Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [272]
Yes, that’s how you do it! Remind me that I still exist! No lack of imagination! Whatever else may be wanting!
How many hours ago? Perhaps she too can no longer count down my hours cleanly. Perhaps she tallies them now by the sharpening of knives, by blades of grass, by the blooms of the bougainvillea dropping with the lightest of rustlings on the stoep.
My honed, grass-light hours.
The apron bands creaked as she sharpened.
Where are you rowing me to, Agaat, to what coast, to what river mouth?
Seven knives I counted by ear, they’re all there, down to the very thin worn-down little one with the crooked blade for scraping carrots and cucumbers in the kitchen of Grootmoedersdrift. Through my chinks I could see them flashing.
Wings of herons, a stormy sky.
Where are you flying to with blades, Agaat, to which high Langeberg horizon?
The bed sang.
In my closeness she found hollows of marrow for me. What more could I want?
Come and stand here in front of me, you’re big enough to learn to handle sharp objects.
I take her hands in mine, the small hand in my right hand. I press the whetting-rod against her body, the strong hand holds the knife, I show her the stroke, it must sing, I say, come let’s make the knives sing!
Why, she asks, do my hands feel as if they’re asleep for hours after I’ve been sharpening?
That shows you’re doing it right, it means the knowledge is going into you, into your flesh and into your bones so that you won’t forget the lesson: You shall know a good kitchen by the edges of its knives, a farm by the sharpness of its shares and its scythes.
Did I imagine that I heard our whetting-song? On the in-breath?
Hey ho, hitch up the wagon.
Yes, Agaat, the wheat stands white in the fields. The front-cutter mows a swathe through the blades of wheat. Over the contours the wagon rocks with its load of golden sheaves. My bed with shiny railings, filled with Kleintrou and filled with Daeraad.
Can I still believe my ears?
Yes, I heard it, the rustling of newspaper, peels falling on a tin surface. The big enamel bowl from Ma’s time, the one with the three red roses in the base, the white one with the black riffled edge around the top, and the spreading black patches where the enamel has gone. No longer suitable for milk, but good enough for blood, for peels. I could discern it through my fissures, the great white stain catching and reflecting the light, a cloud drifting through the room.
Shall I come to rain? Shall I be brought to fruition? Sweet? A sweeter ending than one would have expected after this? How?
A lengthy peeling it was. Hours on end. A slicing, a grating. At long intervals the chunks plashed into bowls of water.
Why is she whetting and peeling here in my room? Why do I see her shadow low down there on the floor? A shadow on her knees? A cloud dripping onto a cloud?
The smell was green and sweet and raw, traces of beans, lazy housewife, of peas, sugarsnow, of cabbage, of carrots, of turnips and radishes, of freshly-pulled fennel bulbs, the whole vegetable garden below the drift, the irrigation water, the loam darkened with barrow-loads of compost.
With the thud of the boer pumpkin on the floorboards I started to understand.
I was supposed to be able to hear the kitchen. In full concert. Pull out all the stops.
Toccata and fugue.
I had to hear and smell what it would be like when I’m gone. The onset of the funeral meal, with how much conviction it would be undertaken. The preparation for the guests, with concentration, with dedication, with virtuoso fingering.
It was supposed to console me. It was supposed to reassure me. I was in the knives, I was in the peels, in the drawers, in the enamel bowls, I was the rich black compost, I was the soil, and nothing would ever grow without me. Nothing, to the end of time, without my having farmed here, and none of the people remaining here and living off the land.
My last meal. That was what she was preparing for me.