Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [286]
Agaat struggled with the paper, embarrassed with the little hand that didn’t want to grip properly in front of an audience. Jakkie took it out of her hand and stripped off the sticky-tape and gave it back to her.
Take it out, he gestured with his head.
It was a shimmering, shiny raw silk headscarf, plain red. It slithered and shone in the lamplight as Agaat shook out the folds.
You saw Agaat’s eyes flashing. How could she say: Blow in my face so that I can smell whether you’ve been drinking? Could she tell from his words that he was too eloquent? How far is it permitted for a servant to investigate the breath of her kleinbaas?
You thought of the scene of Jakkie five years old blowing into Agaat’s face where she was standing before him on her knees.
Stole chocolates!
Chewed fennel seeds!
Ate apricot jam on your bread! she could guess with shut eyes.
Why hadn’t you tried to talk Jakkie out of the idea of flying?
You took him by the shoulder. Hard he is, you thought, far removed from me. Even without the stiff blue serge of his captain’s uniform his body felt unyielding.
You want to make a spectacle of her. That’s all you said.
He removed your hand from his body and put it aside as if it were a marmot. You were close enough, you could smell the liquor on his breath. He had a contrary look in his eyes.
Ma, he said, what happens now, is between me and Agaat. My bit I’ve done . . .
He looked away before he carried on talking.
She’ll get into that Cessna with me and feel how it feels to be as free as a bird. Because that’s what she’s scared of. That’s what you’re all scared of. You’re more scared of freedom than you are of the communists. Even if it fell into your laps you wouldn’t recognise it or know what to do with it.
So I’m not permitted to say what I want to say. Agaat’s orders, she actually thinks she can prevent the whole assembled Overberg’s evening being spoilt for them here. Then she has to pay for it. I’m not the one who’s making a spectacle of her, she’s making a spectacle of herself. It was on her behalf amongst others that I wanted to speak. So if I may not do it, and she can not do it, better then that we go up into the air together.
Jakkie glared at you.
Perhaps she’ll be able to tell me at last up there in the clouds where she came from and how she ended up here on Grootmoedersdrift, in her stupid cap and school shoes, there in the back in the outside room, so faithful, so prematurely aged and so set in her ways, with her embroidery and her writing pads, a tyrant over others here on the farm.
They hate her, they mock her. It’s you who made her like that, Ma, you and Pa. She’s more screwed up than Frankenstein’s monster.
You sound like your father, you wanted to say, it’s a different story, but it’s the same arrogance.
But you didn’t. You were ashamed that he could say one thing and do the opposite and not notice it.
You went in the jeep to the landing strip, at speed over the drift and slip-slide round the bend on the other side of the bridge, because it had been flooded till recently. Jakkie was driving, a whole line of cars following with guests who didn’t want to miss it.
You’re not going to fly with me in that apron and with that white cap on your head, Jakkie said to Agaat.
I am, said Agaat.
You are not your apron and your cap, Agaat, Jakkie said, and turned round to her.
I am, Agaat said.
Well, then tonight you’re going to feel what it’s like for a change not being yourself, because that’s what you wanted from me and I did as you said. Where’s the scarf?
I’m not wearing the scarf, she said.
Take off that bishop’s cap of yours and tie on the scarf, Gaat. And off with that apron, this moment!
Then look in front of you, said Agaat.
Aitsa, Jak said, now the current’s flowing!
They laughed, your husband and your son.
You saw sparks, a rustling of the static electricity in the scarf as Agaat pulled it out of her apron pocket. You got out, following Jak and Jakkie.
Around the runway there was a bustle of men setting up the two rows of tractor headlights for the take-off. A few