Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [142]
September 1966
What can it all mean? Sometimes so overwhelmed by what I experience every day I’m crying as I sit here & write. Don’t know exactly what it is. Not sadness rather gladness & fear. Envy perhaps? but why? & of what?
Have just been to look for Jakkie & A. then I saw them playing in the orchard by the pear trees—snow-white in blossom—their latest game. Jakkie has discovered the airplane that Jak built for him way back under the lean-to only a skeleton & the paint is all peeled off but it still has wings & wheels. He made A. drag it out all the way down to the irrigation furrow. She fixed the head of an old fan to the front for a propeller. He sits in the seat & she sits in the grass with her back against the fuselage & looks in front of her. They pretend he takes off & flies away. Went & sat on the edge of the irrigation furrow behind the pomegranate orchard to hear.
How high are you now? asks Agaat.
As high as the mountains! says Jakkie.
Do tell me everything that you see.
I see a bird!
What kind of a bird is it?
I don’t know!
Well then, ask him what kind of bird he is!
I can’t!
Put your hand out & catch him & bring him home, then I’ll ask him
what kind of bird he is.
There he flies away!
Fly after him!
I can’t he’s gone!
Then I know what his name is!
What?
I’m not allowed to say it out loud, I must whisper it in your ear.
But I’m up here!
Well then come down again!
I’m coming! Here I come!
Come down, I can see you already! Here you come! Look out for the
tower silo!
I come! I see you, here I am!
Then Jakkie jumps from the little plane into A.’s arms & she rolls in the grass with him & laughs they sit up & he holds his hand behind his ear & she whispers a whole long story into it & his eyes widen in surprise & she pulls her head away & he shakes his head for no & she nods her head for yes & he wants to ask something & she lays her finger on her lips & he lays his finger on his.
12
I’m itching.
Possibly because I couldn’t laugh. The theatrics with the neighbour’s wife yesterday, perhaps that was too macabre. Milla, the drama queen. Jak’s name for me. What in heaven’s name would he have said if he’d seen me here like this? Or done?
Closing scene. She-devil with shingles. Perhaps he would have emptied a bucket of water on me and lowered the curtain.
Thursday 3 December 1996. Twelve o’clock.
Itch.
Nobody who knows it or to whom I can say it. Possibly not a drama. Something for the stage, though, Jak. Art in miniature. The Scourge of the Seven-Year Itch.
This bed. A chrome railing. Covers up to my chin. Under that my skin heaving with the itch.
Where is Agaat? When is she coming?
Itch.
Not a word that one could sing, except in a hotnot song perhaps, words for Agaat’s St Vitus’s dance with which she keeps the demons at bay. I hear the servants talk of it, the to-and-fro-ing over the yard at night.
The Sunday morning
The Sunday morning
I didn’t care
My mommy’s words keep
Fresh in Tupperware.
I can scratch myself—that would have to be the message of the Gospel.
Where is Agaat?
Job itched.
But he wasn’t paralysed, and he had a potsherd.
Could it have been itching that caused the creation? They say the stress of isolation causes people to scratch their heads.
Why is Agaat not coming?
Who led the Bear out into the firmament? Who swathed the sea in a mantle of mist? All too pretty. Who clothed man in skin, made him susceptible to itching?
I can see myself in the mirror. As far as I can make out there is nothing swarming over my face, no nest of spiders erupted on the bedspread.
In a life-skills booklet, a Do It Yourself, I read that when you become