Agaat (39 page)

You sent one of the boys to go and commandeer OuKarel. You knew Agaat had everything right about the medicine and you had learnt from your mother about the procedures with tulip poisoning, but experience was what was lacking. You needed OuKarel's eye there, you felt. You remembered your mother's belief that a bull, not to mention a new one, wouldn't co-operate if there wasn't a man in the company.

In the camp the animals were huddled around the drinking trough as Agaat had predicted.

And there was Hamburg, his hump seven hands high above the rails of the holding pen. He'd be able to flatten it like nothing. His head was hanging, strings of drool from his mouth, and the piss and the thin slimy dung ran out of him. He pressed himself against the back of the partition.

How had Agaat got him in there? How would you move him to the threshold of the crush pen? Would the headclamp be in working order?

Wide-eyed the maids stood staring. Agaat trotted off to test the lever of the clamp. Up and down she pressed it so that the flat shaft first bent at the hinge in the middle and then lifted up. Open and shut she operated it, the steel arms of the clamp flashing in the sunlight over there at the far end of the crush pen.

How are we going to get him in there? you asked her.

He's already half dead, Agaat said, look how deep his eyes are, he's wonky in the front legs, he won't give us grief.

How? you asked with the eyes.

Agaat hooked the index finger of her strong hand in front of her nose.

With the bare hand on his nose-ring?

That's how I got him there in the pen, Agaat said.

You didn't believe her. The holding pen's gate was wide open. You were sure she'd prodded him in there from behind.

The holding pen was one thing, one would still be able to roll free under the lowest bar of the pen. But the crush pen was a narrow gully with high cement walls. There was one escape route, that was to the back. But how would you worm past the bull if you were in front of him and he gored you? He would fill the gully from wall to wall.

At the front end, in front of the headclamp, there was a shutter of steel that could be lifted if he should decide to rush forward.

But what if everything happened very quickly? You'd be paralysed with shock, you'd slip, the one who had to lift the shutter could lose his nerve, you'd be trampled.

Who should take the bull in there?

You hesitated.

I'll take him, said Agaat, her mouth set in a straight line. He knows me. He's soft in the nose. He won't bugger around for no reason.

Ho my mother, said Saar.

You go and sit in the bakkie with Jakkie, Agaat said, and wash your hands before you touch him.

Push the other cattle away from the drinking trough, she ordered Lietja, count them, there should be seventy.

And for you she tallied on the fingers of her strong hand. One bottle of egg and brandy, one bottle of coffee, two pints of the rusk bottle's lime-and-linseed water mixed with two tablespoons of tannic acid to the pint, decanted into two Coopers canisters.

She would lead the bull as far as the clamp, you had to secure his head. Then somebody had to open the shutter so that she could get out in front.

Agaat ordered two boys to go and fetch planks and to build a scaffolding on little drums outside the crush pen on both sides so that you could reach across to dose the bull.

What if he gores you? one whispered to her. What if he tramples you?

They retreated stepping on one another's feet. Mush! they giggled. Arsgaat!

Dry up, said Agaat, a bag of acid drops for everybody, if you help nicely here. Stand ready, hand us what we tell you and keep your big traps shut or I'll make dog-mince of you.

You'd never forget it, the sudden subservience of everybody, big and small. Something changed gear that afternoon on Grootmoedersdrift.

Agaat put the medicine containers precisely in sequence on the wall on either side of the headclamp. She blew into the rubber tubes to check that they were clear. She squeezed the triggers of the dosing-canisters and squirted medicine on the ground until she was satisfied that they were working correctly and without air bubbles. Her mouth was set in a line, her chin jutting far forward.

Bring a rope, you called to the boys, bring a stick.

For what? Agaat asked.

So that I can have something with which to pull you out if he runs amuck, you said, then you grab the rope or the stick.

She looked at you. Agaat Lourier can't pull herself out of the gully with one arm, her face said.

Or I push the stick under your apron's shoulder-straps and lever you out, you said. You couldn't look her straight in the eye.

The gully is too deep. The stick is too short. You're too weak. It wasn't even necessary for her to say it.

Perhaps we should rather wait for the vet, you got out. Your voice was low.

Wait till I'm in, she said to you, climb on the wall and walk behind me. Don't put things in his head. Think one thing and think it straight.

First try to prod him from behind, you said.

You try, Agaat said, he doesn't want to, he's too buggered.

You went around the back of the holding pen. You prodded the shitting bull in the flanks with a stick. He didn't budge.

Agaat straightened her cap with both hands. There at the gate of the holding pen you saw it. The one shoulder pulled up, the pace forward, the pace back, the genuflection. Then she opened the gate and went in and closed the gate behind her. Plumb towards the dead strip between the bull's eyes Agaat advanced, bold and high her mien.

Water came into your mouth, of iron it tasted, of blood.

She hooked her finger into the nose-ring, turned her back, took a pace forward. Through the bars of the holding pen you saw the bull bend its knee, dragging his hind leg, starting to move forward. Six, seven, eight paces and Agaat was in the crush pen with him.

