Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [91]
Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
I plead with my eyes.
She doesn’t want to look at me. She’s looking at her towels.
Let’s turn you on your side then we thump out the phlegm before I wash the back.
Businesslike she is all of a sudden.
She rolls three towels into sturdy bolsters to support me from the front. Firmly she wiggles them in next to my side. A self-conceived plan. Leroux said she couldn’t do it alone, especially not with one hand, she needs help, she will need help in future, he’ll send a nurse, don’t I want a live-in nurse.
I signalled such a one would never in a month of Sundays survive with the two of us.
Agaat translated it for him as: Mrs de Wet says no thank you all the same, she’s too particular.
Bolster me with rolled-up towels because I’m over the hill, Agaat, translate me, I’m sick with remorse.
She rolls up another few towels to support me from behind as well.
How many towels does Agaat have? How many does she have washed every day? How does she keep tally of all the linen that passes through here? How does she keep sane?
She covers my body completely with an extra towel, large enough for a king.
I hear her scrubbing her hands, is it possible to get any cleaner?
She returns with white sterile cloths over her shoulder. She places them under my cheek so that I can spit on them.
She turns her back and puts on two new gloves of white-powdered latex.
She unscrews the caps of three jars, her hands are pale, the right glove fits like loose skin.
She mixes two ointments and a liquid in a saucer with a rod of stainless steel. She rubs it on the base of my neck and under my nose. It smells of eucalyptus and friar’s balsam. It’s to help the mucus rise, to help dissolve it.
She pours warm water into the hollow of a silver kidney.
She places mouth sponges at the ready in a row.
She screws in the mouthpiece of the phlegm-pump.
How much slime does she expect to get out of me anyway? My cough reflex is almost completely gone.
She extends the arm of the bedside lamp as far as it will go.
She turns the head so that it shines full on my back, I feel the glow. It’s to keep me warm, I know, she could knock my phlegm loose with her eyes shut.
Ounooi, open your eyes and listen well now.
Her eyes are soft again. Her voice is soft. Close to my face she talks. Through the eye of the needle she’d want to help me. That’s really all, I can see it now. And bring me back.
All the way to the cow-shed.
Iron on the hoof.
Pumpkin on the roof.
As it was, always, as it was in the old song.
But was she happy with how it was?
You remember how we do it? asks Agaat. You take a breath, I turn you on your side, you hold your breath until I’ve propped you up nicely, three rolls behind the back and three rolls in front, then you exhale, then you rest first, then you take another little breath. Just as long as you need. There’s no hurry. We just work at our ease until we’ve finished. You warn me with your eyes, you blink them slowly if that’s enough for now, then we take a pause, then I suck out what there is, then I make us some tea. Then we do the other side. Or we do the other half tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Have you understood well, Ounooi? Get ready for the first breath. On your marks, get set, go!
Lord, Agaat, what race? And how many rounds before the knockout? And what bell? And what white tape against my chest? And the one who sets the pace, will she drop out before the end? Head between the knees in the slow track, too exhausted even to watch how the record is broken?
Record in long-distance dying, best time in cross-country with obstacles. All the way to where the strokes fall one-by-one from the white tower in the throbbing heat of afternoon with cicadas in the pepper trees and a procession escorting me. Or no, it will be different, everything here on the farm, Agaat will carve my headstone.
Don’t perform like that, says Agaat when she catches my eye, into every life a little rain must fall, just co-operate, I’m asking pretty please. Come now,