Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

And if her ministrations don’t have the desired effect, then she’ll push a pipe up me and pump me full of lukewarm saline water. Would I rather have that? The glug-glug in my ears while I’m filled up from below like a gallon canister of Caltex? The bed tilted head-down at fifty degrees? Shaken by the feet to get rid of air bubbles?

Has she forgotten that she embraced my feet? Or is she pretending she meant nothing by that? Can she really have forgotten that she bowed her head over my shins, crumpled up her untouchable cap against my shins?

That was yesterday. Today, apparently, the Cape is Dutch again. Without a crease in the gable is her cap. Perhaps she embroidered herself a cap especially for the occasion. An allegory. Millions of tubes running through the stars. Stuck into the Black Hole, to mock the Evil One in her pit until she gives a sign of life?

Come and bend down here close to me, Agaat, so that I can check whether that’s your latest needlepoint strategy. Give me a dream from the point of your needle. How many angels are there dancing there? And will you accompany me to heaven as embroiderer of deathbed stories? How would you design your deathbed accompanist if you were to be given the chance?

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

With quite a little air of importance she said it. In the chest register of the mezzo-domestico, the one who has to keep her pose under all circumstances, an air hostess on a doomed flight, a waitress in Towering Inferno .

As if she’s singing of duck’s tongues in port-wine sauce, or of pumpkin flowers in batter.

From its earliest incipience this morning the meal has been prepared with an amplitude of gesture. The first you-don’t-know-what’s-in-store-for-you-madam look I got just after breakfast, while I was still sprawling unproductively on the bedpan. With the dish full of springy, curling spinach-beet leaves she marched down the passage past my room to go and rinse them in the bath. Fresh from her vegetable garden of which she’s so proud. Left right, left right, all she lacked was fife and drum. On better days she holds the sunripe strawberries under my nose before she mashes them with a fork. But today it’s green. Colour of the dragon. The pennants are fluttering for the last battle of The Spout.

Three thorough rinses I heard, a stirring and a shaking and a splashing in the bath. This afternoon I got the smell, mercifully braised in butter with onion, a shred of bacon if I can still trust my nose. An hour ago the Braun started singing in the kitchen, at the high pitch of the puree setting. Zimmm-zoommm. Six, seven eight batches. I could hear the wet spinach slapping up in the jug, could see the slurry ooze down on the inside. Who does she think is supposed to eat it all? She’ll get three teaspoons into me, maybe four. And she won’t eat any of it herself.

Now she has enough for a constipated army. Perhaps she wishes she had a whole hospital of casualties to care for. So that she could repeat her ministrations from bed to bed. So that a Revolution of the Shitting Classes could erupt. Which she could suppress with a counter-offensive. Bored to death she must be. Three years long the same routines, over and over, the washing, the feeding, the pans.

In fact I know what she wants to achieve with her noisy preparations. She wants to attract attention. She wants to build up tension. She wants me to know that she’s advancing. With a ruffle of drums. Tralalee tralaley!

Is it for my sake or for hers? Perhaps by this time she can’t believe that she’s held out so long with me so ill. Three years’ dying. A lifetime’s diaries. Perhaps she herself feels like a ghost by this time. Perhaps I’m sustaining her with my dependence.

The one old ghost had a very hard time and the other old ghost did its bit. Long live the two! Tralalee tralaley! Tralalee tralaley!

Who then thought up this pretty little song?

Two geese brought it over the sea.

Mach Toten lebendig.

Macht Kranken gesund.

The Farted Bride. The Three-cornered Pan.

What would Agaat be without her overtures?

The prunes have been stewing since early morning. I heard her take the packets out of the grocery cupboard, one, two, three. I heard her plop them in the water to soak before she put them on, heard her squeeze out the pips, plinks, plinks, into an enamel bowl.

Here they come, Mrs De Wet. Thou shalt behold thine prunes. More nourishing than sour grapes.

Perhaps she will relent. Perhaps she’ll make a souffle. Just for the beauty of it. Would that be the reason for the march-tempo that I hear approaching down the passage? A risen light-green puff of a spinach souffle in a white dish?

No. She’s selecting a tape. Thwick thwock, she pushes it into the player. Volume. Balance. Not a souffle. The Slave Chorus. The Grand March. Va pensiero .

I know this, this out-of-the-blue music-making. Accompaniment to the meal if she doesn’t feel like talking to me.

Camouflage, the music is at times. When there are visitors. To chase them away she deliberately chooses the chickle-chockle on little drums and tin guitars that interests Jakkie so much. So that I shouldn’t hear what she’s discussing with them in the sitting room. But what’s this all of a sudden that I’m not supposed to hear when all day I’m allowed to hear spinach pureeing and prunes plopping? I prick up my ears. Tchick, I hear under the music.

And another tchick. Open with the sideboard and shut.

What could it be? Whatever it is, it proceeds at a leisurely pace, to the beat of the music, down the passage.

I mustn’t hope for it. Fantastic timing it would be.

What do I see?

Yes I see. My eyes are open. I must believe them. With the rolls of maps held out in front of her on her arms she marches into the room solemnly. An offering. She stops just inside the door for me to take good note. She drags up a chair with one arm. Her face absolutely straight. She gets onto the chair. One by one she takes the rolls, hangs them by the loops from the picture rail. Doesn’t open them. Everyone rolled up and still secured with little bows.

Right, Agaat, Mrs de Wet here understands the trade-off!

An evacuation for an exposition! Fair enough!

A poop for a peep!

A panful for a panorama of Grootmoedersdrift!

Who else could think up that anagnorisis should coincide with catharsis?

Yes, Agaat, right enough, what is Mrs de Wet going to see? Mrs de Wet is going to see her arse. I know how your mind works. First Jak and now I. Calculated in such a way that we have only ourselves to thank.

Now she wants me to applaud. Now that I’m tired and worn out with everything that she’s been pushing under my nose. Now that I’ve become so feeble and so heavy of breath. Now that I must shit for old times’ sake. Without any pressure of my own. A mere sewer.

And here my spinach is now. Steaming in a saucer on the bridge. A bit of bicarbonate of soda to make it green.

But first there is another manoeuvre.

A shake manoeuvre. Little brown bottle. Shiny teaspoon.

First the Pink Lady, says Agaat, then the spinach.

The Lady is pink as the gums of dentures are pink. She is deposited on the seam of my tongue. She tastes of chalk and chewing gum. Three times she enters me. Agaat pleats her mouth.

Yuck, she says, I don’t know how you get it down.

Never mind, Agaat, I know.

Just a spoonful of spinach makes the medicine go down, Agaat sings.

Three sips of chlorophyll.

With every teaspoon her excitement increases. She can’t hide it. Could never. From the beginning her area of expertise. Ever since I’ve been unable to get onto the toilet seat myself, clean myself, she started formulating her rules and regulations, more and more complicated as my paralysis increased. Clean and unblocked she wanted to keep me all through my sickbed.