Agaat (33 page)

Shall I take off the mask now?

The simplest question on earth. From the start. So shall I break the eggs for you? Shall I fasten your dress? Wipe your bottom? Hand you the walking sticks? Bring the walking frame? Push the wheelchair?

Crank up the bed? Farming as usual. Milking, slaughtering, shearing, harvesting.

She climbs onto the chair. Measures the length of the string. Fits the hook to the picture rail.

You don't like things near your face, do you, Ounooi.

She picks loose the first bow, bethinks herself, looks at me.

And you look like something from Mars with that thing on your face.

Mars. On the brink of Mars. Don't waste your breath, I flicker at Agaat. One with too little breath in this room is enough.

Wait, she says. She gets off the chair. First things first. Then the surprise.

Agaat has a sequence. There is nothing, she believes, that so reassures and motivates for the execution of a difficult task as the knowledge that you will be rewarded for it. She smiles at me. The you'll-never-guess smile.

Poor Agaat. What has my life been? What has her life been? How can I ever reward her for daring to come this far with me here on Grootmoedersdrift? How does one compensate somebody for the fact that she allowed herself to be taken away and taken in and then cast out again? And to be made and unmade and remade? Not that she had a choice. I even gave her another name.

First the mask, says Agaat. When it comes off, I'm going to press you lightly on the chest, Ounooi, don't get a fright. Gently up and down. You blink with you eyes, I follow you. I learnt it from the doctor just now, it's to assist your muscles. So that you can breathe. Come, let's first sit you up a bit more.

Agaat aims to adjust the bed so as to get me more upright. She doesn't want to take her eyes off my face. Her foot searches for the pedal, her hands grope for the screws.

Oh, oh, she starts singing, softly, on an intake of breath. But the white-throat crow doesn't follow, plummets into emptiness, Agaat's face crumples, her cap wilts, her mouth gapes, wounded.

A little bundle of bones and feathers she drops, down through the blue and the white of the skies, the brown horizon a whirling haze, down, down, black-and-white, a rushing, before she comes to herself and opens her wings and the air buoys her up and she can fly again.

Agaat's foot finds the pedal, her hand finds the wing nut. The bed erects itself with a hissing sound and a light shock.

She puts my arms next to my sides. Wings that can no longer fly.

Go from here to great Tradouw, she resumes on the right note, the crow taken for granted, skipped, omitted from the text, but without loss, because a song that we both know can tolerate that all too well.

Flying high and turning low.

What kind of cloth could it be that's hanging there rolled up? Agaat's décor for the great breathing-scene? It would be the first handmade decoration to hang in my room again after she carried everything out of here.

Went there fast and came back slow.

She unclasps the buckle of the mask behind my head. And the elastic over my nose. One hand is on my chest pressing lightly and rhythmically
and letting go. It's the weak hand. It feels like a bird perching on me, smaller than a crow, bigger than a finch, a starling perhaps. The starling helps me breathe.

There we are, in for a penny, in for a pound. Blink at me, Ounooi, blink with your eyes whether you're managing.

She fixes my eyes while the strong hand puts aside the mask. The strong hand replaces the weak one on my chest. Bigger than a finch. Strong shiny wing-beat.

White-throat crow.

From here. To the wall, to what is hanging there.

Now, says Agaat, now I reckon we've got you going full-steam ahead again.

The hand pumps lighter and lighter all the time, until it gives only the smallest pulse. Then I'm on my own.

Agaat contemplates my solo flight.

You can be satisfied, Agaat. Visibility poor, plenty of tailwind, but I log them, one by one, the turbulent nocturnal hours, the hours of stormy flight, I know, the landing lights are on, I blip clearly on and off on the radar screen.

She ignores me. How are the slimes feeling? she asks.

Clear, open, thank you.

Did I knock you too hard?

Her voice is low.

My back feels like tenderised steak, the skin of my ribs as if I'd leant for hours on end against a running baling-press.

Don't exaggerate, says Agaat. She smiles on my behalf.

Now I'm going to clear up here and then you can see what I've hung up for you.

Agaat puts on the soft neckbrace. EasyHead. She swivels my head into position for a good view. She supports it on both sides with pillows. She turns the bedside light to the wall. She pulls it out to its full extent and tilts it so that the shade looks like the head of an eager spectator. She gets onto the chair again. A horizon arises. Black seam of the house coat, white seam of the apron, folded-over white socks, brown calves of Agaat, crêpe-soled shoes of which both heels are slightly worn down at the back. Dig-in and hang-in hocks, tug-of-war heels.

Doctor says I must be careful not to upset the ounooi, so that the ounooi can carry on breathing nice and evenly.

From up there on top of the chair comes Agaat's voice, slightly strained as she stretches to arrange the cloth, but with the mockery
directed at the doctor, at how he thinks our relationship is, at how he thinks she addresses me.

Now I've chosen something to send you to sleep restfully. Now you look at it till your eyes fall shut.

She unties the other two ribbons.

The cloth unrolls with a shuurrr. It radiates down on me.

The great rainbow.

An embroidery experiment, from the time Jakkie went to high school in Heidelberg, when Agaat had to conjure away the empty time.

Everybody thinks they know what a rainbow looks like, she said, but when it's from close by like this, they'll wonder what they're seeing.

I remember the start of it, impossible, I'd said, a waste of time, why don't you rather make something one can use, but she'd just looked at me.

She anaesthetised herself with the work, for hours on end, in the mornings on the front stoep, before the arrival of the moment that she lived for, three o'clock, when she heard the chug and the squealing brakes of the school bus and she could run to go and fetch Jakkie at the drift, sometimes on the other side of the drift at the road, the time that she could sit with him while he ate, the hours that she could bend over his homework with him, and could learn with him about the French Revolution and the World Wars and the Boer War and he taught her everything that they sang at school,
Ne'er your children need ask who are true, O God of Jacob.

