Agaat (81 page)

You took no initiative. You surrendered yourself to Agaat's ministrations, also to her attempts at reconciliation if that was what one could call them: The passing of an object marginally closer than was necessary, the less formal tone, the stray remarks on the weather that she slipped in, the rose in the vase on the dining table in the evenings, the extra trouble she took with your and Jak's food and clothes.

Give me your party dresses, Ounooi, Agaat would say after lunch, let me go through them a bit for you, there won't be time at the last minute. Her tone was strict, but in her eyes there was something pleading.

Two days later all the dresses with seams and hems taken in or let out as necessary and buttons and zippers sewn on, washed and ironed and fragrantly arrayed in your wardrobe. And all you could say was: Thank you, Gaat, I never seem to get round to it myself.

To win Jak's favour Agaat unpacked his whole shoe cupboard and waxed and polished everything, even his riding saddles and leggings.

These she then left in a line in front of the cupboard for a day or two so that he could inspect them before she packed them away.

And Jak, too, could say nothing but: Thank you, Gaat, what is a farmer without well-maintained footwear.

With such little sentences you all defused the tension between you, that which you would conspire to withhold from Jakkie.

Are there ashtrays in the marquee, Gaat? you'd ask, when in fact what you really wanted to ask was: Is there a chance, do you think, that we could persuade him to stay on for a few days after the guests have left?

Will you make two green and two red pennants for the landing strip, Gaat? Jak asked and Agaat would set her mouth in a tight line and go and execute the task conscientiously and Jak would follow her with his eyes, you could see, with his real question congealed on his lips: Do you know how long his pass is this time? Do you know where he's planning to go when his contract expires?

Shall we order ice in town, Ounooi? Then they'll deliver it on Friday at seven, half we can keep in the little slaughterhouse's cool-room for the Saturday? Agaat asked while you could tell from her tone that she really wanted to say: I'd never chuck hot water on you, surely you know that!

It was as if you'd all thrown in the towel.

Yes, Gaat, Jak would often say of an evening just before Jakkie's arrival, a glass of wine nonchalantly in his hand, whatever would we have done without you? Here we are stuck on Grootmoedersdrift, worn down in body and spirit, and you place liver patties and tomato salad before us and set the pace every day. Don't you ever get tired of it, then?

You looked at her where, without any sign of even having heard, she was dishing up food. Solid under the lamplight her bib, her chest solid, like a wall, invisibly inscribed, from the moment you took her in, with your and Jak's pronouncements, your prescriptions and prohibitions. A wall, a heart of stone that the two of you had implanted in her. And that was all that she could give back to you.

You watched her, her gestures, her phrases, her gaze. She was a whole compilation of you, she contained you within her, she was the arena in which the two of you wrestled with yourselves.

That was all that she could be, from the beginning.

Your archive.

Without her you and Jak would have known nothing of yourselves. She was your parliament, your hall of mirrors.

What must it feel like to be Agaat? How could you ever find that out? Would you be able to figure out what she was saying if she could explain it?

She would have to explicate it in a language other than the tongue you had taught her.

How would you understand her then? Who would interpret for her?

Privately you thought if the new heaven and the new earth were to be an empty, light place without discord or misunderstanding, then you would in spite of everything prefer life on Grootmoedersdrift with Agaat to beatitude, and surrounding you, instead of the heavenly void, the mountains and rivers and humped hills of the Overberg. And you would between yourselves devise an adequate language with rugged musical words in which you could argue and find each other. The language of reed and rushes. For, you thought, what would be the joy of finding each other without having been lost to each other?

Only when Agaat was present, in those last weeks before the feast, could you talk and could Jak talk, could you speak normal sentences to each other.

Was it in this time that Jak without any explanation came to sleep in your bed a few nights? Daddy-like in his pyjamas, complete with his glasses and book?

It was in spite of himself, you thought. And because he knew that it was too late. To seek consolation against the knowledge. That's why he came, towards bedtime, with his pillows and his glass of water.

Neither of you made any overtures to the other. Each occupied a side of the bed. He slept quietly, you could hardly feel his heat and his weight. Like a husk you thought, a dry membrane. In the morning when you woke up, he was gone.

