Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [28]
From the corner of my eye I see her hitch up her shoulder. She rustles a finger through the pile of little blue books on the chair.
Or something from your own pen? That always interests you doesn’t it? The good old days, ‘Agaat and the garden of Grootmoedersdrift 1980’? But this one is empty. It says ‘paradise’ at the top and then it’s just a list of plants.
She runs her finger down the page. Moonflower, flowering quince, silver birch, she reads. She slaps shut the book.
Pity it’s not the whole story, she says, her mouth pleated, it’s just a skeleton. And the gardening was quite pleasant. She taps the front of the book.
Perhaps I should write it up in here myself. But perhaps we should finish furnishing my paradise first before we start on yours, don’t you think? We’re right in the middle of it now. Hr little rm that you fixed up so nicely for hr in the back here, remember? How did the baas always say? Something for the Guinness Book of Records. First time in history. Interior decoration for an outside room. Thought you could hide it from me. Then the ounooi came to do inspection and left the door open. Then Saar saw. But by then I’d known for a long time.
Agaat is trying to provoke me. I give no quarter. I keep my eyes neutral.
Ad nauseam I’ve heard it in a variety of performances. Perhaps she’s going to sing it again this evening. Seven aprons, seven caps, one dozen white socks and a little vase for homeliness.
Perhaps she’ll beat time with her shoe in her hand on the armrest of the chair. That would be better. Anything would be better than her sitting still and reading and glaring at me every now and again as if I’d done her some wrong.
Let her leap, let her dance, let her grab one little book after the other and put it down and spin around in the middle of the room, a starched-aproned dervish without the blessing of release.
As long as she understands I also have my rights.
I want to see my ground, I want to see my land, even if only in outline, place names on a level surface. I want to send my eyes voyaging.
Perhaps you feel like a video?
She’s not looking at me, she’s looking at the books on the little pile. I saw her counting them the other evening. There are sixty-three. I thought there were more.
The one about the snow wolves? Or the black-and-white killer whales? Or the giant bats of the Amazon?
A grimace on her mouth. As if she can see me hooking tiny damp claws into the mane of a horse, how I attach myself to the jugular vein, as if there’s a close-up of my ingurgitating mouth-parts.
Anything rather than having to confess that I’m locked up here as if behind thick one-way glass and she’s out there and doesn’t know what on earth it is that I want.
Or a story movie? Before I go to exchange them tomorrow?
A Passage to India?
Where Angels Fear to Tread?
On Golden Pond?
How many syllables can you speak without saying an ‘m’? Utter how many sentences without using the word ‘map’? Think how many thoughts before you stumble upon the idea of a schematic representation of the world?
You’d think it would be indispensable, like the air that you breathe.
My cheeks are wet.
I close my eyes. I keep them shut. I give up. I flicker my eyelids without opening them. Cheeky, that’s supposed to mean, surely you can see it’s something completely different, get the hell out of my room with your damned lists.
I hear her turn on her heel. Rapid steps down the passage to the bathroom. She returns with a warm cloth. She wipes my face in two swipes.
Stop blubbering, you’ll choke, say her eyes.
It’s tooth-polishing time, says her mouth.
I flicker through my tears, polish yourself.
Aitsa! says Agaat, how-now.
She pushes the plug of the electric toothbrush into the socket. She holds the green toothbrush with the rotary head in the air to test it. Tsiiimmm, it goes, tsiiimmm-tsoommm. She unscrews the lid of the powder-stuff. She presses the head of the toothbrush in it. It’s a dry polish. It tastes of lime, of dust, of blackboard chalk. Against the light I can see the dust particles