Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [218]
He grabbed your wrists. Keep your nose out of my affairs, to look at you, you’re actually the one who could do with a bit of plastic surgery. Reconstruction for Kamilla!
He pushed his fingers into the corners of your mouth. You tried to resist, to take his fingers out of your mouth.
Just look at you, this misery who calls herself Mrs de Wet. Permanently down in the mouth!
Agaat came upon you. Jak threw your hands from him and wiped his thumb and forefinger, which he’d had in your mouth, on his pants.
What do you want here? he asked.
Agaat’s voice was hard, her businesslike housekeeping voice with which she often broke up your quarrels.
I beg your pardon, Mr de Wet, she said, I just wanted to return the ash pan to the fireplace.
You kept your hands in front of your face, ashamed of her coming upon you like that.
Sometimes, Agaat said, and what she said did not accord with her tone, sometimes I wish I could . . .
You looked round. There she stood, the iron poker in her strong hand. It was superficially evident that she was referring to Jak, to something that she wanted to do to him. But her gaze was fixed on you.
Get out of here, you managed to say, it’s none of your business.
It is, she said, and flung the poker into the copper tray, it is most certainly my business.
Did she say that? Had you heard correctly?
Get out of here, immediately, Jak said.
Without looking at you, she walked out with rapid little steps and her head high. If she didn’t say it, her crooked drawn-up shoulder said it: It’s the only business I have, you and your husband and your child and your buggering around.
You kept wondering about Jak in that time when Jakkie went to the border. From his first breakdown on the night of his great nursery rhyme—how old was Jakkie then? eleven, twelve?—you felt that he was working at and building and adjusting his theory of you, of who you were, and what you had done to him. It hurt more than any shove or slap.
So if you don’t want to help me with the garden, you said, please do go ahead and write it up some time, all the stories that you’ve been accumulating against me for years, everything that you sit and think up about me, so that I can read it, because I don’t get the whole picture, only the tirades and the obscure parables.
Go ahead and write yourself, it’s no use your trying to pretend all of a sudden that you’re interested in what I think, I’ve been thinking it for a long time and I’ve been saying it for a long time, from the very start. Your problem is that that you don’t notice a thing, Milla. And now all of a sudden you want me to be your gardener, get knotted, I say.
You were sorry for him. His face and still-fit body were at last starting to show their age. It wasn’t only yourself, you realised, you wanted to console him as well with the garden, you wanted to soothe him as well. You woke up one Sunday morning towards six o’clock with the garden layout practically complete in your mind.
Jak was away, the house was quiet. On Sunday mornings Agaat was off duty. You walked to the kitchen to make yourself some coffee. On an impulse you walked out into the backyard in your nightdress and knocked on the upper door of the outside room. It was wide open.
Come, I’m making us some nice coffee and rusks, I have a wonderful idea, Agaat, you must help me.
You started talking before you’d seen her. Your words dried up when you looked into her eyes.
The curtains were open. The room was bright with light. Agaat was sitting and embroidering in the deep chair in front of the window, her bare feet on a little mat of sewn-together moleskins. She was without her cap. Her hair radiated in combed-out peaks from her head. It was the first time in twenty years that you’d seen her without her cap. You felt as if you’d caught her naked, but you stood there and kept gazing.
The unkempt hair mass made her look feral. You wanted to look away, but you couldn’t. The hair filled the otherwise tidy room like a conspiracy against everything in