Agaat (56 page)

You went to have a peek at Jakkie, snapped on the light for a moment.

Fast asleep with his cheek on Agaat's embroidered pillow slip, his room full of boy's smells, his mouth with the slight down on the upper lip slightly skew against the pillow.

Jak was at the breakfast table at the usual time. He was pale. You could see he was winding himself up for something. You said nothing. You hoped it would blow over as it did generally tend to do. But you felt that this time it was different. When he'd finished eating, he folded his napkin and cleared his throat.

Phone, he said, phone now on the spot where I can hear you. Arrange with Jakkie's school. Tell them Jakkie is going for a week-long scouting and survival trial in the mountains of the Tradouw with the Voortrekkers of the Montagu mountain club. That should satisfy them, or you can think up something better yourself, tell them he has mumps.

He smiled a tight little smile in Jakkie's direction.

You got up from your chair. Jak did not look at you.

But in fact he's only going with his father so we can get to know each other a bit better, not so? And so that he can taste a bit of what life's actually all about. What do you say to that, old man? Go ahead and tell your mother of our plans.

Jakkie was excited. It was obvious that they'd been planning it for a long time.

Agaat came in with the dish of oats. With your eyes you asked: So what do you know about this? She pretended not to see you.

Jakkie started chattering about the route.

From Twaalfuurkop they would climb over the intermediate ranges of the Piekeniers above Swellendam and through the Bergkwagga Cracks and along the bushman caves at the Four Sluices. He carried on about the compass and the ropes and the maps and the leopards in the kloofs, and about the descent into the pass by the red krantzes with the body halters and the bolts and anchors after hiking all along the horizon from the bridge so that you and Agaat would be able to watch their progress over the last stretch through binoculars, and could accompany them along the pass, all the way to where you had to pick them up at the deepest point of the road on the bank of the Huis River.

You looked at Agaat again. Her face betrayed nothing. She cleared the porridge plates and pushed a platter of eggs to the middle of the table. She passed the spatula to Jak and he served Jakkie.

Eat, little man, so that you can build strength, said Jak, you'll need it. We're taking only peanuts and water and for the rest we'll have to hunt dassies.

I won't allow that, you said.

Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, let's go and brush your pony, he's mouldering in the stable by now.

Jak put his hand on Jakkie's shoulder.

Jakkie's staying right here, Agaat, he wants to eat his eggs. You go and brush his pony for him and while you're about it see to the other horses as well, clean their stalls, take the muckrake and a spade and after that you might as well put out new straw in the stables, have the bales ready, just remember to take along the wire-cutter.

Jakkie looked at Agaat with wide eyes. She gave him a wooden eye. She wasn't perturbed in the least.

Gmf! she said. And Jak grinned.

What were they scheming?

Your eyes she resolutely avoided. What did you want her to do? Jak held Jakkie in front of him like a shield. You went and made the call to the school. You heard them giggling over the lie while you were spinning your tale to the principal. You knew that Agaat was listening in to every word.

There was something different about Jak. You could tell from the grim resoluteness with which the preparations were made.

Jakkie was given a pair of real mountaineering boots with blood-red laces and a compass. He couldn't sleep with excitement. In the evenings he and Jak calculated their hiking stages with compasses and pencil. Their halters and buckles and belts and slipknots and pulleys and hooks lay in the sitting room where they checked them for three days.

You did as Jak told you. You packed his rucksack and Jakkie's smaller one. 18 kilograms and 8 kilograms exactly, the underpants and T-shirts and socks, light windcheaters, plastic raincoats with hoods, long johns, cloth hats and golfing-caps, the billycan and matches, a little bottle of methylated spirits for sore feet, the sleeping bags, the peanuts, the salt, the glucose sweets. The catapults, the little rolls of smooth wire and string for snares, knives, a torch, a packet of birdseed, water bottles. Within the weight allowance you managed to fit a slab of chocolate, a few guava rolls and a packet of rusks into Jakkie's rucksack, but Jak threw them out when he checked the contents. Agaat stood in the doorway and watched it all.

