Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [178]
Phone, he said, phone now on the spot where I can hear you. Arrange with Jakkie’s school. Tell them Jakkie is going for a week-long scouting and survival trial in the mountains of the Tradouw with the Voortrekkers of the Montagu mountain club. That should satisfy them, or you can think up something better yourself, tell them he has mumps.
He smiled a tight little smile in Jakkie’s direction.
You got up from your chair. Jak did not look at you.
But in fact he’s only going with his father so we can get to know each other a bit better, not so? And so that he can taste a bit of what life’s actually all about. What do you say to that, old man? Go ahead and tell your mother of our plans.
Jakkie was excited. It was obvious that they’d been planning it for a long time.
Agaat came in with the dish of oats. With your eyes you asked: So what do you know about this? She pretended not to see you.
Jakkie started chattering about the route.
From Twaalfuurkop they would climb over the intermediate ranges of the Piekeniers above Swellendam and through the Bergkwagga Cracks and along the bushman caves at the Four Sluices. He carried on about the compass and the ropes and the maps and the leopards in the kloofs, and about the descent into the pass by the red krantzes with the body halters and the bolts and anchors after hiking all along the horizon from the bridge so that you and Agaat would be able to watch their progress over the last stretch through binoculars, and could accompany them along the pass, all the way to where you had to pick them up at the deepest point of the road on the bank of the Huis River.
You looked at Agaat again. Her face betrayed nothing. She cleared the porridge plates and pushed a platter of eggs to the middle of the table. She passed the spatula to Jak and he served Jakkie.
Eat, little man, so that you can build strength, said Jak, you’ll need it. We’re taking only peanuts and water and for the rest we’ll have to hunt dassies.
I won’t allow that, you said.
Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, let’s go and brush your pony, he’s mouldering in the stable by now.
Jak put his hand on Jakkie’s shoulder.
Jakkie’s staying right here, Agaat, he wants to eat his eggs. You go and brush his pony for him and while you’re about it see to the other horses as well, clean their stalls, take the muckrake and a spade and after that you might as well put out new straw in the stables, have the bales ready, just remember to take along the wire-cutter.
Jakkie looked at Agaat with wide eyes. She gave him a wooden eye. She wasn’t perturbed in the least.
Gmf! she said. And Jak grinned.
What were they scheming?
Your eyes she resolutely avoided. What did you want her to do? Jak held Jakkie in front of him like a shield. You went and made the call to the school. You heard them giggling over the lie while you were spinning your tale to the principal. You knew that Agaat was listening in to every word.
There was something different about Jak. You could tell from the grim resoluteness with which the preparations were made.
Jakkie was given a pair of real mountaineering boots with blood-red laces and a compass. He couldn’t sleep with excitement. In the evenings he and Jak calculated their hiking stages with compasses and pencil. Their halters and buckles and belts and slipknots and pulleys and hooks lay in the sitting room where they checked them for three days.
You did as Jak told you. You packed his rucksack and Jakkie’s smaller one. 18 kilograms and 8 kilograms exactly, the underpants and T-shirts and socks, light windcheaters, plastic raincoats with hoods, long johns, cloth hats and golfing-caps, the billycan and matches, a little bottle of methylated spirits for sore feet, the sleeping bags, the peanuts, the salt, the glucose sweets. The catapults, the little rolls of smooth wire and string for snares, knives, a torch, a packet of birdseed, water bottles. Within the weight allowance you managed to fit a slab