Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [98]
17 September
It’s been 3 days now & I still don’t know how to write it up & if I should write about it at all if writing can countenance it. J. would murder her if he were to know. Can’t tell it to anybody.
Have been seeing wet patches on the uniform for a while now & when I ask she says he must have drooled on me or he most have burped a wet wind will go & change. Without twitching a muscle. After the first few times she must have taken precautions. She knows the rule child-minding or not the uniform must be spotlessly white every moment of the day. So then last Wednesday one of those little spring mizzles & I had a nap in the afternoon & I wake up there’s a silence in the house heavy & deep & I stay lying on my bed listening to the dripping & looking over the stoep scattered with flowers from the wisteria like little blue butterflies in the wet & the gutters are dripping softly a turtle dove calls it’s almost done raining & I feel happy & grateful that I’ve always in spite of everything been able to keep everybody on track on Gdrift & when at last I get up & go to have a look there I find the cradle empty. Feel the covers still lukewarm from his little body & I press my nose into the blankets they’re so sweet & I know A. has come to fetch him to give him the bottle everything is so quiet.
Didn’t want to call or make it known that I was awake wanted to shelter in the hushed sleeping afternoon as in a nest in the rain. Softly to the kitchen on bare feet there the back door is wide open & smell of wet is so sweet & everywhere it’s dripping with rain. The water on the stove in which we always heat the bottles of milk was still warm I felt & 3 clean bottles were standing upright on the tea cloth A. somewhere feeding him with the fourth one I knew. But then she wasn’t in the sitting room either there on the green sofa & not on the stoep either & not in the spare room either.
So then I saw from the nursery window that the outside room’s door was closed but the outside latch was off & then I knew immediately that’s where they were & then I wasn’t easy the servant’s quarters is not a place for my child but I thought perhaps A. had just gone there to put on a clean apron & had taken him along. Put on slippers & went out into the backyard & A.’s curtains were tightly drawn but I didn’t want to knock & then I was ashamed of myself because Jakkie was nowhere safer than with A. Walk around the back because then I remember there’s a small window at the back & it’s muddy & I clamber onto a paint tin & the window’s open a chink & I cling to the window sill to peer into the room.
There is A. with her back to me on the apple box in front of her bed. Hr one shoulder bare the crooked bones of the deformed side wide open to view & I look & I see & I can’t believe what I see perhaps I dreamed it the apron’s shoulder band is off & the sleeve of the dress hangs empty & her head is bent to the child on her lap. Could just see his little feet sticking out on the one side. Perfectly contented. There I see on her bed on a white towel untouched lies the fourth bottle full of milk. There I stand in the drizzle on the paint tin that’s sinking away in the mud with my forehead pressed against the window sill & I listen to the little sounds it sucks & sighs it’s a whole language out there in the outside room I can almost not bring myself to write it.
Went & put on my raincoat & wellingtons. ‘Have gone for a walk’ I wrote on a piece of paper for A. & the exact time half past three so that she could see I was awake. Walked along next to the drift & stood by the deep places & looked at the drops falling on the water in ringlets & the