Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [109]
You gestured to Agaat that she could leave. At her leisure she walked out, her ears flapping backward under her cap.
She must keep her nose out of my business, I’m telling you here and now, she’s carrying on as if the farm belonged to her. And . . . and . . .
Jak was red in the face. With an oil cloth he polished furiously at the barrel of his rifle.
Yes, Jak, and what else?
You were used to it. Always in such situations he brought it up. Agaat was the cause of everything that went wrong, and you were the cause of Agaat. With your finger to your lips you signalled he should lower his voice.
And, he said, if I ever have to hear again that my child, my little Jakkie . . . I’ll cut off her two tits for her one by one and throw them to the pigs! What must the people think? Jak de Wet’s child is being . . . suckled by a . . . by a cast-off kitchen-goffel!
You were startled. Who had read, who had seen, who had told whom?
You kept your cool. Where do you find such rubbish? you asked.
Jak was on his feet, he knocked his chair over backwards.
I hear it from the labourers! I hear them talk! They know everything that happens in this house, you say so yourself! Dawid’s cousin says Saar saw it. They piss themselves laughing, the hotnots. Where do you think this must end? What must they think of me? So-called lord of the manor?
You don’t know how much Agaat is worth to me, you said. You would probably never even have had a son if it hadn’t been for her. And perhaps not even a wife.
Bluff back. But your heart was beating in your throat. Could Agaat have planted the story herself?
Dammit, Milla, once again that pretty-pious little story of yours, how long do you think you’re still going to entertain me with it, your stupid serial? Go and write it up for Springbok Radio, go on, you’ve hardly put that skivvy of yours in her place than you start praising her to the skies all over again. Agaat of Grootmoedersdrift, Littletit of the Overberg! Then they can listen to it on the wireless every day from Caledon to Swellendam.
Jak slammed doors in his storming out.
A mite vehement about cows eating tins, you thought. A mite fierce over a mere rumour amongst the labourers. But it was only the following day that you realised why Jak had been on the defensive.
You were numbering the diaries that were full. From ’53 onwards. In the correct sequence, with the periods that they covered written clearly on the cover. So that you could keep exact tally of how many there were. High up in the bedroom wardrobe you were putting them away. Under the eiderdowns.
Then Agaat came to call you.
Come and have a look, she said, the boys say it’s not just tins that the cows are eating.
You followed her to the grazing next to the river. There against the wilderness of brambles the pregnant cows were standing and eating white ribs, the carcase of a cow that had been lying there for a long time. The white shards were sticking out of their mouths as they were chewing. You gazed at the drooling and the crunching, too shocked to put one foot in front of the other. To one side the cows’ off-colour calves were standing neglected, watching.
Dawid says he shot Blommetjie and Gesina yesterday, Agaat said, they must also have eaten funny stuff.
She went to show you, two cows on the other side of the river.
Blommetjie had already burst open. You could see the dead foetus of her calf. Blommetjie, a great-granddaughter of Grootblom, another one of the Grootblom clan from your mother’s old herd.
All that you could get out of Jak was that the cows wouldn’t get up and that they were lying in the grass drooling with their heads in their flanks and that he’d wanted to put them out of their misery.
You phoned the vet in town. He would come and see what he could do but he didn’t have serums, he would order them immediately from Onderstepoort. If