Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [121]
So listen well now, she said to Saar and Lietja, the new cattle have eaten tulips. Do just what I say and do it quickly! Coffee first, four cans full, double-strength, with sugar!
She looked at you. It could mean only one thing. Hamburg was critical. Sweet strong coffee was all that could save the most valuable animals.
Agaat issued orders non-stop while she worked. The little canister of raw linseed oil she’d already had rolled out of the pantry and the bag of linseed had also been dragged out. In the big white basin with the red roses on the bottom she measured out three measuring jugs of linseed oil and added hot water and stirred with a spatula as she talked. In another gallon-drum she ordered ten measuring jugs of barley and water.
You just stood there, your legs paralysed.
Brandy! she shouted at you! Quicklime! Five double handfuls!
You managed to secure the child in his pram. He would just have to scream now.
Four dozen eggs, whites and yolks separated! she ordered Saar.
Four cups of brandy with the whites! Stir! In the hanslammers’ bottles! Screw shut! When the coffee’s brewed, get it cooled down! Pour it into cooldrink bottles! Be quick quick quick! Bring the roll of rubber piping with the elastic ring around the end behind the pantry door! And a knife! Have it ready! Get a move on!
Now you felt the adrenaline, quickened your pace, grabbed Jak’s ten-year-old brandy out of the cabinet, went and dragged the bag of lime out of the storeroom. You understood everything that Agaat commanded. You just couldn’t have remembered it all yourself so exactly. You knew what was at stake. The new bull was a champion and had cost tens of thousands of rand. You threw a few handfuls of lime into a canister. How much water? you called.
Fifteen jugs! Mix well!
Agaat was already measuring off the raw linseed oil in the big glass rusk canister.
Together you added the lime-water to the oil and shook it up in the bottle, you with your hands above and below, Agaat with her unbalanced grip round the sides.
First to and fro! Agaat directed. Up and down!
Now it’s right, leave it, put down! she called when it had formed a thick cream.
The vet! she called after you. Ring him, give him a list of our medicines, ask him if it’s right, tell him to come, quickly!
In the topsy-turvy you hadn’t even thought of that. But she was right. There had to be a control. So that nobody could say that you’d made mistakes.
Doctor is playing golf, said Mrs Vet.
Take a pen, sweetheart, you heard yourself say, and write! Raw linseed, lime, barley, tannic acid, coffee, brandy, Hamburg tulip poisoning, crisis Gdrift, 13 September, 5 p.m., have you got it? You rang off before she could reply.
You went and fetched the bakkie and parked it in the backyard. Agaat had the bakkie loaded with bottles of sugared coffee and the bottles of egg-whites with brandy, the big rusk bottle full of lime-and-oil cream, the drum of barley water and the drum of slimy raw linseed on water, all sorted into boxes. And the thin rubber tubes, the Coopers dosing-syringes from the shed, a bottle with tannic acid, a measuring spoon, the thicker rubber tubes and cans for the enemas, plastic funnels, tins full of boiled water and bottles with screw-tops and extra bottles and containers.
The whole rescue mission was ready to roll within an hour. Everybody wanted to bundle into the back of the bakkie. Agaat looked at you, now you had to speak. She tried to calm Jakkie. He was bawling his head off with the hubbub.
That they had to be very calm not to frighten the animals, you said, that they had to work slowly and with a plan to your and Agaat’s orders nothing more and nothing less, that they must not talk loudly, and make no restless movements, that everybody first had to go and scrub their hands and rinse them every time between every animal. And that Saar and two big boys and one littl’un were in your team. And Lietja and two striplings and the other three littl’uns in Agaat’s team. And that they should remain behind you when you arrived in the camp because you first had to