Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [213]
Again her lips are at my ear, I feel the moistness of her mouth.
Then why do you still leave me hanging? she whispers. Why do you come and stand by my bedside in the dark? Do you want me dead? What prevents you?
Sulphured fruit must not be eaten raw, comes her reply, a floating contralto, but first boiled again to drive off the sulphur.
How many voices has Agaat?
Calm down, Ounooi, she says, close your eyes now. Think of other things. You’re wandering again. But it’s not serious, just relax, I’m here, I’m staying with you, I’m not going away, here I am, right here.
She moves in behind the bed, above my head I hear the words that well up in me, lisping they drip from Agaat’s tongue.
And the slops you feed me! I’ll choke. And that will be too soon for you. You still want your pound of flesh from me, remember! Living flesh. What satisfaction would a dead liver give you? A dead heart? You want to pluck me out of the hole with a wire. Like a mole. Well, keep your wire! Soon I’ll be in a hole where even you won’t be able to get at me. Except if you dig me up to chew my bones. Bone hunger!
Agaat appears next to my bed. She looks at me.
How are we doing? she asks. She goes and writes something.
Who marks the day high up there on the calendar? The thirteenth of December, I recall and I remember. Could I have imagined it all? Am I dreaming?
She looks at me, smiles, writes something again.
Abracadabra, she says, twirls a little circle next to her head with her index finger.
Could she mean that I’ve lost my wits? I’m raving? It’s not me, witch! You’re the one who’s raving, you’re the one who’s trying to rave my rave for me! Not a word past my lips for three years now. The mute cannot rave! But they can hear!
There, there, Ounooi, don’t be scared, she says, it’s just the little light, it’s going on and off now. In your head.
That’s a good one! Interprets me to the brink of Babel, to the threshold of death. But there are limits! Back! Stand back! You’re too close! My death is of me! And my bed! There are boundaries!
Agaat goes to stand by the door. She clasps her hands round her body, the knuckle of the small hand in her mouth.
Take the stick, take the stick, I signal.
She comes nearer, takes the stick.
T·H·E·R·E A·R·E B·O·U·N·D·A·R·I·E·S, I spell, B·O·N·E M·A·G·G·O·T.
Agaat taps seven exclamation marks of her own. She puts down the stick. She bends her head over me, regards me, presses shut her eyes with the thumb and index finger of her left hand. And with the fingers of her small hand, mine. Her fingers are cold on my eyelids.
Rest, she says, it won’t be long now, we’re almost there.
The first letter that you intercepted was addressed to Jakkie at Langebaan, his official numbers and codes written in stiff black block letters on the envelope. You wanted to know what Agaat had been writing to him, sitting there in her room for hours on end.
The first letter, no it couldn’t have been the first. There were many. When you unfolded it the change in form of address struck you. No longer Dear Boetie as when he was at school or Dear Private when he was doing his basic training. Dear Airman Captain de Wet it was now. Your heart contracted inside you, sitting there reading next to the road, pulled off into a gate entrance on the way to town.
You’d told Agaat that Jakkie was now in a high-security position and that her correspondence wasn’t private. Jakkie had warned you and Jak. No searching questions about his movements, his further specialised studies, would be answered, and your private declarations and revelations might just end up under eyes they were not intended for. And here was Agaat’s camouflage now. All that she thought she could hide, was how close she was to him.
The words with which she concluded that letter, were even more poignant. No longer: Your loving Nêne. Respectfully yours, she now wrote. And no longer just Gaat. Now it was her full name: