Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [245]
6 March
I encourage her to touch things and tug at them, open her hands, to give, receive. Go and fetch my little book, I say, so that I can write down how you are. She knows exactly what I’m talking about, brings it and opens it for me on a blank page. It’s going better by the day now. Must silence her because she grabs the silver hand-bell in the dining room and then J. comes to eat and the food isn’t nearly ready. It’s just the talking that must still be sorted out, everything else will follow quickly once we’ve got that on track.
11 March
I play shadow puppets for her against the wall. Rabbit, snake, camel, dove. She opens her hands now, the strong hand more readily than the weak, the sly hand, the monkey paw, as I call it. I take the little hand in mine, I open and close it, open and close so that it can become human, I say, but she doesn’t like it, she always keeps it half out of play, the weak arm always half out of the way, as if it’s private property. I count to five on the fingers of the good hand, I give them names. Pinkie, Golddinky, Laureltree, Eye-washer, Bugsquasher. At night I leave a candle-end with her. I peep through the slot to see what she’s doing. She lies and stares at the flame for hours. Plays shadows against the wall with her hands. Weak hand makes the snout, ears, tail. Strong hand the neck of the buck, the head of the horse. Earlier this evening I thought I heard a whispering on a long in-breath like somebody counting sheep and not wanting to lose tally, I suppose I mustn’t expect miracles. She doesn’t sleep before the candle is burnt down. Every evening before bedtime she brings the candlestick so that I can fit a new candle-end, she carries it to her room as if it’s a great treasure.
14 March, seven o’clock
Agaat can talk! So I wasn’t wrong about the whispering! She talks to herself in bed but I can’t make out what. The whispering is on the in-breath. I see the little chest swell as she takes the breath. Have just gone to press my ear against the slot, a rustling of little sentences, almost voiced, repetition of the same word or phrases, but I only now and again catch something. The rhymes I say to her all the time? Fragments of the stories that I tell? Granny, why are Granny’s ears so big, Granny, why are Granny’s teeth so long. I know she understands. When I’m telling a story, she looks at me wide-eyed. Sometimes I get the impression she’s on the point of asking me something about the stories. But it’s as if she’s assessing me, as if she’s scared that I’m going to take something from her if she opens her mouth.
Quarter past seven
I could spoil everything if I exert pressure now. Have been to listen at the door of the back room again, this time it was unmistakable. What do I hear there?
In the road is a hole, in the hole is a stone, in the stone is a sound. In one sustained in-breath she said the riddle!
Her finger was on the tip of her tongue, as I always have it when I’m saying the riddle to entice her to talk, as if language is something one can taste.
I went to sit on the side of her bed. I won’t look, I whispered, I look elsewhere, then you tell me what you lie here and say to yourself, won’t you? I swung my legs onto the bed so that I could lean against the bedpost, tried to relax, so that she could relax as well. Wanted her half to forget that I was there and just carry on with her bedtime stories. Sat there for probably