Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [220]
You took your time over every map, coloured in the levels unhurriedly, and kept talking softly all the time as if to yourself before presenting the end result at higher volume.
Coax, you thought, soft-soap, even it if takes hours. At length you got up to fetch a jar of green-fig preserve, Agaat’s favourite, from the pantry shelf. It was eleven o’clock and perhaps she could be won over with something to eat. Bread and butter and green figs. Anything to get her to open her mouth.
How about something special for the two old sweet-tooths on a sunny Sunday morning, you called airily from the pantry, and added even more airily.
So what do you say, Agaat? Do you feel up to it?
With a scraping sound you dragged the stepladder across the pantry floor and mounted its creaking rungs. You had to gain a bit of time to consider what your next move would be, perhaps a suggestion to go outside, to view the area under consideration, to asses the old garden as it was? That might bring some relief to the atmosphere, a displacement away from the square table-top where you were trapped together, something to break through the tension of the presentation and approval.
But the tension was even more palpable there where you were standing four shelves high on a rickety stepladder facing several seasons’ jars of preserved fruit, chutneys, jams, syrups and pickles.
Suddenly the thought occurred to you to fall off the ladder. That would be an instant solution. All balances would be restored in the wink of an eye. You would be paralysed with shock and pain and Agaat would jump to help and attend to you, and then you’d be able to exploit the situation of badly sprained employer to get her where you wanted her.
Where exactly you wanted Agaat, was what you asked yourself while you read the labels.
Albertas (old orchard) thick syrup 1970, Clingstone (old orchard) in brandy syrup 1971, Quince jelly 1973, Prickly-pear syrup 1975, Fine apricot 1980, Whole-fruit apricot and peach pickle (curried) 1981, Peach pickle (chilli) 1981.
Every preserving-jar in front of you on the shelf Agaat had handled, the picking, the peeling, the slicing, the boiling, the bottling, the labels were all in her upright handwriting.
Wholefruit kumquat jam (front orchard) 1972, Lemon marmalade 1972, Bitter orange marmalade, Wild watermelon (Gdrift, dryland), Sourfig cinnamon-sugar syrup (Witsand dunes), Green-fig (Pink fig tree) 10 October 1980.
You felt dizzy. For a moment the fall was a definite possibility. You supported yourself against the shelf.
Then you saw Agaat beneath you, head buried in one of the garden books that you’d set out on the table, the strong hand firmly clamped around one leg of the ladder.
Are you managing here? she asked. I see here they also talk of colour schemes.
The tone was sticky with sanctimoniousness. You were recalled from the faint to sudden fury. You could sweep off the whole shelf of bottles with your arm onto her head. She wouldn’t even know what hit her. A cluster bomb of preserves.
Jakkie phoned yesterday, she began, her voice low.
He says they called him on the carpet to ask who this Agaat-person is and why her letters arrived sometimes open, sometimes gummed shut. They’re scared of sabotage, he says, but he doesn’t understand it, because it’s mainly the other side’s people who are sent letter-bombs, he’s scared his superiors will think he’s turned wrong or something and it’s the secret police who want to eliminate him. He says he’s had it with war. He says he has nightmares.
That’s how your garden began.
After her deposition Agaat took the garden books to the outside room and made her own study of them. You kept thinking of the letter. Would she have seen it, you wondered? Would she have looked in your bag? When she went to take out the new pills from the chemist? You tried to remember