• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 918 0

duration of the notes & the intervals sometimes longer sometimes shorter. Just now again I was standing on the front stoep & heard one of them sounding up from somewhere in the mountain. Lugubrious it sounds plaintive it must have been A. she has a tremendous lung capacity from blowing fires into life in her fireplace & then very faintly from somewhere behind the ridges Jakkie answered. To & fro went the calling on the horn a code if I had to guess. What could the message be? Without content it would have to bore them very quickly but apparently they can carry on with it into all eternity.

12 September 1971

A. learns everything with Jakkie from his schoolbooks, asks him his idiomatic expressions & his multiplication tables. He teaches hr what they sing at school. Land of our fathers. She knows more verses of The Call of South Africa than he. You’re making it up! he says & she shows him in black and white in the old FAK. You sound just like a donkey when you sing she says stay in tune now! Do hope he retains his love of singing after his voice has broken. A lyrical tenor I would guess.

16 September 1971

Am all of a sudden not allowed in the bathroom when Jakkie is having a bath. Not J. either. No, he’s too big now says Jakkie but not for A. no she’s allowed. In & out with pyjamas and clean towels all bustle and display for my benefit. Sits with him on an apple box while he baths & chatters (have already removed the chair from there to discourage hr but she takes no notice). Had to go and fetch a bag of down in the little store for two new pillows and stuff them there in the backyard otherwise J. will complain of the mess & then I saw through the steam the movements. A. adding water or getting up to wash his back. Then I heard him ask her: Where do you come from? what does your name mean? Long stories she spins him. Couldn’t make out everything. She teases him he laughs and giggles he persists with his questions. A. says: I crawled out of the fire. Isn’t true says Jakkie you’re lying he says. Is true she says I was dug out of the ash stolen out of the hearth fell out of a cloud came up with the fennel washed down in the flood was mowed with the sickle threshed with the wheat baked in the bread. No seriously asks Jakkie what kind of a name is that? nobody else has a name like that. Baptised like that left like that. But it’s actually A-g-g-g-g-gaat that goes g-g-g-g like a house snake behind the skirting board. Gaat Gaat Gaat says Jakkie, sounding the g in his throat as if he’s gargling, it’s a name of nothing. That’s right says A. it’s a name of everything that’s good. It’s everything and nothing six of one and half a dozen of the other.

So there she was singing him an odd little song with Scripture thrown in an odd tune I’m writing it up here what I remember of it. Perhaps J. is right A. not a good influence on Jakkie. Can’t put my finger on it. After all she got it all from me but what she makes of it is the Lord knows a veritable Babel. Doleful in a way that makes me want to hide my head somewhere. This person!—how in God’s name did she get like that?

I’m the ear of the owl

I’m the eye of the ant

I’m the right of the rain

The song started off quite low & went higher & higher & faster & faster. Made me think of a choral piece. Which composer? Can’t think that I would ever have told her about it can hardly remember it myself it was so long ago at university. I write your name on the sand & the snow on the white loaf of my days. Everywhere on everything that is dear to me, I write your name. And by the power of this word I shall start my life anew. I was born to call you by your name: Freedom. Something like that. But A.’s song was about something else. Couldn’t make head or tail of it.

I stand sentry at the meal of the mealy-mouthed jackals (here she

sings in high head-tones)

I’m the meal of the first milling

Rejoice oh young man your joy is short-lived

I’m the rising of the dough

The lump in the throat

I’m the mouth of the mother

I’m the faith of the father

And the babble of the baby in