Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [167]
Are you stark staring mad! Jak exclaimed. That bull is worth its weight in gold to me, all the farmers of The Spout phone me to get Hamburg to cover their cows, I’m thinking of fitting out a sperm installation, then I spare the bull and make a profit out of him at the same time.
Jak, you don’t know what you’re doing, you said. Do you want to increase the misery artificially now as well? It’s very hard for the cows, they suffer unnecessarily, but what do you do? You always just walk away when it becomes too hard to behold, so you don’t see what it looks like, you don’t see how we have to damage the cows to deliver the almighty calves, one should have respect for the animals, one should assist them as much as one can . . .
For God’s sake just don’t start that again, Jak said.
You looked at his mouth, his lips distorting with exasperation, the ridges on his jaws as he clenched his teeth. Something in that excited you. What was it? You could never place it. You felt it in your own mouth, extra spit, and in your gullet, a kind of widening, in your gums, an itchiness. You waited for his delivery. You closed your eyes, so strongly did you feel it coming. His voice was high and hard, his speech-rhythm emphatic. You sat back, you knew how it was going to be, how it was going to enter you, the deluge of solid, heated sentences.
You’re imagining things, Jak, you said. I’m not starting anything.
Jak slammed his hand on the table.
No, of course not, Milla, nothing said, nothing meant, I’m imagining things again, the old story, but I know what you think, you always want to get back to that. That I left you in the lurch with Jakkie’s birth. That I deliberately kept myself out of the way because I supposedly didn’t want to behold your travails. That you were unnecessarily damaged in the process. Those are always your exact words when you talk about it, so don’t think I don’t know what you’re insinuating.
Jak got up, went and stood behind his chair, clutched the backrest so that his knuckles showed white.
He was too early, the child, that’s all! A whole ten days! How was I supposed to guess it? I wanted to help you with it, and I wanted to be present, of course, it’s my son after all! But you, you think the worst of me, always have, you don’t want to think otherwise of me, you decided long ago, in the very distant past, that Jak de Wet is the villain of this story and he’ll remain the villain. All written up and bound, what everybody most wants to read.
But do you know, Milla, what it’s like to spend your days next to a woman who always knows better? In whose eyes you can’t do anything right? For whom everything that you tackle is doomed in advance? What it’s like to live with someone who’s forever hinting that you don’t love her enough? Who only cherishes her own little needs, no matter who you are, what you are, the whole you, that feels and thinks . . .
Jak had never expressed himself like that. His voice was strained and his mouth trembled, but he held your eyes and pushed through with what he wanted to say.
. . . the whole you, he said, with his own thoughts and dreams, not only yours, Milla.
His eyes were fierce and gleaming. You wanted to get up and go and put your arms around him on the other side of the table, but he retreated. That was when you recognised it for what it was, exactly what the strange expression was. It was fear, more even, hysteria it was. He tugged at his collar as if he needed air.
Just you don’t come near me, woman, he said, you keep your hands off me! His voice was hoarse.
Jak, you said, don’t, please, don’t you see then? That’s what I’ve always wanted, that you should talk to me like that, so that I could know what you’re about.
You moved around the table to him. He groped behind him, knocked over an earthenware jug, he was almost against the curtains of the sitting room trying to escape.
Leave me alone, just leave me alone, I know you, I know who you .