Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [300]
27 October 1959
Lay awake all night about A. She’s always been inclined to disappear but now it’s getting too bad. Saar & Lietja say they find her roaming with her reading-book down there by the labourers’ cottages but she runs away when they call hr. Must be looking for company shame. I suppose I must tackle the facts of life. Shouldn’t be difficult she knows about covering & lambing & calving & all creatures great & small birds & bees. Came to tell me the other day she’d uncoupled the terrier single-handedly when one of the labourers’ dogs got stuck in her again.
3 November 1959
Really rather put out by conversation with Beatrice this morning. Suspect she drove over on purpose to come & bring me the news. Apparently people are gossiping about A.’s situation & it seems the dominee’s wife has plenty to say on the subject. No it would appear we’re involved in ‘subtly undermining community values’ & defeating the ends of the political policy of the authorities & what would happen if everybody did what I’m doing with A.
A good question I suppose.
B. just carries on & on: Yes it will jeopardise Jak’s position in the church & the farmers’ associations & the regional branch of the party here if we don’t set our house in order & heaven knows what else.
I say Jak’s church is skin-deep anyway & the child means so much to me & even though Jak & I differ on the subject I still feel as though I’m a better wife to Jak because I have more love in my heart & can care for an independent creature. B. looks at me askance but I carry on. Through hr I see the world through fresh eyes I say & I ask: Does she Beatrice have any idea what it is to be childless?
B. sits there with a sceptical slant to hr face & drinks hr tea with her little finger aloft. That’s all very good & pretty & noble she says but I should really think very well about the long-term consequences not only for us but for the broader community & also for A. herself. At this her mouth contracts into a nasty little slit. (J. always says it’s the can’t-get-the-knot-through-the-hole mouth & he doesn’t want to know what she looks like down south.)
Must say it’s an aspect of B. that I haven’t been so aware of before but I’m noticing it more & more frequently of late. I know old Thys belongs to the Broederbond & he’s now proposed Jak but Jak feels little for the idea. I know why: They read too many books there. Beatrice says old Thys pores over the dictionary every evening it’s way beyond him.
I say I’m not sure about such secret organisations & I vote Nationalist but I’m not ashamed to object in public to such skulduggery. B. says it’s top secret & who am I now to think I can turn against the leaders & intellectuals of my people I’ll cut my own throat & Jak’s as well if that’s my attitude & I’d better realise on which side my bread is buttered & ‘they’ can make things very difficult for people who are not well disposed to the national cause & we’ll never reach the top rung if ‘they’ know Jak de Wet’s wife swims upstream however learned & refined she may be. So I went off to make tea to keep my temper within bounds & when I came in again she carried on exactly where she’d left off.
Yes, she says, A. can’t do a thing with the education that I’m giving her & what use does one in any case have for an over-educated servant on a farm. She’s not a servant I say & then B. said well she hasn’t noticed other people’s children of the same age sweeping stoeps & feeding chickens & serving tea to guests & calling their mothers Nooi. I say A. & I understand each other it’s play names & play work it’s a special relationship. B. says what’s the use the two of us thinking it’s a game & it’s special & everybody else in the country thinks it’s abnormal & a sin before God.
Will have to go & talk to the dominee myself. Can’t altogether believe what B. tells me about the judgement of the pastorie. After