When Agaat wasn't present, when you were alone together, you endured each other wordlessly. When in the evenings she drew the kitchen door shut, after she'd rinsed your teacups, and you heard her talking to the dogs, heard her enter the outside room, then it was a consolation for the two of you, where you were left behind under the shaded light of the table lamps in the sitting room, to know that she would be at her post the following morning, and that she would be there when Jakkie arrived and that she would help mediate his departure.

His departure! You didn't want to consider it.

Where did he want to go? You could see that it upset Jak terribly.

You couldn't talk to each other about it. Together you brushed your teeth and had your baths in the bathroom, until at last one turned the back on the other.

Jakkie's mother and father, Agaat's household, you thought, what are we more than that? And what have we made of them? But it was Agaat who was more urgent in your stocktaking.

What would Agaat do before going to bed, you lay there wondering wide-eyed in the dark next to Jak.

How would she get round to unbuttoning her uniform in front, and pulling out the pins of her cap and putting it down? Would she close her eyes first before looking at herself in the mirror without the white peak? And would she then stick her hands into the combed-flat mat of hair and massage her scalp? Would she work loose her hair until it stood in tag-locks around her head and would that then make her feel different? Look at herself in the mirror and smile? Fling her head back and laugh and stretch her arms above her head and roll her head on her shoulders so that the shadows of her hairdo slid over the linoleum like tumbleweed in a high wind?

Would something like that be possible in that outside room? Such a secret other self, such a concealed feral energy?

It was a fantasy you couldn't sustain for long, so mendacious, so banal was it. It was what one read in bad novels. In such a book Agaat would then have had a band of supporters, a claque of hand-clappers and whistlers, a villain with a feather in his hat who could egg her on.

No, it couldn't be like that. She would creak and rustle as she stepped out of her stays and, square in her full-length petticoat, hand on her side, glared at the cap, at the apron, glared at the black dress, lying in a heap there on the floor. She would drape herself in her nightgown like a toga and betake herself to her bed in grim and magisterial dudgeon.

You wanted to soothe yourself with these images. You knew none of it really fitted. There was no sportiveness and there was no self-importance either.

You knew how it would really be, as if you yourself knew the steps.

It would be quiet there. The linoleum on the cement would scrunch sandily under her feet. It would smell of soap and starch, of freshly ironed laundry. The bare light bulb would cast its shadow on the floor, in the hollowed-out seat of the collapsed easy chair. The embroidered cloths would radiate starkly from the walls, Moses in the burning bramble-bush, Elijah in his chariot of fire.

Perhaps she would switch off the light and first sit still for a while in a chair to think over the day?

Perhaps she would light a little fire to ponder by?

But you knew that even that was your own wishful thinking.

There was not then, at that stage, any space between Agaat and Agaat.

She was in preparation for Jakkie's arrival and Jakkie's departure.

She was living outside herself, leaner, sharper, like somebody the day before she leaves on a journey, the suitcases all packed, the usual routine scaled down and intense.

In that room.

There everything would be tidy and bare and rustling.

Rapidly she would wash, rapidly dry herself, thoroughly as in an institution, without dawdling, without a single gesture of self-cherishing. Everything would be in its place, as if for inspection. No tarrying, no reflection.

She would switch off the light at the door and wait in the dark for a moment until she could see again. Barefoot she would walk to the bed, hitch up her nightdress, get onto the bed with one knee first, worm in under the tensed sheets, without burrowing them loose, find a hollow for her head.

Would she lie open-eyed in the dark, first with her face to the window onto the yard? Would she lie looking at the glow of the moon through the curtains? Through a chink? At a star?

No, she would turn round on the other side, with her face to the wall.

And then with a sigh, a sigh you'd want to allow her, she'd close her eyes to sleep.

You thought all these things. All the time in that period before Jakkie's birthday you thought about Agaat.

How did it come about then that that July of all Julys you once again forgot her birthday? For the third time?

Quite shaky now, ai good heavens! I had to dose Agaat with a tranquilliser and take some drops myself. So there we had a whole drama this evening coming back from the dance in town, just as well we didn't stay too late.