Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [89]
She’s simplified everything to a single question: Do you want another nurse?
To that my answer is no.
Agaat covers me with a large towel before she pulls the tunic, under the towel, from my body. She lifts the washbasin from the trolley onto the serving-top and draws it nearer across the bed, over my body.
First the left, she says, and takes my arm from under the towel and lays it down on the bed close to my body. She handles it like a fragment, something that belongs to me only by loose association. A dead arm, but a life-like replica. Like an artificial arm. But an artificial arm needn’t be washed like this.
Breathe calmly, Ounooi, says Agaat, and tests the water with her left elbow, as I taught her with Jakkie long ago.
Her grip is gentle but firm. She anticipates on my behalf the impact of the wet warm cloth by keeping constant contact with my body, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my hand. She hasn’t forgotten a single one of her lessons.
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, she sings on the in-breath.
She soaps the cloth, wrings it half dry and washes the arm with firm soapy strokes up to the armpit. She swivels the wrist, the wrist can still swivel. She washes it as if it could still be stained from the silver bangles that I used to wear, and my palm that she folds open, that she washes as if I’d just deboned a chicken. And between my fingers, which she straightens, and up against the cuticles she washes as if I’d been working in black garden soil.
She washes with conviction, just as if I’d lived a full day as of old and were good and dirty, and she talks of lavender.
She says the bushes are flowering this year as if they’re paid to do it and the bees are buzzing about like mad there amongst the purple florets and she thinks they’ve nested in the hollow of the burnt-out bluegum she’ll have Dawid take a look and how would I like a little taste of honey, lavender-flower honey fresh from the comb? There’s nothing, she says, to touch comb honey, and she must remember to get a jar ready for Jakkie when he comes, as he likes it. Illuminated campaniles, it seems, remind him of honey in the comb. That’s what he wrote to her once from Canada.
Agaat wipes the soapiness from the arm with another cloth, a soap-wiping cloth. She dries the arm, puts it back next to the body and drapes the towel over it.
Now the leg on the same side. The leg looks blue towards the foot. She washes vigorously between the toes so that I can feel how much life there is in my foot.
You know, Ounooi, she says, it took me a long time to figure out why you’re forever looking at the wall, at the mirror, to and fro like a lizard taking its bearings on a rock, but now I understand. This wall next to your bed is too bare. You want something else to look at here by your bed than this old calendar, perhaps it only irritates you. The mirror in the corner over there, I reckon, is not enough by a long shot, even though you can see the bits of garden that I chose for you.
As she works, Agaat covers the clean leg and arm with the towel as if nothing’s the matter. Straight face. Butter wouldn’t melt. As if I’d imagined it all about the quarrels. As if it had been a squabble with the nightingales.
Was I too slow? Are you cold yet? she asks.
That’s her camouflage enabling her to look me in the eye, to catch a response from me without her having to ask anything directly. Catch a fly from the old mare’s back, ha.
I play dumb. No, I flutter with my eyebrows, I’m not the least bit cold and what are you talking about now?
She folds away the large towel from my trunk, so that the washed arm and leg and my abdomen remain covered. She sets her gaze to neutral. That’s her