Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [255]
Are you going to hand me your starched cap to hold for a moment before you take it back again, you who remain behind?
They shut your mouth for you, Jak and Agaat. From that night that you fell into the ditch onto the rotten cow. And by the autumn of the following year they’d started collaborating on planning Jakkie’s birthday feast. A farewell birthday.
You gathered that he’d had his fill of the Defence Force, he was considering a career as a civilian pilot, but first he had to serve out his contract. Agaat knew more, you could see it on her face.
You wrote to Jakkie asking him who all you should invite. Somewhat abruptly he replied: Invite who you want to.
You were affronted. Don’t be so ungrateful, Jakkie, you told him on the telephone, all we’re trying to do is arrange something pleasant for you.
Then he sent a list: Gaf’s Jurie, Lieb’s Hugo, Flip’s Erik.
Jak took out his disappointment on you. He threatened Jakkie with his inheritance to make him stay on in the Air Force. That you picked up a few times when he was talking to him on the telephone.
In the evenings after supper Jak recalled Agaat from the kitchen. She had to present her planning for the feast to him. Ostentatiously spiteful pleasure Agaat derived from this. She ignored you. And Jak ignored you. Mockingly they imitated your style of entertaining to the last detail.
The flower garden must look its best, Jak said, as if he’d ever felt anything for the garden.
With red felt-tipped markers they ticked off on their lists every task completed, a mimicry of your method of doing.
You lost your appetite during this time, mostly stayed in your room, listened to Agaat regulating the movements on the yard and in the house. Your house was filled with a clattering and a shifting and a bumping, creaking floorboards, the chirring of newspaper on the window panes, incessant footsteps, sweeping and scrubbing, the clipping of sheep-shears in the garden. You plugged your ears with cotton wool and Vaseline.
In the evening you took your place at the table when Agaat rang the bell. She avoided your eyes, carried her perfect meals to the table, filled your plates and remained standing mutely behind your chairs. You scrabbled around in the food with your fork. Little Miss Muffet is stuffed, Jak would say, stuffed with her pills and her tears. As a reprimand he would hold out his plate with a large gesture for a second helping.
Agaat was imperturbable, you can still see her, how she places herself before the table to dish up for him, her hands in the air, her face in the shadow of the lampshade. You were hypnotised by the wrists in the starched white cuffs, the strong hand carving with the knife, the weak hand, deep in its sleeve, supporting the meat platter, nudging closer the gravy boat. You couldn’t look away from Agaat’s hands, the doing-hand and the helping-hand, the white and the black and the brown of Agaat’s arms and hands under the bright light on the spotless damask. She never put a finger wrong.
Jak drank a lot at supper. A renewed kind of garrulousness was generated by this. No longer furious, no longer passionate, but bitter, and cynical, and despairing.
The baas of Grootmoedersdrift, he would say, with his glass in the air, drinks to Agaat.
Later you came to know his refrain.
All hail the skivvy! The baas prefers the tyranny at one remove!
Keep my glass filled, Agaat, he said, but keep your madam sober, it’s her fate not to be allowed to carouse with her subjects.
And for Agaat our most total of teetotallers, Jak often said, her I shall keep topping up with words until one day she erupts in eloquence, pissed with wisdom. That’s what always happens to those who know and don’t say!
Agaat smirked when he talked like that.
What was to happen to you all? Something inexorable was hanging over you. The law and the prophets was the phrase haunting your mind all the time. But by that stage you’d long since given up reading the Bible.
Even for that Agaat made