• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

And then she came upright. Her strong hand under my buttocks so that I couldn’t slide off her. Her clothes against my stomach and breast hard and coarse before I could feel the warmth of her body.

On my horse my shiny dappled ho-o-o-rse, with a brand-new saddle ’n bit! How now, she asked softly on the in-breath.

Had she cursed?

There was something by which I could feel the decision.

A ridge that gathered in the cloth of her dress.

And then something beyond the ridge, a boundary, a step, right through herself.

Then she got into the bath with me.

Shoes and all.

Squats with me lower and lower, arranges my legs on either side of her until we both can sit, with a plash, a splash, her dress a bladder of air around her, a black rampart against my stomach, the black blacker yet as far as the water is sucked up her back, the white bow wilted.

I could still hear the tap, plink-plink, in the water, could hear the bluegums siffling through the chink of the bathroom window, a plover flying up, the dog nosing its dish over the cement of the backyard.

How long did we sit like that? I felt her breath against me, a support under mine. Deep breaths with intervals between.

I must have fallen asleep like that with my head against her back.

I woke up when she opened the tap to add hot water. She stirred it with her hands on both sides to distribute it, closed the tap, still remained sitting like that. The grandfather clock chimed. Quarter past eight. My time expired.

Then she straightened her legs and pushed back so that I could lean against the back of the tub. And she got up, with the dress clinging to her lower body. She pulled it away from her legs but the heavy cloth clung again, her thighs like two tree trunks.

Dripping out of the bath.

Sit just like that and don’t go to sleep again I’m coming now, she signalled with her eyes. Without twitching a muscle. As if she got into the bath with me fully-clothed every day.

Schlup-thud, schlup-thump, slowly down the passage in the wet shoes.

Never have I heard her walk so slowly. Never so heavily, a horse under a coat marching two legs to a side through a drift, hearse and drummer following.

But that was my mother’s funeral, her theatrical directions.

What will mine be like?

It’s in Agaat’s hands.

Does one wash a body before laying it out? With soap? With carbolic?

Agaat will wash me, I’m sure, pure I shall meet my Maker, whiter than snow before she crosses my hands for me.

Will she be able to resist straightening my fingers?

Perhaps she’ll splint my hands.

Perhaps she’ll break my fingers.

What will it be like when the funeral eaters have left?

I see her standing at the gate when the last guests have left, when Jakkie’s gone back to Canada. The gate will hold her, its silver inner cross, the tensed wires and the pipes of which it’s constructed.

She won’t be able to turn back immediately.

She’ll feel the hasp with the fingertips of the little hand, even though she knows it’s in place, feel the black iron ring, the double wire hook over which it slides. Her other hand, the strong one, will enclose the upper pipe, let go and grasp again so that the knuckles show white.

It won’t be the first time. So she stood every day when Jakkie went to school by bus, and every time after that when he went away after weekends or holidays. Then I had to go and fetch her there, or call her back from the stoep.

Come, Agaat, we must go and pull potatoes! Come, we must go and plait onions, come, the hanslammers are bleating for their bottles!

Come, little Agaat, we have to slaughter your last hanslam and the ear you may keep this time.

She’ll stand there and nobody will call her.

The dogs will sniff at her hems. They’ll press their wet muzzles into the backs of her legs. Jump up against her so that she’d be thrown slightly off balance.

Come, Agaat, whatever are you standing like that for.

The gate of Grootmoedersdrift. Yard gate.

Gate of Agaat’s world.

She’ll lift the black iron ring of the hook and then let