Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [202]
Apparently Jakkie wanted to take her along to Witsand but now of course she doesn’t want to come any more. A. smiles about this because now she’ll have Jakkie to herself. He won’t fall for her type says A. she’s too light for him for what type then I ask. The fynbos & cave type says Agaat or spring tide whatever that may mean but she seems quite taken with her own diagnosis.
The last few holidays he’s spent long hours reading in his room with a plate of A.’s cookies except when J. orders him to varnish the woodwork or otherwise he goes for long runs on his own or goes fishing with A. & reads her stories & poems. Tanned & muscled the child. Can sometimes not believe how attractive he is. Something of a daredevil too, just like his father, thinks nothing of swimming into the sea & emerging somewhere else far away. The girls peek at him & he banters with them but that’s all. He sometimes goes out when there’s a party & stays out late but then I always hear afterwards he found a book to read somewhere in a room. Perhaps this year I should have a party for him at our house to celebrate his results.
They’ll hear early in January he says he’s not worried about it. But does he have other worries? He can be so absent. Easy-going in the daily round but reserved in a new way the last few years. He feels further & further away from me. J. says it’s because he thinks he’s better than us since he’s been to Paul Roos he’s got a swollen head in that town of snobs they say it’s contagious. I say Jakkie is not as self-satisfied as his father he’s looking for himself. Look what look! Jak exclaims his country is looking for him let him go & put some hair on his chest in the Defence Force the enemy is ready to take over the country. I tell Jak for somebody who can think up such outlandish theories on his own wife his political pronouncements really are extremely simple-minded.
19 November 1978
Went & made the mistake of wanting to take Jakkie along to church this morning. At first he didn’t want to. Said it was too hot for a suit but J. said to him my boy you’ll do as I say. Not that J. is all that religious either it’s more a matter of being seen in the right place & perhaps that’s what irks Jakkie.
He’s been through his catechism & all along with the other boys in Stellenbosch & I see his Bible lying there on his night-table but how things are with him spiritually I wouldn’t know he talks to me about nothing except trivialities. Today he really had the fidgets in the pew & sighed & sat with his forehead in his hands & bit his cheeks & vanished into thin air when we got here & he’s not turning up for lunch.
Dominee preached on the spies in the land of Canaan. A wee bit over-inspired perhaps but still a striking analogy that he drew. Numbers 13. Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: Of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man & these were their names: Of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur. Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori. Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh etc. The application turned out to be the border war & the instruction to the Afrikaner spies just as to the children of Israel & see the land what it is; & the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many & about Caleb who said Let us go up at once & possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. And about the nay-sayers who said it was impossible & brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel such as that the children of Anak were descended from giants & would crush the Israelites like locusts & about the people who murmured against Moses & Aaron: Wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives & children should be the prey? The dominee warned from the pulpit against false prophets who speak excellent Afrikaans & cite the Bible & don’t hesitate to undermine their own nation in their