Agaat (23 page)

The corners of her mouth pulled down, she pushed her lips forward as if she was gulping something down.

So, you decide what he's worth to you from now on and use him accordingly.

You wanted to scream, I know it! I've known it for a long time! But that you didn't want to concede to her. It was a snare. She was
provoking you, she was jealous, she wanted to run down your dead father to you, your father who had loved you just as you were, unconditionally, she wanted to find out how far things had gone with you and Jak. She would use your reaction, whatever it was, against you. She spoke loudly on purpose. She looked at you meaningfully, with every word she rolled her eyes in the direction of the yard and the doors and the passage. There were soft footsteps in the passage.

What old wives' tales are you spinning here?

Jak appeared in the doorway, leant against the door frame, hand in the pocket to strike an attitude. He was in his socks.

You were sorry for him. He looked small. His face was confused. Your mother got up and brushed past him. In the passage she turned back and looked at you from behind his back.

The SPCA, Milla, do they have a number in the book?

The phone book is there in the passage, Ma, see for yourself, you said.

Jak looked at you, helpless.

You got up and walked to him and rubbed your hand through his hair. Never mind, you said, she's old. Her bark is worse than her bite.

You whispered so that she shouldn't hear. But you couldn't speak softly enough. Without looking up the number in the book she strode away with loud footsteps from the little table in the passage where the telephone was. She had an excuse not to phone. You had provided it.

Have just now come to sit here in the sitting room shawl over my nightdress. Woke up from the creeper an eerie little shadow-hand against the window & couldn't go to sleep again.

Bright full moon outside. Quite cold. Feel like something but I don't know what. Tea & ginger biscuits? A glass of warm wine would help but it's out of the question now it's just as if I'm waiting for something just as if I'm missing something. It's the child probably I can feel him kicking usually he stirs in the early evening & then he calms down at night.

 

Labourers' dogs would have barked ducks would have made a racket at the dam if there'd been anything amiss but it's quiet. Crickets. Frogs. Perhaps I should go for a walk in the yard for fresh air. Half-nauseous feeling won't go away.

Yard quiet but something's not right. Don't want to wake J. he'll say it's my imagination he'll say I'm sleep-walking again but I'm awake & I was awake just now even though I feel all the time as if I'm walking just above the ground on somebody else's farm in a dream in somebody else's head. But it's my farm. It's Grootmoedersdrift. Pinched myself even.

 

There was nothing outside that I didn't recognise & didn't expect the yard in the moonlight & everything taken care of everything the image of order & tranquillity. White gables of the shed's gateposts at the entrance to the river-grazing black & upright sentinels the black shadows of the lean-tos under which I know the wood & bales & rolls of fencing & droppers are piled neatly in the sweat-sweet smell of plaited onions from the onion store. A trace of that yesterday-today-and-tomorrow that always flowers out of season? Can one dream such a smell? Would one smell trouble better by moonlight?

 

Made absolutely sure went & tried all the locks checked the gates on the yard & checked that the sluice of the irrigation furrow was closed if the hanslammers were lying against one another in the little sleeping-shed behind the vegetable garden. They're always a bit restless after one of them has been slaughtered & checked the railing of the trailer full of pumpkins saw that all the pipes were fitted securely into the holes so that they can't come unstuck if the load were to shift on the pass.

 

Not a single thing out of place. Even pushed open the gate of the feed-store & felt the bales of lucerne lukewarm as they should be wouldn't get any warmer.

Went in at the side entrance of the implement shed & stood there in the dark until I could see the outlines of the machinery in the dark I could distinguish the nose of the Massey Ferguson the relief of the chrome lettering. Unreal feeling. But who would dream of reading by touch in the dark?

 

In the chicken run sleeping sounds of hens on their perches & the smell of manure & feathers. Walked along the blind side of the house to see if the outside cooler where the fresh meat is hung to cure was latched against the foxes. The little foxes from across the drift. They would you believe it have now taken to standing on each other's shoulders to get to a leg of lamb or the dogs' shinbones. Am I imagining things or have they become more audacious since the day I started fixing up the outside room heaven knows how they found out so quickly must have been Saar who tattled perhaps they think they now have an advanced forward position in A. Perhaps A.'s been in cahoots with them for a long time. Ai shame on you Milla that's surely totally & completely improbable.

Was just going to crawl back into bed when suddenly I knew what's wrong it's Agaat! That door of the outside room was still open when I went by there on my way from the meat cooler. Just ajar! Knocked at the window. Could she really be gone? Must go & look again!

A. is gone! Please God she hasn't slept in her bed the suitcase is gone two Sunday dresses missing lots of clothes gone counted even 8 hairpins & a cap Lord help us! one pair of shoes & one pair of socks also missing & the pack of Dr White's was open & one pad was taken out & brown suitcase with all hr own belongings GONE! Looked everywhere but didn't want to call & wake everybody up I told dogs search I'll warm her bottom for her if I find hr ungrateful little scrap where could she be? My red jersey that I lent her hung by your leave on the hook by the kitchen door cheek! she knows where the dirty clothes should go I'll sort hr out in a wink haven't got time for impertinent creatures here on Grootmoedersdrift what must I do?

