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So blink, Ounooi, blink your eyes, I can see you’re in a terrible state here, I’m asking, is it sore somewhere?

Perhaps ‘somewhere’ is a start.

Yes, somewhere!

Your head? Is your head sore again?

Yes, my head!

Headache?

No!

But your head all the same?

Yes!

Headache syrup?

No!

Neck stiff!

No, no, stay with the head!

Head? Is it lying uncomfortably?

Uncomfortable yes!

If only she would touch my head, that could be a start. It’s not the first time.

She rearranges the pillow. My head keels over on the pillow. Prickly pear full of Christmas lights.

Better like that?

No!

Well what then? With the head? Nightmares? Nasty thoughts?

No! Yes! Yes!

What, Ounooi? Be clear! You’re giving double messages! No! or Yes!

That time again on Grootmoedersdrift! Yes-and-no time! say her eyes.

I must prevent her from getting angry. Nightmares, nasty thoughts, those she can’t tolerate from me. I must just be good and stay good.

She holds out her little hand and then the strong hand. In, out, like switches. In, out.

Give with the one hand and take with the other it means. Yes or no. Be clear.

No! No! No! Agaat, my head! Put your hand on my head!

I flicker upwards with my eyes.

She places her hand on my forehead. Under her hands is an infestation of fine mites, under the palm it tingles, it squirms, it wells up out of the deep, it’s not mites, it’s maggots.

You don’t have a fever, Ounooi, what is it then?

Don’t take your hand away, keep it right there! I move my eyes to and fro, up and down.

Agaat strokes from my forehead, backwards over my hair. Backwards. Once. Once more.

My whole scalp erupts in one blaze, from the front, worse than ever.

I close my eyes, open them quickly, I to-and-fro them, turned up in their sockets.

Scratch my head! Scratch my head! My goddamned, scabby skull! Scratch it!

I see the light come on in Agaat’s eyes. I see the smile. She wants to suppress it but she can’t.

Stutterers, deaf-mutes, idiots, cripples, the lame, the itchers? Why does one want to laugh at them? I don’t know, Agaat. And bugger you too, Agaat!

She postpones. Her eyebrows deliberate question marks. Then she scrabbles a quick scratching motion with her fingers, just a little one, an appetiser. She doesn’t speak, she only shapes the word ‘itch’ with her mouth.

Silent movie. The Itcher and the Scratcher. How many acts tonight?

Need a scratch? ask her lips.

I close my eyes. It means you are an angel of deliverance. It means surrender. She must not remark any further urgency on my part.

The head, asks Agaat, and where else?

She puts her hand under my shoulder.

Here?

Tiny scorpions under a stone.

She pulls out the hand again, rests it on the point of my shoulder.

Three nymphae of the blue tick, their mandibles firmly affixed to my skin.

She puts her hand in the hollow between my breasts.

Small scaly adders in a nest.

Now she touches me with both hands. Lightly, here and there over my strings, over my stops, over my keys. Over my ribs, my belly, my thighs, my ankles, my toes. As if I were a harp. A harp of grass, of chaff and sand fleas and whirling itchy dust.

Everywhere? Is it everywhere?

She puts her hands in her sides. Looks me up and down.

An itch-storm? Ai me. Tsk.

Here comes a hand. It comes towards my head. It scratches, but in an unfocused way.

Harder?

Harder! Everywhere!

Now before we damage something here, Ounooi, let me first see whether you don’t have a rash or something.

Agaat opens the curtains. She tarries by the window. How would I know if it’s deliberate? Or resigned? Or tired? Or not capable of imagining for one moment longer my need? The spring unsprung at last? She spies on my eyes every day. My need her reins. The steerer and the steered and the bit. In whose mouth is it? It must be like sleeping in someone else’s dream. Your own journey abandoned, your own repose an iron in the mouth. You just bite on it. You bite it fast. How she must curse me at times. Cunt. Bugger. But the word in the mouth, a stopper. Under the