Agaat (34 page)

 

When at last they left I rushed out of there & I walked off in some direction with Jakkie in his pram sick of all the cake & when I got to the dam at the ducks' landing place there was would you believe it the white parcel; with the christening robe. The same that had just recently been on the sideboard! I thought at first I was seeing things.

 

Come out! I shouted Come out! because then I knew A. was hiding there somewhere amongst the reeds to torment me. Lord knows how she got there so soon must have taken a short-cut through the little vlei but she wasn't coming out & then I took the parcel & chucked it far into the dam. Then it took a long time to sink & all the time I knew she was watching. Threw a few clods of earth in there to chase her out but it didn't work. What a spectacle, good Lord.

 

So now we're going to have a whole drama about it again.

 

Better go & have a look at what's happening it's been dead quiet all afternoon. A. nowhere to be seen. Jak had to see to his own lunch. Six o'clock now. Still don't hear anything stirring in the kitchen. Perhaps she'll come back when it's Jakkie's bath-time. How are we to look each other in the eye?

A. in a mighty huff. As good as her baking was for Dominee's visit so
disastrous was everything for the christening tea. Deliberately upset a jug of milk on the tray & the guests' shoes were full of dogshit because she hadn't swept the garden path. Remained sitting in the car during the christening service even though Dominee had said she could sit in the side-room & listen to the service. Didn't even want to pose in the little church park with the blue cranes for a photo with Jakkie in his christening robe.

 

Will bloody-well not let myself be buggered around by her. Will make her work until she is tractable so that she can see what it cost. Faith & sweat & blood of generations just so that she who's Agaat can live off the fat of the land on Gdrift & pluck the fruits through no effort of her own.

 

Must I skin her alive? I asked & then I had an idea. Tanned & brayed you must be that's punishment number one & if that doesn't cure you then I have a few others.

Have been watching her though the binoculars where she's sitting & braying the thongs in the back under the bluegum trees. Had D. provide her with a bray-stone & handle. She'd better sing I told her so that I can hear where she's working. As long as you keep jibbing you'll bray hides I said. Will teach her to pull up her shoulder at me. I see J. has gone & added three more lynx hides to the heap it sickens me how he decimates the small game. New sporting rifles with sights they can't miss take a trap I say then at least the poor things also have a chance.

It's my will against hers & she knows it. The chin is stuck out there & she carries on with the one arm. Up & up she winds the thong till it drips & plucks the stick out of the handle & down & down winds the thing & then up again on the other side. Has broken two bray-poles already. A mob of farmboys mocking her. That's how the first rod broke says Lietja one got a blow against the head that had the blood flowing so now they're more careful stand there at a safe distance.

I cut off a piece of thong with the knife & press it under hr nose. See the hide is tanned & the core is white. I take a raw thong & I cut it & show her look the core is black. Just like that it will be with you. I'll wind you up until all your black sins drip out of you & wind you down & wind
you up again in the other direction till you're a decent servant-girl who doesn't leave one in the lurch when you need her most. She gives me that wooden eye I could slap her.

Four days of curing thongs & A. just gets worse all the time. Breaks things in the kitchen when she has to help cook in the evenings. Mixing bowl glass jug in shards two saucepans so burnt had to throw them away milk sour from bottles not washed properly clothes get stained in the washing whole baskets of eggs get broken hens have stopped laying & Jakkie constantly fretful. Must look after him myself all the time now can't lie there in the open under the bluegums with A.

 

I ask hr: But don't you miss Jakkie then during the day? Don't you just want to leave off your quirks now & become good again? Conceived & born in sin she says. I scold her about the thistles in the flower garden & charlock in the vegetable garden & the hornet's nest on the stoep they fly in at the front door & go up & down with their abdomens against the curtains. Take down the hornet's nest I say just now one will sting Jakkie. Can't reach she says. Very well then I say then you'll plough an acre with a handplough & a mule.

 

J. says you & that coffee-toffee of yours can't you just fire her next thing she'll drop dead with exhaustion & what will you do then? Just remember I'm not erecting the monument.

 

Don't have an answer for him. Feel guilty. But the guiltier I feel the angrier I get.

On purpose at first gave her an old plough with a rusty share with the wrong blunt point & a bent beam & saw to it that the hauling-chain was first hanging too high & then too low & watched her struggling with the share that wouldn't grip & kept on sticking & somersaulting head-over-arse or climbing point first out of the furrow & the mule eventually getting all confused & headstrong.

 

Waited for her to get good & tired & then I said now you go & read your Handbook well where they explain the art of ploughing by hand & then you come & say your lesson to me & when you know it & explain to me why you're struggling like that then we make a plan but plough
you will the field one arm or not. D. says Ai Mies. I tell him to keep his trap shut if she wants to be otherwise she'll find out at first hand what that means. A good servant is like a shiny share that shears with ease.

A is walking with an even tread on one side of the plough with the strong hand on the handle & hr shoulder pulled up high & talks to the mule & sings to awake the echoes: Big baboon climbs the hill farmer's wife takes a pill. Knew everything when I tested hr this morning. The whole logic of the plough-bottom. Share-point inclined to the unploughed ground. Hollow under hoof. Mould-board. Tow-line on the centre of the share. On the tips of her fingers.

 

Took her to the co-op & said now you choose yourself a plough here & shares that look right to you for that damp river-soil. So then she knew exactly what is what & as cheeky as you please asked me right in front of the salesman: Do we have a wire brush & grease & graphite & fine oil to soak the bolts after I've finished ploughing & do we have paint otherwise this plough will lie & rust just like the old one. Punish me as much as you like said her crooked back as I walked behind her.

 

Must think up something else. Feel terrible. But can't stop.

