Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [212]
Agaat puts down the stick. Now I’ve got her. I know how angry she was about that.
Trailing-stitch, she says, morning glories, pomegranate pips, ai where are the days. Conceived in sin, I’d say. You too, you always imagined your hands were tied, with everything. But the work of my hands you were strong enough to pick up and throw into the dam! Tsk, I’d rather not think about it!
She lifts up my sheet. For a moment I think she’s going to pull it over my head. She folds it back neatly, pulls it up under my chin.
You think you can wrap me up here, I flicker. You think you can tidy up and finish off this whole story as you do with everything, but you can’t, it’s not in your sovereign power, you need me for it!
Whiter than snow, says Agaat, she strokes my hair.
I roll my eyes to the open books with the folded-back pages on the chair. She follows my eyes.
And she takes my eyes and she reads me direct, she no longer spells with the stick.
She bends her head, I feel the hard cloth of her cap against my temple. Softly she interprets my thoughts for me. She whispers in my ear with her sweet rooibos breath, I smell the borax in the starch.
I listen to myself. Would that be what I would say if I were suddenly to have my tongue restored to me? Can I believe my ears?
What do you think you’re going to achieve by rubbing my nose in what I’ve written in the diaries? the voice asks in my ear, a perfect imitation of how I talk.
It’s your story, it’s for your sake, so that you may have something in your old age to remember how you were rescued from destitution. How I made a human being out of you. You were nothing, you’d have stayed nothing, if I hadn’t taken a chance with you. I’m not saying I did everything right, I constantly made mistakes, I hurt you, I humiliated you, but by what example was I to measure myself? You know what it was like in those days. Your case was highly exceptional. But I tried, under the circumstances and by the light that was available to me, I tried. Now you’re making a circus of it.
A C·I·R·C·U·S ! Agaat’s voice sounds the letters. There’s a pause before she recommences. I see the trailing-stitch on her cap, white on white violence.
It wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy about your whole story, let me tell you, it ruined my marriage. And look what I have to show for it now! A C·I·R·C·U·S, A C·O·U·R·T O·F L·A·W!
Agaat straightens up, she stands back, my ear feels cold without her warm breath. What will she reply to her own ventriloquism?
Didn’t know you were so interested in the little old books, Ounooi, but not now, I’ll read to you again tonight. Useful bits and pieces of all kinds.
She tidies up the blue booklets on the pile. For the first time I see the embroidery book and the Handbook and the orange FAK on the dressing table. Exhibits. Chapter and verse.
The lid of the bouillon pot, sings Agaat, must be removed overnight otherwise the bouillon will go off.
A recitative from the Farmer’s Handbook? What’s that supposed to mean?
She looks at me.
It doesn’t have the desired effect on me. I flicker at her: Go ahead and pronounce it now, Agaat! Stop your unfathomable parables. Go ahead and pronounce it all for me so that you can come to your senses, perhaps it will help if you can hear yourself say out loud what you think I think! What you think I ought to think! Mind rape, that’s what it is!
Again she bends by my bed, this time on the other side. Must my ears take turns in this devilish business?
Why do you torture me on my deathbed?
Is Agaat whispering that? In my ear? Am I hearing aright? Her voice is emphatic.
Why do you let me be ravaged by itching, push and pull my limbs, screw open my mouth, taunt me, threaten me with enemas and suppositories, dig in my ears as if you think I have ear-mite, have holes punched into me, shove tubes into me, cut my hair so that I look like a prisoner of war? Why?
She stands back. She answers from her own corner, a smile as if she’s ascending unto heaven. She opens her mouth wide.
When meat is cooked for the kitchen-maid or kaffir,