Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [138]
Times without number you’d told Jak to see to it that the labourers did not bale or thresh without the tin sleeve of the axle and that they wore buttoned overalls at all times.
You hadn’t seen the axle-guard for a long time. It was extra trouble to cart it along to the fields. Must be lying forgotten somewhere in a shed.
Take a rug, you said, and water. Bring the stretcher from the storeroom.
He tried to hold onto the wheel of the trailer, his pants were winched off him, Agaat said.
You ignored the contemptuous tone, grabbed an old pair of pyjamas of Jak’s from the linen cupboard. You’d heard of this kind of accident but this was the first time on Grootmoedersdrift. A sleeve or the tail of a shirt or a loose belt is caught in the open axle and you’re flung arse over heels, round and round, limbs shimmying, head against the ground. It could be fatal if somebody didn’t press the button in time to turn off the engine.
Go and fetch the baas in the office, you said, he must phone the doctor, tell the baas to ask him what we must do here, perhaps he’d better come out himself to have a look, or send a nurse from the clinic.
She stiffened her body, jerked her head around, her mouth trembled with the effort of containing herself. She looked you straight in the eyes.
She had often had to fetch him for you, but that day something struck bedrock. It was the language. The words. She had had to speak too many languages in one day, hear too many kinds.
Baas! she wanted to say, since when suddenly? Whose ‘baas’? Yours maybe, but not mine. You, you are my baas!
Never mind, I’ll do it myself, you said and walked to Jak’s office. She followed you, came to stand behind you in the office door with Jakkie in her arms.
Julies got caught in the winch-axle, you said to Jak, he got hurt.
Says who? Says Agaat? Jak asked without looking up from under his newspaper.
It’s because the sleeve was once again not fitted, you said to Jak, it’s because they have to work with the machines in their tattered clothes, it’s because they don’t have overalls, Jak.
Jak jerked away the newspaper from his face.
The same old lamentation. Can’t you have done with it?
His back could be broken, you said.
He’s bleeding from his head, Agaat said.
The duet once again, Jak said, how about a cat’s chorus?
Jakkie started to cry. You put your arm around Agaat and the child and prodded her out of the room.
Phone the doctor, you called to Jak over your shoulder.
Agaat’s mood had still not lifted when the two of you arrived in the bakkie where Julies was lying in the lucerne field. She flung the rug over his exposed lower body.
Move your neck, move your neck, so’s we can see if it’s off! she said. You could see how Dawid looked at her. He had Julies’s clothes in his hands.
You pushed her away. The man was broken. His shirt was in tatters. The torque of the axle had stripped his pants off his legs. His shins were grazed, everywhere he was full of green stains from having been keel-hauled through the lucerne.
He groaned when you touched him.
He grabbed your hand.
I’m dying off, Nooi, he moaned.
You held the hand. You dripped water into his mouth with a piece of cotton wool.
He fainted.
You held smelling salts under his nose.
It looked as if one shoulder had been dislocated but you didn’t want to try to push it back into the socket.
You started cleaning the head wounds. There were ugly deep cuts that were bleeding freely. Soil and grit clung to them. Agaat calmed down as she passed you the cotton wool, as she dipped the wads in gentian violet and cut the lengths of bandage for you and prepared the plaster.
You talked softly to Julies while you were working. Jakkie was sitting wide-eyed in the grass to one side. Dawid went off somewhere.
Everything will be okay, Julius, you said, I’ll take you home, the doctor’s coming, I’ll see to everything, don’t worry. You’ll have all the time you need to get better and you’ll be paid through and all the doctor’s expenses we’ll carry.
It was intended for Agaat as well, the timbre you gave to your voice,