Folded on a chair it lay aside then, the great rainbow.

And here it hangs now.

A straight inside section of the body of the rainbow. All over the cloth. The yellow of the spectrum runs off into creamy white, then pure white. The veld gradated so subtly that my eye reels, that I seek for a stay inside of me, for the blue-green of the Waenhuiskrans horizon, for yellow-green shoots of self-sown oats, water-green pineapple drink, lime peel, sunflowers, orange cannas, a dust-dimmed sun over stubble field, a harvest moon blood-red, a watermelon's flesh. And Geissorhiza radians, Babiana purpurea, amongst dark bracken the seven other purples of September. Swift effulgences, pleats of light.

But here is neither place nor time. It's an embroidery of nothing and nowhere. What Agaat must have imagined to lie behind the tender despair of defenceless creatures, behind the firefly, the evening star, the poppy, the blond lad in his corduroy pants. Everything that slipped out of her grasp, Jakkie's whole childhood, replaced with this embroidered emptiness.

Around me Agaat is clearing up the battlefield. She thinks she's distracting my attention with her rainbow. The buckets with the swabs full
of phlegm she bustles away first, the kidney-shaped dish with the gouts of wet cotton wool, the sponges, the cloths, the water that smells of Milton and lavender. Swiftly she works, before her work of art's effect on me evaporates.

But I hear the screwing of the lids of the jars and tubes, see the sure-handed strokes with which the trolley is wiped, the quick snatch with which the slimy sponge on the bridge is grabbed away, the jingling assurance with which the brand-new rigging of oxygen tubes and snorkels and mouthpieces is rolled up. That, all the movements conspire to assert, now belongs to the past. Now we are in another safer place. The rainbow has been brought in for you. A complete colour chart. The origin, the fullness, the foundation of all.

What am I supposed to do with it all? It's the wrong medicine. Completeness. The death of the song, of the small dusty tale.

Rainbow of death.

Is it meant to hypnotise me?

Perfection, purity, order. Adversaries are they all, the devil's own little helpers.

How my heart burns to tell her this! Now that I can see it. Now that it's too late.

A. is terribly excited about Jakkie's christening in a week's time. Have just gone out at the front door & surreptitiously walked round the back of the house & peeped into the kitchen window to see what she's getting up to there. Wouldn't she close the kitchen door after supper & tell me I'm not allowed in now she'll come & call me when she's done. Looks like at least two cakes & a savoury tart that are under construction there as far as I can see. The whole table is packed with stuff & there's a hectic beating & a mixing & a singing at the top of her voice all my recipe books open in a line bowls full of batter & icing-sugar & grated orange peel & plates full of chopped bacon & onion & parsley. Everything for the dominee & his elder who are coming tomorrow morning to discuss the arrangements for the christening.

Have just had to go & do inspection. A. came to call me to come & see if everything's right. Fresh flowers arranged in the sitting room (she's been up since crack of dawn) & her cakes have risen beautifully orange
& chocolate covered under netting on tea table & the best cups put out & cake plates & forks the savoury tart is all ready to be baked everything is ship-shape. I did think this was all rather a to-do, & the eyes shine & the chin juts all the way out & then it came out: Seems she wants to carry Jakkie into the church. I ask you! Won't I big-please get the dominee's permission.

 

Now obviously this is totally out of the question! Couldn't bring myself to tell her this on the spot, what with all the trouble she's gone to with the baking & all. Oh good heavens.

 

To crown it all she's embroidered a christening robe for Jakkie. Here & there a bit of a tangle but it's something quite exceptional. Morning glories & bunches of grapes round the seams & the collar everything white on white & the most delicate little white buttons & ribbons & belts of soft brushed silk cloth with a slight sheen—good enough for a little prince. Must have taken hours & hours of work. But it's obviously unheard of, a coloured girl in church & everything has already been arranged in any case, & Jak's niece will bring him in in their old family christening robe.

 

A. says she wants to hold him for the sprinkling isn't she a baptised child of the Lord as well she says & he won't cry if she holds him. There she does have a point.

Too upset really to write but dear Lord in heaven how on earth could I have proposed it to Ds van der Lught? Perhaps I should really have done it & then she could rather have had it from his own mouth she was in any case listening behind the kitchen door all the time.

 

So there is the christening robe on the sideboard neatly wrapped in white tissue paper & A. serves the cake all prim & properly with little serviettes & Dominee praises her extravagantly but he doesn't eat any cake only the elder nibble-nibbles a bit because of course by that time they'd been on house visits all morning & already full of cake & there she had to recite Psalm 23 & Dominee asks her everything about sin & redemption & she knows it all & he praises her to high heaven isn't she so tidy & in her place & so clean & he can see her heart is as white as driven snow. All I could see was that Jak was going to lose his temper.

All the time she's signalling to me with her eyes so that only I can see: Show him my christening robe with the result that I ate far too much cake just to show her it's good thank you you're my right hand & later she brought Jakkie in & then Jak sent hr out because then we had to kneel & pray & I looked at the chintz on the chair & when it was my turn to pray I couldn't get out a word & Jakkie started screaming & A. comes & picks him up & soothes him there so that he can have the pre-baptismal blessing pronounced upon him & Dominee prays & the elder prays & they just can't seem to stop & under the prayer I look at A. & she's standing there with open eyes big-please asks her mouth but I couldn't ask & then we still had to sing as well The Lord Bless thee out of Zion & A. joins in with the second voice & Dominee & the elder look at each other & they say let's sing another verse but I feel ashamed because coloureds don't sing with white people in the sitting room J. almost has a fit on the spot but he has to behave in front of Dominee & I see he's threatening A. she must stop but sing she does.