Agaat (29 page)

She washes with conviction, just as if I'd lived a full day as of old and were good and dirty, and she talks of lavender.

She says the bushes are flowering this year as if they're paid to do it and the bees are buzzing about like mad there amongst the purple florets and she thinks they've nested in the hollow of the burnt-out bluegum she'll have Dawid take a look and how would I like a little taste of honey, lavender-flower honey fresh from the comb? There's nothing, she says, to touch comb honey, and she must remember to get a jar ready for Jakkie when he comes, as he likes it. Illuminated campaniles, it seems, remind him of honey in the comb. That's what he wrote to her once from Canada.

Agaat wipes the soapiness from the arm with another cloth, a soap-wiping cloth. She dries the arm, puts it back next to the body and drapes the towel over it.

Now the leg on the same side. The leg looks blue towards the foot. She washes vigorously between the toes so that I can feel how much life there is in my foot.

You know, Ounooi, she says, it took me a long time to figure out why you're forever looking at the wall, at the mirror, to and fro like a lizard taking its bearings on a rock, but now I understand. This wall next to your bed is too bare. You want something else to look at here by your bed than this old calendar, perhaps it only irritates you. The mirror in the corner over there, I reckon, is not enough by a long shot, even though you can see the bits of garden that I chose for you.

As she works, Agaat covers the clean leg and arm with the towel as if nothing's the matter. Straight face. Butter wouldn't melt. As if I'd imagined it all about the quarrels. As if it had been a squabble with the nightingales.

Was I too slow? Are you cold yet? she asks.

That's her camouflage enabling her to look me in the eye, to catch a response from me without her having to ask anything directly. Catch a fly from the old mare's back, ha.

I play dumb. No, I flutter with my eyebrows, I'm not the least bit cold and what are you talking about now?

She folds away the large towel from my trunk, so that the washed arm and leg and my abdomen remain covered. She sets her gaze to neutral. That's her way with my nakedness. Well heavens, she says teasingly, you'd really like to know that, wouldn't you, what I'm talking about, as if you haven't for days on end been leading me a dance with your blinking and fluttering, so, you can forget about it then, all I'm pleased about, madam, is that you're not cold!

She soaps my trunk from the base of my throat to the navel. She lifts my breasts and washes under them. One for you, she says, and one for me. She wipes away the soap under them. She swabs me dry, but under the breasts she dries twice with a fresh towel.

The animals went in two by two, she says as she dries them.

I note the inspection. There fungus threatens, there she keeps a sharp eye. Sometimes she checks there with her magnifying glass, mould is like a thief in the night, she says, a lurking menace.

Agaat covers my trunk again. She moves around the bed to the other side. As she moves past the foot of the bed, I manage to catch her eye.

Come on, you can tell me, I flicker with my eyes at the wall and back. You win, I admit, you've guessed right, of course, you always guess right, and good for you, you're wonderful, you're fantastic, as ever, standing ovation!

Hmmm? she says with a straight face, hmmm? Just in passing, she pretends. She juts out her chin just a touch.

I know what she's doing. She's making the washing easier for both of us with a gripping story and she'll postpone the denouement until we've
finished. As reward she'll present it. Triumphantly. As consolation. For the exposure. For the shame. For the blue feet. For the tremendous art that it is to treat a half-dead relic like a whole human being.

Right, says Agaat before she bares the other arm, we're on the home stretch. She's cheering herself up. There's still all of the back.

Are you still holding out, Ounooi? She leans over me and looks into my eyes while she begins to wash my arm.

And so I thought to myself, she says, and looks away again, let me collect everything that I can think of that can hang or be pasted that you want on your wall, everything that you said I should throw away in your great clear-out, everything that I kept and stored in the cellar, and everything that's still here in the house to be inherited or given away, as you directed, and hang them one by one on your wall here next to your bed until you're satisfied!

As an afterthought it comes, love will find a way to get the camel through the needle's eye.

She covers the arm and takes out the leg, peeps at me for the effect, but the effect has been spoilt.

I protest. I am not a camel! And I'm not yet ready for the needle's eye! Please watch your language! And don't sound so smug, it's not appropriate!

Sorry, Ounooi, don't take exception now, it's just a proverb, says Agaat, but she's put off her stride immediately. She drops the cloth into the washbasin.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise, she says, a penny saved is a penny earned.

Every time the stress on the last word. As if she's defending herself with prefabricated sentences that she appropriates to her purpose through tone and emphasis. Old trick. She has no respect for what the proverbs really mean, she invents her own language as she goes. That's her way when she's discombobulated. The old parrot ways. Double-barrelled mimicry.

Oh come now Agaat, in God's name, don't be so touchy, I'm the one who's dying here, look at me dammit, I flicker, but she doesn't look.

Speech is silver twixt the cup and the lip, when the cat's away we throw out the baby with the bathwater.

She pushes the bridge with the bowl of water across my body to the foot of the bed.

Almost, she says.

She pushes her chin far out, moves my legs apart and washes my abdomen with quick soapy strokes.

But don't count your chickens yet.

Once more she rinses the cloth and once more she wipes.

Where there's smoke there's fire, she says.

She dries my loins. The towel feels hard.

I'm sorry I protested. Don't step on the toes of the living dead. Feeling starts at the feet.

I wish I could talk back, counter with my own idioms.

Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither.

Ripeness is all.

I plead with my eyes.

She doesn't want to look at me. She's looking at her towels.