 

Switched on all the yard lights & the house lights so that she can know there where she's hiding that I've discovered that she's gone. J. must in God's name just not wake up then all hell will break loose he'll fire her.

Went to switch off all the lights again wouldn't want her to think I'm eaten up with worry!

Now did you ever! A. is on the mountain in her new uniform! I was standing on the stoep just now first I thought I heard singing then I thought I saw something white stirring on the little foothill thought at first it was the guano bags I tied there to show where the wattles must be hacked out then it turned out it was A. all the time. Could make hr out clearly with J.'s binoculars. Can't see what she's getting up to there odd steps & gestures against the slope.

Lay awake all night & couldn't get warm again after all the roaming around outside then I heard six o'clock a stirring in the kitchen I thought now I'm pretending not to have an inkling & next thing she comes down the passage tchi-tchi in her new soles not a crinkly curl in sight neatly dressed in hr uniform cap pinned just right & proper coffee on a tray slight smell of grass & shrubs but beyond that without a trace dogs following her & pushing their snouts into her. Know what that means or perhaps it's just the uniform that smells of shop.

 

The running off in the night. Feels as if I could have dreamed it all. What a fright she gave me, heavens! But I don't let on. Perhaps she'll tell me one day what exactly she went to do there what in God's name got into her & what became of the suitcase & hr house clothes the two pretty dresses made for hr & the dirty clothes from the sheep-slaughtering. Not that it would be a great loss if they're gone was a lot of old stuff anyway & would be too small for her. My red jersey on the hook. Pennant & signal I know hr.

 

That to-do on the hill I can't figure out. Sideways & backwards knees bent foot-stamping jumping on one leg jump-jump-jump & point-point with one arm at the ground. Then the arms rigid next to the sides. Then she folded them & then she stretched them. Looked as if she was keeping the one arm in the air with the other arm & waving. Thought at first oh so I'm late I suppose it's been carrying on for a long time the nocturnal meetings but I didn't see anybody coming no whistling or calling just the thrumming two three notes over & over.

How strange all the same. Hr head in the air, looking up at hr little arm as if it's a stick. Walking stick? Fencing-foil? Then again held still in front of hr, palm turned down palm turned up. Judgement? Blessing? Over the hills over the valley along the river? A farewell ritual? Where would she get it from? So weird it all is I can't put the images out of my head I think of it all the time. Why up there? What could she have wanted to see? Can imagine well what it would have looked like in the moonlight the river between the trees the grazing on the valley-side the moon-grey hills on the south-eastern side & here & there a clearing so that one can see the great plain stretched out behind. Nothing that she hasn't seen many a time before.

 

Could the binoculars have been playing tricks upon me? Hr arm a pointer? Pointing-out pointing-to what is what & who is who? An oar? A blade? Hr fist pressing apart the membrane & the meat as if she's dressing a slaughter animal? But not a sheep, as if she's separating the divisions of the night. Or dividing something within herself. Root cluster.

 

Far-fetched, Milla! Your imagination is too fertile for your own good. But surely one couldn't think it up. A. in hr working clothes in the moonlight in the middle of the night doing a St Vitus's dance. I could surely not have dreamt that. There must be a simple explanation. Perhaps she's working herself up to running away. I suppose I'll get to the truth of the matter one day. Must go & see perhaps the suitcase is back.

A broad sheaf of light spills into the room, light that I know well, the yellow light of late afternoon. Ten to five? It's somewhere between the quarters, stray time. The alarm clock is hidden behind a box of tissues titled Inspirations.

But something is different. The opening is not in the middle of the swing doors as always aligned with the door knobs, the curtains have been drawn so that the opening is slightly to one side of the glass doors. And the gauze lining hasn't been drawn as usual, it's been swept back over the white cord that runs above the door frame, it's been pushed away behind the curtain. I can make out the garden through the slight distortion of the little old glass panels in the stoep doors.

But it's not only the gibbous glass. It's the light itself inside the room that quivers. It's filled with something, a restorative rippling, pellucid, watery, beckoning.

From where this light? What can lend such a quality to this chamber of death that I know in every last detail? Over which my eyes wander daily, filled as it is with the signs of my end, the nursing-aids that promise no recovery, that are applied to the polite dismantling of my body, to the daily cleansing of my limbs, four, my three axils of armpit and pudendum, the clefts of finger toe and buttock, the crannies behind my ears, the hollow of my navel, the subsidences above my collarbones, my head with its seven holes, the little bottles of pills for the relief of my spit, my tears, for the singing in my ears, for my wasting spasmodic muscles, the instruments for the measurement of my remaining reflexes, for the notation of the statistics of my going hence.