Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [40]
Quite satisfactory under the circumstances, says Agaat, a slight little cloudiness, but nothing to fret about.
She pages the calendar back, taps on it once before she replaces it in the hole for November. She replaces the magnifying glass in the drawer. Ting, go the dressing table’s swing-handles as she slams shut the drawer with her thigh. She knows I’m peeping at her.
She throws off my covers. She wrings out the washcloth, gives me one quick wipe between the legs. It’s too hot. She knows very well it’s too hot.
I keep my eyes shut.
Pees like a mare, says Agaat, nothing wrong with the pee.
I wait for her to cover me again, I’m cold.
She waits for me to take the bait.
A pretty light yellow. Clear except for the little trail. And not at all over-sharp on the nose, she says, just about perfect pee.
What can I reply to that? What acrobatics of eyelids to convey: Your sarcasm is wasted on me. If I could die to deliver you, I would do so, today. Go and find somebody else to pee perfection for you on command. You’re the one who wants to be perfect. You want me to be perfect. We must not be lacking in any respect. If you can do without, I must be able to do without, that’s what you think.
A perfect nurse. A perfect patient.
As I taught you.
According to the book.
What more can anybody expect? you think. And what sticks in your gullet is my surplus neediness, and that you no longer know who I am, and that I’ve changed, that I’m still, every day that I lie here, changing. And that I require something specific from you.
I open my eyes. She’s standing next to my bed with one hand folded into the other.
Everything’s fine, Agaat, I signal, don’t get so het up about nothing, I’m as contented as a little snail in a salad.
But that’s too easy. She’s not looking for an easy victory. She wants to see me angry. She wants to see insurrection. She wants to see what insurrection looks like in the spine of a paraplegic. In my chest I feel a sigh. I have too little breath to sigh. A groan escapes me. I feel tears. I hold them back, but it’s too late, she’s already caught me at it.
Time for your exercises, she says, the chin jutting out. Nothing like movement to lift the spirits, she says, and to get those old guts of yours going.
Your arse, I signal.
Seize the day, says Agaat. She opens the curtains, light streams into the room.
The bedclothes are all pulled off the bed, yanked out at the foot-end, the mattress quakes under me, the bedsocks are stripped off my feet.
No, I gesture, please not now, I’m tired. I close my eyes again, slowly. Last defence, play dead, play at aestivation. Wild pea.
Tired, what’s with tired! Doctor’s orders are doctor’s orders! says Agaat.
Cunt.
Hey! says Agaat, such language! Come now, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake.
She bends over me and picks my arms up by the wrists and moves my hands in a slow applauding motion.
One, two, three, one, two, three, we greet, we greet, the mighty sun!
Nice deep breaths, she says.
She brings my wrists next to my sides, suddenly drops them.
Oops, she says.
She’s at the foot of the bed. Fast. This is still just warming-up. She presses her fists against the undersides of my feet in a kneading motion, a mimic of pedals under my soles. One pedal is weaker than the other.
Busy little feet, she says.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Any complaints so far, Mrs de Wet? She doesn’t look up from my feet.
She moves around quickly to the side of the bed, faces me head-on. Her voice a parody of