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By Root 830 0

then she didn’t sound altogether together to me. So I came over quickly to see if you’re managing here. You never know what the creatures will get up to if you don’t keep an eye on them. And with you so helpless here, for all you know they’re robbing you blind, I don’t mean Agaat of course, I mean the others. It’s not as if she can be everywhere all the time. I wonder where she is. Somewhere in the back I suppose. I knocked but nobody came. And the front door was wide open. And there’s a whole pile of loose stuff in the sitting room, looks as if it’s been put out to be carried off. I’ll tell her she should really lock the doors, my goodness, you two women so alone here in the place, nowadays you can’t be sure of your own life. I must say, Milla, I’ve often wondered whether she’s really competent enough to look after you here on her own, but I hear from Mrs le Roux that Doctor is very satisfied. She’s better than a nurse apparently, knows every need of yours, and is very meticulous with everything. Ai, one can just be grateful that some of them are still like that.

Beatrice opens the curtains further.

Is it too light?

I open my eyes as wide as I can.

Lord woman! Can you see me then?

She comes nearer. Looks me in the eyes. I can see the plan forming in her head. She holds a finger in front of my nose, moves it from left to right. I follow my neighbour’s wife’s finger with my eyes.

Heavens, she says, so you can really still see . . . and . . . everything.

Yes, see and everything, hello Beatrice, I blink. She wants to giggle, swallows it quickly.

She closes the curtain slightly again. Nervous, uncomfortable with me, can’t face it. I can’t face her either. So much embarrassment on the face, so much fear and aversion, all at the same time. She’d look at me much more readily if I were a stuffed pig with an apple in my mouth. She did look at me more readily when I was stuffed. Mrs de Wet with a sentinel in her mouth. Would Beatrice ever have given Thys a blow job? She certainly always could open her mouth wider than anybody else on the church-choir gallery. To articulate with emphasis. Thy praise shall linger on my lips.

Shall I open the doors a bit, it’s a bit close in here.

Beatrice tripples to the stoep doors, opens them.

Here comes a play for voices. And for smells. For neighbour’s wife, sparrow-fart and the intimations of mortality.

A-g-a-a-a-t! she calls in a little high-pitched voice. A-g-a-a-a-t! first to this side and then that side of the stoep.

A swarm of sparrows takes off from the bougainvillea. Beatrice’s dress is the wrong shade of blue next to the purple.

I wish she would leave. I wish Agaat would come and take her to the sitting room and say she’ll manage thank you and give her tea so she can get herself gone. I’ll signal off, off here with the Neighbour’s Wife in search of a Drama, she can keep her heartfeltness for when I’m cold and coffined, thank you. I’ll blink my eyes until Agaat understands: I’ll be content with Saar, Saar can sit with me tomorrow when she goes to town, I’ll go mad with such sanctimonious blethering in my ears all morning, stark staring mad. All that Saar ever says is ‘oumies’. When she sweeps the passage, she stops for a moment, straightens up, and looks in here. ‘Oumies,’ she says then, an acknowledgement of my existence, on the same small scale, the single word, as the scale on which I now live. She looks at me as one looks at a sheep that has long since lain down with bluetongue. ‘Oumies’. Ounooi. Indeed. What more is there to say? It’s honest at least.

Sickbed comforters generally don’t talk to you but to themselves, especially if you’re in the process of dying. You’re a trial run for their excuses.

I wonder where Agaat can be, says Beatrice. I hope she doesn’t often leave you on your own like this now, after all, you can at any moment . . . you can at any moment need her. Ai Milla that you should lie here so at the mercy.

Beatrice clicks her tongue. She looks round the room. Her eyes dart swiftly, scrutinisingly over everything. She thinks I’m not all there. She thinks