Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [67]
You had two big enamel bowls of food dished up, and a little pail of soup and both the loaves and the pound of butter and had a bottle of preserved peaches brought from the pantry.
Jak, you knew, wouldn’t be returning for supper, and you weren’t really hungry.
Ai Nooi, I didn’t really mean . . . OuKarel said, and you believed his self-exoneration, but Dawid’s face, it was a whole little drama when he took the baskets of food from you, emboldened with his own words about what had happened over in the stables, backed up by his father’s request. Even though the request had come from loyalties of a former time and even though it was grafted onto old understandings.
Ai, but this is now going to taste like something, he said, and thank you very much, Nooi, I’m glad we understand each other here.
Come Dawid, OuKarel said and put on his hat. You could see from the old man’s back that he thought his son was going too far.
What you had to understand, what had been implied as understood, was more than you could write down in a day.
In the doorway Karel turned round.
I’m also not altogether useless, Kleinnooi, I can show the young men how it’s done, I can still lend a hand with the little soft jobs, just let me know if the kleinnooi needs me. And send regards when the kleinnooi talks to the ounooi, when the ounooi comes here, tell her to have me called there at the drift, I want to see how the ounooi is getting on.
That was another clear message.
You knew better than to confront Jak, he the fit muscled master of Grootmoedersdrift wrestled to the ground on a stable floor and pinned down by a coloured man twenty years his senior.
You saw to it that his riding clothes were washed and ironed and his leggings polished and his riding helmet dusted the dents beaten out and the plush of green velvet brushed up. You collected it all neatly in a little pile for him on the sofa in his stoep office with the leather crop that Dawid had brought along, buffed to a shine and leant at an angle against the curve of the helmet.
In the end it was the dogs. You were always furious when you caught him at it.
But he turned his hand into a caress, redirected his foot at a ball or a stick. He said you were mad, he was just playing with the dogs.
Ma did not seem surprised when she discovered it one day. It was the first weekend of July. She had come over to help with the final preparations, did at least say that the new rooms were a good idea. At you she looked with a mixture of disapprobation and fascination and pity. You were heavy and slow, your knees and ankles thick and red.
Jak was volatile. You were scared on the Saturday afternoon that he would unleash something when he got home, worked up after his sports meeting. That was why you had summoned your mother.
You were in the nursery putting up a gauze curtain. You’d opened the window to get rid of the smell of paint. Ma was in the kitchen making coffee after her afternoon nap. The kitchen door was open. Across the yard you could hear the rattling of cups. The bakkie drove in and the dogs barked. Jak was back from the rugby match, back from the bar where he’d socialised afterwards, you could tell from the way he drove into the yard, the slam of the bakkie door. He would come in by the back way. A movement drew your attention. The door of the outside room was still open from Ma’s inspection earlier in the afternoon. Was it your imagination, or had something moved behind the curtain? The cups stopped rattling.
Then Jak came round the corner and swore and looked under his soles. He’d stepped in dogshit, and was instantly furious. His new calf-leather boots. Salomo the ridgeback and Sofie the half-bred Scottish terrier were grovelling towards him on their sides. They knew better by this time than to jump up and to lick. Hand on the hip he stood and watched them. Under Sofie the cement grew dark with pee. Salomo’s ears were back and his lip was pulled up. His whole body was quivering.
Jak grinned, coaxed the dogs nearer. Behind the screen door you could see the white