Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [39]
Pee and tea is not the problem. Agaat is the problem. She acts stupid. It’s been five days now that I’ve been gesturing there is something, there in the front of the house, in the sideboard, in the front room, with the photo albums.
She doesn’t like the idea that I want to take leave. Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone. Perhaps telepathy works better through piss in the pan than transmitted in waves through the air into the rock-hard skull of Agaat.
Streams of grace abounding, Agaat sings, flow from God above, sacred source of freshness, that was pledged by His love.
I think of the water map. I think of the underground water-chambers in the mountain, of the veins branching from them, of the springs in the kloofs, of the fountains of Grootmoedersdrift, the waterfalls in the crevices. I think of the drift when it’s in flood, the foaming mass of water, the drift in the rain, when the drops drip silver ringlets on the dark water. And just after it’s cleared, when the black-wattle branches sag heavy and sodden over the ditch and the frogs clamour in the drenched grass-thickets on the bank. Memories in me and I awash between heaven and earth. What is fixed and where? What real? If only I could once again see the places marked on the map, the red brackets denoting gates, cattle-grids, sluices, the red is-equal-to sign of the bridge over the drift, first and last gateway over which the livestock of Grootmoedersdrift move and will continue moving when I am gone. Sheep, cattle, cars, lorries, wire cars, mud and time. Slippery, supple, subtle, silvery time.
Maps attend lifetimes. What is an age without maps? I see it, chambers full of idle melancholy cartographers in the timeless hereafter. Hills there surely will have to be in heaven, but eternal, Eternal Humpbacked Hills, and Eternal Fairweather. Idle melancholy meteorologists. What is a real human being? A run-off. A chute of minutes for God the sluicer. He who paves his guttering with people.
Perhaps I’ve been infected by Agaat. She’s blasphemed for a long time.
It’s coming. Here it comes, through my blessed piss-sphincter, first passing of the day.
Good girl, says Agaat. You don’t perhaps want the number two pan as well, seeing that you’re in the swing of things now? Lesson six, remember? You don’t want dung and piss all over everything if you can help it.
Quite right, I flicker, but I’m not a slaughter animal.
She flickers back.
Otherwise we’ll have no choice but to dose you with a Pink Lady again, she says, a Pink Lady for the lady of Gdrift, it’s five days now that her guts have been stuck. Perhaps that’s what’s making her so restless. What goes in must come out, after all, good heavens!
Take away the pan, I gesture.
No, you first drip-dry nicely now. Then we fix up your uppers first.
It’s a quarter-body wash this morning. Half-wash is every second day and full wash every fourth day. A lick and a promise, Agaat calls the quarter-wash.
She wipes my neck and face with a lukewarm cloth. Then my chest. She works in the cloth under my hospital gown, over my shoulders. She brushes my hair with a dry shampoo. She supports my head with the little hand, so that it doesn’t loll or roll. She rubs cream on my face and ointment in the corners of my mouth. Now the neckbrace. Krrts, karrrts, she rips loose and refastens the Velcro until it’s seated properly. It expands all the time. My neck feels loose.
She brings the hand mirror closer. I close my eyes. Take away your mirror. We haven’t looked in the mirror for a long time. I recognise the mood. She wants to torment me. She’s quite capable of digging up the lipstick and mascara from somewhere again.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, says Agaat, who’s the fairest of them all?
I keep my eyes shut. My face flushes hot with defying her. I refuse to look, I wait until she moves away. I hear her adding water to the washbasin. She pulls out the pan from under me. I hear her walk away with it. I peep from the corner of my eye to see what she’s doing. She puts on her glasses, examines