Nay what, Jak said, this is not a picnic, we're going to match our strength against nature. You just see to it that we build up our stamina beforehand, and have the food ready when we return.

Was it all as unexpected as it felt that morning? Not really. The signs had been there had you but wanted to notice them. Perhaps even then Agaat had a much better overview. She was always the one to draw your attention to Jakkie's growing up, to his first steps, his first daring leaps, first circuit alone on the bicycle, first swim across the river. She was the one who always summoned you: Come and see, just come and
see what he can do. Also when Jak taught him the abseiling technique down the tower silo. Your appeal: Just listen to what he can sing, made a feeble show against these achievements. You were tied to him only by this one thin thread of music, and you weren't sure whether he just played along to humour you.

When Jak heard you making music, he would lure him away. Musical morbs again, he would say, and took him along to go running or rowing. They achieved the best times for father-and-son teams in the holiday races at Witsand, came home with glittering trophies and gilt canoes mounted on wooden blocks. They had ventured into the mountains for a day on occasion. But this project was too large. The scratches and the bruises and the gashed heads that you would have to doctor again. But that would be the least. Now there was a risk of exposure, of getting lost, in the wilderness, in the cold.

But was even that your real concern? My child, you thought, I'm losing my child, first to Agaat and now to Jak, the child of whom I'd dreamt. You put your hand on Jakkie's curly head, felt him strain away.

I'm going along, said Agaat, she was behind Jakkie's chair, her hands on the backrest.

So am I, you said.

Jakkie looked from one to the other, his eyes uncertain.

We're going alone, said Jak. What do we want in the mountains with a wonky-legged woman and a one-armed golliwog? You could never leave your silly little farm all on its own? What would happen then?

He winked at Jakkie.

The cows would get scarlet fever, the wethers would drown themselves one by one in the drinking trough, go on, Jakkie, what else would happen?

The chickens would lay chocolates, the chimneys would start whistling, Jakkie laughed, relieved to be joking. He was in his father's team now.

Yes, you see, he knows it already, Jak said, the windows would bulge out, the windmills would run off, the goffels would cut out each other's goolies, the rams would cover the women. These two bat pilots don't dare look away for a moment. Just look at their control panel!

Jak was on a roll, with hands and feet he demonstrated.

Air pressure, altitude, tail-wind, cruising speed, wheels, wings, long-drop, snot-smear, squitter straight into the drift!

Jakkie roared with laughter.

Or is it a stupid old ship they're steering, Jakkie, port, starboard, goose-turd, sink!

There was nothing you could do about it.

Nothing Agaat could or would do about it.

But in whose team was she? you wondered. Perhaps ‘team' was the wrong word, she wasn't in a team, a pivot she was, a kingpin, you'd felt for a while now how the parts gyrated around her, faster and faster, even though she was the least.

We're going along, you said again.

You two, said Jak, you stay exactly where you are and see to it that the bluegums don't contract typhus, and that Grootmoedersdrift doesn't disappear down a sinkhole, not so, Jakkie? And on Saturday 18 September you see to it that you're waiting for us in the pass with food and coffee and clothes. Come in the red bakkie so that we can see you clearly from up there.

 

It rained on the Saturday when you and Agaat had to go and fetch them. The whole week that they were gone you'd smelt it coming on, heard the susurration before the first drops fell. A countrywide rain it would become, as one could expect at that season in the south-western districts. Slippery the rock faces would be, the peaks covered in mist, the kloofs full of waterfalls. Agaat embroidered day and night, the big abstract rainbow cloth on which she'd worked over the years when she was troubled. The work was completed the day before you were due to depart. She came and draped it in front of you like an omen. But it was only an empty cloth.

You'd phoned rescue teams earlier in the week already and explained Jak and Jakkie's route to them. You'd found out about helicopters at Swellengrebel aerodrome. The more you thought about it the more you reproached yourself for not objecting more vehemently. It was ill-considered, altogether 80 kilometres over mountaintops and kloofs and through rivers. You couldn't believe that you'd permitted it.

