Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [203]
4 July 1979 Front stoep
Mountain still overcast after the snow yesterday dark blue in the south with rainbow it’s cold & still perhaps another precipitation advancing. Listening to Schubert’s string quintet in C major (that second movement, where does it spring from? from the approach of death?) some or other moth that has eaten the covers of my records ai I have so little time for myself on this farm. Feel as if I’ve forgotten everything I ever learnt. J. gone to drop Jakkie at Cape Town station. Didn’t want to go along. A. neither. Took leave here at home for her sake she can’t exactly give him a hug in her apron there amongst all the people.
Lots of talking at table again last night A. standing there with hr hands on her stomach hr face in the shadows. I know what she’s thinking: He’s still so young. The plan is that directly after his basic training at Valhalla & the officer’s course in Waterkloof he’ll join the Air Force permanently & after his flying training at Langebaan Road go to university for his engineering degree three birds with one stone says J. he won’t have to interrupt his studies later for national service he earns a salary while he’s studying & with every exam that he passes he gets more stripes & further promotion is guaranteed. Apparently the best & most honourable career for a young man in SA today & if he’s lucky he’ll get the chance on top of it all to wipe out communists.
Wonder where A. is. Disappeared into thin air when they left here. What on earth does she do to console herself?
4 July 6 o’clock
J. not back yet. A. is though a plume of smoke in the chimney. Comfort fire. Must be cold after her escapades. Tracked hr this afternoon down next to the wild-fig avenue & further down next to the river she couldn’t cross rushing water so there she stood & did hr funny movements forward & back turn around stamping the feet the arm up the cap down. Could only half make out hr singing by standing at the water upstream & downstream. Snowstorm. Perhaps not all there in the top storey.
Quarter past 6
Just heard the door of the outside room open & and peeked behind the woodshed at her feeding the hanslammers again the singing quite gives me the shivers. Couldn’t make head or tail perhaps if I try to write down what I remember of it. Child is gone/time is short/put in the oar/ shift round the rudder/put up the chock/wind up the ratchet/under the mill sits the one-armed dwarf/hear her turn/it’s the meal it’s the snow it’s the salt it’s the bone/listen to it grind/agaat agaat agaat.
Rather ominous. Typical. Always makes herself larger than she is at times of crisis.
8 July 1979
Has snowed again. Light sprinkling lower down than yesterday just like castor sugar. Can smell it clean white sheets piled up in the sky. A. always excited by weather conditions. Have to give hr extra jobs to keep her occupied. Should perhaps increase the size of her herds a bit so that she has more to see to. See the first letters to Jakkie are already written & lying ready for posting on the sideboard.
9 July 1979
Perhaps I should really try again this year to make something special of Agaat’s birthday (31!) now with Jakkie gone like that & doing his own thing I get the feeling that the diary-keeping doesn’t really make very much sense any more. Don’t have that much to report on any more. Agaat is Agaat.