Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [222]
After the structures of stone and wood had arisen in Grootmoedersdrift’s new garden, you did most of the work yourselves, sowed the seeds and planted the seedlings and thinned them and transplanted them from the seed trays and made cuttings and tied up the tendrils and scattered the snail poison and sprayed the roses. And now and then transplanted a thing that wasn’t in the right position, or grafted a little struggling tree onto a stronger trunk.
Without Agaat you couldn’t have managed it, you said in your little speech at the first spring celebration the following year. At Agaat’s suggestion you presented a garden festival and fund-raising drive for the border soldiers. You invited the local branches of the WAU and the Women’s Mission Union and the Southern Cross and the tea-drinking was opened by the dominee’s wife with scripture and prayer and closed with a hymn.
You peeped at Agaat where she was standing behind the cake table with her hand held in front of her stomach. Her eyes weren’t shut during the prayer. And with the closing hymn she stared straight into the blue sky and swayed lightly on her heels as she sang along, her black-and-white clothes sharply etched against the purple irises in the bed behind her, her fine descant floating above the hymn there in the open.
O goodness God’s ne’er praised enow, who would it not profoundly move.
who unpacks the boxes from bockmann independent living aids? see the fat green letters on the brown cardboard it’s fall 1994 land of hope and glory who cuts open the brown packing-tape? who pulls off blocks of foamalite and plastic packaging? it’s metal tubes chrome rods support surfaces who reads the instructions? who click-clacks the pieces into one another there they stand my externalised skeletons my walking frames one with legs one with wheels
tarantula or fortuna
choose!
who grabs the spider by the head? who shows the way? this is how you do it you lean forward on the crossbar who says it’s like walking with a little table but without the top? don’t look at your feet your feet are of no importance you drag them after your legs you keep straight you make a rigid knee the other one is like walking with the tea-trolley but without the tea you roll ahead you drag behind the wheels are braked you can adjust them if they turn too easily you fall
who shall tell the walker from the frame? and the wheel from the revolution? the imitator from the imitated?
who walks demonstration laps on the red polished stoep? who turns round at the furthest point with retracted chin with pursed lips? who cries soundlessly without tears?
I see she makes a rigid knee she flattens her feet she drops the arches drops her shoulders they bulge under apron bands her knuckles show white on the chrome
we’ll take both she says
the frame for the morning the wheels for the evening we support your last steps so god willing twofold.
Wednesday 16 December 1953 quarter past three (day one Day of the Covenant!)
The great clean-up has begun. She’s still groggy with the valerian. I thought I’d grasp my opportunity. Cut off the hair and washed with tar medicine and then with shampoo and applied ointment. Bad ringworm. Fiddled out the gouts of ear wax with matches and cotton wool and cut the nails. Big struggle to get the teeth brushed. Gums inflamed, lots of rotten teeth. Milk teeth fortunately, must be extracted, the whole lot while we’re about it. Disinfected the mouth with extract of cloves. The whole body first rubbed with oils and then soaked in a hot bath for half an hour, afterwards scrubbed down with hard sponge and nailbrush and soap. Scabs, raw patches everywhere. Half limp, the little body. Eyes keep falling shut. Look at me, Asgat, I say, everything will turn out all right. Must think up another name.
Dried well and the whole body rubbed with oil again, all the nicks and cuts disinfected and covered with plasters. Full of little black moles. Must have them looked at, some of them don’t seem right to me. Privates extremely