Agaat (76 page)

 

Do you want it? I ask then, do you want the tinderbox? The little hand appears, and takes it out of my hand, careful not to touch me, but tightly the little hand clasps and tightly the little hand holds and she fiddles with it and smells it, the tinder smell.

 

In front of me! While I'm there! Praise the Lord!

 

Taught her one doesn't play with fire, only when I'm there is she allowed to strike the flintstone or light a match. It may help to exercise the lazy hand because you can't operate the tinderbox with just one hand. Taught her you say thank you when you're given a present. And if you can't say it with your mouth, then you say it with your eyes. Slow blink with the eyes, once and a small bow of the head means ‘thank you' I teach her. Thank you for jelly, thank you for food and clothes and a house, thank you for a tinderbox. Solemnly went and squirreled it away in her hessian sack.

 

Phoned home. Could have known what the reaction would be. Watch out, says my mother, everything you put in there, will come back to you.

Made a fire again! This time with a magnifying glass from Jak's office. Will have to get him another one, he looks at the maps with it. White-hot outside. I got burnt blood-red on my neck from sitting still in the sun with the lens. A newspaper fire. Go and fetch grass, I say, go on, go and fetch twigs. Gone and back in a flash she was. Knows about making a fire, it seems. Then believe it or not she holds out her hand for the lens. How does one ask? Please, you say. Otherwise you look straight in the eye of the one who must give and you blink twice quickly with the eyelids. We practised till I was satisfied. Big please. Pretty please. Then again thank you, thank you very, very much with the eyes, close the eyelids slowly and nod forward with the head. She put the lens also in the sack with her other things. Must get her another bag, or a little suitcase, the sack stinks.

A third fire! Agaat thinks I can do magic. With a flat bit of softwood, half mouldy with wood-mite, and a straight stick. Next to the river in the shade. It took hours, later the sweat was pouring off me, you can't let go, otherwise you have to start all over again. Twirl, twirl, twirl in the little hole. Up and down, my hands burning after a while. First you smell it, the first little curl of smoke appears, up from the base of the stick. Agaat on her knees, looks as if she wants to stare it on fire. Blinks the eyes, looks at me, blinks the eyes, blinks at the turn-stick, blinks at the flat piece of wood. Please! Please! Fire fire in my hand, I say, who sees the first spark in the land? When the smoke was curling properly, I took out the stick, here comes the little hand with the smallest, finest threads of dry straw. As if she's done it often before, as if she knows exactly how, she sprinkles a few shreds into the hole, blows with pursed lips, could hardly believe it, anther shred she adds, blows with the gentlest breath, until the little flame leaps up. Wherever did you see it, Agaat? How do you know so well to start a fire? Who taught you?

 

Then she looks over my left shoulder, I look round, see nothing, then she looks over my right shoulder, I look round, still nothing, then she looks on the ground, then in the air, then in the palm of her strong hand! And I fold it open nicely and make a show of looking and see nothing. All prim and proper she looks at me!

 

I think that's the first joke, the first tale that she's told me.

Who taught you about fire?

 

The Nowherewoman, the woman without name, who is everywhere but who can't be seen, she taught me about starting a fire.

 

Then I continued the tale: Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to learn how to start a fire, and I watched her closely to see if she'd give an indication, hot or cold, but she doesn't let herself be read.

 

Perhaps there were concrete and specific circumstances when she was still very small, many more, far worse than one could dream up in a fairy tale.

Agaat is a closed book. Sometimes I think she's wiser than she is. Sometimes I think she's retarded. When you have to communicate through the eyes, live by inferences, misunderstandings are easy. I must remember she's only a child. Seriously damaged. I mustn't want to read too much into things. I mustn't expect too much. Can't help thinking it's the most challenging and also the most promising task I've ever set myself, that the Lord entrusted to me to enrich and fortify me in my spiritual life, to feed my capacity to love my neighbour, to sharpen my insight into my fellow man. I must write down the commission. I must write how I found her otherwise I'll forget how it was, but it seems too much, I'm scared to commit it to writing. Would I find the right words?

I encourage her to touch things and tug at them, open her hands, to give, receive. Go and fetch my little book, I say, so that I can write down how you are. She knows exactly what I'm talking about, brings it and opens it for me on a blank page. It's going better by the day now. Must silence her because she grabs the silver hand-bell in the dining room and then J. comes to eat and the food isn't nearly ready. It's just the talking that must still be sorted out, everything else will follow quickly once we've got that on track.

I play shadow puppets for her against the wall. Rabbit, snake, camel, dove. She opens her hands now, the strong hand more readily than the weak, the sly hand, the monkey paw, as I call it. I take the little hand in mine, I open and close it, open and close so that it can become human, I say, but she
doesn't like it, she always keeps it half out of play, the weak arm always half out of the way, as if it's private property. I count to five on the fingers of the good hand, I give them names. Pinkie, Golddinky, Laureltree, Eye-washer, Bugsquasher. At night I leave a candle-end with her. I peep through the slot to see what she's doing. She lies and stares at the flame for hours. Plays shadows against the wall with her hands. Weak hand makes the snout, ears, tail. Strong hand the neck of the buck, the head of the horse. Earlier this evening I thought I heard a whispering on a long in-breath like somebody counting sheep and not wanting to lose tally, I suppose I mustn't expect miracles. She doesn't sleep before the candle is burnt down. Every evening before bedtime she brings the candlestick so that I can fit a new candle-end, she carries it to her room as if it's a great treasure.

