Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

As if the second coming itself would take place along that passage.

Three sips of sweet black cellulose.

Tasty, the little prunes, says Agaat.

My dosing is a hurried business tonight. Who wouldn’t start becoming impatient for a denouement? Agaat has switched off the music. Doesn’t want to miss anything. Especially not my crapulent opening chords.

It’s explosive, I know, the mixture of pink and green and black gunge. A rainbow preceding the deluge. An old Grootmoedersdrift recipe.

My stomach starts churning. Ghorrr! it goes. Ghorrr! and gharrr! and gu! and blub! And in between the little singing sounds, zimmm-zoommm.

Agaat’s merry-go-round. Music to her ears.

Strike up, she says with a straight face.

She pulls the sheets from me. No nonsense tonight. We’re going to make doubly sure. She puts on latex gloves. She pops a suppository from its silver container. Translucent it is. Glycerine. For the laxation of the sensitive system. It has the shape of a bomb.

Not even time to turn me on my side tonight. A short cut will do as well. She pushes a hand in between my legs from the front. She runs a finger through the split of my buttocks to find the right entrance. She pushes in a finger to relax the sphincter.

Nothing wrong with the arse, she mutters. Old nag’s arse. Wouldn’t say it’s been cut open. Mommy’s mattress button.

The point of the pill is hard. She pushes it in without ceremony.

Take it, she says, take, swallow it. Otherwise I’m taking the horse’s pill-gun.

Listening is all very well, but who has ever argued with a sphincter?

She pushes it in still deeper.

I feel the muscle slip shut, contract the pill into my anus. Immediately I feel the effect.

Plop, plop, Agaat discards the gloves into the bin. She doesn’t cover me again with the sheet.

Hold on, she says to me, I’m just returning the tray.

As casually as if-you-please.

Hold on.

Am I Atlas? The myth is the wrong way round. The earth like heaven is not above us, but inside us. For us to retain in our cavities and to surrender through our orifices.

What do I hear Agaat sing as she marches down the corridor? Not Italian, no.

Tho’ there’s one motor gone we will still carry on, We’re coming in on a wing and a prayer.

There the pan perches covered with its clean white cloth. There hang the maps rolled up against the wall. There’s a merry rattling in the kitchen. Small arms. Beyond the ridge the regiment is mustering. What do I hear, is Agaat singing there? Singing so that I can hear where she is?

The Braun is being packed away in its box in the pantry.

Are you still holding on? the call comes, I’m just putting the spinach in the fridge quickly!

As if I could call back.

It cramps. A cloudburst somewhere higher up. A burgeoning mass. Completely fluid. Definitely a risk trying to pass wind.

Just don’t, Agaat calls through the clatter of dishes, just don’t go and squitter all over your bed, I put on clean sheets this morning.

I start to sweat.

The prune saucepan is scraped out. Slap, goes the lid of the rubbish bin. Heavy artillery!

Tralalee tralaley! Tralalee tralaley!

I feel as if I’m going to faint. I close my eyes. I concentrate on a point above my nose. The crepe-sole shoes approach down the passage.

I must, I must march all the way to death.

Aitsa, says Agaat, look at the old mare sweating. Now we’ve really got you going, seems to me.

A hand lands lightly on my shin. Sweet as a dove.

I open my eyes. Thunder and lightning. Bring the pan!

Yes, I’m bringing it, don’t rush me now, you make me wait for hours every morning.

Bringthepanthepan!

So, Ounooi, have you seen yet what I brought you this evening? A surprise. All this time I’ve been thinking there’s something that you want to see but I kept missing it. And so it was this all the time? Am I right? All the time? The maps? Yes or no?

Panpanpanpan!

The maps please, from out there in the sideboard, right under your nose. That’s what you’ve been asking all this time? Am I right, yes or no, Ounooi? There I go carrying in just about the whole yard in here and it’s just down the passage in the sitting room where all this time I’ve forgotten to look.

Butter couldn’t melt. Lying without turning a hair. There she stands with the pan in the air, the white cloth over the arm.

Yes, Agaat, you’re right. So put the ridges under my arse instead of your holy of holiest pan. From Bot River to Heidelberg, the municipalities, the districts, the regions. Unroll it under me, keep the edges together, and watch me make a sewerage farm out of them. And if the local is too lowly for you, bring the seven continents so that I can shit them into oblivion for you one by one. What does it matter in any case? Fold the water map into a little boat, set the contour map for a sail. Caulk the holds with pulp from Grootmoedersdrift. Then I sail away on my last voyage in it.

Up to my chin in shit.

Once and for ever put in my place.

Would that satisfy you?

Hey hey hey! Convulsion-kick! The animal’s just about had it but it’s the kick that hurts most!

Keep your damned pan then. Stick it up your own arse. Rather give me the Republic and its provinces, the whole South, then I’ll darken for you the Light of the Word that the Dutch supposedly brought here on the Dromedaris. You’re excellent proof of what a bad idea it was. Your name may be holy, but your soul, Agaat, is at times as black as the hearth out of which you crawled. Don’t you have any mercy? Have you now decided it’s time for me to paddle-paddle through shit to the underworld? Time for those who came to play God the Creator over you? Have you now decided there’s no remedying this confusion and this gibberish? Well, be comforted. The last trump is being sounded.

Here it comes. Here I lie, I can do no other. Covered whiter than snow or not.

Don’t carry on so, Ounooi. You’re not a child, good heavens!

Just in time. The enamel is cold under my buttocks.

She pinches her nose with one hand, pulls over the sheet with the other. Oh say can you hear, she says on a bated breath, the thunder almighty?

She picks at the little pink bows. Zirrts, the maps roll open. All along the picture rail, two full walls.

Zirrts, zirrts, zirrts, she says, as she unties them. Prrts, prrts, prrts, she mimics the sounds emanating from me. O’er the veld it comes wafting wide, she says.

She gestures with wide-open arms at the exhibition. Everything is there, even the house plans and the schemes for the landscaping of the garden. Graphs, tables, indexes.

Right, says Agaat, how shall we go about it?

Leave me in peace! Get out! Out!

No, come on now, come, come, since when can you do only one thing at a time? The way you’re carrying on, you’ll need a second pan at any moment in any case, I’m not getting out of here now. But I’m also not going to stand around here wasting my time, of that you can be sure.

Agaat turns on her heel swiftly. Right turn. Tchi! goes her sole on the wooden floor. With quick brisk steps she stalks out. Parade ground. She yanks open the broom cupboard in the passage. It sounds as if everything inside is falling out. The broomsticks roll over the floorboards. They are kicked aside. Salute and halt on the big cymbals! She returns with the feather duster. Parade baton.

And this is Japie, she says. She turns it around, a grey shock of feathers. I smell house dust.

With swift strokes she presses the point of the stick on the maps. They’re the regional maps.

My stomach loosens in spasms and cramps. Over the rim of the pan. I can feel it. I can smell myself. I close my eyes.

Come now, what’s this nonsense? Open your eyes and look where I’m pointing. If you knew how many sleepless nights I had because I couldn’t figure out what on God’s earth you could want from me!