Agaat (16 page)

 

First lesson of sheep-slaughtering I teach her the animal must eat nothing for 3 days so that the gut can be nice & clean & the last day you give bran that absorbs everything that could still be in the stomach & it washes out easily now with all the talking the little sheep was all wild but make it lie down hold it down I say. So D. ups & says usually I get hold of a little sheep like this from behind in the camp before he knows what's happening to him his throat is cut while he's still standing & thinking it's Christmas in the lucerne flowers then when you eat him his meat is sweet because he was never scared.

 

That's the second lesson I teach hr: sheep that get panicked before they're killed have bitter meat they secrete something from the adrenal with the fear so never dawdle with the killing so then they cast the sheep & held its neck over the edge of the cement furrow & the little wether
struggled something terrible it can't carry on like this I thought now I count to three I said to A. her eyes bulging in the sockets come nearer says D. Oh come nearer oh all ye children of the Lord the kitchen-girls sing bend says D. to A. he grasps her hand in his & quickly they draw the blade over the wether's throat the blood spurts everywhere. A. stands back & the knife falls from her hand & rolls down the incline of the slaughtering-floor no-no-no I say you don't throw away your knife like that climb in there & take it out the workers kill themselves laughing there you are Arsgaat check that farmgirl they shout. Be quiet I say the dogs lick the blood from A.'s shoes she stands stock-still D. goes to pick up her knife & presses it into her hand. Saar comes with the white enamel basin the workers yell catch the blood eat the meat the wool is white the meat is sweet give over I scold it's hr first slaughtering-turn & then the little wether's eyes roll back in its head & its upper lip retracts & the ridges on the nose smooth out & the ears lie flat I show A. all the signs & right there the wether's body contracts into a lump & he gives an almighty kick against her shins all the hands let go & he lets fly another splodge all over her feet.

 

Take note of lesson 3: You don't let go of the feet too soon it's a convulsion kick it's a death-throe & the animal is half-dead but that hurts the most.

 

And there I see Jak standing hand in the side & watching the whole business. Now that looks prosperous to me Milla, he says: Butcher baker butler then you can make her head-girl over a hundred. If only he'd rather attend to his own business it's after all entirely at his insistence.

 

Have just gone to peek again if the outside room's light is switched off yet do hope everything works out right with hr there in the back I feel all the time as if I've forgotten something.

Everything quiet windows shut tight back there must be sleeping I can't get the slaughtering out of my head after all it's just ordinary sheep-slaughtering. Why do I want to write up everything? Did I leave something undone? Didn't I teach her everything, step by step? Not easy but everybody must go through it the first time.

 

Lesson 4: Bleed well till empty otherwise the meat is spongy.

Lesson 5: hygiene. Provide a cloth & water you can't slaughter if you're covered in sheep manure look how the flies swarm. Bent down there heavy of body as I am & washed the sheep manure from her legs & shoes & next thing her knees start jerking fits fits yell the littl'uns be quiet I say no more from you or you don't get any lung.

 

I took her hand with the knife & I bent behind her & I started cutting open from the gash in the throat. Had some trouble with the sternum now you & D. carry on alone I say to A., & press the knife in her hand sing I say to D. so that she can take some strength sikketir sikketir sikketeat sings D. the lamb comes to the block with its wool & its meat sing along A. I say so that you can get some life but her mouth is a straight line & then suddenly she gets some life & she looks me a very straight look & she takes the knife.

 

Not to cut too deep I say here is lesson 6: We don't want dung & piss on everything & she cuts shallow & clean all along the belly-line really quite to my surprise.

 

Then D. took her two hands in his & he pulled the entrails loose & the whole heap of guts fell out & I felt sick & went into the house but I vomited & had done because we were right in the middle & I couldn't leave A. there alone, then they sorted the intestines so that she could see the dirty & the clean the pizzle & the bladder & the gall-bladder & the small intestine & the large intestine on one side & heartlungskidneysliver on the other. A.'s right sleeve by that time full of blood as if she'd been injured & I nauseous all the time & irritated with the circumstances & the spectators.

