Agaat (4 page)

And then on top of that there are all Jakkie's books and magazines, sent on over the years, in which there are chapters and articles written by him. Agaat reads aloud from them regularly, very taken with her own importance, struggling over the long English words, but I've never really understood much of it.
Private Speech, Public Pain: The Power
of Women's Laments in Ancient Greek Poetry and Tragedy
,
Mourning Songs of the Dirty Goddesses: Traces of the Lamia in Orthodox Baptismal Rites of the Levant
,
Echoes of the Troll Calls in Romantic Scandinavian Choir Music
. Terribly obscure, all of it. Another one about the polyphonic wailings of Australian aboriginal women when somebody dies off. The stuff he finds to waste his time with, the child, after all, he has a perfectly good engineering qualification in aeronautics. Chucked into the ocean. For ethnomusicology, whatever that may be.

There was something written on the front page of the clipboard. Agaat looked to see what it was. She looked at me. She wanted to say something, I could see. She thought better of it. Ten pages she had to turn over. On every page her eyes took in the contents. Funeral arrangements to date. She wants to create work for herself. And for me.

She opened the clip and pulled out a clean sheet from underneath and slid it in on top. She let the clip snap shut loudly, tsk-ed again with her tongue.

Then she made a great show of burrowing in the dresser drawer for a pen, every gesture exaggeratedly emphatic. In the mirror I could see her pushing up her sleeve and testing the pen on the back of the little feeble hand. Provoking me on purpose, where was the red pen all of a sudden with which every day she underlined in my diaries, and annotated and rewrote on the counter-page? As if she were a teacher correcting my composition. As if I had to pass a test.

It writes, she said with a long jaw.

She placed the pen between my thumb and index finger and pressed them together as far as she could reach amongst the buckles and the leather and the screws. She pushed the clipboard in under my hand. It was a laborious arrangement. She had to push and pull and balance the splint and the pen and the board and my hand. She made a ridge in the bedspread to support the whole lot. As you do with a rag doll when you want to make her sit up in a chair. Pummel her in the ribs. Punch her in the chest. Head up. Tail down. Sit, doll, sit. Filled with sawdust. Or lupin seeds. Or clean white river sand.

Then she put her hand over mine, the strong hand. The effect was comical.

Ai, Ounooi, you're making life so difficult for yourself. How on earth do you think?

I could see what she was thinking. Haven't you perpetrated enough writing in your life? That's what she thought.

Be quiet, I said with my eyes, you just be quiet and leave me in peace. Take away your hand.

She jutted out her chin and replaced the Foamalite packing and the plastic in the box and closed the lid.

Tripple-trot out of here. In passing she snatched up her embroidery from the chair. I know what that means. That's the other punishment. Today I'll be seeing her only at meal times and medicine times. Otherwise she sits here with me for hours embroidering, a big cloth, I don't know what it is, looks complicated. She counts and measures as if her life depended on it, the whole cloth marked out in pins and knots. It's been carrying on ever since I haven't been able to get around by myself. Otherwise I would have investigated long ago. She's mysterious about it. Taunting at times. Sometimes she looks at it as if she herself can't believe what she's embroidering there. Or like now when she flounced out of here, she grabs it as if it's a piece of dirty washing that she wants to go and throw into the laundry basket, glares at me, as if I was the one who dirtied it.

All that was quarter of an hour ago. The grandfather clock in the front room struck. Quarter past eight.

Now I must begin. Now I must write. Now I must make it worthwhile. What I unleashed.

I gather my resources. I try to find handholds inside myself. Rye grass, klaaslouw bush, wattle branches to anchor myself against the precipice. Diehard species. I feel around inside me. There's still vegetation, there's water, there's soil.

To start I need a preamble. The preamble is just as important as the action itself.

Everything on this farm must be properly prepared, everything foreseen and anticipated so that no chance occurrence can distract you from your ultimate objective. That was the first commandment, has always been. I instructed Agaat accordingly.

