Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [182]
Was it an hour, another two hours that you waited there in the deepest part of the pass next to the red rock faces? You had to switch on the engine every now and again to activate the windshield wipers. In between short bursts of sunshine the rain sifted down in blue sheets. You constantly looked at your watches, but it wasn’t at the position of the hands that you looked, it wasn’t ten o’clock or then eleven o’clock and then half past eleven, there were other distances, other circuits, revolutions between you and Agaat.
Just tell me that they’ll come, you said to her.
She darted you a swift look. Me, the look said, you want me to reassure you, me, after you caused this trouble, you and your baas!
After a while she did after all mumble, looking straight ahead: They’ll come.
It was Agaat who first spotted them, in the rain, two small dark bundles crawling slowly down the rock faces.
There, there! she shouted.
You both grabbed for the binoculars, her hand was on yours.
Give it to me, she said, give it to me, I’ll look. She pulled the binoculars out of your grip. You let go. You pleaded with your eyes: Let it be true! She returned your look with the usual message: Don’t make such a fuss, either it’s them or it’s not them, I’m not the Lord God on high.
You regarded Agaat as she adjusted the lenses. Her mouth was moving, mimicking what moved up there on the rock face. Or didn’t move. What could she be seeing? Mountain-goats, lumps of sliding turf, sodden bushes worked loose and rolling down? The mountain had been playing you tricks all morning.
It’s them, she managed to say.
You grabbed the binoculars. You couldn’t find them, a swirl of surfaces and ridges and grooves of stone.
Where, where? you screamed. Agaat directed you. Pushed, pulled at the binoculars. A notch at the top. A little way down, to the left. There where the rock is a deeper red above the ledge.
There they were in their green windbreakers. Pressed flat against the rock face, motionless before both of them simultaneously switched a handhold, exchanged one foothold for another cranny. Jakkie was tied to Jak with a rope. But that, you could see, was useless. They weren’t anchored to anything above them. They were carrying their rucksacks. Any disturbance of balance and they would fall down from there, the face was too shallow, handholds and footholds few.
You couldn’t watch. You pressed the binoculars into Agaat’s hand, lowered your head on the steering wheel.
She tried to tell you what was happening. Your ears were humming. You felt as if you were going to faint. What was that suddenly on your back? Agaat’s little hand? What was it that she was tracing for you there? Jak and Jakkie’s movements on the rock face, along the ridge of your spine, next to the knobs and depressions of your vertebrae, Tradouw, the way down. ‘They’ve seen us! They’re waving at us! Show your lights!’
You didn’t want to look and you didn’t want to wave and you didn’t want to show your lights. Agaat reported step by step. How Jak hoisted down the rucksacks, how he hammered in the pegs, made the ropes longer, how he hammered in the anchor for securing the main rope deeper than all the others, how he checked Jakkie’s halters, the pulleys, the clips, the nooses. How he slid down first.
Still you wouldn’t look. When Agaat spoke again, her voice was altered.
A scraping and clicking, a clucking, a hissing, murmurings, mutterings, issued from her. You shut your eyes tighter. You could feel her stirring next to you on the seat. Her apron rustled, like a turkey drumming. Then she swore. Got! Got! Got! In a frenzy she got out, left the door open, a sharp herby smell suddenly in your nose, you lifted up your head, opened your eyes.
There she was in front of the red nose of the bakkie, right in front of you so that you couldn’t see anything of what was happening down there in the kloof. You