Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [303]
And the Southern Cross, was it visible to her as it always lies above Grootmoedersdrift in the last half of December? Tilted on the rib, a cast anchor?
Was there a trilling? Did I feel the chill under my back? Was there an unevenness under my shoulders? Were my wings properly folded under me? Were the four corners of the Milky Way squared? And the sides, were they dug down plumb?
And the song? Did I hear it then? The song of which the ending is like the beginning? Arising muffled from a dark place?
A tree grows in the earth
And blooms in beauty—
O tree!
For hours it went on, sometimes at long intervals. I sang along, in my dream I could sing, a second voice.
And on the tree grows a branch,
a comely branch,
a lovely branch!
Later the words submerged in the depths soared up and from the heights floated over the yard, a great coloratura voice out of the mountain, words that tied the long rope of cause and effect together in a noose.
Then the child laughed,
a comely laugh, a lovely laugh!
Then the child laughed with the woman,
the woman sits on the bed,
the bed comes forth from the feather,
the feather comes forth from the dove,
the dove hatches from the egg,
the egg lies in the nest,
the nest is on the branch,
the branch grows on the tree,
the tree grows in the earth,
and blooms in beauty—
o tree!
In my end is my beginning. Now it’s morning.
A new sound!
The new footfall of Agaat, as if she’s lost weight overnight.
What do I hear? The locks of a suitcase being opened, old-fashioned sprung clips that click as if they’ve been oiled? When is she going to approach and open my eyes so that I can see what’s happening?
Her shadow falls on my bed, on my skin. Out of the coolness materialises a hand. How light her hand is on my forehead! And now on my cheeks, how different are her palms!
They are poised now for the final chord. For the last kneading. As good as it gets, they say. No more we can do for you. A bread is a bread mixed like that and risen like that and at some point it has to be baked. And music isn’t music if it carries on for ever. There’s an introit and an amen. That’s the minimum for a mass. Even the fantasy for solo harp has to conform to the requirement of closure. Once touched, once sounded, even the last note must eventually die away.
Here we have now the taking-off of my eyepatches, the pulling-off of my plasters, the casting-off of the cotton wool. Shaft by shaft the light opens up. Pale red is the dawn behind my lids. The pitch is soaked off with cool wet swabs. And here are her finger-tips now on my eyelashes. To pull them apart. To risk it. As I taught her.
She arose out of that grave of mine last night.
She went up into the mountain. Now it’s my turn, now she’s coming to fetch me from the water. I strain to keep up, to get where she is, to do my bit.
Ag, that I could speak now! I would want to ask her if she remembers. The butterflies we picked out of pools. After the showers that fell so unseasonably that first year after I got her. Too heavy to fly, trapped by the rain. We took them out of the mud, blew on the stuck-together wingtips until we found fingerholds, carefully, carefully like wet scraps of tissue paper we pulled the wings apart so that one shouldn’t come off on the other.
Slowly we did it with much tsk-ing and ai-ing from me, because she herself wasn’t yet speaking then. For hours on end we kept at it there with the dripping of the last drops and the calling of the frogs in our ears. We placed the butterflies in the sun, dozens of them, as we opened them up, on the earth wall of the irrigation furrow. Then we sat down on the other side with our chins on our drawn-up knees and waited.
Who’s the first to see something move, I played with her. We stared fixedly. As if dead the little creatures lay.
I wasn’t sure. I was taking a chance. I remembered vaguely from my childhood that it could work. I saw her looking at the half-dead little things in the puddles, with