Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [311]
Your mother came out into the passage. Without a word you walked past her and went to your room and started packing your things.
One by one you held your clothes up in front of you in the unsteady light of the generator: Floral smock, sleeveless summer blouse, full-length petticoat hemmed with lace, before you folded them and packed them in the case. The generator switched off. Through the window you caught a glimpse of a torch moving away from the house in the direction of the cottages. You thought of the child there, in the dark, amongst the people you’d seen that afternoon.
Open-eyed you lay in the dark amongst the cases on the bed and thought about what you’d say, to the frowning elders, to the little deacon of the farm collection in his black frock-coat, to the hatted-and-handbagged older women at the ward prayer-meeting, to George the Greek of the Good Hope Café, to sanctimonious Beatrice, to MooiJak de Wet arranging his cravat in front of the mirror before going out on a Saturday evening.
Your neat speech wouldn’t stand up, no matter how often you rehearsed it in your head: Here I stand, I can do no other.
The argument faded before your excitement. Your heart started beating so hard that you had to get up to drink water from the ewer, to light the candle and snuff it again, to stand by the open window looking out over the yard. Your heart. You placed your hand against your neck to feel the pulse.
Here we go round the mulberry bush, went through your head, one two buckle my shoe, blind man’s buff, you’re it, you must hide, you must seek, you’re out, ring-a-ring-a’roses, pocket full of posies, a-tishoo! a-tishoo! we all fall down, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can, four stand in the road four hang in the road, two gore you in the groin and one flicks away flies, what is it? Look at the clouds, do you see the cayman with its pointy tail and do you see the centipede, do you see the Magicman? And the swift-spit snake? Let’s count the horses stamping their hoofs behind the moon and the stars of the Southern Cross and of the Scorpion and the thirty-three fleeces of the thistle till we get sleepy, till we sleep. Outside walks a sheep. Iron on the hoof, pumpkin on the roof, down in the stable all the calves are fast asleep. Do you hear the rainman shuffle-shambling along the Langeberg? Do you see his grey sleeve trailing along the slopes? And the wind in the black pines, and the wind in the ears of wheat hissing over the hills, as far as the ear can hear, the hills of Rietpoel and the hills of Protem, the round-backed hills of Klipdale and Riviersonderend, the dale of rocks and the river without end, swishing and sweeping, one rustling billowing blanket of sweet quivering stalks to where the lands end against the slopes of the mountain of which this side is Over. Overberg. And on the other side the Table Mountain that I’ll go and show you one day when you’re grown up.
The next day you were waiting for them at the back door. You saw the bickering party approaching from afar, hurrying to the yard. Maria with the basket in one hand and the refractory child in the other. And Lys, the eldest daughter by Maria’s first husband. Hessian bag in one hand, gesticulating with the other. According to your mother the only member of the family who was worth anything. She worked in the house. She was the one who tattled the tales of the cast-off child.
Behind you in the kitchen your mother cleared her throat.
Think before you act, Milla, you’re not the only one who’s going to be affected by this, she said. Hard-heeled she stalked into the house.
Sheepishly the little group came to a halt before you. Maria mumbled a greeting, her head hanging. Lys stepped forward, performed an arm gesture, a sweep of the elbow, signifying that she could be trusted as the representative of her family’s interests.