Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [309]
You went still closer. Of iron she smelt, of blood, of soot and grass and through the holes of her clothes you could see the skin moving over her ribs. You saw the small spasm of the diaphragm as the child said her name.
Again all you could make out was a scraping sound.
Ggggg-what? you asked, that’s not a name, say it again for the kleinnooi so that I can hear nicely, come. Gogga? Grieta? Gesiena? Genys?
You turned your head with you ear against the child’s face and imitated the ggggg-sound. You could feel her breath on your face. This time you heard the ggggg clearly, like a sigh it sounded, like a rill in the fynbos, very soft, and distant, like the sound you hear before you’ve even realised what you’re hearing.
That was the beginning. That sound. You felt empty and full at the same time from it, felt sorrow and pity surging in your throat. Ggggg at the back of the throat, as if it were a sound that belonged to yourself.
You stood back and clasped your arms around your body. Something convulsed in your lower belly. You put your hands to your face as if you wanted to trace with your fingers the expression that you felt there to make sure.
You didn’t want to go home right away, wanted to hold it fast a while longer. In such a mood you could only arouse suspicion in your mother’s house. And you wanted to gather it, fold it away inside yourself in a place from which you could safely retrieve it, at night in your bed, in the half-hour of privacy while you were having your bath, on your evening walk.
You walked to the old dam, to the willow trees, the ruin of the little pump house on the water’s edge behind which you would be invisible. There you found a place to sit down, on a tree-root with your feet in the water, and tried to fathom the feeling, the vague sweetness and sorrow. The heat of the summer’s afternoon overwhelmed it, the dizzying sound of the cicadas, the call of the kingfisher on the dry branch in the middle of the dam.
From their grazing on the shallow side of the dam the ducks came swimming towards you. You closed your eyes, tried to melt yourself into the cloudy dark-red that one sees inside one’s eyelids when the sun shines on them.
Ggggg, you said over and over, as softly as you could, under the tone of the cicadas. Under the low chattering of the ducks, under the trail of the willow’s foliage on the bank.
When you opened your eyes the world was bright and strange. You held your breath. You were waiting for something, you looked down at the water in front of you. There was nothing except fine circles on the surface, the water insect and its little twin shadow, the hooked scribble-claws, broader around the ankles as if wearing boots, with also their reflections, and between the two sets of claws, between above and below, a single ripple inscribing the surface of the water with rapidly successive perfect circles, overlapping, circling against one another, fading away, starting anew, a weltering writing on water. A fugue it reminded you of. You could hardly imagine that it was the work of a single creature.
When you got home hours later, your mother was predictably upset.
Where have you been wandering on this blazing Sunday? Something could have happened to you!
Something did, you wanted to say. I myself happened, my almost forgotten self. But you said nothing and went to the pantry and hand on hip inspected the contents of the shelves while trying to steel yourself against the tone of her voice.
Milla, are you going to tell me what’s happening? Just look at your face! You mustn’t come and try your nonsense here with me. No wonder Jak can’t get along with you. What are you blubbering about now?
Your voice sounded heavy and shaky.
I’m blubbering about whirligigs, Mother, about the beauty of their existence, however insignificant, wrinkles on water, circles that vanish without ever having been anything, except that I’ve seen them.
What are you talking about in God’s name, Milla?
I’m talking about the fact that down there in the cottages there’s a child suffering in