Agaat (94 page)

Slowly we did it with much tsk-ing and ai-ing from me, because she herself wasn't yet speaking then. For hours on end we kept at it there with the dripping of the last drops and the calling of the frogs in our ears. We placed the butterflies in the sun, dozens of them, as we opened them up, on the earth wall of the irrigation furrow. Then we sat down on the other side with our chins on our drawn-up knees and waited.

Who's the first to see something move, I played with her. We stared fixedly. As if dead the little creatures lay.

I wasn't sure. I was taking a chance. I remembered vaguely from my childhood that it could work. I saw her looking at the half-dead little things in the puddles, with a sullen face, her chin far out, her lips pursed, as if she'd prefer to step on them.

It took half an hour.

First the colour returned. Some were orange and white and black, others yellow and black and blue. Then one stirred, then another, then two, three, till the whole wall seemed to be breathing with wings opening and shutting.

See, I signalled to her with my eyes, you didn't want to believe me!

Then she smiled.

I remember the day. She must also be able to remember it, she read it out, quite recently, from my diary. February, 28 February 1954. Would she still be able to remember it? Her fingertips on the lashes of my upper lid?

That was the first time I saw her smile. With the chin drawn in and an inward pinching of the little lips, a reluctant smile, but it was a smile. I looked away not to embarrass her further. But I remember thinking it was a miracle. I saw more colours than there in fact were because everything was swimming before my eyes. First one butterfly flew up, then two, three, then all together in a cloud shimmering over our heads before they eddied up next to the quince avenue, and then in amongst the trees of the old orchard.

Now it's my turn. My upper lash is pulled up, fingertips pull down the lower lid. My eye is lost, I can't find the seeing-slit.

Up, Agaat whispers, look up!

She presses on my eyeball, light rolling movements upwards.

Come, eye, come!

There it is!

I see you!

And I see you!

In the staring eye she puts some drops. The lids of the other one she sticks open, above and below, with strips of plaster. At first her eyes are only on her hands where she's working. She takes her time. I wait for her to look at me again. Both my eyes feel stretched open slightly too wide.

I must look to her like an extremely surprised person.

That brown case full of my things, remember? It was as if I'd buried it there yesterday. As if it'd been sulphured.

I can't close my eyes to listen better. I must look at her, her face is right above mine. She looks at me as one would look at a dam full of
water. She doesn't prick through my cornea. She doesn't penetrate me with a blunt object. She doesn't fish in vain for the end of the rainbow.

She's accepted that it's beyond her, me and my dying.

She smiles at me.

I see my reflection in her eyes.

Everything is still there, she says, exactly as you packed it. Clothes, boots, ribbons. And shells and eggs and stones and bones, my lists, my story books, everything. Only the insects have disintegrated, and the pressed flowers are a bit ragged. And look here, even my sack with which I arrived here on Grootmoedersdrift. Do you remember? In the beginning you hid sweets inside for me.

To get me going.

I was terribly timid, wasn't I?

And just see what else is inside!

Agaat places something against my cheek before I can see what it is.

Feel, she says, there's nothing as soft as a moleskin.

She nestles it in my neck.

Even my wheel and my stick, she says.

She pushes the point of the stick into the rim of the wheel, rolls it over the covers over the incline of my body. I can feel it tracking over the skin of my belly.

Down the road to open the gate for me so long, with her white ribbons fluttering and her white bobby socks and her green dress. And her wheel and her stick.

My eyes can't stay open like this for too long. You must be able to blink. And the mountains freeze in that moment. It's life that passes in the blinking of an eye. While dying itself can last for an eternity.

Poor Jak. Never had time to pose. Flew through the air. Shrike-spiked on a branch. Never looked back. Stayed stuck in the drift.

Would I have preferred it like that? Instantaneous? Without deferment?

And Agaat, how would she prefer it if she could choose? On impact rather than this clearing-up and fitting-in, this emptying-out and filling-in, this never-ending improvisation? Hip-up hop-down in slow motion? With the bellows-book opened wide to blow out one long sustained blast of air, to keep the ember alive for as long as may be necessary?

What have we left of all that? Of all the twirling of the stick in the hole?

A fireplace, this bed, a stealthy little smoke arising.

A frock in which to bury me.

Sulphured conservation cloth.

Tried on and tried out.

A rat is what I smell!

I see it's now been hung here next to my bed on top of the maps. Washed and ironed and starched. The white embroidery is luminous. If one were to turn it over, all the threads on the other side would be sewn back and tied down and worked away. Otherwise it wouldn't be Agaat's work.

I would like to ask, ag, if I could speak I would now like to ask: Do you remember how Jakkie used to sit by you when he was small? He just couldn't believe that a picture could emerge from under the needle.

How do you do it, Gaat?

Do you remember how he persisted?

You couldn't really answer his question.

You fetch it and stretch it and tie it together, you said, you prod it and prick it, you slip it and snip it, you slide it in cotton-thread frames, you hold it and fold it, you pleat it and ply it, you bleach it and dye it and unravel again, you stitch on the stipple, you struggle with pattern, you deck it and speck it in rows and in ranks, in steps and in stripes and arches and bridges, and crosses and jambs of doors and of dams, you trace it and track it and fill it and span it and just see what's come of the cloth, a story, a rhyme, a picture for the pillow, for the spread on the bed, for the band round the cuff, for the cloth on the table, for the fourth dress of woman.

