Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [50]
And somebody must wipe my tears and somebody must see to it that I don’t choke.
Because the map I must still see.
They must unroll it in the dust and place stones on its corners so that it doesn’t roll shut. Four red-blue shards of shale.
They must remove the brace so that my neck can bend.
They must take my head in their hands so that it doesn’t become too heavy, and lift it up and lower it as the rod points on the map and the hand points over my world, so that I can see the map of Grootmoedersdrift and its boundlessness. The blue waverings on paper of the Korenland River to the west, from the Duivenhoks and the Buffelsjag on the east, the dense contours, fingerprint-like, of the Langeberg in the north and the Potberg in the south. The square dots of the encircling places: Suurbraak, Heidelberg, Witsand, Infanta, Struisbaai, Port Beaufort, Skipskop, Malgas, Swellendam, Stormsvlei, Riviersonderend, Caledon, Bredasdorp, and Barrydale just over the Tradouw and Montagu and Robertson and Worcester.
And amongst the mountains and towns and rivers, with the straight red line of the bypass traversing its body, the extent of my farm. The dotted lines of the boundaries, the white dots of the beacons, the green of bushes and orchards and the gardens in its domain, the silver dams, the number of watering-places and stored waters on the dryland, the stables and the sheds and the kraals. The grass pasture next to the Klip River and the lands, the camps for the lambing and the summering, the plots of fallow land, the shallow basins where the sheep sleep, and the black shadow of bluegums.
Between the land and the map I must look, up and down, far and near until I’ve had enough, until I’m satiated with what I have occupied here.
And then they must roll it up in a tube and put on my neckbrace again like the mouth of a quiver. And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae.
So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage.
Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time.
I pile up three breaths. With my chest I create an incline. The hand-bell that Agaat put under my hand rolls from under my palm with a tinkling. First it falls against the iron railing and then further, onto the floor.
The farmers in the vicinity liked inviting you and Jak to their parties, the glamorous, chic, childless couple of Grootmoedersdrift. And if you invited them back they were all too eager to accept. There were harvest festivals, wool festivals, water festivals on Grootmoedersdrift, a festival of triplets in the lambing time, a festival for the new tower silo with automated mowing-trunk and conveyor belt. And your parties were always the swankiest in the region.
Jak was urbane and talkative at these gatherings, as always appreciative of you in front of guests. The festival fairy he called you. Not that he ever lifted a finger to help you. As a matter of fact, nobody knew how much the success of those dinner parties in the late ’50s on Grootmoedersdrift owed to somebody that you could count on at all times. Everybody assumed that it was Jak who was supporting you. Nobody could have guessed that the farming didn’t interest him much. And nobody knew that it was to the back room that you went for comfort when he left you on your own.
You saw how they fell for him, the flocks of twittering wives and the freshly scrubbed young farmers. He was the pièce de résistance at every occasion. You recognised yourself in them, in the way they couldn’t get enough of him. You could see what they were thinking. How did she contrive it? How can a woman be so lucky?
Their eyelids fluttered at the sight of Jak’s new cars and lorries and implements and innovations,