Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [198]
Jak, you don’t know what you’re saying, I can’t listen to this any longer.
You sat amongst the leaves of the plume bush and pulled up your knees and lowered your head. He bent open your arms, squatted by you, spoke into your face, you could smell him, his unwashed body, his bitter breath.
Sis, you said, sis, you stink, get away from me.
With all the shoving and wriggling the seeds of the plume had come loose, white itchy feathery tips that descended around your heads, clung to your arms.
What’s a bit of sweat, Milla, compared with the smell that hovers here over Grootmoedersdrift?
Look at Agaat! What must she think of you when she hears you allow yourself to be shouted at and beaten up? Every day at her post. Starched and ironed. A masterly maid! She plays you much better than I do, doesn’t twitch a muscle when you find fault. And she learns from it, Milla, I’m telling you today, and don’t forget it, all the time she’s learning from us.
You tried to get to your feet, shouted against his tirade. Then why don’t you go away? Why do you stay with me if I’m so dreadful?
You grabbed at him, thought he would come to his senses if he felt a touch. But he took your hands and threw them from him.
I can’t go away, Milla, even if I wanted to. I’m stuck here! You batten on me! But I’m almost done, do you hear me, almost. Then you can advance again. You’ve provided a reserve, after all. In the hanslam camp. Agaat Lourier. Pre-raped. Yes, don’t look at me like that, it’s the truth! As no man can rape a woman. She’s ready for you! To the bitter end! Because that much I can tell you now, I’m not going to make it all the way with you, Milla, that I know in my bones!
Jak kicked over the seed trays, trampled the new seedlings.
Pansies! he shouted.
The two of you think you can stop me from getting to Jakkie. You think you can scheme behind my back. You think you can make him soft, you and your skivvy. With your caterwauling and your carryingson and your nods and winks. What is to become of him? What am I to tell him about his mother if he asks me? Have you thought of that? He knows more than you think in any case. And do you know how? Your skivvy tells him! Blow by blow!
Jak, you’re out of your mind, you must get help, you said, as calmly and as firmly as you could.
Then he shoved you out from behind the plume bush almost into Jakkie standing there with his white bandage around his leg and a basket of dried pears that he’d fetched from the drying-trays. Jak didn’t see him at first. You signalled at him with your hands behind you to be quiet, but his final sentences sounded out loud in the open. And then you saw Agaat running up the stoep steps and she was pressing her hands to her ears.
Help! What help! I’m not the one who was sick here first, Jak shouted after you, it’s you, you’re the one who’s sick here. I’ll get well, I’ll get myself away from here, even if I have to do away with myself!
Jak looked into Jakkie’s face for a single moment and half brushed over his eyes. Then he walked away in the opposite direction, towards the sheds, his bare upper body white in the sun.
Jakkie walked in front of you to the house. Hobbling.
Walk properly dammit, I know you’re putting it on! you wanted to shout at him.
But how could you? You pressed both your hands to your glowing cheeks. A healthy flush. You looked at the palms of your hands, your forearms, criss-crossed with tiny itchy cuts all the way to the crook of your arm.
Agaat kept the announcement for dessert. Concentration-camp pudding. You could tell from its appearance that it hadn’t been a good day in the kitchen. Baked in too much of a hurry, so that the sauce bubbled out at the sides, burnt black on the edge of the white enamel dish. All the food was burnt. She’d just disappeared in her usual manner in the afternoon and put in an appearance only after five to cook. And then she stood by while you were eating. It was a silence broken only by the rubbing of the creeper against the window frames, and now and again the chittering of a loose gutter