You climbed onto the wall, the stick and rope in your hand. The bull lowered its head. On both sides of his muzzle gobbets of drool were hurled against the cement walls. His small sunken eyes were on the cross of Agaat's shoulder-straps. Soon she was invisible. You could only deduce, from the steady pace at which the bull moved forward, that she was there walking ahead of him, and that she was exerting a constant force of traction on him.

The blood in your temples! The whole twenty, twenty-five, thirty yards of the crush pen! Triumph when the bull pushed his huge muzzle over the crossbar, when you pressed down the lever, and wedged in his head, and Agaat escaped through the shutter. A yelling from the littl'uns, cries of admiration as she emerged there.

She was opposite you on her scaffolding on the other side of the gully. She wiped her hands on the bib of her apron. She pushed at her cap. On her shoulders something glistened in the sun. It was wet where the big bull had drooled on her.

Agaat held out her little hand, the back, so that the bull could feel the warmth on his nose. He tried take a step back, felt his head was fast. It would be a business if he lay down in the gully. You had to work quickly. Agaat looked at you across the hump.

You wanted to praise her because she was so brave, but the expression on her face prevented you.

First the coffee, then brandy, he needs a kick-start, she said.

The main thing was that the liquid should not end up in the lungs. Agaat passed you the bottle with coffee.

Press on his cheeks, she said, you have two hands.

You pressed on the release knobs, the sensitive salivary glands. The jaws parted slightly, you pressed down the lever a notch to pick up the head another few degrees and lifted the lip and inserted the thin tube along the gum behind the back molar on the tongue.

Swallow! Gaat said.

The coffee went down without any problems. But then the egg mixture wouldn't pour smoothly down the tube. Agaat took it mouthful by mouthful out of the bottle and blew it into him through the tube.

After that it was the raw linseed-and-lime cream. The full two prescribed pints.

Then the two of you unlocked the clamp. Enlivened by the stimulants, the bull allowed himself to be prodded out of the crush pen. You drove him slowly to the clean straw that you'd had brought in and covered him in sacks where he stood, because then he had the shivers.

When did OuKarel appear on the scene? Next thing you noticed, there he was crushing his hat, a vaaljapie breath issuing from his mouth.

You had to flash a warning look otherwise Agaat would have scolded the old man. He was just sober enough to help. You rounded up the cows three at a time and dosed them with the boys holding their heads up. The cows shat and pissed and tried to step back and coughed. Then everybody had to let go to let them finish coughing. Raw linseed oil down the wrong gullet was the greatest risk. Terrible pneumonia could be the result.

Twice you and Agaat rushed back to the house to mix more medicine.

By six o'clock you trained the bakkie's headlights on the scene and sent home for lanterns. Agaat and yourself you fitted out with headlamps from Jak's mountaineering equipment. Like a cyclopic eye Gaat's headlamp shone in the dark.

One cow looked as if she was going to succumb and had to be given a stomach-pump.

Jakkie was cold and hungry and cried.

Take him, Agaat, you said, go and bathe him and give him food, he's upset, I'll take charge here now. Wait until he's asleep then you come and call me.

At half past six Jak returned from tennis. Flabbergasted. In white clothes and all he plunged into the ooze of manure and mud to help. Anew you doctored the bull with coffee and brandy to stimulate his heart. At seven o'clock the vet turned up from the clubhouse, even more sozzled than Karel. Jak went and dragged Dawid and his cousin out of the huts to come and help. Agaat returned with Jakkie tied to her back in a blanket. She went and stood in front of Dawid and Kadys. Without a word she made them both drink half a bottle of sweet coffee and three gulps of laced egg-white to fix the hangover. The bakkie lights were on them. Everybody was watching. They did as they were told. The women and the boys whispered. Dawid's face was squint. The vet stood back as if he was scared he would also be accosted.

Now you two go and milk the Jerseys, they must be sore by this time, she said. You sent Saar along to keep an eye because they were stepping very high indeed.

Men! you and Agaat signalled to each other with the eyes. But your part of the message was vitiated by her look. Some women! it said.

By four o'clock that morning the tulip poison had been counteracted. You administered barley-water and linseed-lime because the animals couldn't drink ordinary water. But the new herd had been saved. Hamburg was starting to see better out of his eyes. He stopped peeing and started shitting less and less. Just the one cow that had been given the enema was looking weakish.

Everybody who had helped was ready to drop from hunger and fatigue. Agaat went home and for the second time that day washed and dressed in clean clothes.

The kitchen was a chaos, lime and oil on the floor and all the separated yolks standing around everywhere in dishes and bowls. All the egg, Agaat said, overwhelmed for the first time that day, you could see.

Never mind, we can use it, you said, let's make food for the people, they must be starving. You mixed the batter and Agaat started baking vetkoek and bacon and fried onion and pans full of scrambled eggs. Along with big jugs of sweet rooibos tea with milk you helped her to serve it in the backyard.

Aitsa, such a whitecap cattle-quack, the servants teased Agaat, how she blows a bull full of brandy!

There was new respect in the teasing and in the attitude, even of the big men when they brought back their plates and came to hand back the mugs into her hands.

You served Jak and the vet indoors. They were quiet.

That little coloured girl of yours deserves a medal, Thom Smuts said after a while to Jak with his mouth full of egg.

That's Milla's department, Jak replied, and gestured with his head in your direction where you were pouring coffee. It's she who should get the compliment.