Take more people along, take a radio, you had pleaded two days before their departure. At the last moment, when you went to drop them off, you put a little mirror in Jak's hand, offered to go and make appointments with farmers at the foot of the mountain to look for signals at a certain hour so that you would at least know where they were.

You want to be in a play, Milla, Jak had said, willy-nilly you must have a drama where there's none, with yourself in the lead. Plus a banner headline: ‘Woman loses husband and only son in mountaineering tragedy'. The world as it is, is not enough for you, my wife. That's your problem. You're like the hungry cow in that children's book of Jakkie's. You bring misfortune down upon yourself, and upon me, upon us all here, it's you who needs the mirror, not me.

He pressed it back into your hands. His eyes flickered. In the back seat Agaat and Jakkie sat and took it all in.

The Saturday, a week later, the dark morning of rain. You didn't dare go look for Agaat in her room once again. All week while you were waiting, she was stony and taciturn, came and showed you the rainbow cloth once more, with an odd sentence added to it.

Break and be broken, she said, that is the law of life.

You knew better than to ask her what she meant.

Her other intentions were crystal-clear. She ordered you around with a list in her hand. You did what she said, you were too numbed with nerves to think straight. Blankets and towels and warm clothes she packed and thermos flasks of sweet black coffee. Barley water with sugar and salt such as she always gave to the diarrhoea babies down in the cottages. The first-aid chest. Extra bandages. Brandy. She made sandwiches, frikkadels, hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of preserved quinces, cookies, rice pudding, cinnamon sugar, sago pudding, custard.

They'll be as hungry as wolves she said and then they must start with mushy foods first.

You regarded her actions. The mugs, the plates, the spoons that she packed in the basket. Three of each and her own enamel plate and mug.

What if they don't come? you asked, what if you wait there all day till evening and they don't turn up?

Oh God our help in ages past, Agaat said.

The tone of her voice had little to do with God, and her ‘our' didn't invite company.

She got Dawid to put the canopy on the bakkie and laid a single mattress in the back. You'd spend the night there if they didn't turn up, she decided, you in the back and she in front. You'd have to wait there until they arrived. She had a bag of wood dragged up for a fire in case it should be necessary. You started trembling as you were loading the stuff in the half-light of dawn. You realised you were furious, more furious than you'd ever been in your life, at what Jak had done to you. But your fury was without expression, like a thin cord inside you it was. You couldn't utter it, you would have screamed if you could, you would have cursed, but nothing issued from you. Agaat came and stood by you with one of your green pills in her palm and a glass of water.

Drink that, she said, you've got the proper heebie-jeebies.

What if . . . you began.

If me no ifs, Agaat said.

She was curt. You knew how she felt. You thought you knew. It would break her heart if anything were to happen to Jakkie.

But there was something else as well. Contempt. For what you'd permitted Jak to do to you. Rebellion because her hands were tied.

It was still twilight when you stopped to wait just beyond the bridge in the first lay-by. The idea was that they would appear there on the other side, on the skyline, and attract your attention and then move on along the horizon all the way to the descent.

As the light grew, Agaat started thinking you might have just missed them. You drove on to a place on the pass where you estimated that they'd have a better chance of seeing you, right opposite a kloof that they would have to cross on the horizon if they'd kept to the plan. The weather was blue with wind and water. A drifting mist covered the top of the lip of the cliff. A white streak of water was rushing down the seam. Lower down it dispersed, a fine spray down in the undergrowth, on either side the claws of a lion, as you as a child had learnt the formation of the foothills from your father, the roundings of the paws yellow with bitou-bush and then the toes, the shiny black rock-nails in the black water.

Now and again a glimmering flushed behind the clouds intensifying the colours of the rock faces. It felt as if you were peering though thick glass. No doubt because of the tranquilliser you'd swallowed, but also from the tension of having to wait there. The landscape was shallow and empty, the smell you got was of cold sheets, of black water and granite.