Agaat (18 page)

The roar that arose drew more people to the table.

What's going on here? We also want to hear! What's the joke?

Jak was uncomfortable. He tried, but he couldn't get up because people were crowding around the table. He fumbled with his bow tie, took large gulps from his glass.

Ask Milla de Wet! one called out, she started it. Ask Jak, looks like she's got him under her thumb!

You were angry, but your secret of the day made you impetuous. Jak would just have to look after himself for once, you thought.

Look at the condition of the soil, you said. Thinner and poorer by the year. Just look at the dust when the wind blows before sowing-time, look how it erodes in winter. From sowing wheat all the time. From greed. And from worry. Because the bought-on-credit fertiliser still has to be paid off. And the Land Bank is squeezing.

That's right! Round and round on the merry-go-round all the way into the ground!

That was Dirk du Toit, who'd bought Jak's land.

Tell them, Dirk, I called, tell them what happened to you, you see they don't want to believe me.

Dirk made a cutting motion across his throat.

Yes, I owed them. Then they forced me to sell all my wheat to them, at cost. Their idea is, it's our fertiliser, so it's our wheat. Then they sell it again, then they keep the profit.

Everybody started talking at the same time. Out of the corner of your eye you saw Adriaan, one of the Meyers brothers, owners of the fertiliser company, surveying the palaver, a parsimonious little smile round the corners of his mouth.

You tapped on your glass with your knife.

Listen, you said, that's not all, the real point is this . . .

Aitsa! the little four-share plough of Grootmoedersdrift! Now she's going for the middle furrow!

It was Gawie Tredoux of Vleitjies. He was United Party by birth and a Freemason and he liked you. He passed along a glass of dessert wine to you. You lifted it in his direction and took a sip, put your finger in front of your lips, indicated that you couldn't drink too much. Oh come on, he gesticulated back and took a big gulp from his own glass. You put your hand on your stomach. So? he signalled with his eyebrows. Really? You nodded. He raised his glass high: Congratulations! Jak intercepted the exchange. You smiled sweetly at him before speaking again.

The real point is: The Overberg is the bread basket of the whole country. Remember: Good wheat and good bread, and the nation's well fed.

She's a poet and she doesn't know it! somebody shouted and rapped on the table.

Jak looked away.

You knew of one more supporter at the table, the new young extension officer, Kosie Greeff. The little chap glanced around somewhat anxiously when he saw that you wanted to say something. His wife looked at the glass in your hand. Beatrice as well, all the women at the table thought that when a woman opened her mouth like that in male company it had to be because she was tipsy. You're welcome to look as much as you like, you thought to yourself and smiled at Beatrice.

It was young Greeff who'd convinced you of the new rotational system. He was having an uphill battle in the region. Now he was red in the face because it was his area of expertise that had cropped up in discussion.

Mrs de Wet is right, he said, and what's more, gentlemen, the soil problem in the hill country is a bigger problem than the so-called colour problem.

I agree, you exclaimed. You were in full flow now, you could hear you were preaching, but you kept at it.

You can't take more out of the soil than you put into it, you said. And here we are now, a little group of people at the southern tip of Africa in the process of totally destroying this national asset within the space of a few decades. All the fertiliser crops may make you rich, but it's not a long-term investment in the soil. Fallow is the answer. It's a tradition born of respect for nature. In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance. Even a frog knows that.

Hear hear! the people shouted.

Froggy went a-courting and he did ride, red-faced Flippie sang with a suggestive fillip to his voice.

A commotion erupted.

Beatrice looked at you dumbfounded.

Milla, please, stop, you're making a fool of yourself, Jak said under his breath, his voice hoarse with irritation.

Give her a chance, chaps, Gawie shouted, such an opportunity you won't get again soon!

You fixed their eyes as you spoke.

It's the rhythms of nature that you have to respect as the Creator determined them. That's what agriculture should be based on. This new greed is barbaric, it's a form of sacrilege.

And then a thought came up in you and you said it before you thought about it. Perhaps the sips of wine together with your exhilaration had gone to your head.

If a farmer clears and levels his land year after year it's as good as beating his wife every night. In a manner of speaking, you added, but the words were out and they had been spoken.

You saw Beatrice gasping for breath and putting her hand in front of her mouth.

A heavy silence descended.

Gawie came to your rescue.

Food for thought, chaps, definitely food for thought, let's hear what Thys wants to say, he looks as if he's going to burst a blood vessel if he's not given a turn.

Now it's enough, Jak hissed, now we're leaving, you and I.

At the door Gawie greeted the two of you. You he kissed on the cheek and pressed your shoulder.

Congratulations, Jak old friend, you married a first-rate wife, look after her well.

He shook Jak's hand emphatically, but Jak didn't know what it was all about. He released his hand quickly.

He got into the car and slammed his door without opening the door for you. Of that he normally made a big show in front of other people.

It was rally-driving all the way home.

Good God, you, Jak swore, think you know everything!

At home he staggered out of the car and urinated against the first tree. He swayed on his legs, he was so drunk.

Your mouth is too big! he shouted as he entered the front door.

You went to your room, heard him pour himself a whisky from the carafe in the sitting room. He came to look for you in the bedroom, came to stand in the doorway, and glared at you.

Jak, I have something to tell you, you said.

So, and what could that be? That you have something on the go with Tredoux?

Jak, he's our friend, he was just congratulating you.

And on what, may I ask? On your speech? What gives you the idea that you can sit and preach to farmers on how to cultivate their lands?

What must they think of me? You and your mother, you're tarts of one crust, you think you know it all. How am I supposed to show my face ever again at the fertiliser company?

Jak, I said, I can't help your feeling like that.

Come here, you said to soothe him.

