Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [95]
Jak stood there for a while yet before he turned around and crunched away over the glass.
Against the light of the stars you saw him clench his hands behind his head and cast them down by his sides, and he cursed three times in himself, the same curse, and shook his shoulders downwards as if he wanted to wriggle himself out of his clothes into the ground.
something’s wrong
you’re just getting old
I’m sick
not sick senile maybe who would want to bake a sponge cake in the
middle of the night
look the spasms they come from nowhere
donkey twitching under the yoke have a mustard bath
can’t get the button through the button-hole
let me help you
my shoulder aches
it’s from putting it to the wheel all your life rest for a change
that’s not funny it’s stiff
cold shoulder I know it well frozen shoulder it’s the chill of may that
gets into your bones
something’s wrong
you’re just old
I’m sick
stop complaining
my fingers prick
prick back
my rings won’t come off
use soap
it doesn’t work
shall I phone the goldsmith for you?
what can it be?
seasonal indisposition silver-leaf sickness
I’m falling
the leaves are falling soon the rain will be falling then we can plough
then you’ll see it’s all over
but I fall all the time
a falling fashion trying to attract attention that’s all
I’m sick
hypochondria
really sick
affectation
anxiety’s palsy
it’s the inbetween-time’s sickness the fallow land must come to rest
the oats has been raked in everything is holding its breath for rain.
3 September 1960 after lunch
Starting to feel halfway human again & feel like writing again even though I still cry a lot. Just after the birth I felt I should keep my diary up to date but the first weeks lame & no strength & the nightmares still carrying on. Post-natal depression says Beatrice. Comes & sits here with me sometimes when I’m playing Pa’s old records but I don’t want her here she gloats over my situation & she gets bored when I try to tell her about Brahms & his eternally unrequited love for Clara Schumann. She says no wonder I’m depressed it’s the dismal Brahms that I listen to der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, das Leben ist der schwüle Tag & that was apparently also my father’s problem. Then I think nothing of saying I want to lie down so that she can be on her way & A. is not behindhand & fetches her coat.
The brave little servant! how will I ever be able to repay hr? Oh moon you drift so low with constricted throat shame & Ma slipped her 20 pounds when Jak came to fetch us & an old church hat as well you can’t be confirmed without a hat she says I ask you. A. says thank you nicely & just gives the hat a long look & later on the way home she says: I’ve got seven caps what do I want with a hat as well? I see the silly little green hat is hanging there in her room from a nail in the wall with turkey feathers in the band. What would Pa not have thought up to thank her. He would have written a limerick.
A. was off to town at the first opportunity with D. to buy embroidery thread & cloth & buttons with the money from Ma & wouldn’t that woman from Eye of the Needle see fit to phone. Whether I’m aware of the two dozen imported porcelain buttons & goods to the value of altogether over sixty pounds cash that A. bought from her. Apparently she first selected everything & then went & drew some more of her own money at the post office. Had to bite my tongue not to say listen here madam thread-pedlar aware or not that little girl was my midwife & my refuge in my hour of need & no cloth of purple or thread of silk or ivory of Sheba can be too good for hr hands but then I thought