Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [61]
Dawid got hurt, she says, she doesn’t look at me, she sterilises my teaspoon in a glass of boiling water.
Got a cut on his hand from a combine blade that broke and I had to bandage it first, that’s why I’m late today. You must be hungry by now.
Clink, she puts down the teaspoon in the saucer, tests the temperature of the potato with the back of the little finger of her left hand. Still too hot.
She talks with her back to me while opening the curtains and the lace linings wider. Her movements are less curt, she trains her voice to moderation. The purple glow of the bougainvillea rushes into the room.
Hay is strong this year, she says.
There is an unevenness in her voice, she clears her throat.
Grains are swollen out, we’re winning more than five bags of Sterling per morgen. I made Dawid grind a sample and I baked a small loaf and it, it, rose right out of the . . . tin.
Her voice fades away towards the end.
Did you smell it? she still manages to add.
I see her vividly, standing over the mixing of the sponge at first light, over the dredging of the table with white flour, sprinkle-sprinkle with the little finch of the right hand that knows to snatch dab-dab with gathered fingertips in the flour bag, I see her mix and knead, knead and knock back with the palm of the strong hand, fold over with the small hand, knead and knead till the dough springs back, then the covering in a cool quiet place for the first rising, the knocking-back, the proving and the kneading-through, I see her at the shaping in the tins, at the putting into the hot oven and an hour later bending for the testing with the steel knitting needle, the tapping on the back of the small brown rabbit, the turning-out on the old bent wire rack. How many loaves, how many cakes, have been turned out on that little frame? That she would not have thrown away, absolutely not.
And the eating, Agaat? The slicing and the buttering and the apricot jam and the tasting all alone at your set place when you’ve done with me here in the front of the right wing?
Of bread I am told.
Hunger is imagined for me.
Light is granted me.
Time.
Colour.
Life flows through me as if through a transfusion rigged up between her and me. She monitors the rate of flow.
The bougainvillea scorches my eyes. Agaat stands in front of the door and looks out, she hangs there, she hooks herself in place there for strength.
It’s flowering as if it’s being paid, she says, took a long time, but now it’s found its feet at last.
I look at her back with the cross of the apron bands.
Turn round, I want to say, look at me, forget about it, it’s over now. You do everything you can. I want for nothing. It’s not your fault. You are the best nurse one could wish for. We’ll try a different route. How, after all, can you be expected to guess what I want? The day will come when you will think of it yourself, of your own accord. Then you’ll come in here with the maps under your arms and with triumph on your face.
And I know what that mug of yours will look like then, your jaw-bone will be all the way out there, you’ll suppress your smile but the mole on your cheek will be an exclamation point. So you can come away from the door now, it’s not all that bad.
Sometimes when I stare at her back hard enough, she feels it, then she turns around. Brave, as open as possible to receiving everything transmitted to her.
Today I can tell from the shoulder perched at a slight angle that she’s not ready yet. But it’s lower than it was yesterday, than it was this morning. And she’s talking about bread.
I mustn’t stare, I must let her be.
Agaat’s talking shoulder.
I wait, I look in the mirror. The green of scraps of tree, the varied greens of the ornamental cypresses and the water-berry and the honey-bread tree, red flecks in between from