Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [197]
Why would she allow herself to be shoved around without phoning the dominee? Without telling a single mortal? Why? Why does she stay? Why does she have a child by such a man? Why does nothing of the fuck-up at home ever show to other people? Always only excuses! Her homestead, her farm, her birthright, her child, her reputation in the farming community? All just to be able to stay with this Jak de Wet, the poor bloody bugger who has to hear every day that he won’t do, he’s trash.
His eyes were staring wildly in his head, veins bulging on his forehead. With every question he prodded you with his foot, against your knees, against your ribs.
Jak, you’ll have a heart attack, you said, calm down.
Bitch! As if you cared! Shall I tell you why you stay with me? You need me to mistreat you. Do you know why? That’s how your mother taught you. And her mother before her taught her, all the way to Eve, to the tree in paradise.
Jak tore off his shirt so that the buttons popped. You were shocked at his body, so lean and so hard.
Don’t look at me, Milla, that’s what’s bloody-well left of me and at least I know it. A wife-batterer with self-knowledge. What about you? Do you know what I see, Milla?
A cattle farmer, a connoisseur of sheep, a wheat and soil expert, a gardener. You keep things running smoothly on this godcursed little farm. But what do you look like? Like something out of your mother’s old books. Genoveva of Suurbraak. And why? Because you feel inferior. Because you want to feel inferior.
Look at me, Milla! Look, here is your accomplice. I help you with it. Do you think it’s possible to become like me all on one’s own? And you can’t tell anyone about it, can you? Where on earth would you have to begin? More difficult than a magazine story, I can tell you. There it’s the hero who has the insight and the heroine who swallows it all whole.
I the precious, I the victim. How would you ever get something like that past your lips at your sanctified tea-drinking at a church bazaar? No, oh no, there you also have a substitute, there you prefer to worship your b’loved Jesus nailed to his cross. A pity the pictures always show him with his bloody little feet already neatly nailed together. Otherwise you could dream with your mouth full of bazaar cake that Pilate was poking a stick up his holy hole. Which would make him more worthy of your worship!
Jak, you’ll burn in hell, stop it!
No, Milla. I’ve been there for a long time! You’re the one pretending to be in heaven. Never a word in public, no, your mess is for the nest, for the inner chamber. Selected me by the balls, didn’t you? Raised me to your hand! Bedtime story! Little woman whines for attention until she gets the kind that she most appreciates. Thud, bang, blood in the nostril, from ballroom to slapstick in two winks.
Backbone of the nation, bah! Thanks to you and your kind the Afrikaner deserves an early demise. You’re a pestilential species!
See what you look like! You like it. Tell me: How do you rape somebody who wants to be raped?
You just wanted not to be seen by anybody. To and fro you stepped as he shoved you, just to remain behind the plume bush. The sharp leaves cut your hands every time you fell against the bush.
Fall, come fall once more, then I’ll have earned some points. Then you’ll notice me! An Oscar for Jack the Ripper!
He slapped your garden hat off your head with one hand and caught you on the cheek with the other hand, and as you ducked away, again on the other cheek. Left, right, left. The slaps burnt on your skin.
A healthy flush! A few good slaps! That’s all you can tolerate from me isn’t it? Otherwise you don’t trust how much I love you.
Papa’s little princess! So scared of the wolf in the dark! Au, stubbed her little toe! That’s where it comes from. That’s the beginning of it all. That’s what you did with Jakkie when he was small. What will you say when your heir turns out a bloody faggot one day? When I was his age, I’d long since lain with girls, but where does he lie? In the outside room,