Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [195]
You wrote that you could hear Agaat rolling out flaky pastry, thud, thud, with the wooden roller on the kitchen table, for Jakkie’s chicken pie. You went to investigate and her chin was pushed out all the way. She knew that Jak wanted to take Jakkie away to the mountains as soon as he arrived that afternoon. She knew that he wouldn’t be granted a break to eat, she knew that Jak wouldn’t allow any tasty food to be packed for the trip. And yet she was continuing, her lips pressed firmly together, with her preparations.
Were you imagining things, or had you heard her talk on the telephone every now and again the previous week, in the stealthy hours just after lunch while you were lying down?
Was she conniving with Jakkie again?
You didn’t want to ask.
Whatever it was that Agaat had up her sleeve, you knew that her plan would always suit you better than anything that Jak could contrive. You were counting on her by this time. To make things happen in your family, or not happen. Or to stop things from happening. Or to predict things. Rain, wind, floods. She could read your mood like a sky, predict Jak’s movements long before he himself knew what he was going to do.
The twilight was setting in already. You were starting to worry, Jak had gone for a drive in the bakkie earlier to see whether he didn’t meet them on the road. Then the phone rang. It was Jakkie. To say that he’d torn a ligament in rugby and would only be able to get a lift home the following morning and he didn’t think he’d be able to be very active, the doctor said the leg needs rest.
Was it all Jakkie’s scheme? Thought up on his own?
Jak had just recently acquired television on the farm. Perhaps Jakkie wanted to stay at home watching sport rather than go mountaineering, or just wanted to relax at home? Perhaps Agaat wanted to watch television? Perhaps she wanted to get Jak away from there, because he’d forbidden her to watch television, didn’t want her to see too much of the school riots in the north.
You give them the best that you have and just see what you get in return, he said, and glared at you as if it had been you who had stuffed Afrikaans down the gullets of the people.
Jak said nothing when he heard that Jakkie was no longer arriving that evening, and that he couldn’t go mountaineering. He tightened his headlamp around his head, filled his water bottle in the kitchen and shouldered his rucksack.
Agaat went and fetched his ropes on the front stoep and came and put them in his hands.
Oh yes, of course, I almost forgot, what would I do without you, Agaat, Jak said.
His voice was odd. He looked her straight in the eyes. He tugged at the roll of ropes in his hands.
Without any greeting he walked away from the yard in the dusk. You and Agaat watched the little light until it disappeared up into Luipaardskloof.
Perhaps it’s all to the good, said Agaat, her face expressionless.
She went and fetched her best bottle of preserved quinces from the pantry shelf and said she thought she’d make some custard quickly, to be ready when Jakkie arrived the following day.
Nine o’clock that evening Jakkie phoned from Swellendam and said he’d decided after all to come that night and would you and Agaat come to fetch him please, his lift wasn’t going any further. His knee was bandaged and he had a bad limp. He and Agaat greeted each other with poker faces and he said there’d better be chicken pie and quinces and custard and she said but how else.
They didn’t give you an opportunity to get a word in edgewise.
You three were together that evening as if Jak didn’t exist. Jakkie tucked into the chicken pie. He wanted to watch the news on television, because of the so-called situation in the country. He was in the debating society