Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [130]
Must say everything looks nice and tidy here, she says, clean and all. I suppose it’s better than the hospital, familiar isn’t it, I suppose one would rather just be at home.
The volubility of the living. Her cup runneth over. Bountiful she wants the harvest to be from death’s dominion, from death’s antechamber. She wouldn’t have wanted to come for nothing, that’s clear. I can just hear her account: Nothing in the bedpans, doesn’t look as if they’ve ever been used. I suppose everything has just about ground to a halt in that department. The woman eats almost nothing. The maid says just little-little bits of thin gruel.
What the one madam wishes the other: thin gruel and a seized-up internal mechanism. I can see it, the smugness of the impeccable messenger, the primly-pleated pout, it would take more than a bedpan under her backside to conquer her conceit.
Shall I go and see if I can find Agaat?
Beatrice comes to loom over me. She looks as if she wants a twig to prod me. She should just open her eyes, there are sticks on the trolley, flat ice-cream sticks and ear-buds, she can choose. I want to say boo! I want to put out my tongue. I open my eyes, wide, suddenly, and then I peel them back for her, and I flicker for my neighbour’s wife by my bier of death, the flicker of death, sustained and unmistakable, the vibrating blackwhite eyelash butterfly. Leminitis camilla. Map butterfly. Liberated in the occluded valley. Haven’t felt so lively in a long time. The effect is all one could desire. It is sung. Mezzo-soprano in The Spout.
O Lorrrd Mil-la, Oh Go-o-od he-e-l-ep! Steps back, back, her eyes glued to my face. Boer diva in stage shock, Jak would have said.
Yes, don’t look away, Beatie, look, that’s what you get for coming to stand by my bed with a fastidious smirk on your face. Look how my eyeballs quake! It’s my last little bit of muscle power! With that I can move worlds!
She runs down the passage. Gaat! she screams. Her voice is shrill.
Gaat, come quickly, Gaat! Help! The oumies!
Out at the back door. Cat-twah! the screen door slams. I hear her hammer on the outside room’s door, a window is pushed open. A scream. I count the seconds. Then the screen door slams again. Another scream.
Lorrd Jesus please, help! Beatrice exclaims. She’s by the telephone in the passage. I hear the back door open again. I know who it is. I know who’s waiting surreptitiously in the kitchen to hear what’s going on, I know who’s standing behind the door and listening attentively. I want to laugh. I wish I could laugh. Water comes to my eyes. Beatrice the emphatic, Beatrice whom Agaat could imitate so well since childhood. We eavesdrop on her together, Agaat and I. We wait behind the curtains.
Thys, Thys is that you Thys? Thys, yes listen Thys I’m here with Milla de Wet and I think she’s on her deathbed the woman, and I think that maid of hers is dead already.
Agaat, yes.
No, I told you don’t you remember, she phoned this morning and asked I should come tomorrow she has to go to town for all sort of business and funeral arrangements.
Thys, no, listen to me now!
No, I thought I’d rather come and have a look this afternoon already, the maid sounds half odd to me.
No, towards five o’clock. Didn’t you get my note that I left you on the sideboard?
No, when I got here everything was wide open and the yard deserted and Milla was lying all on her own in a pitch-dark shut-tight room with a green thing over her face.
Over her mouth and nose, yes.
In any case so then her eyes peeled back and her eyelids started fluttering, something terrible.
No, Thys, I didn’t touch her.
No, that’s what