Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [151]
Fortunately fine weather today. Think A. must get her monthlies then she gets out of sorts sits and sulks on the beach says she’s hot. Take off your apron I say take off your jersey but she just looks at me and folds her arms. J. rows with Jakkie deep in the sea with a lot of other fathers and their sons I tell hr have a look with the binoculars the yellow canoe look at Jakkie in his red life-jacket but she doesn’t want to. There’s a playing & a laughing around us the colourful umbrellas & balls on the last day of the holidays. Have packed cold red cooldrink & some of the nice custard biscuits but no laughing too much of an effort the mouth remains set on sour. Jakkie full of chat when they come out because he was so deep into the sea & that he was allowed to hold the oar & row with his father. Let you & me he says to A. let’s build such a big castle again with towers & dig a moat around it with a bridge of stones & snoek jawbones & coral but she refuses flat. Pure jealousy because he’s growing up now.
This evening after supper I see she’s embroidering a red & black cushion & she’s ostensibly telling Jakkie his bedtime stories and there she deviates from Hansel and Gretel & makes the witch say to the boy: Look so you think don’t you the sea is a friendly place where you play with coloured balls & chew sugarsticks & row in a yellow canoe there are black slimes below on the bottom there lurks an animal in the depths it blows through its nostrils filthy foams & it bites its own tail & it curls around the world like a clamp & it cramps in its guts with fury & then the water churns & that’s where waves come from & you think you row & you think you swim & you think it’s holidays with the colourful sun umbrellas but it’s not. How dare she? So I fly up on the spot & I scold my goodness but don’t be so malicious & I grab the cushion. A dragon it is with spiky wings scale by scale embroidered & above in death’s-head letters WITSAND. I show it to Jak & he says don’t come and moan to me now you filled that creature’s mind with all sorts of things when she was small I told you to watch out you never can tell how it’s going to hatch one day in a fuzzy-head.
Must get Jakkie under my hand a bit more. Spend more time music-making. That’s all he enjoys doing with me. If I can just get him going first. Singing & recorder-playing.
Witsand 11 January 1968
All packed and ready to go this morning then Jak wouldn’t leave because he’s heard at the café that there’s to be a beach race this afternoon for Father & Son in which he wants to take part with Jakkie. He’s creating massive trouble for me. The fridge had been cleaned & the freezer defrosted & all the frozen fish & tupperware filled with bouillons that A. had packed neatly to take along in boxes. So then we had to unpack everything again & switch on the freezer & A. grumbles nonstop throughout. She’d heard what Jak said last night & she’s good & fuming today. He has to watch his step she says the jaw stuck out all the way—I’ll make him a nice puffer-fish soup I have the recipe of a widow from Port Beaufort. God defend us.
The lamb, Jakkie’s hanslam. Was that the moment you felt something turning? Or before that already? You had hold of it in front by the neck-wool and Agaat was standing at the back with Jakkie in front of her.
You were under the eyes of Jak and under the eyes of Agaat. Between the two of them they had stared you into a corner. The lamb started bleating. Initially it had come running of its own accord. Agaat had called it.
Pietertjie. With its little fat tail. It thought it was going to be given the teat. But now it was scared. Now it started shying away with the head. You had to hold it tightly. It was actually too big already to be a hanslam but Jakkie was