Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [35]
4 July 1960 ten o’clock morning
Specially went into town heavy of body as I am to go & arrange A.’s savings book at the post office spotted my chance when the coast was clear & put hr baptism certificate & hr inoculation records polio & diphtheria & pox in a velvet drawstring-bag & went & tucked it in under hr underclothes in the top shelf of hr wardrobe.
Checked everything once again more nobody could do & more would be wrong. J. perhaps right on this how would I know. A. mustn’t at this stage get accustomed to more he says then you just get trouble later A. will never make trouble I say J. says it’s not she it’s the other workers who’ll make the trouble because she has privileges that they don’t have. I ask how? you never know the country is restless the kffrs are already growing very brazen in the North & he doesn’t want to see a bunch of brazen htnts in the South it will be a horse of a different colour we don’t want to prepare a Sharpeville for ourselves here in the Overberg he says. I say the undrprvlgd we will always have with us. It’s no use our blinding ourselves to their need.
Beatrice is coming over to tea. Time rests too heavily on her hands the woman. Can’t she understand I’m busy? Truly don’t feel like sanctimonious prattle.
After lunch
This morning a long time in the outside room. Checked everything again if I hadn’t forgotten something.
Seven bloomers maybe two more? in case of accident & then had a thought spread undersheet & remade the bed remember how copiously one can bleed when you’re young.
Curtain in front of the clothes rail doesn’t pull nice & smoothly over the steel wire rubbed with candlewax so that rings don’t make the scraping sound put the candlewax on shelf above wash-table so that A. can re-do it will wear off quickly curtain will just have to be closed always. I had to stop Jak he actually wanted to nail shut the window says he doesn’t want to be confronted with a servant-girl’s bed every time he comes out of the kitchen door it’s not a good idea either that the other workers see how luxuriously A. has it here with the whitefolk.
Rather said nothing about its being my plan for a long time to build new houses for the workers. First for Dawid & them the hovel in which they live is still from Ma’s time & the walls crumbling badly roof leaks & and there’s a whole string of little ones as well from Dawid’s cousins who materialised suddenly. Everything gradually D. will just have to make a plan himself in the meantime will give a few sheets of corrugated iron frm the shearers’ cooking huts. Don’t know what when they come again next season sufficient unto the day.
Now everybody must first just get used to the situation with A. in the backyard.
Before supper
Strange feeling can’t stop writing about the outside room I keep on thinking of something else to add. This mrning I opened the Zion bible on the crate next to the bed & then had another thought & went & fetched the crocheted bookmark from Ma from my Bible placed it in Psm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
Can’t stop scrabbling around there just like a broody hen really. Put a twig of fennel in the little vase then the smell suddenly made me cry must be the hormones that are mixed up. Tears idle tears I know not what they mean.
Rinsed the kettle & boiled a bit of water on the two-plate stove. Suddenly felt I wanted to have a cup of tea there. Wanted to test A.’s mug & taste the rusks I baked I made the rooibos sweet as she would like it & dunked the rusk good batch nice rich buttermilk. Tin mug too hot to hold burnt my fingers waited for it to cool & took all A.’s other reading matter out of the crate where I had put it away & so read the introduction by Her Honour Mrs Dr Verwoerd in the embroidery book & must say was really quite inspiring: The book conceived in love for the development of the nation & the homely atmosphere that embroidery