 

Lesson 7: The one place where you can soon find out whether a sheep is healthy is in the intestines. Look for worms in the gut & parasites in the lungs they must be nice & spongy & red & the liver soft & dark the right size like the fist of your right hand. Small & hard or waterlogged means there's something wrong with the heart quite probably with the whole sheep the heart is the blood's windmill I teach her if it doesn't cast the whole animal dries out.

 

Made A. touch everything & identify everything. Just after a while couldn't take the bloody sleeve dragging through everything any longer either you take off that jersey I say or we push that sleeve up but A. latches onto the bloody sleeve with her thumb. Dawid hangs the sheep
under the bluegums from wire hooks in the heels so then A. can't reach. He brings an apple box no I say it's not strong enough cut longer hooks so then the kitchen-girls start singing oi oi oi five pigs in a heap, raise the girl or lower the sheep.

 

Shut your traps I say but they dance buttocks in the air all around A. her lip trembles & I say it's just kitchen-skivvies don't take any notice of them they're getting only head & guts & tonight you're having chops.

 

There the sheep is hanging cut off the head I say it's dripping on her feet. So then I see D. first cuts off the ear & pushes it into A.'s pocket without notches not marked yet for slaughter as we do with the hanslammers. Saw him say something to A. which I couldn't hear & I didn't want to ask in front of everybody (must beware of intimate contact between A. & the men-workers).

 

Then D. shows A. how she should loosen the skin & push away the meat from the membrane & I hold it & at first it's a struggle she cuts now too deep now too shallow. I say take your fist knead the skin loose from the membrane while you feed the blade & only then it improved a little the right fist in the white crocheted jersey a bloody stump looked as if it had been amputated but she persevered well even though it took three times longer than usual but then she knew all the cuts also from the neck to the loin & the groin & what one can best use it for, for braai, for roasting, for baking in the oven or for stewing.

 

Well done my little girl now you know meat. Next time we slaughter an ox you'll get to be the prime butcher here on Grootmoedersdrift I said we'll just have to think of something for that little arm of yours a butcher's sleeve.

Noon silence. The floorboards in the passage creak. Is it somebody standing by the telephone table, shifting weight from one leg to the other? Or studying a photograph on the wall, or hesitating, overtaken by a thought, an afterthought? To-ing and fro-ing? Pro-ing and conning? The floorboards creak of their own accord.

There is nobody there. These are the sounds of an old house.

My house can make more sounds than I.

Sometimes I imagine that I can hear footsteps, swiftly from the front to the back all the way through the house, a hurried, peremptory tread in the mornings. At night, in the afternoon hours between two and three, a laboured pace, a shuffling gait, a walking stick.

As if somewhere a recording has been made of all the times that I've walked in the passages and rooms of my house, as if it were now being played back to me on a worn audiotape, a record without clear information.

What must I make of it? What is the message? I was intended to be an upright animal? Intended to stretch my limbs, delimit four quarters in the air, a golden section, my reach the compass of my intentions? Created to swim, to walk, to climb, sufficiently sanguine to attempt flight?

Here I lie. Drawn and quartered would be preferable.

Sometimes there's a knocking on the rooftop, once, twice, thrice, four times, loudly as the roof beams contract in the night. Then I wake up and wonder who has arrived.

Who wants to come in? I want to cry out, who is there?

But there's nobody there. When Agaat leaves me alone, like today, I am nobody. Between me and me no fissure of differentiation.

In the mornings when the roof beams heat up, there's a tick-ticking above my head for an hour. As if there's a pacemaker wanting to
help me think, an apprehension that on my own I cannot shape into thought.

I am less than a roof.

I am a gutter.

I hear, sometimes, a rustling in the door frames. Woodborer it must be, mice perhaps, or cockroaches. Gnawings sifting down between the wood and the wall, mice probably, insects.

