Agaat comes in with my midday meal. She speaks with cinnamon. It floats behind her, a pennant of persuasion.
She allows me my nose today.
I must rejoice in my privileges.
I must grit my teeth and put behind me the tooth-polishing and the post-planting, the windmill and the borehole, I must remember she’s also only human and she has her limitations.
As if that convinces me!
I must simply reconcile myself to the fact that she’s left me alone for hours on end the last few days.
I mustn’t hold it against her that she did no more than her duty, thoroughly and at the right time, but without blandishments, without words.
I must know I was asking for it.
I mustn’t be difficult.
I mustn’t go around signalling something that nobody on God’s earth can guess at. I must keep it simple please she has her hands full as it is thank you.
I mustn’t accuse her.
She does everything as well as she can.
She does her very best for me.
That’s the argumentation, the sophistry of spices as she’s sprinkled them for me and mashed in with a fork: the cinnamon, the cardamom, with the butter, the sugar, to a perfect pumpkin puree.
I smell for all I’m worth to get all the messages. If I could, I would have sniffed loudly to say: I understand, Agaat, your meaning is crystal clear to me. Mashed potatoes with meat sauce, sweet pumpkin with cinnamon, red jelly with custard. What more could one want? It’s a whole story on its own, Sunday food on Grootmoedersdrift.
But it’s not Sunday.
What day is it? I ask with my eyes on the calendar, I can’t see that far any more.
Agaat puts the tray down on the trolley. She picks up the hand-bell from the floor where it’s been lying for three days now, it looks strange in her little hand, the gesture with which she puts it into her apron pocket contains an element of self-chastisement.
Monday eleven November, the year of our Lord nineteen ninety-six, she says, the fields are white with wheat.
What would she want me to say if I could talk? Would she ever have said something like that to me when I could still talk? She sometimes says such things with a straight face and uninflected voice as if it’s the most ordinary thing, as if she’s talking to herself. The fields are white with wheat. Must I become something that I am not yet?
Dawid got hurt, she says, she doesn’t look at me, she sterilises my teaspoon in a glass of boiling water.
Got a cut on his hand from a combine blade that broke and I had to bandage it first, that’s why I’m late today. You must be hungry by now.
Clink, she puts down the teaspoon in the saucer, tests the temperature of the potato with the back of the little finger of her left hand. Still too hot.
She talks with her back to me while opening the curtains and the lace linings wider. Her movements are less curt, she trains her voice to moderation. The purple glow of the bougainvillea rushes into the room.
Hay is strong this year, she says.
There is an unevenness in her voice, she clears her throat.
Grains are swollen out, we’re winning more than five bags of Sterling per morgen. I made Dawid grind a sample and I baked a small loaf and it, it, rose right out of the . . . tin.
Her voice fades away towards the end.
Did you smell it? she still manages to add.
I see her vividly, standing over the mixing of the sponge at first light, over the dredging of the table with white flour, sprinkle-sprinkle with the little finch of the right hand that knows to snatch dab-dab with gathered fingertips in the flour bag, I see her mix and knead, knead and knock back with the palm of the strong hand, fold over with the small hand, knead and knead till the dough springs back, then the covering in a cool quiet place for the first rising, the knocking-back, the proving and the kneading-through, I see her at the shaping in the tins, at the putting into the hot oven and an hour later bending for the testing with the steel knitting needle, the tapping on the back of the small brown rabbit, the turning-out on the old bent wire rack. How many loaves, how many cakes, have been turned out on that little frame? That she would not have thrown away, absolutely not.
And the eating, Agaat? The slicing and the buttering and the apricot jam and the tasting all alone at your set place when you’ve done with me here in the front of the right wing?
Of bread I am told.
Hunger is imagined for me.
Light is granted me.
Time.
Colour.
Life flows through me as if through a transfusion rigged up between her and me. She monitors the rate of flow.
The bougainvillea scorches my eyes. Agaat stands in front of the door and looks out, she hangs there, she hooks herself in place there for strength.
It’s flowering as if it’s being paid, she says, took a long time, but now it’s found its feet at last.
I look at her back with the cross of the apron bands.
Turn round, I want to say, look at me, forget about it, it’s over now. You do everything you can. I want for nothing. It’s not your fault. You are the best nurse one could wish for. We’ll try a different route. How, after all, can you be expected to guess what I want? The day will come when you will think of it yourself, of your own accord. Then you’ll come in here with the maps under your arms and with triumph on your face.
And I know what that mug of yours will look like then, your jawbone will be all the way out there, you’ll suppress your smile but the mole on your cheek will be an exclamation point. So you can come away from the door now, it’s not all that bad.
Sometimes when I stare at her back hard enough, she feels it, then she turns around. Brave, as open as possible to receiving everything transmitted to her.
Today I can tell from the shoulder perched at a slight angle that she’s not ready yet. But it’s lower than it was yesterday, than it was this morning. And she’s talking about bread.
I mustn’t stare, I must let her be.
Agaat’s talking shoulder.
