in this studio, who is in the chair of the drawing-master, who the model on the podium. Both beginners rather, I tend to feel, with a stick of charcoal in the hand, dumbfounded before each other’s nakedness, without anybody to instruct us in the fashioning of a faithful representation.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into everything she does and says. Perhaps I’m imaging her evil. Or her goodness. Perhaps I’ve been delirious all this time because of a lack of oxygen.

Perhaps I’m more clear-minded than I’ve ever been. And perhaps she’s trying at all costs to make me keep my wits about me. By providing me with material, pricks to kick against.

I know how Agaat’s mind operates. She has no respect for a helpless human being. Possibly still pity. But not for long, then she wants to see signs of independence. She knows she’ll have to generate it in me herself if she wants to see it, reaction, resistance. Because only when she’s brought me to that will she have something to subjugate.

Spinach and prunes, thus.

Her chin has made that clear.

She will no longer be a passive spectator of my constipation.

She is now taking control of my bowels.

If she gets nothing else out of me, that she will get out of me.

Shit I shall shit, says her attitude. For her I shall address myself to the pan with abandon. Even if it is the last time. That’s one thing of which I shall not deprive her. I may be struck dumb in the mouth, and too cowardly to face her for one moment longer than is necessary, and too ungrateful to appreciate it, the spectacle that she’s contrived here in the room. But my stomach, my stomach and its overflow are hers. My last honourable mechanism. She’ll work it for me. Work it and make it work. For the night is coming.