He stood in the middle of the room plucking at his clothes.

And that soil is like a woman whose husband beats her! What kind of crap is that, I ask you? You're looking for it, you know it, you're looking for me and you'll look for me till you find me!

Yes baas, you said to him.

He wasn't used to that. You stared into the slap without ducking, straight into his eyes.

Jak, you can't do that to me any more, you said.

He shoved you back onto the bed.

If you want to be my soil, I'll do on it as I want to. Slapping is nothing! Shoving is child's play! Now tell me, pray, what kind of soil are you? Clay, perhaps? Dirt? Shale? A bloody rock-ridge? Come on, you're supposed to be the expert here! Grade yourself for us, perhaps it will be of use to the man who has to plough you!

You got up from the bed. He knocked you flat again.

What does one do with soil, eh? What does one do with it?

You drive a post into it, you grub it, you quarry out a dam! Or you dig a hole for yourself and fall your arse off into it. That's what happened to me!

He approached threateningly. You held your arms around your stomach. You saw him noticing it. You altered your gesture, you stroked your abdomen.

Jak, you said and put your foot on the arm of a chair, you pulled your dress up into your groin and started undoing your suspender, won't you please undo my zip?

Do it yourself, he mumbled.

But from his tone you could tell that you had him where you wanted him. You didn't even have to look in his direction. He stood rocking on his legs, glared at you with bleary eyes.

You undid the zip and stepped out of the dress, unfastened your other stocking and slowly rolled it down your thigh while you looked at him. You slid the straps of your black petticoat over your shoulders and went and lay down on the bed.

What does one call that? So spread open? You wanted to feel it, his powerlessness. It excited you to wait for it. You felt you had the advantage, for the first time.

He was very rough. He just unzipped his trousers and half pulled you off the bed. On your knees against the bed he forced you. He tore your petticoat and gripped your wrists. You turned your head to see it.

Look in front of you! Look in front of you! he yelled and slapped you against the head.

Jak, you should be ashamed of yourself, you said. But you heard your voice. There was a kink in the words. You were in it together, in the shame.

Whore! Jak shouted, whore!

You laughed, that was what you did. You thought you saw a movement in the mirror but there was nothing. There were only the two of you. You and your shadows, it was the red cummerbund, it was the rags of black petticoat over your white shoulders.

What are you looking at? he shouted.

He grabbed a footstool with one hand and threw it at the mirror and shattered it.

He rammed himself into you.

You fastened your hands around the back of his hips and pulled him deeper into you. You dictated a rhythm. For yourself.

Come now, you whispered, you're still the best, come now. We're made for each other!

That was what you heard yourself say. You wanted to feel it. Dry. Sore. Good. You had him where you wanted him, you were done with him, he was good only for decoration. To know that, was the reward.

I have something to tell you, you said when he was done.

He leant against you in a daze.

I am pregnant, Jak, you said, and if you ever lift your hand against me again, I will sell the farm and leave you and take your child with me and you will never see him again.

He was too numb to answer back. He half-crawled over you onto the bed and drifted into sleep. His penis dangled out. It looked like a piece of intestine.

A son, he mumbled.

He flung his arm across the pillow and straightened his legs, foot on your face where you were lying at the end of the bed.

You pushed his feet out of your face. You looked at yourself in the shattered mirror until he started snoring. Then you went and ran a bath and lay in it for hours adding hot water. You listened to the sounds of the house.

Before going to sleep, you picked up the shards of mirror and gathered your torn clothes in a bundle and threw them away in the bin in the backyard. The side panels of the mirror were undamaged. You turned the panels towards each other and inspected yourself from one side and the other. You couldn't get enough. After twelve years of despoilment you, Milla de Wet née Redelinghuys, were going to be a mother.

You folded the wings of the mirror so that in the morning the damage to the central panel would not be visible.

 

The bigger you grew with child the more time Jak spent on his appearance. He became fastidious about what he ate, combinations of certain foods at certain times, power supplements that stood around in tins in the kitchen. You couldn't keep up with cooking what he wanted and the servants understood nothing of it.

Then cook your own food, you said, and so he ate nothing but raw grated vegetables and macaroni. Every night before coming to bed he trained with his weights in the stoep room. Every morning and every evening he went for long runs in the mountains and almost every weekend since you fell pregnant he went off to take part in tennis tournaments or races. He became the Overberg long-distance champion and the Tradouw's prime mountaineer. His only responsibility towards the world, he seemed to think, was that he shouldn't get fat, that he shouldn't with time come to seem coarse and heavy like most other farmers. His only bailiff was his stop-watch, his only judge the bathroom scale.

His achievements he displayed all around him. He kept the maps of Grootmoedersdrift in his new stoep room. If he could have lifted his leg like a fox terrier, he might have had his way with them. There they hung surrounded by his shelves full of trophies and mounted medals with ribbons in display cases, amongst his photos of himself.

The photos in themselves constituted a whole history of one man's vanity.

Jak on graduation day in his gown, Jak at Elsenburg with the agriculture students' athletics team. Jak with his first sheaf of short-stem wheat, Jak with the agent next to the new combine, with a glass of wine in his hand at the regional caucus of the NP, Jak on his Arab mare, booted and spurred for a horserace, Jak at a farmer's day in his white clothes, leaning against his first red open sports car, Jak in close-up, in a studio portrait, brilliantined hair, smoothed back, charming Jak de Wet, the gentleman farmer. A dead ringer for Gregory Peck, as your mother used to say.

In the time of the fixing up of the new rooms you got into the habit of going into Jak's office when he wasn't there. Who is this beautiful man? you wondered. What has he got in him? Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel. When is he going to reveal himself? When is he going to show who he really is? You could tell that he was brooding on something, but what?