I should be able to impress upon Agaat to bring me a cockroach in a bottle so that I can see it scampering with its grey flat body, scrabbling with its feet against the glass. She'd find mirth in my envy of a cockroach.

My bed in which I'm tilted, makes my weight palpable to myself. My loose weight inside my fixed weight. Each time I can feel my intestines welter inside me. My heart in a basket, my guts a roll of chewing-tobacco tumbling about inside a crate. That's all she's done for me today. Came here to tilt me. Without a word.

My meat is unfairly distributed over my bones. The weight of my skeleton is my only honesty. My meat makes me cry.

I see the contours of my feet under the cover. My feet are logs. The tension has deserted my toes. My feet look like knees, my knees look like wodges, like half-loaves, my hip-bones form ridges and in-between is a basin. My chest inclines towards me, on either side of my breastbone there's been nothing but folds of skin for a long time now. I remember the weight of my breasts, the shadow of my breasts.

Now light plays around me, a clod in a field, a shallow contour. It gradates itself over my heights and depressions, a crafty modeller. The cover is white, the shadows blue. The light sketches the railings of my bed around me like a barred cage. I am a skeleton within a skeleton, a crate in a truck, but I still have time, in me is my time, my wasting flesh preserves my time within me.

One should consist entirely of bone when the dying starts. But an animated skeleton. A skull full of flashes, a hand that hinges like a railway signal. One gesture must be granted you over the creatures that are permitted to die in innocence. And then you have to step back into line.

Darknesses slip along the skirting boards, light rings out over the floorboards, over the chrome, over the piles of white linen, over the jars and tubes and cloths. Stipples and stripes and spots. What is the time? I don't want to know. In the front room the grandfather clock ticks.

My room limns itself from hour to hour, completes itself every day. My room is a perverse painter. I am the still-life. The fold in the cloth, the turned-open book.

I page myself to the outside. The sounds of the last harvest come to inscribe themselves in me.

It must be just before afternoon, time to unload the morning's harvest and to make repairs and to draw breath, to rinse the itchy chaff and the straw from the eyes. The combine harvester that went out this morning comes droning back up the yard. The driver calls: Open up! The door slides open scuffing on its rollers, on its track of steel set into the threshold, the engine echoes darker with the rolling-in under the roof. Here comes the first tractor now, I can hear it's pulling a wagon full of bales. The second tractor is hauling a wagon full of sacks, it's labouring harder. To judge by listening, it sounds like a year of hefty weights.

They're shouting in the yard. They call: Carry in, carry in! Grab hold! It's Dawid and Kadys and the new man, Kitaartjie. I hear a bakkie. That must be Thys coming to cast an eye. Towards the back in the caverns of the shed there's a ting-tinging of ball-peen hammers. I know the sound. They're clinking new blades onto the red harvester's cutting-rod. The hay must be strong because the blades hop, the blades wear out.

Perhaps they can carry me out into the yard one more time, on a stretcher. They can fit my neckbrace and strap me in and stand me up under the wild fig-tree. So that I can see. So that I can smell the dust, so that I can see the black plume of diesel fume spurting from the tractor, so that I can assess the swing of the wagon on the drawbar, and count the bales as they are carried into the shed, and count the stalks on the back of the bearer, praise the one who will break open a bale before my feet so that I can see the density, the power, and the glory, the one who shall know to gather me a handful from the centre and press it against my cheek.

Somebody must bring the small scale before me and hold it up in the air until the hand stops quivering.

A bushel of Daeraad I want to see weighed, a bushel of Kleintrou, a bushel of Sterling.

And somebody must stand in front of me and take a mouthful of Vondeling and chew it for me and look into my eyes and I want to see the pupils contract as the grains crack open, and hear soft singing while the molars grind, hey ho, hey ho, yoke the oxen now. And as the cud starts to bind, I want to see the eye start to shine.

And somebody must bring a coop of chicks and enfold my hands in their hands and put chicks in my hands and feed them with the wild pulp in which spit and bran are stippled. I want to feel once more in my palms the chirp and throb of the body of a chick.