Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [7]
That was a good start. She thought I wanted to read myself.
No, I could signal, that’s not what I want to read.
That’s my technique nowadays. Progress through misunderstanding. I just had to get the misunderstandings going first. The first would lead on to another until I had reached my goal. It’s a kind of retarded logic, a breaking down of each of my intentions into the smallest intermediate steps. Gone are the days of the shortest distance between A and B. Now we’re doing the detours, Agaat and I. By rolling my eyes at a pile of reading matter I can see to it that she ends up at the black box. I always have to fix her attention on the surface first. It’s a start. And then I have to get her delving. This morning she obliged me, she put the pile of blue booklets aside and started rummaging through the magazines.
What do you want to read, Ounooi? She paged rapidly though a Sarie.
Four ways of getting your husband on your side and keeping him there.
No.
No, she said, I don’t think so either.
I looked again at the pile on the dressing table.
She took a Farmer’s Weekly and opened it.
New developments in the practice of crop and pasture rotation: The south-western districts after 1994? Nay what, you know all about that. What about: The future of small-grain cultivation in South Africa? That’s just up your alley, Ounooi, the future.
Lietja laughed loudly in the kitchen. There was a jingling of milk cans.
They’re getting out of hand there in the kitchen, I have to go and check, said Agaat.
She clamped the magazine to the reading stand, on top of the torn-out sheet, on top of my symptomatic-treatment list, set it up more upright so that I could see, put my glasses on for me.
The future. She placed her finger under the words.
No, I signalled with my eyes, no, no, don’t come with your silly games now.
Again she turned to the pile and went through the magazines.
Now where are all the Fair Ladys then, they were here?
She started to unpack the whole pile, fixing my eyes in the mirror.
Ounooi, you’re making me late now. I don’t see the Fair Ladys, wait, there’s one here. Fine Foods for Fine Occasions.
It was the last magazine down. I forced her eyes down, still further down. There was the shiny black box now, open to the eye. She couldn’t follow my glance in the mirror, had to turn round to see better where I was looking.
Tsk, she said and shook her head, no.
Yes, I said with my eyes.
She took out the contraption. It was still assembled just as she’d packed it away. She straightened my fingers and fitted it over my hand. It wasn’t necessary to unfasten the buckles. All the brown leather bands were tightened to the first hole and the chrome wing nut was screwed in as far as it could go. A long piece of wire stuck up above the head of the nut like an antenna. The thing looks like a glove for handling radioactive waste. Long since been too big for me. Long since too heavy. Like all Leroux’s gadgets that he comes peddling here, it works for a while and then no longer.
I looked at my hand. I braced myself. I gestured, pen please. And paper. I can’t write on air.
Agaat looked about her.
Now she knew what I wanted to do but she pretended she’d forgotten where to find writing materials. It’s been a long time since I wrote myself. When I made the lists, when we cleared the house, a year, year-and-a-half ago. Eventually I dictated and she wrote. Or she wrote, and with my last strength I ticked off what had to be thrown away. The blue booklets. I said throw out. She read the instruction and ignored me.
Now she’s acting stupid. As if she doesn’t regularly get out the clipboard to press on when making her latest lists, take out her red pen from the top pocket of her apron. And there’s the pencil, hanging from its string next to the calendar. She’s always making notes. Writes them up everywhere. What do you want the people to eat at your funeral, Ounooi? Stewed tripe? So what do you want me to have inscribed on your headstone, Ounooi? And then God saw that it was good?
Yes or no