Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [103]
Flying high and turning low.
What kind of cloth could it be that’s hanging there rolled up? Agaat’s décor for the great breathing-scene? It would be the first handmade decoration to hang in my room again after she carried everything out of here.
Went there fast and came back slow.
She unclasps the buckle of the mask behind my head. And the elastic over my nose. One hand is on my chest pressing lightly and rhythmically and letting go. It’s the weak hand. It feels like a bird perching on me, smaller than a crow, bigger than a finch, a starling perhaps. The starling helps me breathe.
There we are, in for a penny, in for a pound. Blink at me, Ounooi, blink with your eyes whether you’re managing.
She fixes my eyes while the strong hand puts aside the mask. The strong hand replaces the weak one on my chest. Bigger than a finch. Strong shiny wing-beat.
White-throat crow.
From here. To the wall, to what is hanging there.
Now, says Agaat, now I reckon we’ve got you going full-steam ahead again.
The hand pumps lighter and lighter all the time, until it gives only the smallest pulse. Then I’m on my own.
Agaat contemplates my solo flight.
You can be satisfied, Agaat. Visibility poor, plenty of tailwind, but I log them, one by one, the turbulent nocturnal hours, the hours of stormy flight, I know, the landing lights are on, I blip clearly on and off on the radar screen.
She ignores me. How are the slimes feeling? she asks.
Clear, open, thank you.
Did I knock you too hard?
Her voice is low.
My back feels like tenderised steak, the skin of my ribs as if I’d leant for hours on end against a running baling-press.
Don’t exaggerate, says Agaat. She smiles on my behalf.
Now I’m going to clear up here and then you can see what I’ve hung up for you.
Agaat puts on the soft neckbrace. EasyHead. She swivels my head into position for a good view. She supports it on both sides with pillows. She turns the bedside light to the wall. She pulls it out to its full extent and tilts it so that the shade looks like the head of an eager spectator. She gets onto the chair again. A horizon arises. Black seam of the house coat, white seam of the apron, folded-over white socks, brown calves of Agaat, crêpe-soled shoes of which both heels are slightly worn down at the back. Dig-in and hang-in hocks, tug-of-war heels.
Doctor says I must be careful not to upset the ounooi, so that the ounooi can carry on breathing nice and evenly.
From up there on top of the chair comes Agaat’s voice, slightly strained as she stretches to arrange the cloth, but with the mockery directed at the doctor, at how he thinks our relationship is, at how he thinks she addresses me.
Now I’ve chosen something to send you to sleep restfully. Now you look at it till your eyes fall shut.
She unties the other two ribbons.
The cloth unrolls with a shuurrr. It radiates down on me.
The great rainbow.
An embroidery experiment, from the time Jakkie went to high school in Heidelberg, when Agaat had to conjure away the empty time.
Everybody thinks they know what a rainbow looks like, she said, but when it’s from close by like this, they’ll wonder what they’re seeing.
I remember the start of it, impossible, I’d said, a waste of time, why don’t you rather make something one can use, but she’d just looked at me.
She anaesthetised herself with the work, for hours on end, in the mornings on the front stoep, before the arrival of the moment that she lived for, three o’clock, when she heard the chug and the squealing brakes of the school bus and she could run to go and fetch Jakkie at the drift, sometimes on the other side of the drift at the road, the time that she could sit with him while he ate, the hours that she could bend over his homework with him, and could learn with him about the French Revolution and the World Wars and the Boer War and he taught her everything that they sang at school, Ne