Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [146]
I inspect the stirrings under the sheet. I cast the harness of my eyes over the ill-matched pair. The fingers are cautious. She follows the movements of my eyes on her hands. My eyes are her score. She does sight-reading. She plays the keyboard. By touch. Trills. Scales. A chord. The note-perfect rehearsed death I shall be, the virtuoso performed.
Left, right, no, a bit to the top, more, no down more, down, this side, no that side. There! Just there! More! Don’t stop. Now up here. No, just next to it. Up! Down!
The clock strikes in the passage. That was a quarter of an hour’s scratching. From head to toe and in all the little crannies, in front, behind and along the sides. A partita. Improper tempo. Fantastic execution. Complete relief. Applause! Flowers!
Agaat doesn’t want me to thank her. She averts her eyes. She brings ice-cold wet cloths and wipes me with them, she takes a small, rough towel that she’s warmed in the oven and rubs my whole body warm with it, she rubs cold handfuls of Lacto Calamine Lotion all over my skin. She waves it dry with an open diary. The pages flutter. A bat, a butterfly, a blue gryphon. She puts on my tunic, fastens it behind my neck. She covers me. She walks out of the room with a straight back.
Itch-free I remain behind.
14 December 1966
At long last a bit of a holiday. Really and truly feel I need rest after this year of calamities. J. constantly agitated & full of conspiracy theories about the assassination of Verwoerd. Mother hardly cold in her grave then that on top of it. Haven’t really had time to be quiet & also not had much time to write how life does pass & Jakkie’s growing up & the old people precede us & you forget the moments that were precious to you.
Just yesterday before we left Agaat & I went by Ma’s grave to take some flowers & I realised then I didn’t really cry all that much in July but if I were to mourn what exactly would it be for? Perhaps that in spite of everything I did after all yearn for her approval? For one spontaneous embrace? Her body forgivingly pressed to mine? So much that now cannot be set straight or talked about. Yes at last liberated from her. But what will I measure myself against now? Now that her judge-mental eye no longer falls on everything I do? It’s terrifying in a way.
Perhaps I wanted to cry because she died before I could tell her the whole truth about J. But in any case the whole funeral & the gossip that made its way back to me just made me realise anew that honesty & intimacy are not things that are easy to afford. But how do you defend yourself against your own mother? Her directions regarding the funeral felt like a last trial.
Fortunately I could count on A. Didn’t have to spell out anything for hr. She was a real live wire with the funeral & supervised the cooking for more than a hundred people who had to eat. It was a palaver with seating on the stoep because then it rained a deluge. A whole saga at the drift of course. The coffin duly arrived all the way from Barrydale by horse-drawn cart as Ma had stipulated in her will—in her way also bent on her little portion of drama. So different to Pa who wanted nothing but for his ashes to be scattered on the Tradouw. So there the drift was flooded & the horses balked I suppose also because of the crape funeral coats wet and heavy on them & they refused to cross. So A. left everything just like that in the kitchen & went and helped D. and his team. Unload the coffin and carry it we don’t want the ounooi to get washed away in the drift & bring the lip halters she says. They unload the coffin & then the horses rear up & the water splashes & they snort but she keeps hr side short & Dawid keeps the other side & they all keep their funeral faces solemnly