I wait, I look in the mirror. The green of scraps of tree, the varied greens of the ornamental cypresses and the water-berry and the honey-bread tree, red flecks in between from the weeping bottlebrush that has sprouted again after she had it pruned at the end of winter. A shiny shard of the roof of the shed, a haze of hills further along, everything framed by the dark purple of the bougainvillea clambering over the trellis on the stoep. And in one corner, one could easily miss it, Agaat’s profile. She doesn’t know I can see her front, from the side only, but enough to read it. There’s a frown on her face, as if she cannot comprehend the bougainvillea, as if she’s trying to fathom the bread.
Like Christmas, it’s flowering, says Agaat again.
She lifts her hands, pat-pats at her cap.
Right out of the tin . . .
I make room, I give her a chance. I look at the reflection in the mirror, look with Agaat who doesn’t know that I’m looking with her. She will see the whole garden, framed in the purple. For me it’s carved up and jumbled together in fragments in the three panels, bits of the flowerbeds. The central panel is brighter than the other two. The one that broke long ago. For eleven months now the mirror has been standing in the same position with its panels at the same angle. I know the content of the reflections, I try to imagine the bits left out, the avenues of agapanthus that must by now be in full bloom, the borders of gillyflowers and wild pinks and snapdragons and purple and white petunias that Agaat sowed and had planted in the late spring, in the early summer, so that I might still experience it, and the people who will come for my funeral.
She came in September and held in front of me the packets of summer bulbs and seeds.
Choose, she said, I’ve bought ten packets of everything and ordered 500 bulbs from Starke Ayres.
Everything, sow everything, I gestured, sow everything, it’s my last garden.
There I was right, I could see, she wanted to sow everything, her eyes shone. She blinked quickly and turned round and for three days on end sowed seeds and planted bulbs and walked singing and whistling round the house so that I could hear where she was working, and at mealtimes came and told me three beds of white gladiolus at the back and purple dahlias in the middle and right in front purple and white sweet alison. And in-between fennel for fragrance and for the fine feathers of foliage and for the yellow flower-heads that will mitigate the strictness of dahlias and gladioli and break the purple and white.
Tobacco flower, Californian poppies, and common poppies, and Queen Anne’s lace for delicacy, and in the dry beds sunflowers and zinnias and painted ladies high and low. Would she not have drawn a plan? Would she have done it free-hand this time? Somewhat more carelessly, extravagantly, more higgledy-piggledy than usual? For the music? For the departed?
There must be a show garden in flower out there.
A bower of beauty.
She’s watered it every day. From early every morning I can hear the sprinklers go tchip-tchip-tirrr over the lawns. Until the sun heats up at nine o’clock and then again in the evenings when the plants have regained their composure after the scorching of the day.
Agaat knows how to make a garden grow.
This evening if there’s no wind, if I’m lucky, if her mood continues to soften, she’ll open the stoep doors. For me to smell everything that’s in bloom. Perhaps by following her movements, by concentrating on her intentions, I’ll have my way. Perhaps I’ll manage to usurp her will on the sly, and keep it warm in me, without her even noticing that I have it, meld it with mine so that we can have one will for these last days.
Smell the world! Take the scent, all along the flowerbeds and further along the boundary fences! Show me the outlines! Fetch the maps from the sideboard!
She catches my gaze in the mirror, catches me out in a calculation, in a fantasy. I see the indignation leap in her face, her eyes narrowing. I should have kept my eyes shut. When she turns round her mien is neutral, but the battle continues, I can hear it in her heels.
I didn’t mean it like that! Please!
She adjusts the bed so that I sit up straight, she fits the neckbrace. Her hands are cold and swift. She puts the tray down hard on the bridge.
I blink my eyes to say: You’re too touchy! One can’t do anything without your taking offence! I don’t want to eat! I’m not ready for your fragrant favours!
She ignores me. I blink my eyes.
I say again: I don’t want to! I’m not ready!
She pretends not to see. She puts the bib on my chest, she pulls and plucks at it. She bends her head.
Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts, she prays.
She scoops the first teaspoon half-full of pumpkin.
Now she’ll watch my breathing, bring the spoon into my mouth, tilt it towards the back where she can get hold of my swallowing reflex. I look at her, I look at the spoon, I look at the mirror.
For what are you looking like that, Ounooi?
Ounooi. For the sake of bread and bougainvillea!
She looks where I’m looking in the mirror, its edges brimming with bougainvillea, suspended in a tree-lined landscape. There’s a flash.
Birds, tiny birds, white-eyes that fly away from the fig tree I can’t see, that grows just around the corner. That I, Lord, can’t see. The early figs at the top ripe bells. The first light-green figs on a plate arranged with a flare of purple bougainvillea, that was how I served them, for the season, to mark it, to celebrate it, midsummer on Grootmoedersdrift. My figs.
Hmm, says Agaat, we must see if there are any figs yet, the tree around the corner here is dragging its branches on the ground this year.
She suspects something, she swivels her neck, she keeps on looking with me in the mirror. Determined to twist my arm to eat. The windmill must turn, the thresher must churn. The pumpkin must in.
And the bougainvillea, it’s flowering as if it’s never going to stop.
Is she taunting me? Does she think I must take my cue from it, from the flowers, from the wheat, from the bread?
