Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [196]
He was now really getting beyond her in his education, Agaat said, but what would he say to a game of Scrabble?
The two of you helped Agaat wash the dishes and then waited for her to have her meal in the kitchen and then you sat playing the word game around the dining room table till after half past one that night.
Why can’t it always be like this? you thought. Such peace, such harmony? But every now and again you intercepted a glance between Jakkie and Agaat and knew the peace would be short-lived.
‘Quick’ Jakkie built. ‘-grass’ you added for ‘quickgrass’. ‘Karooquickgrasses’ Agaat made of this, by using a blank and spending her last ‘s’ to make ‘tricks’ of ‘trick’ that was already in place vertically on the board. All seven letters and on a red block as well and Agaat won. But only after she’d had to show Jakkie the kind of quickgrass in the old Handbook for Farmers because it wasn’t in Chambers. He maintained Agaat was fabricating it, there was no such type of grass. Then there was a whole argument about whether a word was valid if it wasn’t in Chambers and you had to decide the matter. There’s more to a language than is written in a dictionary, you said, and there would have been mighty little happening on Grootmoedersdrift if you’d had to farm only with the words in Chambers.
That was how you decided. Agaat was the winner, out and out.
Agaat always wins, Jakkie said. He winked at his packed rucksack that was standing ready on the sitting room floor. You pretended not to see anything, not to see at bedtime how Agaat double-locked all the doors and windows, not to see her signalling to Jakkie with her little hand to lock the kitchen door from the inside. Pretended not to see Jakkie walking, suddenly without a limp, across the kitchen floor to lock the door with a loud grinding noise.
But Jak’s onslaught did not come at night.
You had just returned the following morning from the first round of taking out feed, busy in the garden putting in plants for winter when suddenly he was standing behind you. Dishevelled. Red in the face, a white ring around his mouth, spit accumulated in the corners of his mouth.
It was twelve o’clock and the sun was shining viciously.
Jak’s mountaineering clothes were torn. It looked as if he’d wrestled in the dust with some wild creature.
You carried on with your work, thought you would keep it light, would pretend not to have noticed that he was in a state.
Home is the hunter, home from the hill, you said. You moved to the flowerbed behind the plume bushes to be out of sight of the workers on the yard or of somebody coming out onto the front stoep.
Jak hauled you upright, grabbed you by the front of your dress.
Nobody would believe me, he hissed in your face, nobody, everybody would think I’m mad if I had to tell them about you, but I know I’m right! About how you really are!
You tried to keep your voice light and removed his hand and bent down next to your flowerbed where, with the little hand-trowel, you were putting in seedlings for the winter garden. Calendula, a few sowing trays of purple pansies.
A voice crying in the wilderness? you said, you must be careful, next thing the baboons will be barking at you!
Yes, said Jak, you’re right, I see it in the wilderness, I see it when I’m hanging from my ropes between heaven and earth, then I understand it, dumb retarded bastard that I am, I see it only after I’ve run myself to a frazzle for miles, or when I’m clambering up sheer rock faces. Then I see it, then I see what’s happening here!
Good heavens, Jak, what about the glories of nature? you asked. When last did you see a march rose, hmm? Or the great emperor butterfly of Grootmoedersdrift? You frequent such privileged vantage points, you should put it all to better use!
Jak kicked the trowel out of your hand and pushed you over off your haunches so that you landed flat on your behind in the flowerbed.
Why would any self-respecting