Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [143]
Definitely a less far-fetched doctrine of salvation than the Resurrection after three days. Short Form. Doesn’t need volumes.
In the beginning was the Skin and the Skin was God and the Skin itched in the outer darkness. No name needed, you need indeed then only say: I am who I am.
Where is the wretched Van der Lught with his chubby cheeks so that I can see his face when he hears it?
The world as the impotence of an itching God, and the sons of men, they scratch Him.
Milla, calm down.
Left side, front quadrant, twenty to seven if my head were a clock face.
That’s where it started.
A prick, like that of a mosquito bite.
I said to myself, nothing can bite you here, no flea could survive here.
But one thing leads to another. A second prick right next to the first, twenty-three minutes to seven, as if from a mosquito grazing in a circle. Zimmmm-zoommm. Oh mosquito, where is thy sting? I would be able to extract it with my imagination.
But it was not a mosquito.
It was legion. Snap, Crackle and Pop. All over my scalp. But not Rice Crispies.
Harpies, swarming like seconds, like fractions of fugitive seconds, minuscule little black monsters, scourging the dome of my skull.
And if I’m not permitted to scratch, give me the Book then, I’ll rewrite it, from front to back, with my hand set in a cast of iron. The waste and wild and the streets of jasper. With itching I shall replace them. It’s momentous enough.
And after that the hordes migrated over my neck and they gathered their forces in pools of itch in the hollows of my collarbone. And their numbers were vast and they migrated along my backbone, in columns, in a multitude of battle arrays. And in the fullness of time they returned by the front route, with intensified force, all along my ribs. They excavated me under my breasts, arrow-headed letters strayed from a text. And they marched across my belly, an inflamed track of itching all the way to the pit of my navel, amen.
Preacher-tick.
Ringworm.
Rubella.
Shingles.
Scab.
So many mansions in my Father’s house.
On my flank, on my shin, against my inner arm, squamous.
I wait, my hands inert hooks next to my sides, my mouth bitter.
Drool.
Squirm.
Tears.
Sweat.
Do it yourself.
My cheeks itch, my forehead, my gums underneath my lips. It itches all along the cleft of my buttocks, all the way into the inside of my hole, all along the white ridge running there, where Agaat cut me at the birth, and further, in every grey membranous fold of my posterior does it itch. Can I say it? All the way into my cunt. Cunt. Milla Redelinghuys’s cunt itches. Who would ever have suspected she had such a foul mouth? Not if it is gagged. Cunt. What is deeper than cunt? All the way into the depth of my black irrational womb it itches me.
Here she comes!
Lord, Ounooi, what’s the matter now?
She’s next to my bed, she searches in my eyes. She swabs my face with a tissue. Gary Player.
Drenched with sweat!
She throws off the covers.
Now I mustn’t mislead her.
Are you so hot then?
No, but carry on with your list, the list you made for me!
Is it the shivers?
No!
Can’t you breathe?
No!
Are you in pain?
Is itching pain? How must I reply? No, itching is not pain. It’s suffering, yes, but it’s like somebody who suffers an urgent call of nature. Relief is what one wants. Not comfort. Not nursing. People with an itch and people with an urgent call of nature, they belong in a farce. In a Greek comedy, perhaps? A philosopher shitting in the shadow of national monuments, a guffawing catharsis. The yearning for inconsolability is