I have ears to hear, I flicker, how many more times are you going to say it today? Since when do you expect me to compete with bougainvilleas? But she doesn’t look at me.
She keeps on looking away at the stoep door. I see her neck, the neck of Agaat from the side with the constellation of dark moles, and the row of hairpins securing the white cap.
Slowly she turns her head back, careful on her perch to get the best from the moment, focused on putting me in a place where I’ll submit and blink my eyes to say, yes I will eat, you may approach with your teaspoon, Agaat, depress it slowly on the tip of my tongue and slide it firmly upwards all along the middle to halfway, so that I have less work to do, and I will swallow what you have prepared for me. So nourish also our souls.
But I don’t do it. The fragments of green in the mirror are a reproduction, a repetition of another plan, in another format. As a map is of a place. If I can get her to grasp the analogy. Mirror, map, reproduction, repetition.
I press my gaze against the front of Agaat’s white cap. As if it’s a sail and my will a wind.
I look past her at the mirror and then quickly at the wall next to my bed. At the mirror, at the wall. From the fragmented garden to the off-white surface of the wall. From what is lacking in the reflected summer to what is lacking on the despoiled wall, an image, a hill farm on a flat plan, suspended by its loop from the picture rail. To and fro I look, to and fro, with the white-eyes that flash in the mirror, around the invisible corner, to the invisible fig tree. Agaat, don’t you see then, the unseeable, this goodly frame the earth, don’t you see it, quartered by the compass, east west south north! The yard, the dam, the mountain, the drift!
Slowly she retreats from me. She places the teaspoon on the saucer’s edge. She slides off her high perch next to my bed.
Lower the girl, she says softly on a held-in breath through her teeth.
To and fro she looks, as I looked, I flicker my eyes all the time. She looks at me, she looks where I’m looking, she nods slowly.
Mirror, mirror, she says, is it bothering you? Seen too much? On the wall? Seen it all?
That’s a start! I signal. You’re warm! That’s excellent progress! Yes, I signal, yes Agaat, you’re on the right track! Now just think further! Now just think: map on the wall, think flat earth, think pictured palm of hand, think life-line, think fingerprint!
Agaat gives me her eyes. I look deep into them, I take hold of her eyes with mine, I bend them to the door, down the passage, all the way to the front room, to the sideboard next to the wall, to the quivers lying there, behind the photo albums. I close my eyes slowly and keep them closed. I gather a sheaf, from behind her apron, from out of her chest. I see a great sailing ship tacking against the wind with billowing sails. Keel-deep in the waving wheat she comes towards me, hill crest after hill crest, disappearing in the troughs, every time bigger as she reappears till I can hear her apron creaking in the swells and can make out her figurehead, the profile of a Fate, the jaw set to brave without retort the storms that she has predestined.
…
Only when it really dawned on him that he was going to be a father, did Jak start treating you slightly better. You didn’t altogether trust it. It was the eighth month of your pregnancy and all of a sudden you were being showered with all kinds of gifts, an LP with saxophone music which, it must be said, didn’t do much for you, Wonderland by Night, perfume by Elizabeth Arden, a new tea set. He even took you into Swellendam for Die Heks by Leipoldt which an amateur dramatic company was staging. Not that he’d given it much thought, but you appreciated the effort.
You had to listen to his fantasies of how the child would look just like him, what sterling blood flowed in the de Wet veins and how he was going to bring him up to be strong and fit just like his father, a gentleman farmer. In the evenings he drew plans of toys that he wanted to build for the child. Kites from which one could hang, aeroplanes, rockets that could really take off.
You asked, what if it’s a little girl? In his family, Jak said, the first-born was always a boy.
You watched this husband of yours in the evenings as he washed his face and brushed his teeth, standing stooped over in his underclothes. Sometimes as he removed the towel from his face, it seemed to you as if he was going to cry. Sometimes you found him paging through one of your books on the night-table and shutting it quickly when he saw you looking. At night he left the stoep room and came and lay behind your back like a little boy. In the mornings when you woke up he was gone.
As meek as he was with you, so volatile was he with the labourers. He would berate them for the slightest infraction. You’d always chosen to overlook those things, the sugar and the coffee disappearing from the house, the dogs’ bones vanishing from the meat cooler outside, but Jak took up arms against them. He lay in wait for the kids who stole pumpkins from the roof of the shed at night, and shot at them with the air gun. You knew about it because their mothers brought them to you mewling with the pellets that had become infected in their buttocks. You had to remove them with needles burnt clean and provide ointment and plasters until the wound had cleared up. They never said what had happened, and some of them didn’t even know, because Jak of course didn’t let himself be seen. When you dug out the pellet with the mother holding down the screaming child on the kitchen table, you said, don’t look, and spirited away the evidence between your breasts.
One evening you put the pellets in Jak’s plate. There were five of them.
Jake, these are children, you said, they can take as many pumpkins as they like, it’s not as if you eat them. And you don’t plant them either and you don’t water them and you don’t stack them on the roof, they’re my pumpkins with which I earn a little extra at the market to pay the servants, I might as well just regard it as part of their wages.
He said nothing, put the pellets in his shirt pocket.
