Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [12]
In the marrowy pulp I feel for the beginning, for an inspissation, the graininess of a germ cell. I continue only until I can imagine fine threads in the uniform texture. I roll them between my fingers until they find a grip in my imagination. And then, carefully, so as not to disturb their vague beginnings, I start drawing them together in strings, until they’re thick enough to plait, first three, then nine, then twenty-seven and so on. Three hundred and sixty-three. Until I’m ready to feed the whole coil securely into the hollow of the brainstem, into the hole of the first vertebra. I wait, I hold everything together well, before I pull it through and spread it open on the other side like a sheaf. Finer and finer I imagine the filiations, a mesh just below the surface, until I’m sure that all points are served by my will.
I want to write.
To the string running down my right arm I devote particular attention. I imagine that it’s dark brown. I gather it into a thick smooth bundle, shiny as kelp in the swell, an elegant tassel at the far end, long sensitive strings of seaweed with fine ramifications in each of the first three fingers of my right hand.
I wait for the right moment. Nothing to lose. Breathe in, send the signal, breathe out for the leap.
Write!
With precise electrical flashes I mark each bight of the current, from high up in the brain pulp through all the plaitings of nerves I’ve laid down in their circuits. With extra momentum I force the command down into my hand to the furthest extremities.
Write!
I manage to draw one leg of the m before the pen slips from my fingers and rolls over the bedspread and falls from the bed.
My hand lies in the splint like a mole in a trap.
The first time you slept with Jak was the day after he came to declare his intentions to your parents. He was eager to get away that morning after the engagement, eager to get away from under your mother’s eyes after the sermon he’d endured from her the night before, and especially eager to get his hands on you.
You knew it, Milla Redelinghuys, you played him.
How did you experience him then? Can you really remember it?
Don’t forget the keys, Ma called. She jingled the great bunch of keys to the Grootmoedersdrift homestead behind you as you walked down the steps of the stoep to Jak’s red Spider.
Catch! She called and threw the bunch at him.
You were watching him closely all the time, that much is certain. He snatched the bunch out of the air with a flourish. Ostentatiously, from a height, he dropped it in your lap, showing off to your parents, seeing you off on the steps. Frail they seemed against the house and the sky. But you didn’t want to notice that, you looked down at the keys nestling between your thighs in the dip of your dress. You jingled with your fingers amongst them, you fondled the old worn key-heads. The front door, the kitchen, the loft, the outside rooms. You imagined how you were going to unlock all the doors.
Thanks for everything! Jak called and waved.
Old Sweet ’n Sour, he said under his breath.
Jak, please, she’s my mother, show some respect, you said. But you laughed with him, because she’d been at her worst the night before. It started at dinner when Jak put the expensive engagement ring on your finger. Diamonds are forever, he said. Too expensive, you could see Ma thinking, too showy. It was a burl of a diamond set in gold. You could read her mind. That kind of money would have been better put to some practical use, something for the farm that had now become yours because you were getting married. But she said nothing. Because you who hitherto could never find favour in her eyes, would at last be complete. Somebody’s wife. In the normal course of events, somebody’s mother.
And then, money wasn’t everything, work rather, toil and sweat and grit. There