Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [181]
But there was something else as well. Contempt. For what you’d permitted Jak to do to you. Rebellion because her hands were tied.
It was still twilight when you stopped to wait just beyond the bridge in the first lay-by. The idea was that they would appear there on the other side, on the skyline, and attract your attention and then move on along the horizon all the way to the descent.
As the light grew, Agaat started thinking you might have just missed them. You drove on to a place on the pass where you estimated that they’d have a better chance of seeing you, right opposite a kloof that they would have to cross on the horizon if they’d kept to the plan. The weather was blue with wind and water. A drifting mist covered the top of the lip of the cliff. A white streak of water was rushing down the seam. Lower down it dispersed, a fine spray down in the undergrowth, on either side the claws of a lion, as you as a child had learnt the formation of the foothills from your father, the roundings of the paws yellow with bitou-bush and then the toes, the shiny black rock-nails in the black water.
Now and again a glimmering flushed behind the clouds intensifying the colours of the rock faces. It felt as if you were peering though thick glass. No doubt because of the tranquilliser you’d swallowed, but also from the tension of having to wait there. The landscape was shallow and empty, the smell you got was of cold sheets, of black water and granite.
To and fro you and Agaat passed the binoculars between you. You had to adjust them constantly because your vision was weak in different ways, you near-sighted and Agaat far-sighted.
You couldn’t find anything with the binoculars in the descending mist, tumbling down and down in the black undergrowth of the kloof. Once you saw in the grooves of the rocks your father’s face, the sharp nose, the notch between the eyes, the sad expression around the mouth. Time and again you had to take the binoculars away from your face to try and see where you were. Later you gave up completely, just kept looking purposelessly until Agaat pulled at the cords to claim her turn. Without a word she buffed the lenses dry every time with the long sleeve of her jersey.
You thought of Jak who’d appeared in the door of your bedroom the night before their departure. He was quiet, his footsteps so light that at first you supposed it was Jakkie. He didn’t say a word. Just came and lay next to you and placed his head on your breast. You didn’t move, you heard him swallow, after a while you put your hand on his neck, startled at how sinewy he felt, how bony his back, his vertebrae, his protruding shoulder blades. You hoped that he’d tell you that he knew the route like the back of his hand, that he would protect the child with his life, but he didn’t. He went away, as silently as he had come. Against the backlight you saw his silhouette, his skull with the shorn hair, his neck tensed.
You sat there in the bakkie for hours, you and Agaat. Sometimes an exclamation broke the silence when one or the other of you thought that you saw something, an arm waving, two figures standing next to each other on a misty skyline, a cloth hat amongst the silver bushes, a white collar disappearing into a crack. But it was always just the shifting of the mist, of the sun that from time to time glowed more strongly through the clouds and made colours flare up amongst the black rock faces.
Let’s drive to the place where they’ll come down, Agaat said after a while, perhaps they’re waiting there already.
You drove slowly to give them time to arrive, then again faster to be in time in case they’d already arrived. As you drove further into the pass, in amongst the rugged rock faces, the black river far below, you remembered the trip twelve years earlier. Agaat was inspecting the horizon, the binoculars pressed tightly to her eyes. You could see from her mouth that she was thinking the same thing. You heard her mumble.
I’ll climb up right here, I’ll drag you out of the holes, I’m coming