The children grow up here on the farm, you said, when they’re grown men they’ll remember it, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
The creatures just breed here, Jak said, I’ve a good mind to fire the whole lot, they can’t do as they like on my yard, they’re just loafing about and getting up to mischief.
You can’t do as you like on the yard either, you said. They’re human beings, remember, not cattle.
You stopped talking when the food was brought in. You put your finger on your lips to warn Jak not to talk further.
But he’d already said it.
You get the creatures accustomed to everything, Milla, he said, you’re the one who creates expectations, not me. Remember, give them the little finger and they’ll take the whole hand, don’t come and complain to me one day if they come to confront you with all kinds of demands. Mark my words, the Romans knew it long before us, give a hotnot a hard master and he’ll long for a soft master, give him a soft master and he’ll start dreaming of being his own master. Is that what you want? And then where do you think we’ll bloody well end up in this country?
It was the old pattern. The political justification of downright meanness.
Shooting at children as if they were baboons, you said, has nothing to do with politics, Jak.
And you teaching them the alphabet as if they were parrots? What does that have to do with? And then you think you can contain it afterwards? You may think you know all about farming, Milla, but you mustn’t come and tell me about politics.
What could you do? You couldn’t even stop him ranting for all the world to hear.
Let them hear who have ears to hear, Milla, he said when you tried to silence him, I won’t be shunted around in my own home. Not by a long shot.
That last while before Jakkie’s birth you couldn’t inform yourself at first hand, your legs were swollen and you no longer went out into the yard so often. But you knew in a matter of minutes if anything happened.
Who came to tell you about the fighting? That Jak first shoved Koos Makkelwyn because he gave him lip?
Initially it wasn’t clear to you what had happened. And you could get nothing from Jak himself. Bedraggled, his riding clothes full of dust and horse manure and his riding-helmet dented, he arrived at home in the middle of the afternoon to take a bath and then he left again in the bakkie without a word.
Makkelwyn was a sturdy, neat man in his fifties whom Jak had hired specially to look after his stable horses. He was a farrier and breaker-in of wild horses and in the mornings arrived, quite the dandy, on a dapple-grey ambler from The Glen, where he was stable-master. His people, the McCalvins, had since time immemorial been the farriers in the region.
You had Dawid called in when Jak had left. So then he brought along his father.
You can still see them standing there in the kitchen, the old man in his seventies, and his son, both with the Okkenel crooked mouths and light-green eyes, and with their oily khaki hats in their hands. In Dawid’s other hand the gleaming riding crop, incongruous against the dirty pants, the scuffed shoes.
What happened in the stable, Dawid? Spit it out!
You were irritated. Why had the old man come along? When OuKarel put in an appearance in the kitchen, you knew from childhood, then there was trouble. You were tired. You weren’t in a mood for trouble.
Dawid looked at his father.
Talk, the old man said to him, I’m here as your witness.
Dawid looked you straight in the eye. You didn’t like it.
Mister Makkelwyn ticked off the baas. He rubbed against the leg of his pants with the crop.
Over what?
Because the baas rides the horses through the piss and then Mister Makkelwyn has to struggle with foundered horses for days.
And then?
Then the baas shoved him in the chest and told him to shut his bloody trap.
And then?
Then Mister Makkelwyn said he wouldn’t shut his trap and he wouldn’t be sworn at and shoved around by a pipsqueak who had no respect for a noble animal.
Dawid shifted his weight.
Carry on, OuKarel said.
Then the baas whipped him across the face with the crop and then Mister Makkelwyn grabbed the tip of the crop and then the baas pulled Mister Makkelwyn down on the ground and wanted to kick him and then Mister Makkelwyn grabbed the baas by the leg and then he fell and by this time they’re both flat on the ground rolling in the straw and horse-shit and the baas can’t get the better of Mister Makkelwyn, because Mister Makkelwyn holds him down so that he can’t do a thing.
And then?
And then the baas shouts at me and says why am I just standing there can’t I see the bloody Spout-mongrel has him by the throat I must help I must take the hay fork.
The Aga’s door slammed and the fire leapt out of the plate-holes as the evening meal was being warmed.
Dawid looked away.
Nooi, he said, I’m sorry . . .
For what, Dawid?
Again Dawid looked at his father.
The old man was to the point, but you could see he had something else on his mind, there was an expression on his face as if he was rehearsing to look pathetic.
My hip is sore, my boy, have your say and have done, Karel said, the people want to cook their evening food here.
You saw how OuKarel was looking at the saucepans as the lids were lifted and the food was stirred with the pot-spoons. Meat with dumplings and sweet potatoes and fennel bulbs with white sauce it was. The beetroot salad was being grated together with onion. There was a bacon and spinach soup. A lot of food for three people. The old man’s eyes were starting to water from it all.
And then, Dawid?
Then I said, Baas, the way I see it the hay-fork is meant for shovelling hay and I’m not being paid to do the baas’s dirty work, I’m the foreman, and all I did then was to close the stable door so that nobody could see further what was happening in there because then they were rolling this way and that way there and Mister Makkelwyn pinned the baas’s arms down so that he couldn’t use his fists.
