Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [271]
The Lord is my witness, I don’t know if I’m up to this! I sometimes no longer know myself with this child in the house. How is it possible that the small, deformed, pig-headed, mute child in the back room can make me feel like this? It’s she who’s nothing. And all I wanted to do, was to make a human being of her, to give her something to live for, a house, opportunities, love.
I’m frustrated and impatient and I can’t help it, sometimes she nauseates me (yes, I’m ashamed of myself, but it’s true!). The long jaw, the bulbous eyes that can glare so coercively, the untameable woolly mop, the little crank-handle of an arm, the sly manner at times, the cruelty that sometimes breaks through. How does one make a good heart in a creature that’s so damaged? How will I ever put enough flesh on the puny little body? How do I get all her senses and her mind operative? (Not to mention her conscience!). And a will (but obedient!) and a soul? She resists me, she’s a long way from being tamed.
Sometimes I feel as if the child is a dark little storage cubicle into which I stuff everything that occurs to me and just hope for the best and that one day when I open the door, she’ll walk out of there, fine and straight, all her limbs sound and strong, grateful and ready to serve, a solid person who will make all my tears and misery worthwhile. So that I can show all the world: See, I old you! You didn’t want to believe me, did you?
15 November 1954 morning
Saar came to call me just now from the garden in the back, come and see, Mies, what Agaat is playing. On tiptoe through the kitchen door and peep at her from behind the door. Wouldn’t there be an inquisition of the rag doll on the telephone stool! She deliberately places the doll filled with river sand in such a position that she has to fall off. Then she falls off, then she gets a slap, then she falls off, then she gets a finger in the eye!
Sit, doll, sit! If you can’t sit up straight nicely and look at me, and answer me when I speak to you, then I’m phoning the police!
Next thing she clambers onto the telephone stool, takes the receiver off its cradle. Hello, hello police? Come and fetch her, lock her up! She’s full of stuffing! She looks at me cheekily! She plays dumb! She does her business in her panties!
No lack of imagination, whatever else may be wanting!
19
The sharpening of the knives.
How many hours ago? I was still asleep, if you can call it sleep, the drowsy delirium in which I drift.
Sudden swishing sounds in the dark by the bed’s head.
Mighty striking-up. Last movement. Metal on metal. Con brio.
From the movement of air against my face I could infer her position. To and fro the rhythm firmed, a rocking to the tempo of the sleeper. She was whetting without varying the angle of the whetting-rod to my bed, a duller sound close to her body, a high sibilant hiss at the furthest point of the rod. The point of the rod was on the railing at the head of the bed, a whetting-wind over my forehead.
Oh, Agaat, what else will you still think up for me? Sharpening knives over the tip of my comatose nose.
It was the big knife, to judge by the sound, the one with the three silver studs on the handle. And it was the longest whetting-rod, the heavy one with the cast-iron handle, the one that’s stored in the long bottom drawer next to the old Aga because it doesn’t fit anywhere else.
It was a culinary demonstration. How old was she? Not old enough yet to handle sharp objects.
See, you support the rod against your waist and the point you rest on the edge of the table.
But that was long ago. The point of the rod now on the top railing of my bed, close to my head. The point of support the midriff of Agaat.
Dangerous