Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [206]
Now it’s the other way round.
Me dying and she to accompany me.
Who’s going to give in first? On the facts of the past? Or does our assignment lie here in this present?
Here I’m cutting my own throat now, she said when she hung up the alphabet.
Did I hear aright? She whispered it on the inhalation.
Here I’m cutting my own throat now.
But whose throat is it really? It’s my spelt-out words that she has to pronounce for me, it’s my sentences that she has to complete aloud for me.
Who’d want to bluff at the end? That everything is in order? Forgive and forget and depart in peace?
Perhaps it would have been better to have kept to eye signals to the very end, without any chance of a retort on my part. Perhaps we could have brought the matter to a workable conclusion if we’d resigned ourselves to the list of questions?
Are you cold? Are you hot? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Too dark? Too light? Do you want to poo? Do you want to pee? Do you want to read? Do you want to listen to SAfm?
Yes and no.
But it’s getting more complicated. Now she’s added to the alphabet auxiliary lists on slips of paper, opening phrases and conjunctions. She’s stuck them up there close to hand around the chart, short cuts by which we can arrive more quickly at the point. They stir and rustle with every draught or current here in the room, they flutter up and down when Agaat walks past, the loose slips, as if they were alive.
I am, I wish, I fear, I hope, I believe.
Because, but, and, nevertheless, notwithstanding, even so.
Necessary conjunction which betonkeneth concord, who wrote that again?
Milla. Jak. Agaat. Jakkie.
I’m no longer hungry, and I’m beyond tired . . .
Whom did I love in my lifetime and why?
I have, I will, I can, I want. Or not. I would be able to. I would have wanted. If I could have it over, then . . . What might have been.
There’s a whole grammar developing there on the wall. Every day there’s more of it. Question mark, exclamation mark, swearword, dots to mark an implication. A skeleton of language, written down in print and in script with a Koki chalk, bigger, more complicated than Agaat on her own, than I or the two of us together could think up. If it had to be fleshed out as well . . . muscles, skin, hair, nerves, glands . . .
How, when, who, why, what . . .
But my nerves are extinct and my muscles are moist cotton wool, my hair grey strands, my skin worn, my glands dry dumplings. My secretions trickle out of me through tubes. My poo and my pee are no longer my own. My sphincters no longer open and close me. I am one might say permeable.
Why would she want now of all times to invest me with language?
Up, down, under, before, behind, above, in.
Or perhaps ‘invest with’ is the wrong expression here.
Goad with, perhaps.
She is the one who takes up Japie. She can put him down whenever she wants. Or she can pick him up and walk out and go and dust somewhere. Or she can turn him round to point his stick at the map.
Japie mostly stays in the corner of the room. She holds him in the left hand, she always starts from the beginning again, she points, letter by letter. A is for Adam, B for Babel , C for Christ, our Redeemer and Lord. She looks at what I signal and she points and she points until there’s a word, three words, half a sentence, and then she starts guessing.
Don’t put words into my mouth, exclamation mark, I then have to spell out for her. Don’t anticipate my meanings, don’t impose the wrong stress, wrong nuances on me. Exclamation, exclamation, exclamation!
My protest is not of much use. She gets impatient when it takes too long. She wants to make my sentences flow for me. She wants me to sing. She’s looking for a rhythm. A march from the FAK.
Onward, onward, ever onward, by forest and by foam, ever shall we wander, ever shall we roam.
I can see it in her face. Shift-boss habits. She taps the beat on the railing of the bed. Then the words come.
Don’t shirk! There