Two new loaves were being turned out of the tins, a pound of butter was being taken out. The sounds in the kitchen were loud in your ears.
And then?
So then I stood there because then I wanted to see that Mister Makkelwyn came out of it okay. But I needn’t have worried because the baas was completely winded by then and then Mister Makkelwyn got up and dusted his arse and put out his hand to help the baas up and then the baas slapped away the hand and then Mister Makkelwyn said well then the baas would have to manage on his own with his fancy horses and the baas must please take the money he still owes him to his brother’s house in Suurbraak this very evening he’ll spare him the embarrassment of arriving at The Glen to apologise to the stable-master, and it will be so much and so much and if the baas doesn’t do it he’ll go and charge him with assault even if it’s just for a case number in the book and even if it’s just to warn the sergeant about what’s happening here on Grootmoedersdrift.
There was a silence in which only the swishing of the riding crop against the pants was audible. You were weighing up what to say next.
OuKarel took the gap.
Grootmoedersdrift, ai, ai, a . . . I’ve now been coming along for ever . . . He shook his head.
Here, you knew, the real story was coming out.
I’m tired of working, Kleinnooi, I’m asking for a little pension, Kleinnooi, I must buy medicine for my rheumatism and I now want to rest at home and now and again at least eat a bit of meat and buy a tin of peaches.
You were amazed. As if it was nothing, not one word of commentary about the happenings in the stable, a stone in the stream, to step over on.
I’ll see what I can do, Karel, you said.
You knew better than to ask: But what does this have to do with anything and why now?
It was a time-honoured negotiation and it was as effective as it was subtle.
Dawid was not behindhand either.
We’re hungry, Nooi, our children follow the baas and pick up the guinea-fowl that he shoots to glory but then he chases them away, we can’t live on milk and askoek alone, Nooi . . .
There was a pause. He put the crop down on the kitchen table.
On milk and askoek and . . . pumpkin, Nooi, can the nooi not top up our rations with a bit of pork and fat and beans?
I’ll see what I can do, Dawid, you said.
Pumpkin. The word was flagged for you like a red pennant, a red pinhead with which one marks a critical point on a map.
You had two big enamel bowls of food dished up, and a little pail of soup and both the loaves and the pound of butter and had a bottle of preserved peaches brought from the pantry.
Jak, you knew, wouldn’t be returning for supper, and you weren’t really hungry.
Ai Nooi, I didn’t really mean . . . OuKarel said, and you believed his self-exoneration, but Dawid’s face, it was a whole little drama when he took the baskets of food from you, emboldened with his own words about what had happened over in the stables, backed up by his father’s request. Even though the request had come from loyalties of a former time and even though it was grafted onto old understandings.
Ai, but this is now going to taste like something, he said, and thank you very much, Nooi, I’m glad we understand each other here.
Come Dawid, OuKarel said and put on his hat. You could see from the old man’s back that he thought his son was going too far.
What you had to understand, what had been implied as understood, was more than you could write down in a day.
In the doorway Karel turned round.
I’m also not altogether useless, Kleinnooi, I can show the young men how it’s done, I can still lend a hand with the little soft jobs, just let me know if the kleinnooi needs me. And send regards when the kleinnooi talks to the ounooi, when the ounooi comes here, tell her to have me called there at the drift, I want to see how the ounooi is getting on.
That was another clear message.
You knew better than to confront Jak, he the fit muscled master of Grootmoedersdrift wrestled to the ground on a stable floor and pinned down by a coloured man twenty years his senior.
You saw to it that his riding clothes were washed and ironed and his leggings polished and his riding helmet dusted the dents beaten out and the plush of green velvet brushed up. You collected it all neatly in a little pile for him on the sofa in his stoep office with the leather crop that Dawid had brought along, buffed to a shine and leant at an angle against the curve of the helmet.
In the end it was the dogs. You were always furious when you caught him at it.
But he turned his hand into a caress, redirected his foot at a ball or a stick. He said you were mad, he was just playing with the dogs.
Ma did not seem surprised when she discovered it one day. It was the first weekend of July. She had come over to help with the final preparations, did at least say that the new rooms were a good idea. At you she looked with a mixture of disapprobation and fascination and pity. You were heavy and slow, your knees and ankles thick and red.
Jak was volatile. You were scared on the Saturday afternoon that he would unleash something when he got home, worked up after his sports meeting. That was why you had summoned your mother.
You were in the nursery putting up a gauze curtain. You’d opened the window to get rid of the smell of paint. Ma was in the kitchen making coffee after her afternoon nap. The kitchen door was open. Across the yard you could hear the rattling of cups. The bakkie drove in and the dogs barked. Jak was back from the rugby match, back from the bar where he’d socialised afterwards, you could tell from the way he drove into the yard, the slam of the bakkie door. He would come in by the back way. A movement drew your attention. The door of the outside room was still open from Ma’s inspection earlier in the afternoon. Was it your imagination, or had something moved behind the curtain? The cups stopped rattling.