You don't just blunder into a thing, you examine it from all sides and then you make an informed decision and plan it properly in distinct phases, always in tune with the seasons. And then you round off the phases one by one, all the while keeping an eye on the whole, the rhythms, the movements, just like rehearsing a piece of music.

That's how you retain control, that's how you prevent irksome delays at a later stage.

That's the one principle of a self-respecting farmer, especially for mixed farming. That's how you get results. That's how you build up property. With built-in rewards in the long and the short term so that you can have the courage to carry on. A foothold.

But my preamble here is not mine. It's been marked out for me on the surfaces of the room as Agaat has arranged it. Nothing has been
left to chance. Death is her objective. She has prepared it excellently. I couldn't have done it better myself.

First she emptied the room.

Everything redundant she carried out. To the cellar. I heard her bump and shift, here right under my bed, to make space for the stuff. The sofa and footstools, the doilies and cloths on the dressing table, the ornaments and wall hangings. The clothes horse, the hatstand, the walking stick stand, the walking frame, the wheelchair, the snows of yesteryear, the posies of dried everlastings.

So that she could move fast and clean easily, she said.

Because there shall be no dust or obstacle. It will be the best-managed death in history, you'll see, her eyes said. Her mouth was a thin line.

The carpet was taken out, the wardrobes with my coats and dresses, the chests of drawers with my jerseys and blouses.

I was the one who started it. I planted the idea of the great clearing-out in her head.

Only the bookshelf from Jakkie's room she carried in here to hold the extra reading matter. She selected all the books in it. And the television she brought in from the living room and took away again later because the contents would upset me, I ask you.

Perhaps she was the one who was upset.

There are already too many things happening in this room, she said, without our having to make space for
People of the South
and
The Bold and the Beautiful
.

Now she wheels it in only when she thinks I want to watch a video. But I no longer want to see Agaat's selections.
Ben Hur
,
Mary Poppins
,
My Fair Lady
,
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
.

The radio was permitted to stay. For the idle hours, she said. Morning service. Praise the Lord. Listener's Choice.
Moto perpetuo
. In these sacred halls. Almost time for Christmas carols. They've been starting earlier every year. Then Agaat will walk through the house again singing high and low with her descants and her second voices.

You like your music, don't you, Ounooi.

She switches the radio on and off. She selects the station. She selects the tune. Sometimes she pushes a tape into the slot. Not always what I want to hear. Red Indian croakings from Jakkie if she wants to irritate me.

That she left the three-panel dressing table, that's a miracle. It hunkers there like a museum piece, its dark wood conspicuous against all the other stark objects in white and chrome. I can see myself in the
central panel, the one that was put in later and reflects bluer than the others. She turned the dressing table exactly in that position for me.

So that you can keep yourself company when I'm not here, she said.

The drawers are empty now. But that wasn't my doing. I didn't have the heart to clear them. The trace of Chanel No. 5 and lipsticks which hovered in them, must have evaporated a long time ago. Sometimes I miss perfume. Would she have given it all to the servants?

It's the last time, Agaat said, on the morning of my birthday, go ahead and enjoy it. A woman has to look her best on her birthday, not so?

She marked the date on the calendar. 11 March 1996. Seventy years old.

Then she made me up for the guests. I could see them blanch when they came in here.

She never liked making me up. She had to do that from quite early on, when only my hands were paralysed, when we still went into town together.

But I know by now, birthdays always bring out the nastiness in her.

Then I looked like a blue-headed lizard, white spot between the eyes, the one I'm always given right there when she makes me up, to warn me against spying, to remind me of what I shouldn't have seen that time with my head against the whitewashed window sill of the outside room. Mascara. Blazing Bat on my drooling mouth. My neckbrace doused with six kinds of perfume and the powder-puff creating clouds around my head. And drowned the sense in odours. Just about choked in powder that day. So then she had an excuse. So then she tipped out the drawers of the dressing table into black plastic bags.

Claims she was acting on advice from Leroux, but she's always been one step ahead of him.

There must be nothing to irritate the nose, he's supposed to have said to her.

