Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [92]
With a firm yank of the towel under me she gets me toppled onto my side. She keeps me in position with her strong forearm pressed lengthwise behind my back. I feel her inserting the rolled-up towels behind me, the back of the weak hand nudge-nudging against me, like a muzzle.
She works fast. No sound issues from her. She holds her breath with me. She begins the auscultation. Down below on the short-rib she cups the little hand. She knocks on it with the other hand. Up, up, up come the knocks, to under my shoulder-blade and then again from below. After every third sequence she vibrates over the ribs with the strong hand. She’s firm. It’s not unambiguously pleasant what she’s doing. I can feel something coming loose in my lees. It feels like old solid pieces of me. This is the critical stage. Now she’ll stop and with the Heimlich manoeuvre help me try to cough. And then she’ll suck the product out of me with the phlegm-pump.
I feel faint. Stones and grass glide below me, as if I’m approaching a landing strip, one foot without a sandal. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Agaat exhales. Right we are, she says, she joggles the towel out and makes me roll back slowly. You’re hanging on nicely, Ounooi. Come let’s sit you up straight first so that I can help you cough.
I can feel her seeking out my face.
Look at me Ounooi, so that I can see what’s going on.
I try to open my mouth. I want to say, a piece, you are a piece of me, how am I to quit you? The landing strip is approaching how am I to land? The urge to cough stirs in me, but it’s vague, un-urgent, a phantom cough, like an amputated hand with which in an unguarded moment you think you can still lift something.
I feel pressure in front against my teeth, on both sides I feel pressure on my jaws under the ear, my mouth is being opened for me, a flat stick inserted between my front teeth to separate them, I feel fingers on my tongue, pulling threads out of me, I feel the suction of the phlegm-pump, the sound of my fluids, and then a damp sponge that wipes out, my cheeks, under my tongue, inside between my lips and my gums, and then a new sponge, drool runs out of me, another sponge, cool, damp on my tongue, and a strong arm that lifts my head and a voice that says:
You can breathe now, the slime is out, get ready to swallow, you’re thirsty.
And a spout of small finger-tips between my lips that squeeze out the drops for me. One, two, three on the back of my tongue.
I can’t swallow it, I can’t.
Jak was angry with embarrassment at his absence from the birth of his son.
An apology he couldn’t get past his lips.
He’d won the race, yes. He’d been first in the senior class out of forty-six contestants who were all younger than he. The tide had come in. The wind had come up on the river-mouth. Twice he had capsized and got stuck under his canoe. Exceedingly tough had been the inclines on the cycle routes. He’d grazed and bruised himself falling. His knees, his elbows. Look. Raw. He’d had to change a wheel all on his own in the gale-force wind. He’d been just about knackered. And on top of that, yomping across the loose sand of the dunes, for seven miles.
Ad nauseam you had to listen to it. But when you started recounting how Agaat had kept her wits about her, how brave she’d been, how she’d cut you with the strong hand and delivered the child with the other, how she’d done everything right from beginning to end and stopped a vegetable lorry to take you to hospital and how with hands and apron red with blood she’d helped stack cabbages to make space for you to lie, and how you’d bled on the cabbage leaves, and how she’d got into the front with a complete stranger with the baby, he interrupted you.
He’s just glad that you’re safe and sound, he said, and he’s so proud of his son.
It was the same lay-by, you said.
What lay-by?
Where we the first time, where we almost that time, when we were on our way together, the first time, do you remember, the day after my mother had harangued you so, when we almost in broad daylight in the open sports car, do you