Then Jak came round the corner and swore and looked under his soles. He’d stepped in dogshit, and was instantly furious. His new calf-leather boots. Salomo the ridgeback and Sofie the half-bred Scottish terrier were grovelling towards him on their sides. They knew better by this time than to jump up and to lick. Hand on the hip he stood and watched them. Under Sofie the cement grew dark with pee. Salomo’s ears were back and his lip was pulled up. His whole body was quivering.
Jak grinned, coaxed the dogs nearer. Behind the screen door you could see the white blotch of your mother’s face. You stood back behind the gauze curtain.
You could have stopped him, you could have opened the window, you could have said Jak, the coffee’s ready in the kitchen, how was the rugby? But you said nothing. You knew that your mother would not betray her presence either. Witness, was what you two wanted to do, witness, and be each other’s witnesses. Again a stirring in the outside room. How many pairs of eyes were there that afternoon?
Jak had his back to you, right in front of the kitchen door. You could hear everything.
You think you can growl at me, you think you can bark me off my own backyard, you think you can crap all over the place here!
Then three kicks. One at Sofie before she could get away, and two into Salomo’s body where he was lying on the ground.
So get away! he hissed at Salomo through his teeth, sag-balls! Should wear underpants, you, he snarled. Powder-prick! No-good, you’ll let them rob us blind here!
The dog struggled up, limped away glancing back nervously. Jak scraped his soles clean with a twig, washed his hands at the tap in the backyard and dried them on his pants, looked at his watch.
Then you pushed open the window of the nursery.
Jak, you said, the coffee is ready in the kitchen, Ma made it.
He looked at you, then darted a glance at the screen door. He walked away quickly, in the direction of the sheds.
You sat down on the chair in the nursery and waited. You unfolded the toy lampshade that you still had to put up. A yellow face with a wide laughing mouth. Open and shut, open and shut you folded it, the sun a fan in your hand.
Your mother came in with a tray and three cups. She put the tray on the washstand, closed the open window, drew the curtains.
She said nothing, waited for you to speak.
Jak is frustrated, you said.
You kept your voice light. It felt as if it was you who’d kicked the dogs. You got up and started fiddling with the baby things on the washstand.
He’s not really a farmer, Ma, you know it yourself.
She said nothing. She waited. You stole a glance at her. She already knew every word that you would say.
He feels worthless, then he takes it out on the dogs.
She made a sound.
He feels I’ve got him under my thumb. And now I’m pregnant, at last after all the years, the centre of attention. I suppose he feels neglected.
Your voice dried up. You were starting to get angry. Old bat preying on me, you thought, first he wasn’t good enough to farm on your land, then he’s the golden boy for twelve years while he’s mistreating me, and you shrug it off as if it’s nothing, and now that I’m pregnant, he’s suddenly a villain if he kicks a few dogs. Keep your nose out of my affairs, you thought. Your cheeks were burning.
You opened the curtains again. The door of the outside room was now wide open. Somewhere in the house you heard a door slam. Something fell onto the floor in the back room. You felt dirty. Your house felt dirty.
Your mother’s voice was like a dipping-rod in your neck, down you had to go, down into the white milky poison.
Milla, look at me, she said, sit down on that chair so that I can talk to you. I’m old, I know more, and I understand more than you think. My life is almost over, I’m free to talk now, I must talk, so that you can’t say one day your mother kept up a front to the day of her death.
Ma, just let it be! You waved your hands around your head.
You will listen, Kamilla. And the walls will listen.
The floorboards in the passage creaked. You signalled with your finger in front of your lips.
But she only talked louder.
Too much understanding of the evil-doer and too little indignation with the evil, she said, that’s how women make a virtue of their own suffering and how men get away with murder. You needn’t keep spinning me pretty tales. Nor he. And don’t try and absolve yourself of all blame in this. Jak de Wet kicks his dogs for two reasons: Because they can’t flatter him in full sentences and because they can’t tell anybody what a two-faced churl he is.
You protested, she held her hands up in the air to stop you.
Let me finish, she said.
Do you want to carry on being his dog? You know that you’re now the mother of his child. You know that you can keep him at bay with the same arts with which you caught him. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you worked him. But you can do more. You’re now a fully fledged woman. People will listen to you now. You can tell people what’s happening, your woman friends, your mother. We women may be the weaker sex, but we’re actually in charge, you know that as well as I. We just work in different ways. We needn’t be scared. We’ve got hold of them where it hurts most.
She stretched out her hand. The elbow was stiff. It was only half bent, slightly extended in front of her. You wanted to look away, but you couldn’t. The hand cupped itself around something imaginary, from below, caressed it, the fingers writhed, grabbed, twisted. At last she dropped her hand. There it lay, in her lap, large, weathered, with gnarled joints.
A story, she said, is an easy thing to spread.
You couldn’t look away from the hand. You thought, let go of me, I’m infected already, you can’t make me any sicker than I am. You don’t know why you thought that. All the time in that little room you felt undermined and underpinned at the same time. Fed and fed-upon at the same time. You rolled your shoulders and blinked your eyes to get rid of the feeling, you tried to see her as she was, tried to hear what she was saying, because for the first time in a very long while she was actually trying to talk to you.
