Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [200]
You watched him closely. What kind of man is this, this child of yours, who can in a crisis like this put up a front, who can persist so in his own deceit? How scared must he not be that his father will find out that he’s been lying about his leg? How scared must he not be to leave Agaat in the lurch? How many such conspiracies had there been in the past of which you didn’t even know?
Ma, I smell rain!
That was Jakkie’s voice next to you. Little tongues of flame were licking through the oaks next to the drift. You pointed with your finger, more to silence him than anything else. You didn’t want him to talk. There was something pleading in his tone, as if he wanted to console you, apologise to you. His gaze was anxious, he couldn’t even start confessing.
The rain splashed out of the gusty south-easter. Fat plopping drops. A stray cloud, an evaporated day, scooped up by a rogue wind on the open sea and left exactly there where a fire was raging inland, a freak, something that didn’t even happen in books because it didn’t conform to any pattern of probability.
The three of you stood there on the stoep and watched the fire being rained into oblivion in front of your eyes.
A wet black soot covered the whole yard the next morning. The foothill in front of the house was burnt down from Luiperdskloof all the way to the slopes on The Glen side. From far away, there where you saw her standing at the crossing-place by the river, Agaat showed up against the blackened tree trunks. She was doing her rounds, making a survey of the damage. You turned around and went inside. You didn’t want her to see you. But you noticed when she came in by the kitchen door, that her whole apron all the way to her cap was covered in fine black specks. You stretched out a hand. She jerked away her head.
Don’t wipe, she said, it streaks.
Dawid came and told you an hour later in the backyard that one of Agaat’s kids was lying with a broken neck there by the river and he didn’t understand it, it wasn’t tethered any more, and its mother had been driven to safety in the hanslam camp behind the house that night.
It’s sopping wet and full of mud, Nooi. Dawid hesitated, cleared his throat.
Seems to me it stayed behind there, it seems somebody got at him quite badly, drowned it on purpose or something. There are skid marks there in the mud on the little bank. It was dragged in there, seems to me.
Agaat appeared in the doorway of the outside room with a black-and-white bundle of freshly laundered clothing in her arms.
Take it for yourselves, Dawid, clean it well before you slaughter, you have to make the best of such accidents. I suppose it lost its bearings in the fire.
She pressed past you. You could hear the clothes pegs rattling in her apron pocket.
Only later that day did you pick up the flat piece of river mud on the sitting room floor. Jakkie was sitting on the green sofa with Agaat on her knees in front of him. She was rubbing in his sore leg with Deep Heat.
Now what mud is this lying here? you wanted to ask but their faces forbade you.
The piece of trampled mud was grooved with the pattern of Agaat’s school shoe. You said nothing. You went and threw it into the drain in the backyard. You stood there for a long time contemplating her washing, strange so on a Sunday, on the line. White and black it billowed and slapped there in the gusty south-easter. Two aprons, two pairs of socks, two caps, two black dresses. You went and took them down before they could blow full of soot again. You were surprised at the weight of the wind-dry material in your arms. Lighter than one would think, you thought at first, but when you hung it over the lower door of the outside room, it suddenly felt heavier, as if immediately drenched with the smell of the outside room: Red