We've thought of that already, she said. No dogs, no plants, no dusty shoes or dirty things ever enter this room. And from now on no face powder, no perfume, no under-arm sprays that can make her sneeze or snort.

She had to stop herself. It was one of those days.

So now she'll just have to shine and stink, was on the tip of her tongue. But Mum and calamine it was to be.

Keep a good record of everything, Leroux said, and Agaat pointed out the farm calendar where she'd long been making notes in the empty columns. With her hands clasped in front of her she listened while he read out her list. Urine, bowel movements, eat, sleep, headaches, phlegm,
temperature, breathing, state of mind, force of deglutition, medicine, exercise.

She'll want to judge me in as many categories as she can think up, that's certain. Sphincter pressure, melting-point, share suction, sowing density, rust resistance, siphon level, tailwind, drainage slope, crimp index, inverse proportion,
Sphaeropsis malorum
, core rot. O rose thou art sick.

I can see that you're a very good nurse, Agaat, said Leroux after studying the calendar. Excellent records. Keep up the good work.

And she did. Unstoppable she was. She unscrewed the inside door of my bedroom because my new bed wouldn't pass through.

Don't be stupid, I wanted to say, bring it along the stoep and through the swing-door. But by that time I couldn't really speak all that well any more.

Perhaps it's better like this. Now I can hear everything that goes on in the house. I can hear Agaat approaching. I can hear what her footsteps sound like. I can adjust myself.

My bedroom door was the last door she unscrewed. The other doors in the house disappeared one by one.

So that Ounooi shouldn't have to turn doorknobs, so that Ounooi can get in and out easily with her walking sticks and her walking frame and her wheelchair, she said.

But that was just one half of the reason. The other half is her own problem, Agaat doesn't like closed doors. And she doesn't like cluttered surfaces.

She carried in a melamine surface on trestles and on that everything we need is arranged in rows and piles against the wall. Packs of swabs, neckbraces for every occasion, quick-drying sheets, mattress protectors, clean hospital gowns, bedpans. Under the trestle table are three enamel pails with lids.

There's a triple-level stainless hospital trolley with washbasin and clean cloths and towels and disinfectants and medicinal soap.

And a smaller trolley of hard plastic with removable baskets containing my medicines and pills in bottles and boxes. Fresh water in a carafe. Sponges, cotton wool, ear-buds, ointment for my lips that dry out, paper towels for accidents, tissues for drool, for tears. Things get disordered quickly in the trolley. Agaat tidies it every day, sees to it that all the bottles and tubes are tightly shut.

And then there's the bridge, a broad flat shoulder on one steel leg that fits over my bed, and on which my little bowls of food and my spout-jugs full of thickened tea can stand. And my reading stand.

Above my bed is a reading lamp, 100 watts with an adjustable head on a long arm, which can extend.

Enough light in the shearing shed, says Agaat, you don't dip a sheep in the dark.

But normally she doesn't switch it on at night. Only when absolutely necessary.

Next to my bed is a wooden stool on which she sits when she's feeding me. In front of the window is her upright chair on which she sits when she reads to me or when she embroiders. She brought it in from her outside room in the backyard. She never sits there anymore anyway she says, she only washes and changes there. It's now just her locker room, she says.

She sleeps in the passage. She needn't, she knows that. There are many rooms in the house.

All the rooms of my house, the progress to where I am now, the history leading to this last room, the domain remaining to me. Shrinking domain. I'm locked up in my own body, my limbs form a vague contour under the bedspread.

Now my preamble stretches over my feet. They're flat, they lie open. The bedspread subsides over my shins. My kneecaps form two bumps, the flesh has fallen from my thighs, between my hips there is a hollow. Further than that I cannot see myself. My neck is locked at the angle determined for me by Agaat. Her pillows are stacked like bunkers around me. In the mirror I can see something, a shadow of myself, my sloping shoulders, my face on which my features appear vague, as if an artist had rubbed his sleeve over a preparatory study, or flattened the modelling clay with his palm. Because the beginning failed, because the first attempt came out wrong. Because the underlying structures were not clear.