Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [90]
She soaps my trunk from the base of my throat to the navel. She lifts my breasts and washes under them. One for you, she says, and one for me. She wipes away the soap under them. She swabs me dry, but under the breasts she dries twice with a fresh towel.
The animals went in two by two, she says as she dries them.
I note the inspection. There fungus threatens, there she keeps a sharp eye. Sometimes she checks there with her magnifying glass, mould is like a thief in the night, she says, a lurking menace.
Agaat covers my trunk again. She moves around the bed to the other side. As she moves past the foot of the bed, I manage to catch her eye.
Come on, you can tell me, I flicker with my eyes at the wall and back. You win, I admit, you’ve guessed right, of course, you always guess right, and good for you, you’re wonderful, you’re fantastic, as ever, standing ovation!
Hmmm? she says with a straight face, hmmm? Just in passing, she pretends. She juts out her chin just a touch.
I know what she’s doing. She’s making the washing easier for both of us with a gripping story and she’ll postpone the denouement until we’ve finished. As reward she’ll present it. Triumphantly. As consolation. For the exposure. For the shame. For the blue feet. For the tremendous art that it is to treat a half-dead relic like a whole human being.
Right, says Agaat before she bares the other arm, we’re on the home stretch. She’s cheering herself up. There’s still all of the back.
Are you still holding out, Ounooi? She leans over me and looks into my eyes while she begins to wash my arm.
And so I thought to myself, she says, and looks away again, let me collect everything that I can think of that can hang or be pasted that you want on your wall, everything that you said I should throw away in your great clear-out, everything that I kept and stored in the cellar, and everything that’s still here in the house to be inherited or given away, as you directed, and hang them one by one on your wall here next to your bed until you’re satisfied!
As an afterthought it comes, love will find a way to get the camel through the needle’s eye.
She covers the arm and takes out the leg, peeps at me for the effect, but the effect has been spoilt.
I protest. I am not a camel! And I’m not yet ready for the needle’s eye! Please watch your language! And don’t sound so smug, it’s not appropriate!
Sorry, Ounooi, don’t take exception now, it’s just a proverb, says Agaat, but she’s put off her stride immediately. She drops the cloth into the washbasin.
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise, she says, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Every time the stress on the last word. As if she’s defending herself with prefabricated sentences that she appropriates to her purpose through tone and emphasis. Old trick. She has no respect for what the proverbs really mean, she invents her own language as she goes. That’s her way when she’s discombobulated. The old parrot ways. Double-barrelled mimicry.
Oh come now Agaat, in God’s name, don’t be so touchy, I’m the one who’s dying here, look at me dammit, I flicker, but she doesn’t look.
Speech is silver twixt the cup and the lip, when the cat’s away we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
She pushes the bridge with the bowl of water across my body to the foot of the bed.
Almost, she says.
She pushes her chin far out, moves my legs apart and washes my abdomen with quick soapy strokes.
But don’t count your chickens yet.
Once more she rinses the cloth and once more she wipes.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, she says.
She dries my loins. The towel feels hard.
I’m sorry I protested. Don’t step on the toes of the living dead. Feeling starts at the feet.
I wish I could talk back, counter with my