If the story hasn’t spread already, she continued. There’s nothing, is there, like a good housemaid to send the truth into the world. You need only speak the word. They’re women. They know about things. They live for their mistress, what else have they got to live for? Their husbands? You need only encourage one of those a bit, and there it runs, a veld fire. Kitchen, co-op, consistory. You have quite a few here, don’t you, that you can recruit. The little young one strikes me as particularly suited to the purpose. A rumour in these regions, I’m telling you today, is the best way of keeping a man in his place. If the people know, they’ll look at him askance, pass him by, push him out of places where it matters to be seen, to belong to. Then he’ll come and cry on your shoulder. He’ll come and ask you to help him. Then you can set your terms. He’ll do everything and anything to get back in favour. He’ll stop, I know the kind, then he’ll stop.
Ma, stop, you said, it’s not your business.
I know the kind of man he is, Milla, take my word for it. I’m your mother, and I know you too. They find strong clever women attractive, men like Jak, they can’t exist without approval. They live on reinforcement and affirmation as if on air. They’re like children. As scared as children are of the dark, so scared are they of not being liked.
The corners of her mouth pulled down, she pushed her lips forward as if she was gulping something down.
So, you decide what he’s worth to you from now on and use him accordingly.
You wanted to scream, I know it! I’ve known it for a long time! But that you didn’t want to concede to her. It was a snare. She was provoking you, she was jealous, she wanted to run down your dead father to you, your father who had loved you just as you were, unconditionally, she wanted to find out how far things had gone with you and Jak. She would use your reaction, whatever it was, against you. She spoke loudly on purpose. She looked at you meaningfully, with every word she rolled her eyes in the direction of the yard and the doors and the passage. There were soft footsteps in the passage.
What old wives’ tales are you spinning here?
Jak appeared in the doorway, leant against the door frame, hand in the pocket to strike an attitude. He was in his socks.
You were sorry for him. He looked small. His face was confused. Your mother got up and brushed past him. In the passage she turned back and looked at you from behind his back.
The SPCA, Milla, do they have a number in the book?
The phone book is there in the passage, Ma, see for yourself, you said.
Jak looked at you, helpless.
You got up and walked to him and rubbed your hand through his hair. Never mind, you said, she’s old. Her bark is worse than her bite.
You whispered so that she shouldn’t hear. But you couldn’t speak softly enough. Without looking up the number in the book she strode away with loud footsteps from the little table in the passage where the telephone was. She had an excuse not to phone. You had provided it.
…
descended to hell my right hand a fall of stars it is raining the bleating in the fields all night long I lie awake spasms knock at my rings thumb and index pressed against each other form the eye of a rabbit there leaps wrong shadow my thumb buckles pen paper slips out of my hand a rustling in shrubs a lizard a mouse an emperor butterfly under a roof of leaves how does one hold an egg the stem of a rose a doorknob a window-catch everything I leave open were you born in a church? made like that and left like that? button and button-hole remain apart to what end the display of your glory? that is the question agaat
…
12/13 July 1960 after midnight
Have just now come to sit here in the sitting room shawl over my nightdress. Woke up from the creeper an eerie little shadow-hand against the window & couldn’t go to sleep again.
Bright full moon outside. Quite cold. Feel like something but I don’t know what. Tea & ginger biscuits? A glass of warm wine would help but it’s out of the question now it’s just as if I’m waiting for something just as if I’m missing something. It’s the child probably I can feel him kicking usually he stirs in the early evening & then he calms down at night.
Labourers’ dogs would have barked ducks would have made a racket at the dam if there’d been anything amiss but it’s quiet. Crickets. Frogs. Perhaps I should go for a walk in the yard for fresh air. Half-nauseous feeling won’t go away.
1 o’clock
Yard quiet but something’s not right. Don’t want to wake J. he’ll say it’s my imagination he’ll say I’m sleep-walking again but I’m awake & I was awake just now even though I feel all the time as if I’m walking just above the ground on somebody else’s farm in a dream in somebody else’s head. But it’s my farm. It’s Grootmoedersdrift. Pinched myself even.
There was nothing outside that I didn’t recognise & didn’t expect the yard in the moonlight & everything taken care of everything the image of order & tranquillity. White gables of the shed’s gateposts at the entrance to the river-grazing black & upright sentinels the black shadows of the lean-tos under which I know the wood & bales & rolls of fencing & droppers are piled neatly in the sweat-sweet smell of plaited onions from the onion store. A trace of that yesterday-today-and-tomorrow that always flowers out of season? Can one dream such a smell? Would one smell trouble better by moonlight?
Made absolutely sure went & tried all the locks checked the gates on the yard & checked that the sluice of the irrigation furrow was closed if the hanslammers were lying against one another in the little sleeping-shed behind the vegetable garden. They’re always a bit restless after one of them has been slaughtered & checked the railing of the trailer full of pumpkins saw that all the pipes were fitted securely into the holes so that they can’t come unstuck if the load were to shift on the pass.
Not a single thing out of place. Even pushed open the gate of the feed-store & felt the bales of lucerne lukewarm as they should be wouldn’t get any warmer.
