Agaat (30 page)

Jak was angry with embarrassment at his absence from the birth of his son.

An apology he couldn't get past his lips.

He'd won the race, yes. He'd been first in the senior class out of forty-six contestants who were all younger than he. The tide had come in. The wind had come up on the river-mouth. Twice he had capsized and got stuck under his canoe. Exceedingly tough had been the inclines on the cycle routes. He'd grazed and bruised himself falling. His knees, his elbows. Look. Raw. He'd had to change a wheel all on his own in the gale-force wind. He'd been just about knackered. And on top of that, yomping across the loose sand of the dunes, for seven miles.

Ad nauseam you had to listen to it. But when you started recounting how Agaat had kept her wits about her, how brave she'd been, how she'd cut you with the strong hand and delivered the child with the other, how she'd done everything right from beginning to end and stopped a vegetable lorry to take you to hospital and how with hands and apron red with blood she'd helped stack cabbages to make space for you to lie, and how you'd bled on the cabbage leaves, and how she'd got into the front with a complete stranger with the baby, he interrupted you.

He's just glad that you're safe and sound, he said, and he's so proud of his son.

It was the same lay-by, you said.

What lay-by?

Where we the first time, where we almost that time, when we were on our way together, the first time, do you remember, the day after my mother had harangued you so, when we almost in broad daylight in the open sports car, do you remember, when you pressed your head between my breasts, the waterfall was in flood from an unseasonable shower, just like the other day, as if there'd been no time in between.

You tried, you didn't know how to say it, you so badly wanted to recover something of that youthful beginning with him, now that you at last had a child.

Jak looked at you, and looked away. Could not, would not remember it. He was nervous, didn't want to be alone with you, phoned all the world and brought them into the room where you were lying and kept company with them. Ma was the one who put a stop to that. Milla is tired, she said, respect that.

He returned to the farm after two days, only phoned now and again. He kept himself apart from then on. He knew everybody was angry with him.

The Mercedes was sold without his trying to clean it. The upholstery was permeated, he said, with blood and stuff. The first night after you returned to the farm he got hold of you briefly. Half-angrily and deliberately. You were still sore, even though it was three weeks after the birth, but you let him have his way. Where pain was concerned your standards had shifted. He wouldn't get the better of you any more.

For weeks you were tired and weak. You had problems with your milk. The little one was fretful and that got on his nerves.

In the first weeks he tried to build a toy aeroplane in the backyard. It wouldn't come together. A few times he kicked it to pieces in frustration. You tried to bring him to his senses.

Jak, you said, surely you know by this time you have two left hands, just don't get yourself so worked up about it, in any case it'll be years before the child is big enough for a toy like that.

He wouldn't give up. The whole backyard was eventually cluttered with pieces of plank and nails and open paint tins and clamps and glue-pots.

You had to keep shushing him with his electric planes and drills there under the nursery window.

Be quiet! you screamed at him, day-in, day-out you kick up a racket, don't you have any consideration?

Then he took umbrage and went running in the mountains, only to return with a red face to start chopping and hammering where he'd left off.

You said, forget about the propeller, but he had to install a dashboard with flashing lights and build a propeller into the nose that could turn with electricity.

One day when he was out, you had the mess cleared up and sorted and carried under the lean-to next to the stables.

You're in our way here, you said, go and play over there.

He looked at you, opened his mouth and closed it again, and walked away stiffly. Give me a break, his back said, give me a break, I'm also here. But you didn't want to see it, your heart was cold.

Once you went to him under the lean-to, with a mug of coffee. Flat on his back under the fuselage he was trying to jiggle the electric leads for the dashboard lights through holes that had been drilled too small for them and trying to tinker the wires into place behind the propeller-head. The blades that he'd taken out of an old lawnmower and filed down to make an airscrew were too heavy for the little plane, they looked completely out of proportion. You pointed at it. He looked at you. You lowered your hand.

One evening he called you and Agaat from the bedroom where you were attending to Jakkie.

Come and see, he said, his voice exaggeratedly jaunty, bring that lad of mine along, we're ready for our maiden voyage.

For the demonstration he'd dragged the little plane from under the lean-to to the middle of the backyard. There it stood under a piece of black plastic, ready for the unveiling. From under the plastic a thick white extension cord snaked out. It was supposed to be connected to the electric cord with the plug that was dangling out of the window of the nursery.

