Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [106]
Will bloody-well not let myself be buggered around by her. Will make her work until she is tractable so that she can see what it cost. Faith & sweat & blood of generations just so that she who’s Agaat can live off the fat of the land on Gdrift & pluck the fruits through no effort of her own.
Must I skin her alive? I asked & then I had an idea. Tanned & brayed you must be that’s punishment number one & if that doesn’t cure you then I have a few others.
3 October 1960
Have been watching her though the binoculars where she’s sitting & braying the thongs in the back under the bluegum trees. Had D. provide her with a bray-stone & handle. She’d better sing I told her so that I can hear where she’s working. As long as you keep jibbing you’ll bray hides I said. Will teach her to pull up her shoulder at me. I see J. has gone & added three more lynx hides to the heap it sickens me how he decimates the small game. New sporting rifles with sights they can’t miss take a trap I say then at least the poor things also have a chance.
5 October 1960
It’s my will against hers & she knows it. The chin is stuck out there & she carries on with the one arm. Up & up she winds the thong till it drips & plucks the stick out of the handle & down & down winds the thing & then up again on the other side. Has broken two bray-poles already. A mob of farmboys mocking her. That’s how the first rod broke says Lietja one got a blow against the head that had the blood flowing so now they’re more careful stand there at a safe distance.
6 October
I cut off a piece of thong with the knife & press it under hr nose. See the hide is tanned & the core is white. I take a raw thong & I cut it & show her look the core is black. Just like that it will be with you. I’ll wind you up until all your black sins drip out of you & wind you down & wind you up again in the other direction till you’re a decent servant-girl who doesn’t leave one in the lurch when you need her most. She gives me that wooden eye I could slap her.
7 October 1960
Four days of curing thongs & A. just gets worse all the time. Breaks things in the kitchen when she has to help cook in the evenings. Mixing bowl glass jug in shards two saucepans so burnt had to throw them away milk sour from bottles not washed properly clothes get stained in the washing whole baskets of eggs get broken hens have stopped laying & Jakkie constantly fretful. Must look after him myself all the time now can’t lie there in the open under the bluegums with A.
I ask hr: But don’t you miss Jakkie then during the day? Don’t you just want to leave off your quirks now & become good again? Conceived & born in sin she says. I scold her about the thistles in the flower garden & charlock in the vegetable garden & the hornet’s nest on the stoep they fly in at the front door & go up & down with their abdomens against the curtains. Take down the hornet’s nest I say just now one will sting Jakkie. Can’t reach she says. Very well then I say then you’ll plough an acre with a handplough & a mule.
J. says you & that coffee-toffee of yours can’t you just fire her next thing she’ll drop dead with exhaustion & what will you do then? Just remember I’m not erecting the monument.
Don’t have an answer for him. Feel guilty. But the guiltier I feel the angrier I get.
9 October 1960
On purpose at first gave her an old plough with a rusty share with the wrong blunt point & a bent beam & saw to it that the hauling-chain was first hanging too high & then too low & watched her struggling with the share that wouldn’t grip & kept on sticking & somersaulting