Went in at the side entrance of the implement shed & stood there in the dark until I could see the outlines of the machinery in the dark I could distinguish the nose of the Massey Ferguson the relief of the chrome lettering. Unreal feeling. But who would dream of reading by touch in the dark?
In the chicken run sleeping sounds of hens on their perches & the smell of manure & feathers. Walked along the blind side of the house to see if the outside cooler where the fresh meat is hung to cure was latched against the foxes. The little foxes from across the drift. They would you believe it have now taken to standing on each other’s shoulders to get to a leg of lamb or the dogs’ shinbones. Am I imagining things or have they become more audacious since the day I started fixing up the outside room heaven knows how they found out so quickly must have been Saar who tattled perhaps they think they now have an advanced forward position in A. Perhaps A.’s been in cahoots with them for a long time. Ai shame on you Milla that’s surely totally & completely improbable.
Twenty to two
Was just going to crawl back into bed when suddenly I knew what’s wrong it’s Agaat! That door of the outside room was still open when I went by there on my way from the meat cooler. Just ajar! Knocked at the window. Could she really be gone? Must go & look again!
Two o’clock
A. is gone! Please God she hasn’t slept in her bed the suitcase is gone two Sunday dresses missing lots of clothes gone counted even 8 hairpins & a cap Lord help us! one pair of shoes & one pair of socks also missing & the pack of Dr White’s was open & one pad was taken out & brown suitcase with all hr own belongings GONE! Looked everywhere but didn’t want to call & wake everybody up I told dogs search I’ll warm her bottom for her if I find hr ungrateful little scrap where could she be? My red jersey that I lent her hung by your leave on the hook by the kitchen door cheek! she knows where the dirty clothes should go I’ll sort hr out in a wink haven’t got time for impertinent creatures here on Grootmoedersdrift what must I do?
Switched on all the yard lights & the house lights so that she can know there where she’s hiding that I’ve discovered that she’s gone. J. must in God’s name just not wake up then all hell will break loose he’ll fire her.
Ten past two
Went to switch off all the lights again wouldn’t want her to think I’m eaten up with worry!
Half past two
Now did you ever! A. is on the mountain in her new uniform! I was standing on the stoep just now first I thought I heard singing then I thought I saw something white stirring on the little foothill thought at first it was the guano bags I tied there to show where the wattles must be hacked out then it turned out it was A. all the time. Could make hr out clearly with J.’s binoculars. Can’t see what she’s getting up to there odd steps & gestures against the slope.
Nine o’clock morning 13 July
Lay awake all night & couldn’t get warm again after all the roaming around outside then I heard six o’clock a stirring in the kitchen I thought now I’m pretending not to have an inkling & next thing she comes down the passage tchi-tchi in her new soles not a crinkly curl in sight neatly dressed in hr uniform cap pinned just right & proper coffee on a tray slight smell of grass & shrubs but beyond that without a trace dogs following her & pushing their snouts into her. Know what that means or perhaps it’s just the uniform that smells of shop.
The running off in the night. Feels as if I could have dreamed it all. What a fright she gave me, heavens! But I don’t let on. Perhaps she’ll tell me one day what exactly she went to do there what in God’s name got into her & what became of the suitcase & hr house clothes the two pretty dresses made for hr & the dirty clothes from the sheep-slaughtering. Not that it would be a great loss if they’re gone was a lot of old stuff anyway & would be too small for her. My red jersey on the hook. Pennant & signal I know hr.
That to-do on the hill I can’t figure out. Sideways & backwards knees bent foot-stamping jumping on one leg jump-jump-jump & point-point with one arm at the ground. Then the arms rigid next to the sides. Then she folded them & then she stretched them. Looked as if she was keeping the one arm in the air with the other arm & waving. Thought at first oh so I’m late I suppose it’s been carrying on for a long time the nocturnal meetings but I didn’t see anybody coming no whistling or calling just the thrumming two three notes over & over.
How strange all the same. Hr head in the air, looking up at hr little arm as if it’s a stick. Walking stick? Fencing-foil? Then again held still in front of hr, palm turned down palm turned up. Judgement? Blessing? Over the hills over the valley along the river? A farewell ritual? Where would she get it from? So weird it all is I can’t put the images out of my head I think of it all the time. Why up there? What could she have wanted to see? Can imagine well what it would have looked like in the moonlight the river between the trees the grazing on the valley-side the moon-grey hills on the south-eastern side & here & there a clearing so that one can see the great plain stretched out behind. Nothing that she hasn’t seen many a time before.
Could the binoculars have been playing tricks upon me? Hr arm a pointer? Pointing-out pointing-to what is what & who is who? An oar? A blade? Hr fist pressing apart the membrane & the meat as if she’s dressing a slaughter animal? But not a sheep, as if she’s separating the divisions of the night. Or dividing something within herself. Root cluster.
Far-fetched, Milla! Your imagination is too fertile for your own good. But surely one couldn’t think it up. A. in hr working clothes in the moonlight in the middle of the night doing a St Vitus’s dance. I could surely not have dreamt that. There must be a simple explanation. Perhaps she’s working herself up to running away. I suppose I’ll get to the truth of the matter one day. Must go & see perhaps the suitcase is back.