You stand over there now, he instructed you and Agaat, who was holding the child. You had to stand in front of the bathroom window on the closed-in side of the backyard for the best view.

All the doors and windows of the rooms facing onto the backyard were open. He switched on all the lights that could switch on, from the kitchen all the way to Agaat's room, the storeroom and the nursery, all the main lights, and left the doors wide open so that light could shine on his handiwork.

With a grandiose gesture he removed the plastic cover. Beneath the bravado, you could see, he was tense.

It's turned out well, you said. From a distance, under all the lights, the toy did in fact look impressive.

It was painted silver with orange and blue stencilled on the fuselage and on the wings. Jakobus de Wet, Jr., was written on the one side and a black outline represented the five points of the castle. On the wings were rings and dots and crosses.

It's a Spitfire, said Jak, and now we're going to get it going.

Will it make a noise? you asked, because the child had just calmed down after a long struggle with feeding.

Not too much, Jak said, otherwise you just cover his ears.

Agaat looked at you. She stepped back. You put your arm around her shoulders.

Are you ready? Jak asked, it may move a short distance but it's not working all that well yet, I must still adjust the propeller's angle. You felt half sorry for him, so clumsy, and you didn't want him to make a fool of himself in front of the farm children, because by now there was a whole cluster of them who'd come to see, trampling one another at the open end of the backyard.

He pushed in the plug. The propeller creaked, turned once, twice. Jak twirled it by hand. Then the propeller took suddenly with a high keening sound so that he had to jerk back his hand and jump back.

Jak called something and gesticulated with his hands behind the grey haze of the propeller. You couldn't hear. The little plane moved forward fitfully, then it looked as if something got stuck in its throat. It dipped forward, heaved backward, and exploded.

A grey object flying loose, whirring blades.

You saw slow wavelike movements. First you saw Agaat turning round and growing. Her back ballooned out backwards and grew up into the air lengthwise, a mast. The cross of her apron bands white over her shoulder blades. She bent her head low over the child. Her white cap descended over his little pink face like a keel. Pieces of wood flew around. The propeller came straight at her. It struck her a glancing blow on the back of the head and bounced up into the air and broke the window of the nursery and was left dangling in the steel frame of the panes.

Agaat slowly sank down with the shards of glass shattering around her head. Her arms were locked around the little bundle. Her shoulders were hunched forward like shelters. At the nape of her neck a stream of blood coiled out from under her cap. Everywhere on the ground wrenched-loose wires smoking. The dashboard on which two little red lights were blinking, lay at your feet. Then there was another explosion, three, four more in short succession and more glass tinkling. Short circuits in all the rooms around the backyard where lights were on. The whole house blacked out from front to back. The backyard was pitch-dark. You couldn't utter a word. Your knees collapsed under you. You sat down on the ground. It was dead quiet.

He isn't hurt, Agaat said after a while out of the darkness. He doesn't have a scratch.

Her voice was matter-of-fact.

You saw the white cap coming upright slowly.

The child started crying frantically.

Jakkie! Jak called, his voice high with anxiety. Give him to me!

You crawled over the splinters of plank and glass to Agaat.

You're not laying a hand on my child, Jak de Wet, you said. You're not getting anywhere near him.

I'll put in new fuses quickly, he said, his voice rising higher all the time, I bought new ones.

You're not touching anything further around here, Jak. You keep your hands to yourself, and you go and sleep in your canoe in the shed, you said. You were quite calm and collected. You were furious. Your words issued from your mouth dispassionately.

I'll have in an electrician tomorrow, we should have had new fuses installed a long time ago. And don't worry about us, there are lamps
and candles and the Aga. Agaat is here, she'll help me. And tomorrow morning when I get up, the last shred of trash here will be cleared up, I don't want to see one shard or splinter, not one, do you hear? And you take your car and you drive to town as soon as the shops are open and you have glass cut for the broken panes and you get putty and you put out all the tools here in a row. I'll ask Dawid to put in the panes. Is everything quite clear to you now?

Jak stood there for a while yet before he turned around and crunched away over the glass.

Against the light of the stars you saw him clench his hands behind his head and cast them down by his sides, and he cursed three times in himself, the same curse, and shook his shoulders downwards as if he wanted to wriggle himself out of his clothes into the ground.