Let's turn you on your side then we thump out the phlegm before I wash the back.

Businesslike she is all of a sudden.

She rolls three towels into sturdy bolsters to support me from the front. Firmly she wiggles them in next to my side. A self-conceived plan. Leroux said she couldn't do it alone, especially not with one hand, she needs help, she will need help in future, he'll send a nurse, don't I want a live-in nurse.

I signalled such a one would never in a month of Sundays survive with the two of us.

Agaat translated it for him as: Mrs de Wet says no thank you all the same, she's too particular.

Bolster me with rolled-up towels because I'm over the hill, Agaat, translate me, I'm sick with remorse.

She rolls up another few towels to support me from behind as well.

How many towels does Agaat have? How many does she have washed every day? How does she keep tally of all the linen that passes through here? How does she keep sane?

She covers my body completely with an extra towel, large enough for a king.

I hear her scrubbing her hands, is it possible to get any cleaner?

She returns with white sterile cloths over her shoulder. She places them under my cheek so that I can spit on them.

She turns her back and puts on two new gloves of white-powdered latex.

She unscrews the caps of three jars, her hands are pale, the right glove fits like loose skin.

She mixes two ointments and a liquid in a saucer with a rod of stainless steel. She rubs it on the base of my neck and under my nose. It smells of eucalyptus and friar's balsam. It's to help the mucus rise, to help dissolve it.

She pours warm water into the hollow of a silver kidney.

She places mouth sponges at the ready in a row.

She screws in the mouthpiece of the phlegm-pump.

How much slime does she expect to get out of me anyway? My cough reflex is almost completely gone.

She extends the arm of the bedside lamp as far as it will go.

She turns the head so that it shines full on my back, I feel the glow. It's to keep me warm, I know, she could knock my phlegm loose with her eyes shut.

Ounooi, open your eyes and listen well now.

Her eyes are soft again. Her voice is soft. Close to my face she talks. Through the eye of the needle she'd want to help me. That's really all, I can see it now. And bring me back.

All the way to the cow-shed.

Iron on the hoof.

Pumpkin on the roof.

As it was, always, as it was in the old song.

But was she happy with how it was?

You remember how we do it? asks Agaat. You take a breath, I turn you on your side, you hold your breath until I've propped you up nicely, three rolls behind the back and three rolls in front, then you exhale, then you rest first, then you take another little breath. Just as long as you need. There's no hurry. We just work at our ease until we've finished. You warn me with your eyes, you blink them slowly if that's enough for now, then we take a pause, then I suck out what there is, then I make us some tea. Then we do the other side. Or we do the other half tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Have you understood well, Ounooi? Get ready for the first breath. On your marks, get set, go!

Lord, Agaat, what race? And how many rounds before the knockout? And what bell? And what white tape against my chest? And the one who sets the pace, will she drop out before the end? Head between the knees in the slow track, too exhausted even to watch how the record is broken?

Record in long-distance dying, best time in cross-country with obstacles. All the way to where the strokes fall one-by-one from the white tower in the throbbing heat of afternoon with cicadas in the pepper trees and a procession escorting me. Or no, it will be different, everything here on the farm, Agaat will carve my headstone.

Don't perform like that, says Agaat when she catches my eye, into every life a little rain must fall, just co-operate, I'm asking pretty please. Come now, ready?

With a firm yank of the towel under me she gets me toppled onto my side. She keeps me in position with her strong forearm pressed lengthwise behind my back. I feel her inserting the rolled-up towels behind me, the back of the weak hand nudge-nudging against me, like a muzzle.

She works fast. No sound issues from her. She holds her breath with me. She begins the auscultation. Down below on the short-rib she cups the little hand. She knocks on it with the other hand. Up, up, up come the knocks, to under my shoulder-blade and then again from below. After every third sequence she vibrates over the ribs with the strong hand. She's firm. It's not unambiguously pleasant what she's doing. I can feel something coming loose in my lees. It feels like old solid pieces of me. This is the critical stage. Now she'll stop and with the Heimlich manoeuvre help me try to cough. And then she'll suck the product out of me with the phlegm-pump.

I feel faint. Stones and grass glide below me, as if I'm approaching a landing strip, one foot without a sandal. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Agaat exhales. Right we are, she says, she joggles the towel out and makes me roll back slowly. You're hanging on nicely, Ounooi. Come let's sit you up straight first so that I can help you cough.

I can feel her seeking out my face.

Look at me Ounooi, so that I can see what's going on.

I try to open my mouth. I want to say, a piece, you are a piece of me, how am I to quit you? The landing strip is approaching how am I to land? The urge to cough stirs in me, but it's vague, un-urgent, a phantom cough, like an amputated hand with which in an unguarded moment you think you can still lift something.

I feel pressure in front against my teeth, on both sides I feel pressure on my jaws under the ear, my mouth is being opened for me, a flat stick inserted between my front teeth to separate them, I feel fingers on my tongue, pulling threads out of me, I feel the suction of the phlegm-pump, the sound of my fluids, and then a damp sponge that wipes out, my cheeks, under my tongue, inside between my lips and my gums, and then a new sponge, drool runs out of me, another sponge, cool, damp on my tongue, and a strong arm that lifts my head and a voice that says:

You can breathe now, the slime is out, get ready to swallow, you're thirsty.

And a spout of small finger-tips between my lips that squeeze out the drops for me. One, two, three on the back of my tongue.

I can't swallow it, I can't.