Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [102]
It’s of no use to anybody if you drive yourself to the brink of exhaustion, Agaat. Remember, you’re the only care-giver here. If you also collapse, we have an even bigger crisis on our hands. Do the necessary. Spare yourself, cut out the frills. See to it that you eat regularly, get enough sleep, go for a walk in the veld, in the mountains. You can’t hold her. She’s withering away, every day a little more. You must accept. You must resign yourself. It’s time. Nobody can battle against death.
They’re out on the stoep, down the steps, the boot clicks open, slams shut again. The engine idles. Last instructions, inaudible directions, a car door slams, lights swivel across the yard.
Then Agaat calls the dogs back into the yard, she removes the doorstop, closes the front door. She puts something down on the floor. It sounds like deep-sea diving equipment. She rustles something in the passage.
She comes into the room with a rolled-up length of cloth, tied with bows in three places.
Ai mercy, the doctor, she says, he’s a meddler.
She looks at the wall.
Ounooi, it’s only your breath.
She brings a chair.
You have a lack of breath.
The cloth has a piped seam that is threaded onto a bamboo rod. One of those that we used to train tomatoes. Tomato-rod. There’s a string attached with a loop and a picture hook. She smoothes the seam with one hand, so that the cloth is in the centre of the rod.
Shall I take off the mask now?
The simplest question on earth. From the start. So shall I break the eggs for you? Shall I fasten your dress? Wipe your bottom? Hand you the walking sticks? Bring the walking frame? Push the wheelchair?
Crank up the bed? Farming as usual. Milking, slaughtering, shearing, harvesting.
She climbs onto the chair. Measures the length of the string. Fits the hook to the picture rail.
You don’t like things near your face, do you, Ounooi.
She picks loose the first bow, bethinks herself, looks at me.
And you look like something from Mars with that thing on your face.
Mars. On the brink of Mars. Don’t waste your breath, I flicker at Agaat. One with too little breath in this room is enough.
Wait, she says. She gets off the chair. First things first. Then the surprise.
Agaat has a sequence. There is nothing, she believes, that so reassures and motivates for the execution of a difficult task as the knowledge that you will be rewarded for it. She smiles at me. The you’ll-never-guess smile.
Poor Agaat. What has my life been? What has her life been? How can I ever reward her for daring to come this far with me here on Grootmoedersdrift? How does one compensate somebody for the fact that she allowed herself to be taken away and taken in and then cast out again? And to be made and unmade and remade? Not that she had a choice. I even gave her another name.
First the mask, says Agaat. When it comes off, I’m going to press you lightly on the chest, Ounooi, don’t get a fright. Gently up and down. You blink with you eyes, I follow you. I learnt it from the doctor just now, it’s to assist your muscles. So that you can breathe. Come, let’s first sit you up a bit more.
Agaat aims to adjust the bed so as to get me more upright. She doesn’t want to take her eyes off my face. Her foot searches for the pedal, her hands grope for the screws.
Oh, oh, she starts singing, softly, on an intake of breath. But the white-throat crow doesn’t follow, plummets into emptiness, Agaat’s face crumples, her cap wilts, her mouth gapes, wounded.
A little bundle of bones and feathers she drops, down through the blue and the white of the skies, the brown horizon a whirling haze, down, down, black-and-white, a rushing, before she comes to herself and opens her wings and the air buoys her up and she can fly again.
Agaat’s foot finds the pedal, her hand finds the wing nut. The bed erects itself with a hissing sound and a light shock.
She puts my arms next to my sides. Wings that can no longer fly.
Go from here to great