Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [135]
It was the day of the pork measles, the evening after the accident with the tractor winch, December ’61, after supper. Agaat brought Jakkie in with ‘great news’ on her face, ‘good news’.
She could hear you and Jak were having words again. She could hear it was going to go awry again.
She put the child down on the mat and brought in the coffee after supper and said ‘something’ had happened.
Jak was too annoyed to notice. A deputation of workers had come at knocking-off time that afternoon to tell him that they wanted new pit lavatories at their homes, the old ones were dilapidated. You heard it all, you were in your room, exhausted after the day. You’d often spoken to Jak about sanitation for the workers, he simply didn’t want to do anything about it.
They were in front of his office door on the front stoep and you heard their complaints clearly.
Yes, Agaat doesn’t do the right thing by them and Agaat says it’s because of people’s shit lying around that the pigs get measles and their slaughter-pig for the month was spoiled and they don’t believe her they thought pork just had spots like that and why can’t they get a sheep then to slaughter and the mies had said the privies would come and when are they coming then and Agaat had threatened the baas was going to shoot their dogs and is the baas going to do it and where are they supposed to find food for their dogs when they don’t have any themselves and Agaat had said their wives can’t work for the mies in the kitchen with germs.
You looked out of the open door of the room onto the stoep. There they stood. Lietja’s husband, Kitaartjie, and Saar’s husband, Piet Skilletjies. You saw them from the back, the ragged seats of pants, the bare patches in the hair from stab wounds, the sloping shoulders. You could smell them, the sharp sweat, the old dirt.
Our children have worms, we want pits with corrugated-iron huts over them and wooden seats, they said.
Jak knew nothing of the morning’s doings, nothing of the medicine-dosing and the grumbling at the labourers’ houses. He didn’t understand what the slaughter-pig had to do with measles and latrines. He told them to get away from his office door, he was busy. You withdrew your head quickly from the window.
It was Dawid there in the office. He had come to speak about his cousin who had been caught in the winch-axle earlier that afternoon with the hay-baling.
Julies is lying in front of the fire and he’s talking confused and the doctor said he has concussion, and his foot, his foot isn’t so good.
Dawid’s voice was calm and serious. He demanded nothing explicitly, just spelt out the details.
It was too much for Jak, all the accidents. You could see it on his face as he sat there twirling his fork that evening after supper. He didn’t want to listen when you tried to tell him what had happened that day, of Agaat’s doings. Agaat got on his nerves, he said. And there she was again now with Jakkie and ‘something’ that had happened.
He put his fork down and leant back in his chair.
What could it be this time? Has the dam burst? Has the horse drowned? How come, Gaat, that you’re always the first on the scene? One would swear that there where your eye falls, there trouble erupts. What is it this time?
Later, you signalled to Agaat, tomorrow, now’s not the time, make yourself scarce here. But you could see that she was excited.
I want to help you, she signalled with the eyes, I want to provide diversion here at the table. ‘Something’ has happened! Just give me a chance! She had Jakkie on her arm. He pointed a tiny finger at her cap.
Go and put him to bed, you said, it’s bed-time.
You knew the expression on her face very well. It spoke of wanting to compensate, of wanting to make good all the bad things of the day, wanting reassurance, wanting to be set at ease. It was she who had had to put a stop