J. says he feels like going to live in a flat in town & becoming a lawyer he's had a bellyful of being an extra in my concentration-camp movie. Says he's had enough of the mess in the house & what's happened to my wonderful house-slave she can't even iron a shirt properly & why must she struggle with a handplough or is this now my latest design for a hotnot hobby first the flat seam now the plough furrow. Had to throw away three shirts this week with scorch marks on the collar. Made her waterproof a large tarpaulin with fat & linseed oil over & over again on both sides.

 

If I can't break her with sweating blood I'll get into her mind then we can see at the same time if she's really as clever as she thinks.

 

I'm humiliating myself. God in heaven.

Instructed D. to move the McCormick seeder onto the tarpaulin in the
shed & to jack up one wheel & to loosen all the gears & to put out a few bags of wheat seed. 150 pounds is what we must sow per morgen I said to A. Now you calculate how we must set this machine's gears so that it's going to sow the right density & how much seed we need to sow 16 morgen & while you're about it teach D. as well & you needn't come home & you needn't be given food before you've done the sum go & read your Handbook & help yourself to pen & paper in the baas's office. Since you tell me you know how to multiply & divide. Bless me if she doesn't talk back & tell me it's not sowing-time it's almost harvest-time don't I rather have a sum for harvest-time. I restrain myself. The labourers are watching me with eagle eyes. Tsk I hear behind my back. They look at me as if they don't know me.

 

Do I know myself?

A.'s light is still burning & there's been a droning on three notes all evening. I know what she's struggling with. They don't say how many square yards in a morgen & how many feet to a yard. If she's clever she'll look on the farmer's almanac tables behind the kitchen door.

 

Have dried up completely now. Jakkie full of colic from drinking cow's milk.

Heard a to-do in the shed early this morning & D. is in & out of the door. So there was the seeder sowing on the tarpaulin & A. is turning the jacked-up wheel with a piece of rope tied to one of the spokes so that she can count the revolutions & there is the Handbook & the almanac with tables & I see hr papers with the sums. By then they were setting the seeder's gears for the third time already to try & arrive at exactly 150 pounds a morgen. So then I relented & gave back the rowel that I'd removed & then the machine worked properly & the sum worked out & A. all but put out her tongue at me. D. gives me a straight look & says lord Mies but nothing further & next thing I see Lietja is giving A. a plate of rice & mince with vegetables in the kitchen & I happen to hear her say never mind it's over now you're terribly clever. Like a serpent as clever as a cat as sharp as needles but now just must start eating slowly otherwise your stomach will get a fright & then you must go to bed in your room you look like a ghost shame.

 

Made myself scarce because next thing I heard sniffling there in the kitchen & I don't know whether it's Lietja or A. that's bawling but A. doesn't cry of course. Then I heard J. there in the kitchen egging A. on: Go & sing your white stepmother a little song, go on: Anything you can do I can do better.

 

A. in the outside room all afternoon. Very quiet.

 

There's not a single farmer of my acquaintance who could do that sum.

How can I do it to her?

 

That October after Jakkie's birth, after the battle with Agaat over the christening robe, five things happened that changed everything on Grootmoedersdrift. First Jak had the cattle-troughs with licks & the salt blocks removed from the lands. And then you noticed one day that the farm boys' wire cars were no longer built from wire but from bones. White vertebrae, white ribs, white collarbones, little white carts of death rattling over the yard. Without your putting two and two together. The third thing was Jak's new hunting rifles. What was he on his way to do when he left the house with the long leather bags? You didn't want to know. And then there were your diaries. Somebody was reading your diaries. Or that's what you thought. But most important of all was the change that came over Agaat. You saw her looking with new eyes at the two of you. But mainly at Jak, as if she was noticing him for the first time.

Five things that preceded that first catastrophe. Five things that helped shape all future catastrophes.

In the evenings there were the squabbles over the farm as usual, over your compost heaps, over your pumpkins amongst the pear trees.

It's not a laboratory, Jak, you said, it's mixed farming, the surfaces can't be bare and sterile without a sign of the processes that keep a farm healthy.

There he sat, pushed away his plate of food, taking apart his rifles and putting them together again, firing silent shots at the ornaments in the sitting room. Through the sights. Click. Click. You thought it would drive you mad. It fascinated Agaat. Not the rifles. Jak's face, his hands.

Then she brought home the story one evening. End of October 1960 it was.

The cows are eating tins.

Just as Jak was taking his first mouthful.

What tins now?

You had Jakkie in your lap, were trying to get him to take to his bottle.

Paraffin tins, car-oil tins, turpentine tins, sheep-dip tins, molasses tins, she said.

That they pick up where, Agaat? you asked.

You were incredulous. Why would cows eat tins? You thought she was inventing it to pay you back for the punishments she'd suffered.

Agaat was silent.

Ag, the stupid cows of yours, said Jak, probably calving again, you know they're always full of shit then, if it's not the trembles, then it's something else.

I'm just asking, where do they find that particular collection of tins to eat? Do they select them in the supply shed?

You looked at Agaat.

The tins are lying in the little grazing at the back next to the river amongst the stones, Agaat said.

Full sentence with prepositions. From a grammar book for second-language speakers.

She jutted out her chin.

Jak pointed his fork at Agaat. They're my tins, leave them just there where they are, or you'll be given another field to plough!

You handed Jakkie to her. He wouldn't drink so well with you. She just stood there with the child in her arms.

It's my shooting range, dammit, I do target-shooting at the bloody tins! Jak exploded. And that'll be the day that I let myself be put off by a bunch of silly cows from enjoying the little bit of healthy recreation that I'm allowed in this internment camp.