Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [51]
That suited you fine. You didn’t want to draw attention to Jak’s weaknesses. You wanted to show to advantage yourself. Your job was to camouflage him. Because apart from his toastmaster’s jokes he didn’t have much in the way of conversation. Boast, that he could do, and wittily comment on what he’d read in the papers, the plans of the Party he could explicate, and the mechanisms of his implements, but he was too light-weight for you. Often in that sitting room resounding with laughter, you bit your lip. You wanted him stronger, more independent, less transparent, you wanted him to possess more of himself, of his own substance.
What did you want him to be? An anchor post? A trailblazer? A source of insight? How could you expect him to understand that?
You didn’t understand it yourself. You could only hint and squirm. You were in the shade. That was what angered him without his knowing what was bothering him, this: That you replaced his guts with your own projects.
But when did you start to see it in this light? Not with so much clarity in those first twelve years.
You wanted a child.
And for that he was good enough.
Because that was something you didn’t have. It was in him. His seed.
1 January 1960. The day that you heard that you were pregnant you’d been invited to a New Year’s party on the neighbouring farm Frambooskop for the welcoming of one of the Scott brothers who’d returned from Rhodesia to take over his father’s farm.
You didn’t want to tell Jak immediately. You were all a-flutter. You put on your prettiest dress, a black one with a low neckline and bare shoulders, with sleeves that fell open when you lifted your arms. You’d last worn it on the evening of your engagement. It still fitted you perfectly. It made you blush.
You felt eyes on you, eyes that interrogated you, a face that was unsure of this new mood of yours. But you kept the secret.
Who laid a hand against your arm as if your temperature would warm her? Who touched the hem of your dress? Who twirled over and over again in her hands the tubes and jars and lipsticks that you’d taken out to beautify yourself? Was there somebody who could guess something and wanted to share in your excitement?
No, you were alone. You wanted to be alone. You became a different person. Everything altered in interest and in scale.
Twelve years you had waited, twelve times three hundred and sixtyfive days. So you made the sum for yourself over and over again while you were getting dressed. Why should it have happened now suddenly?
The doctor had phoned an hour earlier with the news.
Good news for the new year, he’d said, I had to go and collect something from the consulting room and then there was the result from Cape Town. Just be careful now, my little woman, he said, you’re a few weeks gone already, remember no emotional upsets, not too much movement in the first few months, no lifting heavy objects, not too much alcohol, not too much rich food, pregnant women are inclined to heartburn.
You took your time over your make-up and you couldn’t stop repeating it to yourself: After all the years, after everything that you’d had to endure, after everything that you’d undertaken, however good or bad, long after you’d given up all hope, the reward.
You smiled at yourself with red lips in the mirror. It had been worth the trouble keeping everything together against all the odds. You caressed your neck. You lifted up your arms and spun around to feel the fall of the sleeves, the swishing of the cloth. You couldn’t remember when last you’d done something so indulgent. It felt as if your limbs, the hair on your head, the nails on your fingers were inspired, as