Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [177]
Was it the day after Jak’s breakdown that everything changed once more? Was it the morning after?
You didn’t want to remember all the things he’d said the night before. A pig with wings. Was he out of his mind? And the so-called fairytale that he contrived for himself out of it all? How could he distort your lives together like that?
In spite of the sleeping draught you couldn’t sleep. You were too scared to go and see whether Jak was back. At five o’clock you were up. Put on milk for coffee, went out into the backyard to throw away the shards of the earthenware jug that Jak had broken the night before. What goes up must come down, you said to yourself as you dumped the shards in the bin, your father’s words for the aftermath of family clashes.
The upper door of the outside room was open. You heard Agaat mumbling to herself over her ironing, the creaking of the ironing-board, smelt the steam and the starch, the thud-thud of the little iron with which she always ironed, a glimpse of the white apron in the dark little room. She was already dressed in her black dress and cap and shoes. Was ironing the apron, for the second time apparently, the seam, the bands, the pockets on the bib and the stomach.
She was frowning, shaking her head, as if trying to understand something, lost in a world of her own. You put your hands over your ears and fled back to the kitchen. You wanted to hear nothing more, could tolerate nothing more after the night before, suddenly fearful for all of you so constantly getting in each other’s way, trespassing on each other’s private space, beset by each other’s catastrophes. But there the milk was boiling over on the stove and you had to rescue it, clean the hob before it scalded. Then you heard the litany.
Help me with this and help me with that, and then a silence. And after a few thud-thuds of the iron on the board: She wanted him to be the master, she thought badly of herself, thought she was stupid, thought she was weak, she didn’t want to be her own master.
The irons were vigorously changed around on the hotplate.
But this is bad and that is wrong and gibe, gibe, gibe, constantly, whatever you do.
There was a hissing sound as Agaat sprinkled water on the ironing-cloth.
It was Jak’s emphatic strain of the night before.
God, must I listen to this for a second time, you thought, with the cloth drenched with burnt milk in your hands.
And what did he do, the poor man? He just tried harder to be good enough!
And then suddenly there was a another voice, higher, lighter, your voice.
What does that have to do with Agaat? She’s the best in the land, the best governess one could wish for!
You unlatched the screen door from its hook to make it slam.
At the top of her voice it resounded there out of the dark door-hole of the outside room:
Praise the Lord with joy resounding, oh my soul how rich the gift!
An exercise in prayerful attendance indeed. Thunder in the outside room when there’s lightning in the sitting room.
You went out onto the front stoep, the red bakkie was parked outside under the fig tree, its front wheels turned at an angle over the roots. So you must after all have dozed off, you thought, because you didn’t hear Jak come in during the night.
You went to have a peek at Jakkie, snapped on the light for a moment.
Fast asleep with his cheek on Agaat’s embroidered pillow slip, his room full of boy’s smells, his mouth with the slight down on the upper lip slightly skew against the pillow.
Jak was at the breakfast table at the usual time. He was pale. You could see he was winding himself up for something. You said nothing. You hoped it would blow over as it did generally tend