Agaat can talk! So I wasn't wrong about the whispering! She talks to herself in bed but I can't make out what. The whispering is on the in-breath. I see the little chest swell as she takes the breath. Have just gone to press my ear against the slot, a rustling of little sentences, almost voiced, repetition of the same word or phrases, but I only now and again catch something. The rhymes I say to her all the time? Fragments of the stories that I tell? Granny, why are Granny's ears so big, Granny, why are Granny's teeth so long. I know she understands. When I'm telling a story, she looks at me wide-eyed. Sometimes I get the impression she's on the point of asking me something about the stories. But it's as if she's assessing me, as if she's scared that I'm going to take something from her if she opens her mouth.

I could spoil everything if I exert pressure now. Have been to listen at the door of the back room again, this time it was unmistakable. What do I hear there?

 

In the road is a hole, in the hole is a stone, in the stone is a sound. In one sustained in-breath she said the riddle!

 

Her finger was on the tip of her tongue, as I always have it when I'm saying the riddle to entice her to talk, as if language is something one can taste.

 

I went to sit on the side of her bed. I won't look, I whispered, I look elsewhere, then you tell me what you lie here and say to yourself, won't you?
I swung my legs onto the bed so that I could lean against the bedpost, tried to relax, so that she could relax as well. Wanted her half to forget that I was there and just carry on with her bedtime stories. Sat there for probably an hour without saying anything. She said nothing further but that's the best that I've yet felt with her. Peaceful. Secure. A kind of motherhood even.

Sat on the stoep for a long time, tried to think of everything that happened there in Agaat's little back room tonight. It's as if I'm too scared to write it down. As if writing would efface the fragile event, as if words would spoil everything.

 

It smelt sweet there with her in the little bed. Agaat's breath, her little body smell sweet nowadays. All the sores and ringworms have healed, the bad teeth have been pulled, she eats well and sleeps well, has regular bowel movements, has a bath every evening. Not at all as hunched up and bewildered as at first. Sweet, like a little rabbit. And then there was also the twig of fennel that she'd picked this afternoon that I'd put in a little jar next to her bed. I picked a leaf and crushed it between my fingers and smelt it and made her smell it too. Dreamy the little eyes were in mine, they half closed from the aroma. If she were to say something, I thought to myself, it would be because she was almost asleep.

 

I wanted to press her to me. But that's against the rules.

 

Twenty to nine
And then!
My hand trembles to write it.
Then I bent down and whispered in her ear.
What did I say to her?

 

I'm so hungry, I'm so thirsty, I said, because you don't want to talk to me and I know you can talk, because I hear you, through the hole in the door, how you talk to yourself in bed and I see your lips move and I wonder what you're saying.

 

I knelt by the bedside.

Perhaps you can say your new name for me?

 

I blinked with my eyes to ask, big please!

 

Why is it taking me so long to write it up? I'd rather just think about it again and again. It's too precious! It's too fine! Words spoil it. Who could understand?

 

I held my ear right next to her mouth, a good ten minutes long I breathed in her little fennel breath.

 

I imagined the tip of her will as the rolled-up tip of a fern. Did I say it out loud? That she should also imagine it? A tender green ringlet with little folded-in fingers?

 

I bent it open with my attention.

 

Then it came into my ear, like the rushing of my own blood, against the deep end of the roof of her mouth, a gentle guttural-fricative, the sound of a shell against my ear, the g-g-g of Agaat.

 

I felt faint, lowered my head on her chest.

 

Fast asleep she was when I lifted my head. I must have slumbered off myself. Had I dreamt it all?

 

When I got up, she opened her eyes. I opened my mouth to say her name.

 

Then she also opened her mouth.

 

Then we said her name at the same time. Sweet, full in my mouth, like a mouthful of something heavenly. Lord my God, the child You have given me.

Still I have the feeling of satiety. Now still as I'm writing here, hour upon hour, I feel it, a tingling fulfilled feeling through my whole body, as I imagine it must feel to suckle a child. Can it be that you feed someone else and feel replete yourself with it?

Perhaps it's the mere fact that she could go to sleep with me so close to her that makes me feel like this.

 

It's the first time in my life that I understand it like this, the impersonal unity of all living things. It doesn't matter who is who. The speaker and the listener. The shell and the sea, the mother cat and the human hand that stirs her blind litter, the wind and the soughing pine, the dry drift and the flood. It's one energy. We are one, Agaat and I, I feel it stir in my navel.

Agaat spoke to me again! Admittedly through a closed door, but still! First we played the knock-knock rhyme, on either side of the door, I say the words and she knocks the rhythm.

By the second verse I hear another voice beneath mine.

Then I remained quiet and Agaat actually started the third verse on her own, rapidly on the in-breath.

Who's speaking? I ask behind the door.
Me.
Who's me?
I am me and you are she.
What's her name?
Agaat.
Agaat who?
Agaat Lourier.
Who is she?
Crawled out of the flea-blanket!
Where does she come from?
Oupa rode a pig!

Back room door open on a chink. We sit on either side of it on the floor. We sing, we talk, rhymes, songs. Not real sentences yet, but better than nothing. She's evidently taken in everything, literally every word that I've taught her up to now, she can't be retarded! Everything but. Just Jak that's nasty. Coon kindergarten, he calls out when he hears us.

If she doesn't want to talk to me properly face to face, she doesn't get food and she stays in her room. That's the rule. Two days now.