Will Jakkie still see me in it, Agaat? Will he remember me in it one day? Laid out and dressed in the Glenshee?

I think I recognise the weft. So it's true what she said? My great present to her for her first embroidery lesson? For one day when she will have mastered the art?

My eyes are drying out. Will she add drops once more so that I can try and make out everything she's embroidered there? So many tiny details, in places it looks like musical notation. A piece of sheet music? What could it be? If Agaat could compose? A symphonic tone poem?

Or programme music, like
Carnival of the Animals
? An aria for two female voices and farm noises?

But no, it's not as pretty as that. Here around the central portion it looks like a page from a manual, a guide to dying, a do-it-yourself book with illustrations, all the information in captions around the body embroidered there in the coffin position, the hands already folded on the chest. A woman in a frock in a woman in a frock I'd be.

Ounooi, says Agaat, your people have come to say goodbye to you. In one hand she has something, I can't see what it is. The Bible? With
the other hand she beckons down the corridor. I hear the clicking of dogs' toenails on the floorboards.

What must I see? To whom is she beckoning there at the other end of the passage? Come! Come! The dogs? Boela and little Koffie? Who? There at the door? Who's there? Dawid, Julies with the drag-foot, Saar, Lietja, Kadys, a few well-grown young ones, a few little ones. All in Sunday best, a smell of cheap soap in the room, satin ribbons in the little girls' hair, their mothers in floral scarves, the men with their hats in their hands.

So these are all the ones I'll be farming on with here on Grootmoedersdrift, Ounooi, says Agaat.

Her voice is factual. As if she's leading evidence. She's showing them, I've been alive all this time, three years long in this bed. She shows I'm now moving on. She shows the reins, at the moment of changing hands.

Good morning, um, says Dawid. His cool light-green gaze rests in mine for a moment. He doesn't know which one of my eyes to peer into. He rotates his hat in his hand.

Oumies, says Saar, we'll look well.

Oumies was good to us, says Lietja. We will, we will . . . stay here under Agaat.

The message is clear. I see how they look at each other, how they assess it, the new order. We'll have to see. We'll just have to make the best.

I see the hands of the adults resting on the shoulders of the children.

Look children, look, that's what it looks like.

The children are standing dead still, the little girls in their still new unbleached dresses, the unironed shirt collars of the boys, white against the brown skins. Their eyes are big. One of them is holding Boela by the scruff of the neck. The little dog is making whimpering noises under the bed.

Agaat takes up position at the foot of the bed. She looks at me.

It's good, Agaat, it will go well, I wish you good cheer, and as much peace as is possible.

The ounooi says, Agaat interprets, she says thank you that you've come to greet her. You are all good people, she says. She wishes you all peace and prosperity, also for the coming Christmas and a blessed new year. She says that from now one you must be given two sheep every Christmas and a whole tolly as well and a vat of vaaljapie as always. She says she knows you'll work well with me. Just as well as I've worked with her all my life here on Grootmoedersdrift.

Amen, says Kadys in a professional mourner's voice. Amen, the others mumble under their breaths. Dawid squashes his hat on his head.

A suppressed giggle? I see one child nudging another in the ribs. The group is starting to disintegrate.

Agaat opens the book where she's been holding her finger. The cover is worn, dark blue. She announces:

From the section Soil and factors that can influence plant growth, from the chapter An unchecked danger, from the paragraph, The erosion process. Page three hundred and fifty-five.

It is written there:

Many of us will still remember that not so many years ago there were in certain districts very beautiful large and famous vleis covered in wild clover, vlei grass, and other useful plant species; in which there were also to be found pools and pans filled all year round with clean clear water. Surrounding these pans were bulrushes (
Prionium serratum
), sedge (
Cyperus textilis
) and other beautiful plants. Where are the vleis today? They have altogether disappeared and in their stead you find only a nest of hideous ditches, and where of old wild clover displayed its pretty flowers, there is now just here and there a hideous little bitter-berry (
Chrysocoma tenuifolia
). There is no drop of water to be found because the network of ditches forms such a perfect conduit that, as soon as the rainwater touches the earth, it is flushed away to other and bigger ditches that can take it away further until it ends up in the sea. This whole vlei area that once upon a time could carry and fatten more cattle than any other part of the veld, of the same size on the farm, can nowadays hardly feed a mountain tortiss.

She closes the book. She smiles at me.

Tortiss.

She takes her little scissors out of the top pocket of her apron, cuts a strip of plaster, sticks down the stare-eye. She pulls off the tuft of Vaseline-soaked cotton wool holding the other eye open. I feel the upper lid descending slowly. Firmly she starts singing. I feel her breath on my face. I feel the dogs bumping against the bed. A wet snout burrows in under my hand.

Behind Agaat they fall in, drawn-out, they drag the notes, through bone and marrow, the women just about weeping.

Now everyone is transported by the power of the hymn. High rises Agaat's descant for the last verse.