Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [70]
Jak looked at you, helpless.
You got up and walked to him and rubbed your hand through his hair. Never mind, you said, she’s old. Her bark is worse than her bite.
You whispered so that she shouldn’t hear. But you couldn’t speak softly enough. Without looking up the number in the book she strode away with loud footsteps from the little table in the passage where the telephone was. She had an excuse not to phone. You had provided it.
descended to hell my right hand a fall of stars it is raining the bleating in the fields all night long I lie awake spasms knock at my rings thumb and index pressed against each other form the eye of a rabbit there leaps wrong shadow my thumb buckles pen paper slips out of my hand a rustling in shrubs a lizard a mouse an emperor butterfly under a roof of leaves how does one hold an egg the stem of a rose a doorknob a window-catch everything I leave open were you born in a church? made like that and left like that? button and button-hole remain apart to what end the display of your glory? that is the question agaat
12/13 July 1960 after midnight
Have just now come to sit here in the sitting room shawl over my nightdress. Woke up from the creeper an eerie little shadow-hand against the window & couldn’t go to sleep again.
Bright full moon outside. Quite cold. Feel like something but I don’t know what. Tea & ginger biscuits? A glass of warm wine would help but it’s out of the question now it’s just as if I’m waiting for something just as if I’m missing something. It’s the child probably I can feel him kicking usually he stirs in the early evening & then he calms down at night.
Labourers’ dogs would have barked ducks would have made a racket at the dam if there’d been anything amiss but it’s quiet. Crickets. Frogs. Perhaps I should go for a walk in the yard for fresh air. Half-nauseous feeling won’t go away.
1 o’clock
Yard quiet but something’s not right. Don’t want to wake J. he’ll say it’s my imagination he’ll say I’m sleep-walking again but I’m awake & I was awake just now even though I feel all the time as if I’m walking just above the ground on somebody else’s farm in a dream in somebody else’s head. But it’s my farm. It’s Grootmoedersdrift. Pinched myself even.
There was nothing outside that I didn’t recognise & didn’t expect the yard in the moonlight & everything taken care of everything the image of order & tranquillity. White gables of the shed’s gateposts at the entrance to the river-grazing black & upright sentinels the black shadows of the lean-tos under which I know the wood & bales & rolls of fencing & droppers are piled neatly in the sweat-sweet smell of plaited onions from the onion store. A trace of that yesterday-today-and-tomorrow that always flowers out of season? Can one dream such a smell? Would one smell trouble better by moonlight?
Made absolutely sure went & tried all the locks checked the gates on the yard & checked that the sluice of the irrigation furrow was closed if the hanslammers were lying against one another in the little sleeping-shed behind the vegetable garden. They’re always a bit restless after one of them has been slaughtered & checked the railing of the trailer full of pumpkins saw that all the pipes were fitted securely into the holes so that they can’t come unstuck if the load were to shift on the pass.
Not a single thing out of place. Even pushed open the gate of the feed-store & felt the bales of lucerne lukewarm as they should be wouldn’t get any warmer.
Went in at the side entrance of the implement shed & stood there in the dark until I could see the outlines of the machinery in the dark I could distinguish the nose of the Massey Ferguson the relief of the chrome lettering. Unreal feeling. But who would dream of reading by touch in the dark?
In the chicken run sleeping sounds of hens on their perches & the smell of manure & feathers. Walked along the blind side of the house to see if the outside cooler where the fresh meat is hung to cure was latched against the foxes. The little