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By Root 891 0

nowadays possible for all kinds of handicaps. It depends on what your ultimate goal is with someone like that, he says. Half provoking, as if he suspects me of something. Got annoyed with the man, as if I had to account for myself to him. I’ll work on her myself until she’s caught up, I said. I’ll look after her, she has nobody else on the face of the earth. There are few people who are prepared to do so much for the underprivileged, Mrs de Wet. Drily. Felt humiliated when I walked out of there. What kind of attitude is that to somebody who wants to do something that everyone is forever preaching and praying about? Love thy neighbour as thyself? Then they should by rights rather be asking: What can we do to help you with the poor child on whom you’ve taken pity? Hypocrites! The old wall-eyed nurse Schippers and so-called highly educated Sister Goedhals with their po faces in their white uniforms, tchi, tchi, on the crêpe-soled shoes, they stared me out of the door of the consulting room, as if I were trespassing on their territory, as if I’d polluted it. That’s the last time that I’ll take them Christmas prunes! How is the world supposed to become a better place if that’s how the medical profession feels about the under-privileged?

Bought a cup of ice-cream for A. and myself afterwards from the café. Needed it. Went and sat in a quiet spot next to the river with her. Couldn’t get the ice-cream into her. Knuckle in the mouth. Quite closed up all over again. On the way back bought a celluloid windmill on a stick and showed her how it works. Sang her an old song, The Magic Mill, from my childhood and was moved to tears by it myself.

Turn the mill in the mountain’s fall

turn the mill in the sea

turn the mill in the time of joy

nobody ever content can be.

She didn’t want to take it from me. I held it out of the car window with one hand so that it could spin.

Turn fine the good white salt

turn soft the falling snow

grind small the grains of wheat

nothing’s too hard for the mill of God.

Watched her in the mirror. Sits there with large eyes fixed in her face. It looks as if she’s crying without tears.

Nothing to cry about, Aspatat, I say, we’re getting you ready for life, that’s all. Just the tiniest flickering when I mention her name. But it’s not your real name, I say. Your name you still have to be given.

Still 4 January after supper

Had a terrible storm of crying, couldn’t stop. Too many emotions for one day I suppose. Jak says I’m putting it on. He says it’s New Year’s disease.

She would take in absolutely nothing. No tea. No jelly. So took her to the room early. I can’t any more. Feel as if I have to start all over. Have just been to peer through the slot at what she’s doing. Sits in the corner all hunched up with rigid eyes and looks at the door. She’s cottoned on to the spy-slot. I put all the drawn teeth into her shoes so that the mouse can bring money.

Can still not stop crying. Don’t know what about.

Jak mocks me by repeating the rhymes that I say to her.

Oh bat oh bat

butter and bread

you come in here

you’re good as dead!

He says I mustn’t blubber now, I must now chew what I’ve bitten off, he says I must go and cry somewhere else, he wants to sleep. So now I’m sitting here in the living room. The house is heavy and still. It feels as if a disaster has struck. Is it of my doing?

6 January 1954

Jelly for breakfast, afternoon and evening. That’s all she’ll eat. I can see the mouth is still sore from the drawing of the teeth. Sit with her in the garden in the morning. Sing everything that comes into my head, talk non-stop everything I can think of, all the names of the flowers. Clack my teeth, smack my lips, click my tongue, show all the speaking mouth parts. Imitate all sounds, brrr goes the tractor, bzzz goes the bee, clippety-clop gallops the horse, moo says the cow, baabaa says the sheep.

Tried to explain her surname, Lourier, to her with the twigs of the laurel tree. Aspatat Lourier, down at the weir, Aspatat Lourier feels no fear. She slowly started