Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [191]
Right, says Agaat, how shall we go about it?
Leave me in peace! Get out! Out!
No, come on now, come, come, since when can you do only one thing at a time? The way you’re carrying on, you’ll need a second pan at any moment in any case, I’m not getting out of here now. But I’m also not going to stand around here wasting my time, of that you can be sure.
Agaat turns on her heel swiftly. Right turn. Tchi! goes her sole on the wooden floor. With quick brisk steps she stalks out. Parade ground. She yanks open the broom cupboard in the passage. It sounds as if everything inside is falling out. The broomsticks roll over the floorboards. They are kicked aside. Salute and halt on the big cymbals! She returns with the feather duster. Parade baton.
And this is Japie, she says. She turns it around, a grey shock of feathers. I smell house dust.
With swift strokes she presses the point of the stick on the maps. They’re the regional maps.
My stomach loosens in spasms and cramps. Over the rim of the pan. I can feel it. I can smell myself. I close my eyes.
Come now, what’s this nonsense? Open your eyes and look where I’m pointing. If you knew how many sleepless nights I had because I couldn’t figure out what on God’s earth you could want from me!
I open my eyes. Please, I ask.
What’s this please all about now? Enough of please, thank you! Blink your eyes when I press on the right place, I suspect somewhere on these maps is a spot, a weak spot or a soft spot that you want to visit again.
Hooikraal? Tygerhoek? Boschjesmansrug? Adderskop? Holgat? Van Rheenenshoogte? Lindeshof? Wolvelaagte? Varslug? Blydskap? Rietpoel? Jongensklip? Infanta? Ockertseinde?
All the battle sites. Farms, stations, towns. Beach hamlets. Wheat storages. Settlements. Train junctions. Kraals, corners, ridges, heads, holes, heights, bowers, plains, named after hay, after tigers, after bush-men and adders, long-forgotten van Rheenens and Lindes, after wolves, after fresh air and joy, after stones and pools, after distant princesses, after the end of some unfortunate Ockert. Of some of them I’ve never heard. She’s inventing half the names. I can’t see all the way to where she’s pointing. I don’t trust it. My own stink is in my nostrils. Acrid, grassy. Green manuring.
Come now, Ounooi, do your bit, it’s not for nothing I struggled and exhausted myself guessing and slaved away trying to satisfy you. Perhaps you’d like to inform me as well what we’re looking for here on these maps? So far from your bed? You can rest assured I won’t give up. I don’t give up and you don’t give up. That’s our problem, the two of us!
She settles the cap more firmly on her head, as if she’s heading into a wind. She changes hands, takes the stick in the crumpled paw, grabs a blue booklet with her strong hand, fans it before her face.
Got, but what a stink you can crap!
She strips the sleeve of her bad arm up all the way to the elbow. As if she’s preparing to grab a snake behind the neck. She looks straight at me.
All the better to show you, my child. She shakes the little arm at me. The handle of a mincing machine.
It’s the first time that Agaat has ever pushed up her right sleeve for me like that. It’s the first time that she’s sworn in front of me, with her mouth at any rate, and at me. She watches me watching the arm. The same thickness all the way, a thin rod with a wrong-way-round elbow.
Vadersgaven? Vinkelrug? Blink one eye if I’m getting warm, right? Blink both eyes quickly if I’m cold, do you understand me?
What does she want me to understand? The names, of fathers and fennel, mean nothing to me. I signal, no, heavens, have done, are you mad? I close my eyes.
Open your eyes, Ounooi, or I’ll fit you out with matchsticks, I’ll stick your four lids up and down with plasters before you can blink an eye. Look here, here, here. Have you been here? have I? What would we have wanted there? We know our place, don’t we? Where’er we walk.
Remhoogte? Bobbejaankrans? Perdekop? Slangrivier? Rotterdam? Bromberg? Heights, rock faces, hills, rivers, dams, mountains,