Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [112]
10
In the grey light of morning the rainbow looks different. Darker than last night by lamplight. Then it looked like an empty bright stage-set where actors were due to appear, singers, to bring life to it. Now it looks like a hole in the plastering, a dark plane against the white wall. Dark rainbow.
Agaat is tired this morning. Her face is withdrawn. She appears by my bedside less frequently than usual. She avoids my eyes. Her embroidery lies folded on the chair. On top of it lies the little blue book open at where she was last reading before I fainted. The building of the fireplace.
Sometimes I think it’s no longer I who am the target of the reading. She does it for herself, to generate energy. To squeeze anew from history a last pressing of indignation, but not so as to destroy me with it the more easily, but as a shot in the arm, as fuel for herself to carry on nursing me every day.
Because her arms are tired. I can feel how she struggles when she has to turn me, lift my legs, my hands.
Her feet are sore, I can hear she walks with difficulty. She’s burnt out.
How valiant was she not at the start, in those early days when we had just heard what was wrong with me. Fired with enthusiasm even. She thought she would handle it, as she had handled all illness and death in her life.
She was upset that I wouldn’t take her with me to Cape Town, alarmed when I came back after a week.
Leroux came to fetch me and brought me back again. I pretended to be sleeping in the car. I didn’t want to listen to his chatter. I thought of Agaat, how I was to convey it to her. A few times I felt the wind buffet the car, heard him swear, felt the car swerve as he corrected. It was a wild wind typical of the change of season and it raged all the way from Groote Schuur to The Spout. When we got out in the yard I could see the willows by the dam being blown to one side. I could smell the fennel, sharp as always when the wind blew just before the rains.
12 May 1993 it was. A Wednesday afternoon. Agaat served tea and rusks in the sitting room.
In her eyes the full orchestra was playing.
So here you are again! Alive and kicking! Pure affectation! Didn’t I tell you! Or what am I saying? Let’s have it! If there’s more to know, I want to know it! Now! This minute! Winter pains? Frozen shoulder?
I shuttered my regard, answered cautiously, later-later-clear-out-now.
It was what he’d suspected all along, said Leroux and added milk to his tea.
Not hypochondria. Not this time.
Small smile, quickly wiped away. In front of him lay the papers with the results of the tests.
I must plan, he said.
One and a bit of sugar.
I must make provision.
Doctor Stir-well.
I must start formulating a living will.
Doctor Dunk-a-rusk.
You’re never done with such a testament. You can always change it again. In the end it really only has to state in black and white what must happen one day when you can no longer change anything yourself.
T chirr-tchirr, the creeper against the pane.
Who must do it then . . .
Picks a crumb out of the tea.
Who may change something then . . .
I heard a dog’s bark downwind blow away right out of its mouth.
Who may change something on your behalf . . . take decisions on your behalf . . . now do I understand what he means?
Ticks, with the teaspoon in the saucer.
I must consider it well, I have enough time, he said. Three years, maybe five in my case. I must realise he himself does after all think very progressively about these matters, he always wants only to alleviate all and any suffering as much as possible and he is at my service I need only speak the word, do I understand?
As far as possible. Alleviate he wants to.
Up-and-down with his eyebrows. Read-me-I’m-an-open-book-my-name-is-Euthanasia-Leroux-MB Ch.B.
Well, in my book there’s little scope for speculation, Doc. I was born Redelinghuys, house of reason.
I beg your pardon?
I said, time will tell.
I wanted him to leave. Agaat was listening